From: Richard A. O'Keefe [mailto:ok@atlas.otago.ac.nz] They would be equally worthless, and I mean WORTHLESS. No site KNOWS what browsers access it, only what identification string the browsers send them. At least one of the browsers I use can be asked with a couple of mouse clicks to announce itself as any of several other browsers. (I haven't bothered looking to see if the others can. Hang on, I _know_ two of the others can be so configured with a wee bit of code.)

OK. How many people make use of that fact to mask their browser use? I submit that the number of people doing this is vanishingly small - far less than 1 percent. Most users *don't care* which browser they use - they just use the one which came pre-installed on the computer they bought from Gateway/Dell/whoever. They wouldn't know a browser ID string from a string bikini! To most people Web = Internet - they don't know ip from ftp from http from nntp and *THEY DON'T CARE!!!* They just want to, you know, surf. They're certainly not going to spend any time figuring out how to send bogus browser ID strings. That's my judgement of the situation, at any rate...

Bob Jarvis Compuware @ Timken