Closed Bug 141279 Opened 22 years ago Closed 22 years ago

hotmail.com / passport - registration blocked in non-Netscape Gecko browsers

Categories

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect, P1)

Product:
Tech Evangelism Graveyard
Component:
English US
Platform:
x86
All
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
VERIFIED FIXED

People

(Reporter: verbal, Assigned: susiew)

References

(
URL
)

Details

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:0.9.9) Gecko/20020311
BuildID:    2002031104

Unable to sign up for new account.  It says I have to use Netscape 4.0 or higher
or IE.  

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.go to hotmail
2.choose create new account
3.

Actual Results:  unable to sign up

Expected Results:  message telling me to use netscape 4.0 or higher or IE
Summary: unable to sign up for new account → hotmail.com - unable to sign up for new account
Blocks: MS
Taking. I will follow up.
Assignee: doron → susiew
Priority: -- → P1
This appears to be due to user-agent blocking.  hotmail.com is a top-10 (or 20,
whatever) site.  We need to really bug them about this.  Also, they're blocking
lots of other browsers that would work fine with hotmail, such as wgate's
3.x-based browser.

Passport bites again.
Severity: normal → critical
Verified that this is a useragent issue; tried masquerading as MSIE 5.0 and got
through
I'm working with MSN on sniffing. 

Changed subject line to reflect this is a Passport problem, not just Hotmail. I
believe a couple days ago they integrated Hotmail reg with Passport which
suddenly caused this problem on Hotmail.
Summary: hotmail.com - unable to sign up for new account → hotmail.com / passport - unable to sign up for new account
*** Bug 138155 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Verified this is a passport.com issue.  I have a non-mozilla browser I maintain
that I was forced to implement UA spoofing on a per-site basis this weekend due
to passport.com.  Passport is used by a LOT of sites.  Note that you also can't
view things like signup help, FAQ, etc.

Using a 3.x browser UA (this other browser I maintain based on spyglass), not
only was I blocked from registering, but I was also blocked from logging in
(redirected back to hotmail's login page with no message).  Spoofing IE gets me
through no problem, which makes me think there's no real reason for their
whitelist other than to force non-standard/older browsers out of circulation (or
non-IE browsers...?).


http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/16/2338212

Microsoft has added a new checkbox to Hotmail:
  [X] Sell my name to spammers
and the page on which this checkbox appears is blocked to non-IE non-NS4
user-agents.
In regards to the new spam check box which cannot be accessed via Mozilla
see bug 

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145177.
*** Bug 144799 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 145262 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 146782 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
accepting; and changed subject line
URL: http://www.hotmail.com/ → http://www.hotmail.com/ http://www.pa...
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
OS: Windows 98 → All
Summary: hotmail.com / passport - unable to sign up for new account → hotmail.com / passport - registration blocked in Gecko/non-Netscape browsers
Who can we contact at Hotmail/Passport about this problem?  I need to have this
resolved too.  
They are fully aware of these problems. The best you can do is contact customer
support as customer feedback usually accelerates fix schedules.
*** Bug 145174 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 148672 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I've contacted them and these are the replies I've had:

I am Roxanne and I am replying to your inquiry regarding the error message you
received.
 I understand how important it is for you to access and use your account without
difficulty.
 Please be advised to upgrade your browser to the latest version.
 Download the latest version of Netscape Navigator at:
    http://www.netscape.com/download/
If you have continued problems, please reply to this e-mail message with a
detailed description. Let me know exactly what you did and where the process
fails and include the exact wording of any error messages.


So I tell them I am using the 'latest version' so then:

This is Margarita and I am writing to you in response to your problem changing
your password.  I understand your frustration because you are receiving an error
message when attempting to do so.
 May I suggest that you use another PC when trying to change your password.  In
this way, we would be able to isolate the problem.  It is possible that the
error that you are encountering is caused by your system's configuration.
 Please send us another email message if in case the same problem persists.
 If you should have further questions, please feel free to email me and I would
be glad to help you again.  Thank you for your patience, cooperation and
continued support.


So I tell them I've tried that and it still doesn't work. So then they reply:

This is Bryan and I've checked the account in question and it appears to be
functioning properly. Hotmail is currently up and running on its maximum speed.
We are not experiencing any technical problem as of this period. We suggest that
you contact the Technical Support of Netscape Navigator regarding this matter. 
They can give you a much comprehensive help on your inquiry. 


So I tell them that it's got nothing to do with Netscape navigator, and I'm not
even using Netscape anyway, I'm using Mozilla. So then:


This is Gina and I am writing in response to your problem with using your
Hotmail account.  I understand your frustration regarding the matter. 
 I believe your problem is due to your browser settings and configurations. 
Please contact the support group of the browser you are using so that they may
address the problem immediately. 


