Forum Moderators: phranque
Why do caching non-transparent proxies read in content using user-agents which do not indicate that they are proxies? Wouldn't be even more helpful would be if the UA explained that they are a proxy?
If we were really lucky the particular brand and version would be nice too :)
It strikes me as courtesy that when I browse a site I show a browser UA, equally when an SE browses a site it too uses a UA that indicates it's a search engine. So why do proxies display a false or primative user agent?
Just curious if anyone has any thoughts, maybe some of you run/manage/admin proxies of your own.
Is it because of the browser specific content issue? I can't see why adding "Proxy" somewhere in the UA will result in a match against any major browser type so this would not break functionality.
Is it because people would block their bandwidth stealing proxy? Possibly, but by hiding the nature of what they are doing is deception and that's worse.
Is it because they are afraid people might be able to see what the proxy was doing? People might believe that proxy access isn't a bad thing, but what if they saw how much and how often a proxy crawls their site and decided that was excessive.
Is it because the potential exists for a product to be blocked by a large number of sites? A proxy is only good if it does what it is supposed to, so if for some reason or other your proxy UA got blocked by a large number of popular sites you would be left with two options - change the UA or face problems selling your software due to it being blocked of sites.
- Tony
Why do caching non-transparent proxies read in content using user-agents which do not indicate that they are proxies? Wouldn't be even more helpful would be if the UA explained that they are a proxy?
Is it because of the browser specific content issue?
