Firefox: Changing User Agents to Get Access to Extra Content

Contributor Icon Contributed by risherz Date Icon December 18, 2005  
Tag Icon Tagged: Internet

How to change user agents so that you can view “Members Only” areas and get access to extra content this is only meant for other browsers (such as Internet Explorer)


There are two ways to change user agents for Firefox

The first way is to download the User Agent switcher and switch your the user agent. Just download this extension. Then to change your user agents all you do is
1. Tools
2. User Agent Switcher
3. Pick the user agent you want

By default it has only 3 different options (Internet Explorer 6, Netscape and Opera), however you can always add more.

For example you might want to add the Googlebot 2.1 user agent… (when you use this user agent you can get into “member only areas” of quite a few sites) You can do this by

1. Tools
2. User Agent Switcher
3. Options
4. Options…
5. Then click on User Agents in the right column
6. Click on Add
Now type in Googlebot 2.1

where it says “Description” and “User Agent“.

The rest can be left empty. Then just click on OK. After that all you need to do is change your user agent and get access to “Member only” stuff on various sites on the net.

If you don’t want to download user agent switcher then you can also do this:

In the adderss bar type in
about:config

Then scroll down till you find (you can also use the filter feature)
“general.useragent.extra.firefox”
Double click on it and type in “Googlebot 2.1“. Now this will change your user agent to the google bot. To change the user agent back to the original one just right click and click Reset.

Previous recipe | Next recipe |
 
  • Anonymous
    This is one of the most confusing posts I've ever seen.

    "Members Only" content for where/what?
  • risherz
    Oh... okay, could you please tell me where I went wrong and where you get confused. Actually I kind of agree, I do need to write it up a little more properly, so I'll be updating this recipe or something later.
    Yes I guess I should have rephrased "Members only" content but here's a little example of how this works.....
    Go to http://shortenthis.com/zzdtbgl (thanks to bugmenot for the redirection link). See how it says Log on, subscribe to articles and pay about US$130 or something like that... and you only see the short preview of the article...

    Now, switch your user agent to Googlebot 2.1 you should be able to read both the pages of the article(the complete article) and view the comments (all without logging in and without paying $130 or anything like that)

    This is because the site thinks you are "Googlebot 2.1" and gives you access to the information so that you can index all of the information. But of course you know that you are only there to do something else.

    You can also gain access to the yahoo rich text editor which is only meant for Internet Explorer if you are using Firefox... so you don't need to switch around when you are using Firefox to write e-mails using yahoo..

    And please note that do not use this for evil purposes...

    Hope this helps the confused...
    Risherz
  • Anonymous
    Am i doing something wrong? I cant get it to work on www.backpackinglight.com...
    any help is appreciated
  • Anonymous
    changing the user agent to googlebot will only gain you access to sites that allow googlebot to view the entire site. it's possible that site does not. try it on the example site he linked to previously in the ccomments

    (not the same bugmenot)
  • risherz
    Yeah, I believe the bugmenot above is right (funny how many use bugmenot... its confusing actually) Some sites dont make all of the content accessible for search bots.

    The thing is that if you make the content of the whole post accessible for bots like google bots, chances are that you are going to get more visitors. This is because now you probably have more keywords in your site so you might get more visitors. However somesites such as this one probably store all the member only content somewhere else and make sure that only members that pay can access it. And that's why they have the small description of the review's etc, so that's the only thing google bot indexes.

    My point is that this trick will work for many sites, because many sites are trying to get more and more visitors come to the site and try to make money out of that. On some sites this trick won't work because they really want people to sign up and don't care if bots like google bot can access the rest of the information... sorry.

    Hope this helps
    Risherz
  • Anonymous
    Don't do what I did and set your UA to Googlebot and then forget that you did it. Some sites like http://del.icio.us actually block Googlebot's access entirely (allowing only access to RSS feeds and such). If you've set your UA to something else and forgotten about it, visiting such a site and getting a 404 or some other error can sort of catch you off guard. :D
  • Anonymous
    How many websites does this work for? Or more specifically, which type of website does this work for?
  • risherz
    <ul id="quote"><h6>spoonmonger wrote:</h6>How many websites does this work for? Or more specifically, which type of website does this work for?</ul>

    Well... I'm not sure how many websites this trick works for because things are always being changed.

    As for your second question, this trick works for a lot of tech websites where you need member subscription. For example windowsitpro.com . Mainly this trick works on websites that have a better search rating or wan't bots like the google bot to look at the complete content of the site.

