Is there a way to beat OS identification from websites?

[bshandley]

Hi, I'm a new Kubuntu convert looking to this great community for what might be an easy answer. I'm a bit of a media junkie and I like to view movies and tv shows online. However, some sites like 24's myspace page and netflix' "watch now" feature claim that i need XP, even though I have flash 9, mplayer and the mplayer embedded plugin. I would bet that my system would have no problems running the movies if their website didn't catch me in the act. Does anyone know how to get around this?

The 24 site i'm trying to access is http://www.myspace.com/24 The movies are in flash.

Thanks in advance!

[v_override]

Re: Is there a way to beat OS identification from websites?

I don't know about FireFox, but if you're using Konqueror (Kubuntu, KDE), there is.

In Konqueror, just select (from the menu) "Settings" and then "Konqueror Settings".
Then scroll down a bit and on the left you should see icons. There should be one called "Browser Identification".
Select that one and then you can select what you will and will not send with the Identification string. Or you can just simply turn it off.

I hope I got the menu options right, cause I'm using a dutch version and I'm not too sure about the English translations.

[Goeroeboeroe]

Re: Is there a way to beat OS identification from websites?

I have no problem at all accessing myspace.com/24 and viewing videos. I'm using Firefox with the normal standard identification.

[bshandley]

Re: Is there a way to beat OS identification from websites?

Thanks for the info v_override . Konqueror has that option, but it still somehow finds out that I'm not using XP or OSX. There's actually an option in the "tools" box that you can change the ID on the fly. I cleared my cookies as well, no good.

Goeroeboeroe, what embedded video player are you using? I have heard something about one plugin being able to send bogus info to sites.

[Goeroeboeroe]

Re: Is there a way to beat OS identification from websites?

I'm using mplayer with (mozilla-mplayer).
On http://www.aadmm.de/en/br.htm
I get as identification etc.:
browser name Netscape
HTTP-Identification Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20061201 Firefox/2.0.0.4 (Ubuntu-feisty)
cookies forbitten
javascript activated
java activated
os platform Linux i686
language en-US
screen width 1280 Pixel
screen height 1024 Pixel
color depth 24 Bit

So it looks like my browser just sais it's runnin on Linux. Maybe that warning you get about XP is some kind of stupid standard warning if a plugin is missing?
The only thing I really didn't like installing Linux was configuring multimedia in my browser. I had a lot of help from
http://www.linspire.com/products_lin...=compatibility
If it's working there, you're sure it's installed the right way and it's must be something on the site.

[Detonate]

Re: Is there a way to beat OS identification from websites?

When I went to the site, I used an extension for FF called "User Agent Switcher" which identifies your browser as IE to get past the initial "Sorry" message, but when I tried to play the video the site wanted to download an ".exe" file to my computer and install it. I have flash and mplayer plugin installed and working on other sites.

[bshandley]

Re: Is there a way to beat OS identification from websites?

Thanks Detonate, that helped tremendously. I still can't view the movies, but it gets me past the browser and OS warnings. For those interested, User Agent Switcher is found here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59 and you can find a lot of profiles for different browser/OS combinations here http://qainsight.net/2007/03/04/Upda...+Switcher.aspx

Fittingly, both of these movie sites want to install packages that decode video, but still use flash. The new problem is: Where do I find a plugin that is compatible with Move Media's Movie player. It's the same one that ABC uses on their website.

I'm surprised at the politeness and quick response of this forum, so much better than others i have used. It seems switching to kubuntu was a good move. Thanks again!

[MoonRise]

Re: Is there a way to beat OS identification from websites?

My wife has run into the same problem. She tends to watch "TV" show she missed during the week. A few of the networks only design their sites to work with M$ and IE. Why, I don't know, especially since there are so many that use FireFox with Window$. I will not go any further about that, I'll just start ranting.