User Agent switch

[pomoc72013]

Hi all,

When I connect with thunderbird to gmail via IMAP, and the check on gmail in the browser, and check the activity information it gives me this:
IMAP (Thunderbird) Hide details
"name: Thunderbird"
"version: 17.0.7"
and the IP and the time.

How do I suppress sending the "user agent" (I don't know if that is actually the right term)? For firefox there is the extension "user agent switcher". there are 2 user agent switcher for TB but they do not change what thunderbird sends to gmail. I couldn't find anything in config editor.
Thanks

[rsx11m]

The Config Editor is the right place already, that preference setting doesn't exist by default, though.

Right-click into the about:config window and select New > String from the menu. As the preference name, enter general.useragent.override and then the value of your choice as the string. That should be sent out with the message, unless Gmail uses some other mechanism to figure out which e-mail client is used to access it.

It is not possible to hide the IP address, that's part of the connection protocol.

[pomoc72013]

Thanks, I tried that, but it does not work. It still says:
"name: Thunderbird"
"version: 17.0.7"

I think general.useragent.override changes the user agent in the email header, if I send an email. But gmail finds out about the client with an other setting. And gmail also knows the version I use, so this must somehow be transmitted by TB.

[rsx11m]

Well, so the IMAP log confirms that indeed an explicit "ID" string is sent to the server in response to the server's identification. But, it's not clear to me where this is coming from (definitely not from the user-agent string). I've created general.appname.override and general.appversion.override instead, without affecting the ID sent. I've also modified application.ini in the installation folder, doesn't make any difference either.

[morat]

The ID string is hardcoded. The name and version attributes are read only.

http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-release/sou ... ce030#5322
https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/XPCO ... XULAppInfo

[pomoc72013]

Thanks for the info! I don't know if this information is necessary to retrieve email via IMAP. And if it is not necessary, that would be a thing to change for the sake of anonymity. It's obviously not a crucial information but nevertheless.

[rsx11m]

I don't know if and how that information is actually useful in the IMAP protocol. In general, the CAPABILITY response should be sufficient for negotiation which features to use. Thus, in contrast to web content, no need to guess from the application information which code to serve to ensure compatibility.

The ID string is hardcoded. The name and version attributes are read only.

Yeah, I saw that, but was hoping that either the preferences can be used to override them or that they are obtained from application.ini ("read only" doesn't imply "hardcoded" but just means that you can't change them through the nsIXULAppInfo interface).