This bug was just brought to my attention: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1266569
It appears that this extension is now installed by default on the Fedora Workstation release. I don't personally have a problem with this, but could someone please point me to where the decision was made and discussed so I can update the BZ and close it out?
Hi Stephen, I think most discussion about it was on IRC as it was mostly considered a small cosmetic change which just put us in line with the industry standard. I think the closest thing to something written down is the Firefox bug for the issue (which is sparse on details): https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1190774
Christian
----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Gallagher" sgallagh@redhat.com To: desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Monday, September 28, 2015 10:42:50 AM Subject: Google Chrome User-Agent Extension
This bug was just brought to my attention: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1266569
It appears that this extension is now installed by default on the Fedora Workstation release. I don't personally have a problem with this, but could someone please point me to where the decision was made and discussed so I can update the BZ and close it out?
On Mon, 2015-09-28 at 10:42 -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
This bug was just brought to my attention: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1266569
It appears that this extension is now installed by default on the Fedora Workstation release. I don't personally have a problem with this, but could someone please point me to where the decision was made and discussed so I can update the BZ and close it out?
It's to allow sites to collect of statistics on the number of Fedora users, in particular Wikimedia [1]. (But notice the big red warning at the top of the page, about that report not being maintained. I wonder if we are still using this or not.) Note that for Firefox and WebKitGTK+, we simply used patches rather than browser extensions.
The disadvantage is that it does of course make your browser fingerprint more unique, which caused me to hesitate at first, but I think the privacy concerns are quite minimal. Servers already know you're using non-Ubuntu Linux, which is a very, very small class of users. [2] is very likely to show that your browser fingerprint is unique (or almost unique) with or without Fedora in the user agent. And none of that matters, because sites can use several forms of supercookies (e.g. using HSTS database abuse, or using IndexedDB; probably also with WebSQL or localstorage, not sure) to identify you uniquely irrespective of any of this. The only possibly-significant harm is that it informs the server that you're using Fedora rather than some other distro. We can debate whether that should be kept private by default, but I don't think so. :)
[1] https://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSy stems.htm [2] https://panopticlick.eff.org
I talked to the Wikipedia sysadmin some time ago and there is a plan to switch to a new system which should be kept up to date more regularly.
In general I think the browser vendors response to concerns about the user agent is to suggest using incognito mode.
Christian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Catanzaro" mcatanzaro@gnome.org To: desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Monday, September 28, 2015 11:39:31 AM Subject: Re: Google Chrome User-Agent Extension
On Mon, 2015-09-28 at 10:42 -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
This bug was just brought to my attention: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1266569
It appears that this extension is now installed by default on the Fedora Workstation release. I don't personally have a problem with this, but could someone please point me to where the decision was made and discussed so I can update the BZ and close it out?
It's to allow sites to collect of statistics on the number of Fedora users, in particular Wikimedia [1]. (But notice the big red warning at the top of the page, about that report not being maintained. I wonder if we are still using this or not.) Note that for Firefox and WebKitGTK+, we simply used patches rather than browser extensions.
The disadvantage is that it does of course make your browser fingerprint more unique, which caused me to hesitate at first, but I think the privacy concerns are quite minimal. Servers already know you're using non-Ubuntu Linux, which is a very, very small class of users. [2] is very likely to show that your browser fingerprint is unique (or almost unique) with or without Fedora in the user agent. And none of that matters, because sites can use several forms of supercookies (e.g. using HSTS database abuse, or using IndexedDB; probably also with WebSQL or localstorage, not sure) to identify you uniquely irrespective of any of this. The only possibly-significant harm is that it informs the server that you're using Fedora rather than some other distro. We can debate whether that should be kept private by default, but I don't think so. :)
[1] https://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSy stems.htm [2] https://panopticlick.eff.org
-- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
On Mon, 2015-09-28 at 11:42 -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
I talked to the Wikipedia sysadmin some time ago and there is a plan to switch to a new system which should be kept up to date more regularly.
In general I think the browser vendors response to concerns about the user agent is to suggest using incognito mode.
Christian
Incognito mode doesn't affect your user agent, though. ;)
On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 6:05 PM, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
On Mon, 2015-09-28 at 11:42 -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
I talked to the Wikipedia sysadmin some time ago and there is a plan to switch to a new system which should be kept up to date more regularly.
In general I think the browser vendors response to concerns about the user agent is to suggest using incognito mode.
Christian
Incognito mode doesn't affect your user agent, though. ;)
There are like 10000 extensions that do though ;)
Oops, I stand corrected. It does remove Fedora from the user agent in Chrome though, since it disables all extensions :)
Christian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Catanzaro" mcatanzaro@gnome.org To: desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Monday, September 28, 2015 12:05:26 PM Subject: Re: Google Chrome User-Agent Extension
On Mon, 2015-09-28 at 11:42 -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
I talked to the Wikipedia sysadmin some time ago and there is a plan to switch to a new system which should be kept up to date more regularly.
In general I think the browser vendors response to concerns about the user agent is to suggest using incognito mode.
Christian
Incognito mode doesn't affect your user agent, though. ;)
desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org
-
Christian Schaller -
drago01 -
Michael Catanzaro -
Stephen Gallagher