Closed Bug 1236030 Opened 9 years ago Closed 9 years ago

Accessing Youtube.com changes the user-agent string to an old Firefox version

Categories

(Core :: General, defect)

Product:
Core
Component:
General
Version:
43 Branch
Platform:
Other
macOS
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: tommy, Unassigned)

References

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0 Build ID: 20151223140742 Steps to reproduce: Trying to access youtube.com from Firefox 43.0.3 from Macs running 10.11 and 10.8.5, but due to user-agent string blocking we have in place to prevent access using older browser versions, the site will not allow access as the user-agent string is changing back to Firefox 42, instead of 43. All other sites visited show the correct UA string, but youtube.com does not. Actual results: When accessing youtube.com from Firefox 43.0.3, the user-agent string for the connection is being changed from "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0" (what it should be) to an older version "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:42.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/42.0". This same activity is being seen on other Macs in my environment that are running Mac OS 10.8.5 (the UA, obviously, shows the OS as 10.8, but the browser shows as 42). Expected results: All sites being visited should use the default user-agent string for the browser, unless changed by the user, I would believe. This behavior is preventing our users from accessing Youtube.com unless using a user-agent string changing extension to set it back to the default one. I am wondering if we might see other sites with the same issue. Most users would not even know this is occurring, but due to our restrictions, it is causing a problem.
OS: Unspecified → Mac OS X
Hardware: Unspecified → Other
To note, one of my coworkers, in analyzing the Firefox binaries (I am seeking clarity on what, exactly), found code that appears to indicate functions that are deliberately modifying the UA for youtube.com, ytimg.com, and youtube-nocookie.com. So, it appears that this may be deliberate???
See Bug 1233970, This would be intentional.
Blocks: 1233970
(In reply to Alice0775 White from comment #2) > See Bug 1233970, This would be intentional. That makes sense now. Thank you for the link. I will close this out.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 9 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
When YouTube fix their code (they mentioned next week) we'll disable this hack.
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