Small rant about 'compatible browsers', VPNs, adblockers, and websites breaking: a saga from the last few days

Off Topic
1

So I just relocated for a new job (yay!!) and I’m staying in a hotel as temporary housing while apartment hunting.

The past few days while trying to submit apartment applications I’ve found that more and more websites are completely breaking unless you use chrome with no adblockers or fingerprint protection and with vpn disabled. Up until now I really haven’t ever had an issue with my browsing setup and most of the time I forget I have a vpn running. I normally use brave or trivalent on desktop for logged-in/’official’ websites; on ios either brave or safari. On desktop brave I don’t use any extensions, on trivalent and safari I only use ubo lite (plus noir on safari for dark mode since you can’t force dark mode like brave and trivalent).

But oh my god trying to go through all this has been like pulling teeth.

One apartment complex I toured didn’t have a certain floorplan available for touring, so they emailed me a link to their virtual tour for that floorplan. Cool, pull up the link in Brave, get an error message telling me to use one of the ‘approved’ browsers: chrome or edge. I opened the link in my Trivalent profile that has most of the hardening settings disabled which I normally use for picky websites that insist on chrome, still got the same error message. Fine. Installed chrome, sandboxed it under bubblejail, installed ubo lite, virtual tour still didn’t work. Only was able to view it when I disabled ubo lite. Ugh.

Come time to submit the apartment applications, I first had to temporarily unfreeze my credit reports for the credit screening. None of the three credit bureau websites would allow me to log in on any browser even with minimal hardening. I even shut off the vpn and switched to using my phone as a hotspot for my laptop, nope, still didn’t work. Ended up having to call them one by one to re-authorize my accounts. Only was able to log in on chrome with ubo lite disabled again.

After that debacle, finally went to submit the applications. Once again, had to use chrome without ubo lite in order for the apps to go through and not have my application fee payment declined. I don’t think I’ve ever had an online payment declined on brave or trivalent with no vpn, so that was a first for me. Honestly, after the credit bureau website issue I probably should’ve gotten the memo and just kept using chrome, but I was curious to see if this was gonna be a recurring pattern.

Anyone else noticed more websites doing this recently?

2 Likes
2

Have you tried using a user agent switcher to fool the sites into thinking that you’re using Chrome? I doubt those kind of services use more sophisticated methods to detect the browser…

Alternatively, how about accessing them using the plain Chromium? At least that should be better than Google Chrome :sweat_smile:.

2 Likes
3

I use Vivaldi as my Chromium browser and it seems to satisfy the demand to use Chrome without having to actually use Chrome.

To @tomaz86 ‘s point about changing the header, if you’re using FF with Chrome as the header, I’ve had some parts of the site just not load or work correctly, and ran into plenty of times where the site thought I was using Chrome, wasn’t working right, and then I realize that if I change the header to something FF-based, it give me all the “uSe cHrOmE oR eLsE!” warnings.

4

I’ve always heard to avoid using ungoogled chromium because it’s outdated or lagging behind in security measures but I’ll def look into it more for sure

5

I actually haven’t tried vivaldi yet! I’ll give it a shot

6

All this BS about “compatible browsers” can drive most of us insane for doing simple tasks. I have noticed some variation of this while apartment searching abroad…it just simply doesn’t work if you need to access your credit report or make apartment applications.

Compartmentalization is probably the best fit for your situation. I’m sure bubblejail works fine with Chrome for most folks, but Qubes OS or a dedicated laptop can make it seamless. While calling your credit bureau for a printed-copy of your report mailed can be more private, it is understandably very annoying (and slow) nowadays!

7

I’m old enough to remember that similar annoying compatibility warning when the majority uses freakin ie in the 2000’s and I’m rocking firefox. Now majority use chrome and the warning changed from telling to use ie to telling to use chrome. Poor firefox always the black sheep lmao