Use a bit more generic user-agent

[mozillian]

Hey there, i believe giving the option to change to a bit more generic user-agent instead of the direct Firefox one in the block fingerprinting page would be nice, Firefox is capable of doing everything pretty much all browsers can and i believe there's no reason to allow websites to directly see what operating system & version of the browser you're using. I'm also confident that most people think this way.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[Jim2000]

It very much seems to be the case that the OS specific parts of of the user-agent string are more commonly used for fingerprinting than for customizing page content for a particular OS. The same improvements and standardization that killed Flash have largely removed the need for OS specific pages.

As a minority OS user (e.g. Linux) I've used extensions to change my UA to a Windows one for years without negative impact. In fact it's more likely to have a positive impact on website functionality. The problem I've observed with UA modifying extensions is that they are seldom user-friendly or nice looking.  They often do too much when all I want is to blend in or work with a "windows only" website.

It would be nice if there were an option to just use the most common Firefox UA string (the Windows one).  While this would not eliminate the UA fingerprinting signal, it would weaken it.  Having "Linux" in your user-agent is a pretty strong signal.