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Yeah, they decided against spoofing user agent anymore: https://blog.torproject.org/comment/275941#comment-275941 https://blog.torproject.org/comment/275941#com

by r3bl 8y ago

Yeah, they decided against spoofing user agent anymore: https://blog.torproject.org/comment/275941#comment-275941 https://blog.torproject.org/comment/275941#comment-275941

bo1024 8y ago
That's really unfortunate. It seems like a big loss of privacy with weak arguments in favor. (1) They could easily spoof one UA for mobile and one for desktop -- user chooses. (2) Why are they worried about the experience of Google Docs over Tor??? More generally why focus on the use case where people enable all kinds of unsafe javascript to do fancy OS-specific things? It's like advertising your lightweight speed-focused track racing bicycle, then putting massive tires on it because some users had trouble going off-road.
- stordoff 8y ago
  How much of a difference does it make in practice? Just the platform does not seem like that much more information. Further, I'd wonder if, while the actual OS is fingerprintable (as the various discussions seem to suggest), reporting one OS whilst actually being on another flags the user as interesting/has something to hide (i.e. they are probably using Tor Browser, not just Firefox). There's also usability to consider - if this results in more people using Tor Browser, or not disabling things to try and work around it, that might be a net gain.
  - emanreus 8y ago
    > flags the user as interesting/has something to hide (i.e. they are probably using Tor Browser, not just Firefox). Tor nodes are known and it's trivial to detect users using Tor. > There's also usability to consider - if this results in more people using Tor Browser, or not disabling things to try and work around it, that might be a net gain. I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous. Sharp corners on tabs most certainly won't attract more users. EDIT: Ok I saw the issue with mobile users and some other edge cases. I would still agree with bo1024, it's a weak argument.

by r3bl 8y ago

Yeah, they decided against spoofing user agent anymore: https://blog.torproject.org/comment/275941#comment-275941 https://blog.torproject.org/comment/275941#comment-275941

bo1024 8y ago

That's really unfortunate. It seems like a big loss of privacy with weak arguments in favor. (1) They could easily spoof one UA for mobile and one for desktop -- user chooses. (2) Why are they worried about the experience of Google Docs over Tor??? More generally why focus on the use case where people enable all kinds of unsafe javascript to do fancy OS-specific things? It's like advertising your lightweight speed-focused track racing bicycle, then putting massive tires on it because some users had trouble going off-road.

stordoff 8y ago
How much of a difference does it make in practice? Just the platform does not seem like that much more information. Further, I'd wonder if, while the actual OS is fingerprintable (as the various discussions seem to suggest), reporting one OS whilst actually being on another flags the user as interesting/has something to hide (i.e. they are probably using Tor Browser, not just Firefox). There's also usability to consider - if this results in more people using Tor Browser, or not disabling things to try and work around it, that might be a net gain.
- emanreus 8y ago
  > flags the user as interesting/has something to hide (i.e. they are probably using Tor Browser, not just Firefox). Tor nodes are known and it's trivial to detect users using Tor. > There's also usability to consider - if this results in more people using Tor Browser, or not disabling things to try and work around it, that might be a net gain. I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous. Sharp corners on tabs most certainly won't attract more users. EDIT: Ok I saw the issue with mobile users and some other edge cases. I would still agree with bo1024, it's a weak argument.