[Feature request] send an user agent in hkp request

[Fabian Keil]

David Shaw <dshaw at jabberwocky.com> wrote:

> On Jan 27, 2013, at 5:33 AM, jbar <jeanjacquesbrucker at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > It should not be a big job, but is could be great to send an HTTP user-agent within hkp request (to search, receive and send keys from/to a key keyserver).
> > 
> > When I checked the log*, I noticed that none are send when using "gpg --send-keys" or "gpg --recv-keys". But that could be usefull to have stat about used GnuPG versions (or... I don't know if PGP did send the user-agent), and why not O.S. too, like we already use to stat with regular Web servers.
> 
> Not passing a user-agent is actually intentional behavior.  Unlike some sites which may want to behave differently for different user-agents, you get the same key blob no matter who (or what) is making the request.  Given this, there is no real reason beyond tracking and statistics gathering to send a user-agent string, so we don't, as it is really nobody's business what client you are using.

An advantage of sending a User-Agent is that it allows the proxy
to easily differentiate gpg from other clients to route the
requests differently.

For example I do not want my gpg requests to share a Tor circuit
with my feed reader or web browser and a "User-Agent: GnuPG"
header would make this easier, IMHO without disclosing too much
information.

"Detecting" gpg by looking for requests without a User-Agent header
only works as long as no other client sends no User-Agent header
either.

Fabian
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