User agent
Software acting on behalf of a user
On the Web, a user agent is a software agent responsible for retrieving and facilitating end-user interaction with Web content. This includes all web browsers, such as Google Chrome and Safari, some email clients, standalone download managers like youtube-dl, and other command-line utilities like cURL.
The user agent is the client in a client-server system. The HTTP User-Agent header is intended to clearly identify the agent to the server. However, this header can be omitted or spoofed, so some websites use other detection methods.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “User agent”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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