Reddit is blocking users based on user agents?

ISOmorph@feddit.de to Reddit@lemmy.world – 626 points –

Started to get this message when accessing Reddit. I use LibreWolf as a browser, which does indeed provide a more generic user agent to combat fingerprinting, but nothing out of the ordinary either (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/119.0). Anyone else experiencing this?

Edit: seems to have resolved itself. Thanks for confirming I wasn't doing anything wrong. Let's hope this isn't some new algorithm to test if for insufficient fingerprinting so Reddit can kick ad-resistant users.

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It's also used to create a digital fingerprint so you can be tracked without downloading a cookie.

Uhh, I'm unaware of how that's even possible. There is no uniquely identifiable information in the UA. Everyone keeping their browser and os up to date are going to fall into the same few buckets. Are you pulling that out of your ass, or do you actually know of a technique that abuses it?

It is one of dozens of things used to establish a unique fingerprint. Check this out, I bet you can be individually identified and tracked with nothing more than what your browser reveals, including the UA.

https://amiunique.org/

Reddit uses exactly this to enforce site bans so they can identify people that just change emails or even public ip addresses. It's almost certainly used to create phantom profiles at hundreds of sites whether you make an account or not.

https://smartframe.io/blog/browser-fingerprinting-everything-you-need-to-know/

Not the person you're replying to, but I would second what they're saying. I recall many years ago reading a post from the Tor browser team explaining that they customise the UA and even browser window size to avoid fingerprinting. It's not the UA alone, but that in combination with other values the site you're visiting can detect.

User agent is also the very first thing checked on the below fingerprinting site. I was surprised to see that 0.00% of me have the same user agent as me!

https://www.amiunique.org/fingerprint