Identify Slackware as Windows
 

The UK National Lottery site at http://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/p/home/home.do won't let me open an account claiming that for security reasons I need to be running windows or a mac. (try 'Open Account' you just get an error page). When I phoned to enquire about this the lady who answered had never heard of Linux and her supervisor just reiterated that it was for security reasons, despite my protests to the contrary.

Anyway, what I was wondering was can I make them think I've got Windows somehow? I found out how to edit about:config so Firefox identifies as the IE but what about the OS (Slackware 9.1)?

regards,

I was able to get passed the error by setting "general.useragent.override" to:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)

This was in Mozilla 1.6 using about:config but I think it will work for firefox too.

I should also have said that there is actually a good plugin that puts a sub menu in "Tools" to do this for you:
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more...ragentswitcher

Thank you David that worked perfectly.

The first solution you mentioned comes under general.useragent.vendor in firefox...I downloaded and installed the second solution in seconds, so simple yet effective.

One question I do have that came out of this, I logged out of my account and in on my wife's to install the plugin there as well and I noticed that I was actually still logged in to LinuxQuestions. Is this because I install all my software in /usr/local and we're effectively using the same firefox? I was thinking that if I say had an online bank account and logged into that then another user could log in fire up the web browser and be logged in to the bank account too?

regards,

That shouldn't happen.

All your user files are stored in ~/.phoenix so unless you are sharing a profile directory your cookies should be completely seperate.

The only thing I can think of is that you have a locl cache server saving pages. This shouldn't have kept you login but it may have displayed the pages as if you were logged in (ie you shouldn't have been able to post etc)

test post to see if I can.

test post on wife's account after clearing cache.

Well I managed to post on my wife's account both before and after clearing the cache after logging in on mine.

Is it just a case of make sure I log out of everything then? I cleared the cache under tools>options>privacy, should I have done something else?

regards,

Try clearing the cookies on her account and see if you can get in from your account. The back to her account again. Perhaps you previously left a cookie on her settings.

You're right. I was logged in when I opened her account but on clearing the cookies and coming back I was logged out. I was then logged out again when I returned to hers.

But doesn't this mean I'm relying on another user to clear their cookies to totally log me out?

regards,

There is an option in the user cp to defien whether you should remain logged in over sessions. If you do login on another computer just make sure you click the "log out" button in the top right corner.

Thanks again David, I set it to not remember anything on both accounts so hopefully it'll all clear down when the browser is closed...and I'll remember to log out when I'm done.

I guess all security starts with common sense.

regards,

i don't know how much this helps and if anyone asked but i tried that plugin on netscape 7.1 and this is whot i get

========CODE===========

Netscape 7.1
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)

========CODE===========

so i guess they can add netscape to the list with mozilla and firefox...

my 2 cents just if someone asks the question about netscape working with it.

laterz

I'm not sure if this applies, but if you're using KDE, an option within Konquerer is to change your browser's identification. Go to Tools > Change Browswer ID and then you can choose whether you want to become IE 6.0 running on XP, or IE 5.5 running on Win2000, etc.

I've used this successfully to bypass the occasional "you must be running MS products" message you sometimes see on certain sites. -- J.W.

I did actually try this with Konqueror and chose IE6 on XP but still got the error message. Not sure why it doesn't work for me.

regards,