GNU bug report logs - #44678
Set a Firefox user agent for our Icecat build

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Message #8 received at 44678 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer <at> gmail.com>
To: Arun Isaac <arunisaac <at> systemreboot.net>
Cc: 44678 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#44678: Set a Firefox user agent for our Icecat build
Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2021 23:22:58 -0400

Hi Arun,

Arun Isaac <arunisaac <at> systemreboot.net> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Many sites---jitsi among many others---don't work properly when they see
> an Icecat user agent. Instead, when the user agent is set to a Firefox
> user agent, these sites work as expected. Users can do this manually by
> installing user agent switching extensions such as uaswitcher, but it
> would be much better if our Icecat package, by default, came with a
> Firefox user agent, and everything worked normally without any user
> intervention.
>
> This bug report arose out of a discussion on help-guix. See
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2020-11/msg00082.html
>
> I would normally volunteer a patch, but building Icecat takes too long
> (> 24 hours) on my slow computer. It would be nice if someone with a
> faster build machine handled this.

I thought the default user agent was already that of Firefox for Windows
(!), purportedly to make it less unique (thus making fingerprinting of
browsers/users more difficult).

Isn't it the case?  I changed mine long ago so I don't remember (to
please some broken site).

Thank you,

Maxim

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