Re: Blocking policy (WAS RE: The Web has flexible presentation Re: (Nielsen article))

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:24:44 +0100, Rotan Hanrahan  
<rotan.hanrahan@mobileaware.com> wrote:
>>> Me:
>>>> Although it is possible to block specific user agents, we don't see
>>>> people who we know block various browsers often choose to do that to
>>>> OPera Mini - it appears that in general they are happy to have further
>>>> ways for their users to reach them.
>> Luca:
>>> really? this is an interesting remark, because some companies were
>>> really mad at your friends at ByteMobile who were transcoding and
>>> replacing the original UA string with the one of Opera-Mini. Shall I  
>>> ask those companies to report about their experience here?

(Actually, I think this forum is meant for technical discussion, not  
whining about what your clients don't like about what someone else's  
client managed to get one of our clients to do. So maybe you should stick  
to describing the problem, and proposing solutions that are relevant to  
the problem and

> Me:
>> If you like. I don't expect everyone to appreciate everything that
>> happens. I know that some companies preferred to work with people like
>> Rotan, who allow them to provide highly targetted adaptations to a huge
>> range of particular devices, and *do* block Opera.
>
> Just for the record, my company (MobileAware) doesn't block Opera, but  
> it is possible to configure our products to block whatever you like, and  
> some of our customers decide to use that ability to not offer certain  
> services (e.g. mobile banking) to browsers such as Opera Mini. In part,  
> this is because Opera have been up-front about how Mini works, and  
> knowing that there was a brief period in which sensitive data was in  
> plain text as it passed through Opera's service was enough of a concern  
> for them to choose to block Mini. Other customers, however, consider  
> Opera to be trustworthy enough to not block Mini traffic during  
> sensitive interactions.
>
> MobileAware takes no position with regard to the trustworthiness or  
> otherwise of any intermediate. We just want it to be possible to know  
> that intermediaries are present, and have a reliable way to  
> signal/bypass them if that's what our customers and our customers'  
> customers want.

In general I agree with this approach (and thanks Rotan for clarifying - I  
was aware of this but didn't express it clearly). That is certainly in  
line with our recommendations to customers.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals       Try Opera: http://www.opera.com

Received on Thursday, 19 March 2009 17:51:14 UTC