Post #972540

2026-04-06 12:50 UTC

An operating system can lie about that though. The only reason it doesn’t is because of convention. There is no technical reason it couldn’t look like a different OS. Try changing your user agent, it’s that simple in most cases.

Replies (2)

@fhein@lemmy.world 2026-04-06 13:41

And services can choose to only allow operating systems which don’t lie, have anti-tamper mechanisms, and authenticate themselves cryptographically. It has definitely been easy to spoof your identity in the past, but OP is talking about where we might be heading in the future. Since the laws about OS:es having to partially identify the user is so obviously useless in its current form, don’t you think the corporations and politicians who are pushing for it are going to keep expanding it when they get the opportunity?

Open ##972651
@TheIPW@lemmy.ml 2026-04-06 12:58

User agents are just the tip of the iceberg. Between TCP/IP stack fingerprinting and modern hardware attestation (TPM/Secure Boot), pretending to be a different OS is becoming a lot harder than just changing a string in your browser settings. The 'handshake' I mentioned before is at a much deeper level than that.

Open ##1110801