On Wed, Sep 20, 2000 at 04:06:30PM -0700, Krzys Majewski wrote:
> What's with this silly junkbuster default
>
> user-agent @
>
> in /etc/junkbuster/config ?
>
> >From the manpage:
>
> "In Version 1.4 and later, if user-agent is set to @ (at) these
> headers are sent unchanged in cases where the cookiefile specifies
> that a cookie would be sent, otherwise only default User-Agent
> header is sent. That default is Mozilla/3.0 (Netscape) with an
> unremarkable Macintosh configuration."
>
> In other words, the user-agent is mangled by junkbuster to be Mozilla
> 3.0 for Macintosh. I noticed this when my friend wanted to check her
> hotmail account on my linux box and hotmail complained about
> an old browser version (although it would probably also explain some
> problems I've had with other sites).
Setting the user-agent to "@" means that you can add hotmail.com and
hotmail.msn.com to your cookiefile, so that your user-agent can get sent
through unchanged.
> Shouldn't this be debianized to some reasonable default (like ".",
> which passes the user-agent string through unchanged), or am I missing
> something here? -chris
With junkbuster making everybody look like they are running a Netscape 3 on a
Macintosh, nobody knows you are running Mozilla on a solaris box, or wget on a
Cray, or lynx on a hp300. You might argue that you couldn't care less if
people find out what exact browser you are using: if so, just disable the
User-Agent mangling completely.
The are two main reasons you might want to use junkbuster:
1) reduce ads
2) privacy
If the reason you are running junkbuster is just "1", then you will probably
get annoyed by junkbuster killing cookies and telling the whole world you are
a Macintosh user. I know a lot of people use junkbuster for privacy though,
and I believe "@" as the User-Agent is still a good default.
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