Netzero - Mac discrimination

why don't you support your local isp instead? they're less expensive and don't require special clients to access.

Wow, that makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever....its webmail, how do they know whether you are a Mac user or not? Honestly I feel a very strongly worded e-mail demanding an answer is in order.

Krizoitz said:

Wow, that makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever....its webmail, how do they know whether you are a Mac user or not? Honestly I feel a very strongly worded e-mail demanding an answer is in order.

Click to expand...

When a browser connects to an internet site, it leaves what type of browser it is to the web site, the web site can tell by comparing that header to a bunch of if statements to find out what you're running, version, screen resolution, etc.

http://www.anonymizer.com/privacytest/2.0/privacytest.cgi?test=1



The browser information part is how they know you're running a mac:
Operating System: Windows NT
Mozilla
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624

That says I'm in Windows 5.1 = XP, running Mozilla, rv 1.4.

This information is transmitted for the basic fact that some sites have different 'profiles' for different machines. It's a handy feature, but in the case of netzero, it's a tad abusive. You can get around this with some browsers, the one for KDE is the only one that comes to mind. You can easily bypass it though with those browsers.

Remember also that most online services wether ISPs or most sites in general won't allow you access unless you have "cookies" enabled. So once they look into your computer and send the info back....nuff said.

I find a whole lot of online services are PC only and it really p****s me off too. I hate it when a site says "Macintosh is not supported at this time" and they have no intensions of making it Mac friendly. So if these site don't mind loosing 5-10% of the market share then the hell with them.
(besides I finally found a Mac friendly Poker site at http://www.victoriaspoker.com/

If I remember correctly when I got (but don't use anymore) Netscape 7.0 (free download) it allowed me a free e-mail account. I never used it other than checking to see what came in every month or so, but it was free!

with a small hack you can make Safari tell NetZero that your computer is a Windoze machine. Search MacUpdate for it -

Sparky's said:

Remember also that most online services wether ISPs or most sites in general won't allow you access unless you have "cookies" enabled. So once they look into your computer and send the info back....nuff said.

I find a whole lot of online services are PC only and it really p****s me off too. I hate it when a site says "Macintosh is not supported at this time" and they have no intensions of making it Mac friendly. So if these site don't mind loosing 5-10% of the market share then the hell with them.
(besides I finally found a Mac friendly Poker site at http://www.victoriaspoker.com/

If I remember correctly when I got (but don't use anymore) Netscape 7.0 (free download) it allowed me a free e-mail account. I never used it other than checking to see what came in every month or so, but it was free!

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Cookies don't apply here. Cookies are only there to save variable/state information from one session to another, only able to be accessed by that site (or an iframe site if people are trying to abuse this feature). Even if you disable cookies, and visit a site, your browser information is sent automatically....this can only be changed in a very few select browsers. If people want, I'll post the python scripts that I programmed for grabbing your browser information (acts like a little web server, only grabbing what the browser sends). I'll have to boot into Linux to post them though, if someone posts they want to see them, I'll post them.

Cheers

Thanks for the info, this is why I'm a member of the forums, to learn, and update what I know.

The motto of my oragization: "Share Your Knowledge"

http://www.iaphc.org

I decided to post my stuff anyways, I guess. The python script is below:

import socket

S = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
S.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
S.bind(('',8888))
print "Mini-Web server started, type http://localhost:8888 in your browser to connect"
S.listen(1)

newS, address = S.accept()
buffer = ''
print "A client connected from", address
buffer = newS.recv(32768)
print buffer
newS.close()

To run this application you must have python installed. just copy to a file, save it, and type "python myfile.py" as myfile.py being your python files you saved it as. Then as it is sitting there, just open up your browser and type "http://localhost:8888" and it should connect and spit out a bunch of information to the console.

I included a screenshot about all the stuff sent, just for people's knowledge.

The above app is just a small example that took me 5 min to do, don't pick on it too much

Hey Applebum - Try this. Enable the Debug menu in Safari if you haven't already. To do this open up Terminal and type the following -

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

(Make sure Safari isn't running when you execute this statement.)

Now launch Safari and you should see the debug menu. To make NetZero or any other website think you're using a Windows based IE browser, go to Debug>User Agent>Windows MSIE 6.0. That should do the trick.

Krizoitz said:

Wow, that makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever....its webmail, how do they know whether you are a Mac user or not? Honestly I feel a very strongly worded e-mail demanding an answer is in order.

Click to expand...

Silly, you can use javascript to see if there mac user or not.

applebum said:

Well, I had thought about this, but doesn't this just tell the site I am using IE? I have IE for the Mac. When I use it, NZ still knows I am on a Mac and tells me what browser version I have. If I use the Debug menu, will it make me look like I am using IE on a windows machine or IE on a Mac? I will try it if it will hide the type of machine I am on. I really don't know if it is worth all the trouble as I have a .Mac account as well. I just want my junk going to NZ. I could understand if they were saying the browser wouldn't work. However, they are simply saying they are going to make Mac users pay. I guess they feel there aren't enough of us Mac users to make a difference if they do piss us off. Poor business if you ask me. Thanks for all the replies so far. Does anyone have a guess as to why they would so alienate the Mac community?

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No it will tell the server that you are on internet explorer on windows

NusuniAdmin said:

No it will tell the server that you are on internet explorer on windows

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Applebum - Like Nusuni says, it will tell the site that you're on a Windows computer.

You can see this on the website TDT provided.

Go to that website with Safari and you should get something similar under the "Browser Info" heading:

Browser name: Safari
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/124 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.1

Click to expand...

If you go to the Debug menu and do what I told you earlier, the results will look something like this:

Operating System: Windows NT
Browser name: Internet Explorer
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2)

Click to expand...

Pretty cool, I think!

NusuniAdmin said:

Silly, you can use javascript to see if there mac user or not.

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You're missing the point. What does it matter if you are or aren't if its a web based system?