Vivaldi To Change User-Agent String To Chrome Due To Unfair Blocking

'Because some internet websites unfairly block browsers from accessing
their services, starting with Vivaldi 2.10, released today, the
Vivaldi browser plans to disguise itself as Chrome to allow users to
access websites that unfairly block them. From a report:

Vivaldi will do this by modifying its default user-agent (UA) string
to the UA string used by Chrome. A UA string is a piece of text that
browsers send to websites when they initiate a connection. The UA
String contains data about the browser type, rendering engine, and
operating system. For example, a UA string for Firefox on Windows
looks like this: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:71.0)
Gecko/20100101 Firefox/71.0. UA strings have been in use since the
90s. For decades, websites have used UA agent strings to fine-tune
performance and features or block outdated browsers. However, many
website owners these days use UA strings to block users from accessing
their sites. Some do it because they're not willing to deal with
browser-specific bugs, some do it because of pettiness, while big tech
companies like Google and Microsoft have done it (and continue to do
it) to sabotage competitors on the browser market.'

-- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/12/19/2041250

Cheers, Peter
-- 
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
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