Closed Bug 106720 Opened 23 years ago Closed 23 years ago

MSN sites are blocking Mozilla browser

Categories

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English Other, defect)

defect
Not set
major

Tracking

(Not tracked)

VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 104733

People

(Reporter: m-cahill, Unassigned)

References

()

Details

I've been able to log-in to msn.ca for content I can't get on other portals. However, as of this morning, Mozilla is being denied with the following message: <snip> Attention: Web Browser Upgrade Required to View MSN.ca If you are seeing this page, we have detected that the browser that you are using will not render MSN.com correctly. Additionally, you'll see the most advanced functionality of MSN.com only with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5. If you wish to visit MSN.com, please select the appropriate free Internet Explorer download link below. * Internet Explorer for Windows * Internet Explorer for Macintosh * MSN Explorer for Windows ©2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of Use Advertise TRUSTe Approved Privacy Statement GetNetWise </snip> My Mozilla version: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.5) Gecko/20011012
Yes, MSN is now blocking most browsers except for the Microsoft branded browsers :( Also affected is MSN.com (and probably most of the other re-designed msn sites) This is not a blocker.. but should probably be atop the 'most wanted' list of Evangelism. I'm removing "blocker" status, and demoting it to "major", but someone may want to lower it even more. (I dont know how the status of Evangelism bugs are handled) I also changed the summary to better reflect the problem. --> marking as NEW (i searched and found no dupes) A quote from CNET: ----------- "Microsoft is actively keeping our browser from accessing MSN.com," said Jon S. Tetzchner, Opera's chief executive. He added that every time a browser connects to a server, it sends a string to the server telling it what type of browser is seeking access. "Microsoft is seeing (that) it is an Opera browser and shutting it out," said Tetzchner, whose team was testing the problem Thursday. "If you change the Opera string by one letter, it is letting us in." Earlier versions of the Netscape Navigator browser jammed and crashed when trying to reach MSN.com. The latest version, 6.1, seems to be working. ----- (full story at: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7655334.html?tag=mn_hd )
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Summary: MSN.CA will not allow Mozilla (0.9.5) → MSN sites are blocking Mozilla browser
Severity: blocker → major
Is there a way to set the string Mozilla is sending msn.com such that msn would think mozilla was IE?
Should this depend on bug 97222 or should it be the other way around?
Albert R, I'm not sure which :) I'll let someone that DOES know change it themselves :) MSN looks for the Mozilla user-agent string, and blocks when it finds a particular type. Here is a (temporary) workaround which lets you view the site: Exit mozilla, and find your "prefs.js" file. Add the following to the file, and save: --- // Override the default user-agent string: user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.16-22smp i686; en-US; m18) Gecko/20010110 Netscape6/6.5"); --- This "tricks" MSN.com into letting you view the page. You can probably modify that user-agent string to better suit your needs. I pulled that particular string from one of the webpages of mozilla.org. After adding that user-agent overide line, I can visit the msn.com site without any problems. Note: The page appears to work fine under Mozilla! It is almost identical to the rendering under IE6 (for me at least). Also, I'm changing Platform/OS to all.
OS: Linux → All
Hardware: PC → All
Should this be marked as dup of bug 104733 ?
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 104733 ***
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 23 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
ahh, ok. Now that this bug is duped.. any further comments should be made in bug 104733. marking this one 'verified'
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
Mass reassigning English-Other bugs to general default assignees.
Assignee: momoi → english-other
QA Contact: jonrubin → english-other
Product: Tech Evangelism → Tech Evangelism Graveyard
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