    So as a general rule I would say that if you do a search on say google and one of the top queries listed has what you are looking for... you click on that link and go to that site but that site doesn't have what google says it has then try changing your user agents and trying again... chances are you will be able to see the content that is only ment for subscribers and bots ;)

    Hope this answers your question...
    Risherz
  • Anonymous
    ho ive veen to the windowsitpro.com site and all articles seems full articles could you give us an an example for an article in this site that can't be accessed if your not a member and you can access it with the user agent thing ? and hos does it work do you click on log in after switching the agent ? could you give us morec details ? and does it work withh downloadable ebooks sites and with porn sites if so how does it work and thank you very much
  • Anonymous
    K this is totally useful. There are several tech advice sites that function like this... Asking outragous amounts of cash for simple questions / results...
    Very good.
  • Anonymous
    can u list solme of those sites ?
  • Anonymous
    Hi,
    The "general.useragent.extra.firefox" isn't on the list of preferences for my firefox. Is there a reason for this, and is there another way for me to get it to work, or should I just download it?
  • risherz
    <ul id="quote"><h6>kingking wrote:</h6>can u list solme of those sites ?</ul>

    Well, I don't have a list of sites right now, but I'll try to put together one soon. Right now you can use this on a lot of tech sites like I said above...

    <ul id="quote"><h6>bugmenot wrote:</h6>Hi,
    The "general.useragent.extra.firefox" isn't on the list of preferences for my firefox. Is there a reason for this, and is there another way for me to get it to work, or should I just download it??</ul>

    If you don't see the "general.useragent.extra.firefox" in the preference name then you probably have an older version of firefox. Just get the newer version from mozilla.com. I don't think there is another way to get this to work without downloading the extension. I think is it better to download the extension, this might help you switch back to the default user agent quicker.

    Hope this helps :D
    Я
  • Anonymous
    You really need to remove the direct link you have from this site to the example site. The way you have it now it will show up in their referrer logs and they may possibly follow it back and learn of the small exploit and close it up.

    I took the liberty of creating a redirect for you:
    http://shortenthis.com/zzdtbgl
  • risherz
    <ul id="quote"><h6>bugmenot wrote:</h6>You really need to remove the direct link you have from this site to the example site. The way you have it now it will show up in their referrer logs and they may possibly follow it back and learn of the small exploit and close it up.

    I took the liberty of creating a redirect for you:
    http://shortenthis.com/zzdtbgl</ul>
    Wow, I completely overlooked the fact that they could trace this! Thanks so much bugmenot! I've corrected the link.

    Great idea of redericting the url... sometimes I totally forget about those things... hopefully the people at digg didn't read the comments... because many people have posted comments on where you can test this out :( Hmm... but i still wonder if they will close this, the reason why they get a lot of visitors is probably because of this. But, you never know...

    Thanks again :wink:
    Я
  • Anonymous
    Ok, I downloaded the plugin for firefox and typed EXACTLY <font color="red">Googlebot 2.1</font> in the create useragent. I set it as [color=red]Googlebot 2.1[/color in the description and name, but, it wont work on ANY site I go too! Help please.. :(
  • Anonymous
    Hi. I'm a different person. Not the other guy who uses this account.

    I figured I would add two helpful hints.

    1) If you visit ipchicken.com , you can see what user agent your browser is sending. There are plenty of other sites that do this, but this is one of the easiest to remember. Your user agent is displayed after the "browser:" field.

    This should aid people who are having problems. It will either affirm that you have switched the user agent correctly, or affirm that you haven't.

    2) You can achieve something similar to the goal of the recipe by using google cache. The advantage is not having to switch your user-agent back and forth. The disadvantage is that google cache is usually quite ugly. It is also sometimes out of date.

    It's been mentioned already, but some people don't seem to understand. This only works for sites that are specifically set up to allow googlebot but no one else besides members. Test that you are set up correctly on the site mentioned in the recipe. It is guaranteed to work (or so I assume. haven't tried it myself.) For any other site, this trick might work, might not.
  • Anonymous
    i really see no reason sites
    should treat googlebot and normal visitors any different and so i see
    no problem doing this

    there should not be search results in google if you cannot actually access the information
  • Skippy
    There is a reason why they do that.
    The reason why some member-only sites allow Googlebot to see the info, but not a regular person, is because the genuine Googlebot will collect the information and post it on Google, and these sites really want it because it would attract more people to become members.
  • timmy g
    thank you! firefox forever!
blog comments powered by Disqus