service and user-agent disclosure - please consider privacy

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 22:50:53 +0100,
  Richard <rz at linux-m68k.org> wrote:
> 
> the privacy issue is a topic for Fedora because Fedora desktop users 
> have a substantial disadvantage compared to users of more frequently 
> used desktops. Intercepting a Fedora version string will in most 
> regions of the world identify a particular user.

If you are talking about a useragent header for your browser, that header
is an optional header according to the http standard. You can easily block
sending one in Firefox (in other browsers it may not be easy) by setting
general.useragent.override to the empty string.

There are other variant headers that can be used to identify users, such
as http_accept header.

The following has information on the amount of information in just
the useragent header:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/tracking-by-user-agent

The following is a page that provides information on the uniqueness of
the browser you are using:
http://panopticlick.eff.org/index.php?action=log