Why did they remove the OS spoofing? Without having read the controversy, my guess is that "TOR Browser doesn't work" needed a fix and a big part of the problem was that users on Linux got the Windows version of websites, so the TOR browser devs decided to tell the website this detail about the visitor, resulting in reducing the anonymity set dramatically, to 2.5% but even worse, to the 2.5% that are most suspicious to totalitarian regimes cause it must be somebody with agency and initiative, who doesn't just go with the OS that came with the PC.

Replies (2)

Scoundrel's avatar
Scoundrel 5 months ago
According to the Tor Project, websites have always been able to identify the 2.5% Linux minority, even with OS spoofing in HTTP headers and even with Javascript disabled. In other words, the only effects of OS spoofing in HTTP headers was creating problems for user experience and providing a false sense of OS anonymity.