#26146: Setting `general.useragent.override` does not spoof the platform part
anymore in ESR 60 which is confusing
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Reporter: gk | Owner: tbb-team
Type: defect | Status: new
Priority: Medium | Milestone:
Component: Applications/Tor Browser | Version:
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: ff60-esr, tbb-fingerprinting-os | Actual Points:
Parent ID: | Points:
Reviewer: | Sponsor:
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Comment (by traumschule):
The actual goal is to not split user groups even more. The current
defaults are a tradeoff between usability across platforms and not being
fingerprintable.
As i understood it, the fear is that new users open TB, visit their
favourite sites, find them broken and switch back to another browser. So
essentially the current approach is to make it easy for them and have an
UI that invites to change browsing habits by getting more interested in
anonymity.
I am not sure if it is possible to not break google's (and other) apps
without harming anonymity, but this is the current approach.
Energy is probably best spent finding out how to fix existing
fingerprinting issues that allow to guess your OS (see keyword) and to
write guides to help others. Trying to convince developers to improve the
settings for some by harming may be a waste of time for all.
For the moment interested users have to experiment with UA spoofing addons
for themself. Hopefully the current OS specific UAs will be replaced by
something better (like a split in two groups: desktop / mobile, or popups
offering to lower security for known to be broken websites, etc).
See also https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-
dev/2017-October/000642.html and discussion in #27495.
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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26146#comment:21>
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