What does the user agent tell you?
What does the user agent tell you?
We’ve written about changing your browser’s user agent before – but what exactly is a user agent, anyway? A user agent is a “string” – that is, a line of text – identifying the browser and operating system to the web server.
What is user agent example?
There are millions of User-Agent combinations given that UAs change with the software and hardware. For example, a Chrome browser on an iPhone 6 will introduce itself using a different UA than a Safari browser on the same phone. Here is a list of example User-Agents for different device types that can be detected.
What does user agent do?
A user agent is any software that retrieves and presents Web content for end users or is implemented using Web technologies. User agents include Web browsers, media players, and plug-ins that help in retrieving, rendering and interacting with Web content.
What does user agent contain?
In computing, a user agent is any software, acting on behalf of a user, which “retrieves, renders and facilitates end-user interaction with Web content.” A user agent is therefore a special kind of software agent. Some prominent examples of user agents are web browsers and email readers.
Is the User-Agent unique?
User-Agents also provides one of the data points for fingerprinting users without the use of cookies. It’s included with every HTTP request and can potentially be very long and unique to a user in certain uncommon situations.
What is User-Agent spoofing?
In user-agent spoofing, bad actors modify elements of the user agent string to obfuscate details of their traffic. For example, making high traffic volumes from a single device look like lots of individual advertising engagements from multiple devices.
What happens if I change user agent?
Changing your user agent can also assist you in getting around browser-based restrictions. Though it’s not nearly as common as it was a decade ago, you’ll sometimes see websites that claim incompatibility with a certain browser build and will completely deny access to anyone using it.
Is the user agent unique?
What is sniffing Agent?
User-Agent (UA) Sniffing So-called “User-Agent Sniffing” (or “UA Sniffing for short”) is the quickest approach to the problem. UA Sniffing usually involves searching for a specific string or pattern in the UA string and basing choices on the result of that search.
Is User-Agent required?
Per RFC 7231: A user agent SHOULD send a User-Agent field in each request unless specifically configured not to do so.
What is an example of an user agent?
A user agent is therefore a special kind of software agent. Some prominent examples of user agents are web browsers and email readers. Often, a user agent acts as the client in a client-server system. In some contexts, such as within the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the term user agent refers to both end points of a communications session.
What is a browser’s user agent?
What Is a Browser’s User Agent? The Basics. When your browser connects to a website, it includes a User-Agent field in its HTTP header. Examining User Agents. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/12.0 This user agent tells the web server quite a bit: The operating system is Windows 7 (code name Windows The User Agent String Mess. Uses.
What are user agent strings?
The User-Agent (UA) string is contained in the HTTP headers and is intended to identify devices requesting online content. The User-Agent tells the server what the visiting device is (among many other things) and this information can be used to determine what content to return.
What is user agent identifier?
User Agent Identifier is an add-on to simplify User Agent Identification with our continuously updated user agent parsing library. As automated bots, mobile devices and desktop browsers have exploded into a thousand different forms, it is really difficult to accurately determine just what a given user-agent represents…
