143624 - Option for disabling Browser Identification

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Networking: HTTP, enhancement)

Description

[imran.geriskovan]

There should be an option to prevent Mozilla sending
User-Agent/Browser-Identifier-String to the server.

That is, I don't want my browser sending platform and browser information
to anyone. I hate it. String below violates my privacy!!!!!

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.0+) Gecko/20020507

Or at least I should have the option for changing the identifier string.
Such as:

SomeGoodBrowser/999.0 (Doors; A; Doors SE -9.7; some-lang; x.y.z-) MyEngine/20990507

Comment 1

[Frederic Bezies]

Can't you do this modifying pref.js file ?

It is not violating privacy, it is more useful for some webmasters, and it helps
having good sites on the web. Not crappy MS-HTML only ones !

Moving this to enhancement, because it is a enhancement feature, here.

Comment 2

[imran.geriskovan]

I know it may be good for some webmasters.
But this does not justify sending any information without my permission.
This is a very important issue, I think...

Comment 3

[imran.geriskovan]

Ooppss..

Which variable disables such behaviour in pref.js?

Comment 4

[HJ]

This can be done by adding/changing a single line to prefs.js.  This file is 
located in your profile directory. Here is an example:

user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.16-22smp
i686; en-US; m18) Gecko/20010110 Netscape6/6.5");

See also bug 46029 for a GUI implementation. You should be aware of possible
problems after changing this setting! 

Marking WFM

Comment 5

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

You get a crash if you change the browser version below V5 with installed Java.
Many pages will not work with this settings because they do browser sniffing...