Qwant search refuses to connect due to useragent setting
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Try using a meta-search engine and enable Quant.
No more problems no matter what browser or OS.
(and a lot more private)
https://searx.me
https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/
https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/wiki/Searx-instances -
I can confirm the following behaviour for Vivaldi 2.8.1664.44 (Stable channel) (64-bit) on GNU/Linux right now (days after the last response to this thread and the supposed "fix" by Qwant):
Search from www.qwant.com (Qwant's main page) or the address bar in Vivaldi --> "Upgrade your browser" error.
Go to lite.qwant.com and search --> Works perfectly.For those who want to use Qwant, you can therefore workaround this by using "lite.qwant.com" as your search page, instead of the regular Qwant page... and also change the "Qwant" entry in Vivaldi's search settings to be the following:
Name --> Qwant lite
Nickname --> (keep "q" or add a new entry and use something like "l")
URL --> https://lite.qwant.com/?client=brz-vivaldi&q=%s
Suggest URL --> https://api.qwant.com/api/suggest/?q=%s&client=opensearch&lang=en_gbI have no idea if suggestions still work as I keep them disabled (I find them a bit of a nuisance - and if you enable them for an evil search engine, they'd also be a privacy risk).
I had no idea this problem existed, as I find the main Qwant page to be excessively busy and heavy, so always use the lite version when on Qwant.
This behaviour from Qwant is a big shame when they wish to become an ethical, privacy-focused, European competitor to the G suite (in particular, Qwant's implementation/extension of OpenStreetMap intrigues me). Whilst I tend to favour Startpage for search, along with Disroot.org's and Privacytools.io's instances of SearX, I have been following the development of Qwant with interest. If they block a European, ethical, privacy-compatible browser, they send the wrong statement completely. They also reduce their user base, which I'm sure is the opposite of what they need to achieve to survive.
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@jamesbeardmore said in Qwant search refuses to connect due to useragent setting:
This behaviour from Qwant is a big shame when they wish to become an ethical, privacy-focused, European competitor to the G suite (in particular, Qwant's implementation/extension of OpenStreetMap intrigues me). Whilst I tend to favour Startpage for search, along with Disroot.org's and Privacytools.io's instances of SearX, I have been following the development of Qwant with interest. If they block a European, ethical, privacy-compatible browser, they send the wrong statement completely. They also reduce their user base, which I'm sure is the opposite of what they need to achieve to survive.
Yes and no. It is, IMHO just a bad thing in general to completely block access. But they do have the valid point that in that respect Vivaldi is not that privacy-compatible, as it voluntarily gives much more info than actually needed, and even doesn't offer a way to change it. I would have appreciated a popup that notifies the user about the issue, but can just be closed.
There have been requests to add the capability to edit/change the Agent String for quite some time. Maybe this thread helps getting it into place..... -
@Der_Pit said in Qwant search refuses to connect due to useragent setting:
There have been requests to add the capability to edit/change the Agent String for quite some time. Maybe this thread helps getting it into place.....
I used to use this feature ("identify as...") extensively before Opera lost its way. Back at that time, the web was littered with "works best in Internet Explorer" warnings, or intentionally-broken web sites that worked perfectly once Opera was set to pretend it was IE. As a work around, to the problem of tracking by browser-ID, the privacy extension "Trace" by a lad called "AbsoluteDouble" can be set to change your reported browser ID and also fake/hide some other bits of commonly-leaked information. Unfortunately, even when I set to spoof as Firefox using this extension, Qwant still refuses to load. Either Qwant is deliberately targeting Vivaldi like MSN targeted Opera in the early-00s, or Vivaldi still leaks too much information for Qwant's liking.
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I don't have the tendency to complicate my life much. If Qwant does not want to work in Vivaldi for discriminatory browsersniffing, apart from losing my trust, this search engine also loses me as a user, in view of the existence of a ton of equally good and even better alternatives.I have installed User Agent Switcher & Manager that I consider one of the best, but I try to use it as little as possible for 2 reasons, with discriminatory pages the same thing happens with Qwant, They lose my confidence and I do not visit them again if it is not necessary to do so. Apart from this, Vivaldi needs a webcast and pages should for statistical reasons recognize Vivaldi as valid browser, this is not achieved by disguising it as Firefox, Chrome or any other.
Browser sniffing is legitimate for statistical reasons, although it is used in a discriminatory way, for me it is directly a contempt and insult to the user, at least I see it that way. -
I've just checked Qwant and I'm blocked again with the latest snapshot (same reason, user agent string too specific).
MacBook Pro Early 2015 / macOS 10.12.6 Sierra / Vivaldi 2.9.1705.4
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@Gwen-Dragon Thanks for your reply.
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@Gwen-Dragon
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_6) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.3904.72 Safari/537.36 Vivaldi/2.9.1705.4
Thanks again for taking your time and trying to resolve issues.
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@Gwen-Dragon Thanks for your help.
I guess I figured out what happened: I was on trip and checked from my hotel using the hotel's wifi. That's the only explanation I can see, for now, back home, it works. Anyway, as you said, it's a really weird site with a weird policy. -
Thanks for sharing all these insights. So it took it sweet time but the issue should be now resolved for everybody. If not let us know.
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