Re: [fetch] `user-agent` header control (#37)

There is value in having a reliable user-agent header. Historically we've had some browser bugs where it was possible to protect the user server-side, but where the fix would be too expensive (in terms of cost, perf or user annoyance) to apply to all users.

More commonly, a new browser feature might allow some feature to be reimplemented in a more secure way; with a reliable user-agent header, it's easy to disable the "unsafe" back-compat implementation in decent browsers.

If a malicious script can lie about the browser version, protecting against such attacks becomes a lot harder.

(The fact that this is same-origin-or-CORS-only helps a lot, of course, but not in the case where the particular browser bug is that the browser is confused about what counts as the same origin...)

Would a solution where the user data is either appended or prepended to the 'responsible' user agent be an acceptable compromise?

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Received on Tuesday, 7 April 2015 12:25:03 UTC