For Opera: forbidden 403!?

Luca

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Apr 27, 2013, 4:58:57 PM4/27/13

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Now, I have never seen anything like this:
http://www.conservatoriosantacecilia.it/

Identify as Opera gets a 403, Identify as Firefox is ok!?

--
Luca - e-mail: p.stevens at libero.it

ge...@none.net

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Apr 27, 2013, 7:09:29 PM4/27/13

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On Sat, 27 Apr 2013 22:58:57 +0200
Luca <lu...@no.spam.invalid> wrote:

>
> Now, I have never seen anything like this:
> http://www.conservatoriosantacecilia.it/
>
> Identify as Opera gets a 403, Identify as Firefox is ok!?

See this from time to time. I've always assumed it was page not meant
for the public, or misprogrammed as such, sometimes verifying it with
IE or FF. Now I'll have to be sure to look, since it looks like
browser sniffing. Suggest writing them to complain.

Gene

JJ

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Apr 28, 2013, 3:49:53 AM4/28/13

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On Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:09:29 -0600, ge...@none.net wrote:
> See this from time to time. I've always assumed it was page not meant
> for the public, or misprogrammed as such, sometimes verifying it with
> IE or FF. Now I'll have to be sure to look, since it looks like
> browser sniffing. Suggest writing them to complain.

It's definitely blocking Opera on purpose. The "Presto" keyword to be exact.
I tried with these UAs:

"Why?" = passed
"Why do you block Opera ?" = passed
"Or is it Presto ?" = blocked

ge...@none.net

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Apr 29, 2013, 4:57:01 PM4/29/13

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What is a UA and how exactly do you go about testing?

Gene

JJ

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Apr 30, 2013, 2:03:43 AM4/30/13

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On Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:57:01 -0600, ge...@none.net wrote:
> What is a UA and how exactly do you go about testing?

User Agent. A text that identifies the browser as well as some general
client system information. It is sent to the web server on every requests.
It is used by the server to adapt the content based on the capability of the
clients' browser. But this is no longer a reliable source for identifying
the browser nor detecting the browser capabilities. Check Wikipedia's "User
Agent" article for more details.

For Opera 12.14 for Windows, under Windows XP, it would be like below.

Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 5.1) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.14

I used a filtering proxy software (kind of an ad-blocker) to change the UA
and test it.

AFAIK, since Opera 12, the UA can be customized from below URL (don't change
any setting unless you know what the effect is).

opera:config#UserPrefs|CustomUser-Agent

Ed Jay

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Apr 30, 2013, 2:02:42 AM4/30/13

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JJ wrote:

>On Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:57:01 -0600, ge...@none.net wrote:
>> What is a UA and how exactly do you go about testing?
>
>User Agent. A text that identifies the browser as well as some general
>client system information. It is sent to the web server on every requests.
>It is used by the server to adapt the content based on the capability of the
>clients' browser. But this is no longer a reliable source for identifying
>the browser nor detecting the browser capabilities. Check Wikipedia's "User
>Agent" article for more details.

Hack the file 'english.zip' or other language equivalent and make the
string anything you want. ;-)

Make sure you save a copy of the hacked version for restoration, as the
file is updated with each browser update.
--
Ed Jay (remove 'M' to respond by email)

Ed Jay

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Apr 30, 2013, 2:15:12 AM4/30/13

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Wrong filename. Search for presto in the msg files.

JJ

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May 1, 2013, 5:37:09 AM5/1/13

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On Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:15:12 -0700, Ed Jay wrote:
>>Hack the file 'english.zip' or other language equivalent and make the
>>string anything you want. ;-)
>>
>>Make sure you save a copy of the hacked version for restoration, as the
>>file is updated with each browser update.
>
> Wrong filename. Search for presto in the msg files.

I assume multilingual version is required? Cause I have none of those files
and I always install the English version.

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