Mozilla alters stance on User-Agent Client Hints from “non-harmful” to “harmful”

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  • standards-positions

  • > UA Client Hints proposes that information derived from the User Agent header field could only be sent to servers that specifically request that information, specifically to reduce the number of parties that can passively fingerprint users using that information. We find that the addition of new information about the UA, OS, and device to be harmful as it increases the information provided to sites for fingerprinting, without a commensurate improvements in functionality or accountability to justify that. In addition to not including this information, we would prefer freezing the User Agent string and only providing limited information via the proposed NavigatorUAData interface JS APIs. This would also allow us to audit the callers. At this time, freezing the User Agent string without any client hints (which is not this proposal) seems worth prototyping. We look forward to learning from other vendors who implement the "GREASE-like UA Strings" proposal and its effects on site compatibility.

    https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#ua-client-hin...

  • ua-client-hints

    Wouldn't it be nice if `User-Agent` was a (set of) client hints?

  • There is a JS companion to this proposal that splits up the information in a similar way

    https://wicg.github.io/ua-client-hints/#interface

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