So here I am contacting the 'support group' . But as we all very well know, it's
them, not Mozilla...
Ok I've just downloaded UABAR from mozdev.org and told Hotmail that I'm using
MSIE 6.0 . Registering works fine so they can't say that they've stopped Mozilla
from being able to view this page because it wouldn't be able to.
Blocks: 145177
OK, I spent 1.5 hours on hold on the phone and ended up with an escalation email
address, to which I sent this message:

Hello;

I was told to send an email detailing the developer problem we are
currently having with hotmail.com.  I am a Mozilla
(http://www.mozilla.org) developer and we are currently preparing to push
out version 1.0 of our browser, and we try to comply with what is known as
the "top 100" websites on the internet.  Hotmail is one of those sites, so
we would love to interoperate with it.  The problem seems to be one of    
browser detection on your passport website, for example if we try to 
access this page to create a new Hotmail login: 
 
  http://lc3.law13.hotmail.passport.com/cgi-bin/login 
 
and then we click on the "Sign Up" link, we're greeted with a screen that
says the following: 
 
  "Microsoft® .NET Passport no longer supports the Web browser version you
are using. Please upgrade to a current Web browser, such as Microsoft
Internet Explorer version 4.0 or later, or Netscape Navigator version 4.08
or later." 

However, if we change the browser to identify itself as Microsoft Internet
Explorer 5.0, or Netscape 4.79, then it works flawlessly.  We have an
outstanding open bug for this issue at this URL:  
 
  http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=141279 
 
If you would be so kind as to forward this message to those who can help  
us resolve this issue, we would appreciate it.  Thank you, 
 
   -- The Mozilla Development Team 


To all those concerned: 
I have been in touch with Microsoft and updating their browser detection is in 
the queue. It might not be as soon as we would all like, but they are aware 
this is an issue. 

Susie

PS Netscape and Yahoo mail work beautifully with all Gecko browsers. Yes I know 
you've had your hotmail account for years but I don't get much spam from these 
services either.
Thanks for the updates.  Will the browser detection be applied to all browser types? or just for Gecko?  My emails to MS don't get responses.

I am not evangelizing support for browsers other than Gecko so I'm not sure.
(Sorry!)
What is the chances that Mozilla could add a section similar to 'Form Manager'
that allows us to get around the browser sniffing problems in Mozilla?

Basically all it would need to do is maintain a list of sites for which various
properties are overridden (just 'navigator.userAgent' to begin with).

While it is wonderful to call this problem 'Tech Evangelism' and hope that the
various sites all fix up their problems, the fact is that many people are (a)
lazy, (b) too busy, or (c) Microsoft, and thus change will be s-l-o-w.

Why don't we simply allow ourselves to get around the problem without relying
upon web administrators?  It would certainly resolve one of my largest niggles
when using Mozilla.
*** Bug 149979 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
->evang500
Keywords: evang500
Summary: hotmail.com / passport - registration blocked in Gecko/non-Netscape browsers → hotmail.com / passport - registration blocked in non-Netscape Gecko browsers
*** Bug 151939 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 151915 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 152577 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This bug is so heavy that you even can't use the link "contact the .net team" to
put them under pressure and force them to speed up.
I've try to contact them by the link and get the same stupid "upgrade browser" mess.

*** Bug 97222 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This is a huge problem.  Ever since MS has started to press .NET, more web 
based services are starting to use Passport.  As a result of the centralized 
sign-on process, Mozilla users are going to be left out in the cold.

Overriding the user agent does work, but it's a bad solution.  It's bad 
because of the following:

1>  Media Metrix (and related polls) will not produce accurate results.
2>  Reporting based on these polls will show innaccurate results.
3>  Web development efforts will be geared towards the results of these 
reports.

By hiding the browser type you might be using - you're contributing toward 
misleading information.  This has a nasty ripple effect, and ultimately 
can "kill" the Mozilla effort.  I think the Mozilla core is a huge improvement 
over the old NS 4.x series - it's competitive with the IE 5+ series.  If 
browser share isn't accurately represented as a result of hacked user agent 
strings we'll only hurt adoption of the Mozilla product.
Does anyone have the eMail addresses for those USA states that are still
fighting Microsoft?
*** Bug 164557 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 165801 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Start the virtual worldwide party. This is FIXED!
You can now register for Hotmail/Passport in Mozilla.
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 22 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
can sign in from passport.com and hotmail.com using mozilla trunk. v.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
ummm, this is not about signing in, but registering (signing in always worked).
But I checked and the registering page seems to work fine now :)
Product: Tech Evangelism → Tech Evangelism Graveyard
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