A win for privacy? Google plans to scrap user-agent string in Chrome

guest · Jan 18, 2020

A win for privacy? Google plans to scrap user-agent string in Chrome
Mozilla takes issue with proposed replacement, which the Firefox-maker says could still be used for fingerprinting
January 16, 2020
https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/...le-plans-to-scrap-user-agent-string-in-chrome

Earlier this week, Google announced that it plans to phase out the user-agent string in Chrome that gives websites details about the browsers that are accessing them.
Mozilla has offered tentative support for its rival’s decision to scrap the aging feature, although the Firefox-maker said it would not be endorsing the proposed replacement, which it says could still potentially be used for fingerprinting.

User-agent strings have been in use for decades, allowing websites to fine-tune their content for different setups.
However, Google says it’s now causing problems. In a post on the Chromium forum this week, Google engineer Yoav Weiss said the data being shared by the user-agent-string has privacy implications.

“On top of those privacy issues, user-agent sniffing is an abundant source of compatibility issues, in particular for minority browsers, resulting in browsers lying about themselves (generally or to specific sites), and sites (including Google properties) being broken in some browsers for no good reason,” he adds.
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Now, says Google, it plans to freeze the standard, and stop updating Chrome with new strings. Instead, it plans to roll out a new feature called User-Agent Client Hints (UACH), developed as part of its Privacy Sandbox project.

“Mozilla supports this change. However, Mozilla does not support the mechanisms Chrome is proposing to replace the user-agent header,” a Mozilla spokesperson tells The Daily Swig.
“Client Hints can be used for fingerprinting based on HTTP requests, and this makes it harder to determine how sites use this information.”
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Regarding Client Hints:

mood said: ↑

Privacy concerns raised about upcoming Client-Hints web standard
Brave devs warn about new alternative user fingerprinting method being rolled out with Chromium-based browsers
May 16, 2019
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