Option to disable "Wirelessly posted" tag

[Xenc]

This is automatically prefixed to posts created using the mobile version of the forums. An option to disable this would be great, since it's a little unsightly!

[SilentPanda]

I believe this is part of a separate piece of code which we are unable to modify. I think it'd be good to disable it also though.

[RedTomato]

I believe it should be disabled. I feel it represents an active privacy and security risk.

Let me show an example of privacy invasion which happened to me on MacRumors via this tag.

I got my first iPhone a couple of years ago, and gave it a name in iTunes. I included my full name as part of that name, to help with recovering it if it was lost or stolen. Suppose my full name is Dale Bloomberg, then my iPhone's name was Dale Bloomberg's iPhone.

All lovely, no problems. I then discovered MacRumor's Mobile skin, so I happily posted in a few threads via that for a few weeks. Note: When you are returned to the thread after making a post via the mobile skin, it does not show you the 'wirelessly posted' tag. So I had no idea a tag was being inserted above my posts.

Some time later, I happened to revisit an old thread on my desktop. I saw the tag for the first time, and I was shocked to find that it had inserted the name of my iphone in all my wireless posts. So they were all tagged with my real name, as in 'Wirelessly posted, (Dale Bloomberg's iPhone, xxxxx etc)

I had to go back over my old posts and edit them all to remove my name, and rename my iphone. Like many people here, I'd rather my full real name wasn't publicly linked with my MacRumors account.

Note: This only happens if you give your iPhone a specific name of its own in iTunes, which many people don't. I'll post below an example.

[RedTomato]

Wirelessly posted (This odd thing that I hold: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

See above - 'This odd thing that I hold' is the name of my iPhone at the moment. This tag isn't shown when returned to the thread after posting via the mobile skin. It is also automatically stripped out when reading the thread via the mobile skin. So someone who only posts and visits via the mobile skin would never know that potentially private information about them was being displayed in the thread.

EDIT: I've just tested it with a different iPhone name, and the tag hasn't changed. So I'm not quite sure what the current situation is.

[localoid]

Even if MacRumors would/could turn off the "wirelessly posted" tag, each and every time you visit a Web page, your browser broadcasts the user-agent header to the Web server hosting the pages you're visiting. Most servers record that info to the server's log file.

It's probably not a good idea to change your brower's user-agent string to include any sort of personal details about one's self, such as your name, SS#, or your mistress' phone number.

[SilentPanda]

Originally Posted by localoid

Even if MacRumors would/could turn off the "wirelessly posted" tag, each and every time you visit a Web page, your browser broadcasts the user-agent header to the Web server hosting the pages you're visiting. Most servers record that info to the server's log file.

It's probably not a good idea to change your brower's user-agent string to include any sort of personal details about one's self, such as your name, SS#, or your mistress' phone number.

There's a huge difference between a few server admins having access to the information and it being posted on a public forum. In this case the users aren't even putting the information in their user-agent string, it just happens to be displaying the name you give your iPhone which I believe is defaulted to "your name's iPhone". I think RedTomato brings up a good point and although I don't post from my iPhone, I think if there is a way to disable it it should be investigated.

[arn]

Originally Posted by RedTomato

Wirelessly posted (This odd thing that I hold: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

See above - 'This odd thing that I hold' is the name of my iPhone at the moment. This tag isn't shown when returned to the thread after posting via the mobile skin. It is also automatically stripped out when reading the thread via the mobile skin. So someone who only posts and visits via the mobile skin would never know that potentially private information about them was being displayed in the thread.

EDIT: I've just tested it with a different iPhone name, and the tag hasn't changed. So I'm not quite sure what the current situation is.

Are you sure you haven't installed some sort of hack to cause your user agent names to be displayed like that?

It's not a normal feature of Safari to include your iPhone's name. I just tested it again to make sure. No identifying information is included in my user agent string from my iPhone 4.

arn

[arn]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

An example.

I think we can turn off the user agent string, but I'd like to figure out this first.

arn

[xUKHCx]

I seem to remember it picking up the iPhone's name long ago but my memory isn't so great so could just be remembering it wrong howeverr I just tried it out now and it only picks up the fact that it is an iPhone. My testing though might not be 100% correct as I had a device name listed in the following preference on the mobile forums

My Prefs – Wireless Device – Device’s Name

As you can see below if you have a device name set there it uses that in the string.


Wirelessly posted (Not an iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

Once I removed that it reverted back to this:

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

Perhaps someone who has never used the above setting to alter the name of the device can check if it picks up the iPhone's name or not(?)

[arn]

It seems unlikely that a web app can automatically pick up your iPhone's name. For obvious privacy issues we're talking about.

arn

[Xenc]

The wirelessly posted tag has been removed from the latest version of the forums. Thank you!

[Dr McKay]

Mine never did this, but I use the full site not the mobile one. Is that why?