[Tfug] I know that you know what I know

[John Gruenenfelder]

On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 10:08:08PM -0700, erich wrote:
>Well,
>     I got sidetracked. Sorry for the late response. My machine was
>building Octave.
>That last URL the "Client" one did the job. It returned:
>
>*Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux alpha; en-US; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20061027 -
>You!* (United States)
>
>      This is the so-called user agent string. It's not as detailed as I
>expected, but
>the information collected about my system is still unnerving.
>

Is it really all that unnerving?  My user agent string is:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070310
Iceweasel/2.0.0.3 (Debian-2.0.0.3-2)

I see rendering engine name and version, browser name and version, and
language.  All of those seem perfectly logical and useful to a remote server
depending on how fancy it wants to get with the data it sends back to me.

There is also my OS (Linux) and architecture type (x86_64) and window system
(X11).  Those shouldn't be necessary for a remote system to do its job of
giving me a webpage.  On the other hand, it tells them remarkably little about
my system as a whole.  Certainly not enough information that I would begin to
worry.

Proper data mining of cookies set by sites like Doubleclick could probably
reaveal a *lot* more about your system than the user agent string.  And if
you're really worried, most browsers have a plugin that lets you change your
UA string to whatever you want.  I think it's even built into some, like
Opera.


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Research Assistant, UMass Amherst student
                        Systems Manager, MKS Imaging Technology, LLC.
Try Weasel Reader for PalmOS  --  http://gutenpalm.sf.net
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood
of my enemies!"
        --Sam of Sam & Max