Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] Partial freezing of the User-Agent string (#467)

> * Are you convinced that GREASE will help? Perhaps in the very short term, but that’s it. Do you expect website operators to _not_ recognize that only `NotBrowser` and `Foo` are being mixed in randomly, while `Epiphany` is indeed a safe sign that the browser at hand is Not Real Chrome? Will Chrome actually start mixing in _real_ browser names and versions to give teeth to GREASE? No, Chrome won’t. That would defeat the purpose of the whole feature after all, because now you can never be sure what browser the client is using.

Your comment is thoughtful and well-considered. This is the only point where I don't agree, but it's a critical point. The GREASE will help a lot, and in fact I'd say it's key to the entire proposal. I'm not worried about websites searching for "Epiphany" and blacklisting it; my worry is sites searching for anything non-Chrome and blacklisting that. If Chrome greases with some truly random values, that will be a *huge* benefit to other browsers. If Chrome is randomly removed from the list, as proposed in the spec, that will help a ton as well. (Say it includes "Chrome" for half of page loads; then you can still gather accurate usage statistics by multiplying by two.) Chromium browsers would benefit hugely by the switch from "Chrome" to "Chromium," (although I'd love to see that randomly removed as well, because Epiphany isn't based on Chromium and we don't really want to wind up in a world where small browsers are OK only if based on Chromium).

The current user agent string cannot be GREASEd.

-- 
You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/467#issuecomment-583562415