Remove device name from user agent

dewey

Or at least an option to set a custom or shorter user agent.

For example:

Mozilla/5.0 (Android 9; Mobile; rv:68.0) Gecko/68.0 Firefox/68.0

looks better than

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 9; SM-A202F) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/76.0.3809.137 Mobile Safari/537.36 Vivaldi/2.7.1624.163

LonM

@dewey The user agent shouldn't include the device name at all. This looks like a bad case for user tracking / fingerprinting.

could you file a bug report for this please? https://vivaldi.com/bugreport/

dewey

Reported as VB-57402

LonM

@dewey said in Remove device name from user agent:

VB-57402

Thanks. I confirmed the bug in the tracker.

sagrid

The current UA format will stay put (I guess) perhaps due to some debug issues. However I noticed on latest Samsung Browser beta version that device OS detection forward in headers Android(SamsungBrowser) instead Android (Android)

sagrid

This post is deleted!

alexcavaco

Hello,

Is there any info on how this bug report is?
I've tested my user agent now and the app is still leaking the device name.

I fear this might have privacy implications. Can you move this up on your priorities?

murphybeck

User Agent detection is not a recommended technique for modern web apps. You can use JavaScript window.matchMedia() method to detect a mobile device based on the CSS media query.

if (window.matchMedia("(max-width: 767px)").matches)
{
// The viewport is less than 768 pixels wide
document.write("This is a mobile device.");
}

Another approach would be a responsive media query. You could presume that a mobile phone has a screen size greater than x and less than y.

For example:

@media only screen and (min-width: 320px) and (max-width: 600px) {}

You may also use navigator.userAgentData.mobile .

const isMobile = navigator.userAgentData.mobile;