Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Anti-harassment/Deal with Google Chrome User-Agent deprecation

Deal with Google Chrome User-Agent deprecation

  • Problem: Google Chrome, the most widely used browser on the internet, will soon start limiting the information it includes on HTTP requests about the client (also known as the user-agent string). User-agent, along with IP address, is an important piece of data used by CheckUsers to fight sockpuppetry.
  • Proposed solution: See phab:T242825
  • Who would benefit: All projects in which CUs are run and a substantial group of users edit from internet providers who own wide IP ranges and frequently hop the user's IP within this broad range (which I understand is more common in developing countries than in some developed countries like the US in which static IPs are more common).
  • More comments: This is already on people's radar, but submitting it here, on behalf of the CU community, is an attempt to bring it up the list of priorities.
  • Phabricator tickets: phab:T242825
  • Proposer: Huji (talk) 21:34, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • It is very useful for CUs to have useragents to rule out or further connect two users who share the same IP / similar ranges. Especially on busy ranges or for proxies two accounts being on the same or similar IPs doesn't necessarily technically link two users to each other. Having alternatives such as UA Hints provided in the tool would be better than having non-descriptive UAs (which is what Google Chrome plans to have). Dreamy Jazz talk to me | enwiki 22:07, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could you explain to someone with no experience with CheckUser to what extent anything this could be dealt with/what could be done to deal with this? ~~~~
    User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk)
    19:25, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Voting