Re: Slight OT: Making Firefox behave the same on FreeBSD and windows

Kevin Oberman wrote:
> Bob Proulx wrote:
> > parv/FreeBSD wrote:
> > > Chris Hill wrote:
> > > > I had the same issue with a Chase account. It seems that they object to
> > > > seeing "FreeBSD" in the user agent string. I used one of the many
> > > > plug-ins to change the string for that site, so my machine would appear
> > > > to be running Linux. It works well.

This is definitely our client side workaround to this problem.  The
next thing would be to complain to sites that UserAgent is not
something that should be used for security blockage!  It's not actual
security.  It's simply annoying.

> > I am using "User-Agent Switcher" with Firefox.  It's simple.  It works
> > okay for me.
>
> I used to do ths, but it stopped working. Tried it again and have tried
> Ubuntu and Linux with no success.

Hmm...  Sounds like a different problem.  Because I have often seen
this with random sites on my various systems not-FreeBSD where one
browser does not operate with a site and I must switch to a different
one and that other one works.  Seems just a common problem with sites
and browsers that don't get along.

I mostly use Firefox so that's usually the first one and for me the
other one would be Chromium.  For sites I normally go to that's
enough.  But for a long list of government sites a client of mine must
use a MS-Windows browser only due to the Windows only 2-factor
authentication.

> It's also annoying that I can't set it to only work for Chase. I
> would prefer to be honest with most web sites.

User-Agent Switcher can be configured to always use specified
UserAgents for specific site URLs.  That's a great feature!  Because
otherwise I would forget to use it manually and then fail and remember
that I need it for that site and have to do it again.

> In any case, how is your User-Agent Switcher so htt Chase accepts it?

It "Just Works" so I don't know how to answer otherwise.  I am using
it right now to verify it.  And to do some banking.

Let's give some details.  I am running FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p5 as my
desktop.  I am currently running firefox-108.0.1,2 as my web browser.
I installed User-Agent Switcher 1.4.1 extension.  I am pretty sure
this all worked exactly the same under 12.* too.

With the default UserAgent the result is this.

    "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:108.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/108.0"

An attempt to log into https://www.chase.com/ results in the site not
logging me in, putting up a white-on-green banner in the site "flash"
area telling me the following.

    "We've enhanced our platform for chase.com.  For a better
    experience, download the Chase app for your iPhone or Android. Or,
    go to System Requirements from your laptop or desktop."

None of that tells me that my UserAgent is not acceptable to them.
It's just misleading gobblygook.  It redirects back to the
https://www.chase.com/ area, currently displaying anti-scam
information on the front page.  This is very confusing to say the
least!  But I have seen sites do this bad behavior before.

If I click on the User-Agent Switcher button a pull down list of other
selections are available.  These can be customized.  Since I installed
these some time ago the strings are old and just say simple things
like "Linux / Firefox 93" and "Windows / Firefox 93" and "Default".
If I select the Linux entry it switches UserAgent to this full string.

    "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:93.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/93.0"

That's old at version 93 but that does not matter.  The main thing is
that it says "Linux" where it otherwise would say "FreeBSD".  (Those
buggers!)  And then with that change I can log into the site and
everything works okay.

I experimented some with this and found that only the login process
requires the UserAgent to have an override.  After being successfully
logged in then the UserAgent can be set back to Default and everything
continues to work okay.  Until re-authorization is needed in which
case it needs to be set back to Linux or Windows again.

But click on the User-Agent Switcher button in the Firefox task bar
again.  Up top is this.

    "[ ] Override for domain"

Check that box.  That opens another pulldown menu with several
selections.  Select the "https://*.chase.com/" entry to always use
this UserAgent override on any matching chase.com URL.  That way it
will always Just Work and you won't need to remember to do it manually
for this site.  This works excellently.

I hope this helps! :-)

Bob

P.S. Since I am looking at this I am updating the version string from
93 to 108 now and it will be okay for another year.  Updated the
strings from the "Preferences..." menu.  Careful editing this as
changes are immediate with no undo or backup.  But not difficult.

    "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:108.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/108.0"