Change Details

We have been observing spikes in our automated bot traffic since June 2022. {F36999773} This coincides with the roll out of the [[ https://chromestatus.com/feature/5704553745874944 | User Agent deprecation ]] by Chrome. See phases of rollout here: https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/ Summary of the Reduction Rollout starting June 13th, 2022: the Phase 4 rollout is enabled for 100% of clients on M101 and above via Finch. - [[ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/#sample-ua-strings-phase-4 | Phase 4 ]]: Chrome v101 and above will get a reduced UA string where the <minorVersion> token is set to “0.0.0”. - Other than the rise in automated traffic we don't have a good way of verifying the impact of this change since we do not capture browser minor in the aggregated pageview tables and data in webrequest has been purged (90 day retention). starting Nov 3rd, 2022: the Phase 5 rollout is enabled for 1% of clients on M107 and above via Finch. - [[ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/#sample-ua-strings-phase-5 | Phase 5 ]]: Chrome 107 and above get reduced Desktop UA string where OS major version is set to "10.0" {F36999796} - we have observed a drop in count of distinct OS versions after this rollout ([[ https://superset.wikimedia.org/superset/explore/p/5dZbLdLba4D/ | superset chart ]]) starting February 21st, 2023: the Phase 6 rollout is enabled for 1% of Android clients on M110 and above via Finch. - [[ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/#sample-ua-strings-phase-6 | Phase 6 ]]: Chrome 110 and above the <deviceModel> token will be changed to “K” and the <androidVersion> token will be changed to a static “10” string on Android Mobile (and Tablet). Reduction Completion [[ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/#sample-ua-strings-final-reduced-state | Phase 7 ]]: Chrome 113 and above will receive the reduced UA string which is a combination of all the above phases **Request**: We would like Research and Data Engineering to investigate the impact of this change as we expect some reduction in unique devices (that are identified using finger printing+UA) as a result of this and an increase in human user traffic being flagged as automated. While we dont have a good way to measure the impact we want to know if there is some way of estimating the impact or if we should accept this as a change in the landscape and flag it as such.

We have been observing spikes in our automated bot traffic since June 2022. {F36999773} This coincides with the roll out of the [[ https://chromestatus.com/feature/5704553745874944 | User Agent deprecation ]] by Chrome. See phases of rollout here: https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/ Summary of the Reduction Rollout starting June 13th, 2022: the Phase 4 rollout is enabled for 100% of clients on M101 and above via Finch. - [[ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/#sample-ua-strings-phase-4 | Phase 4 ]]: Chrome v101 and above will get a reduced UA string where the <minorVersion> token is set to “0.0.0”. - Other than the rise in automated traffic we don't have a good way of verifying the impact of this change since we do not capture browser minor in the aggregated pageview tables and data in webrequest has been purged (90 day retention). starting Nov 3rd, 2022: the Phase 5 rollout is enabled for 1% of clients on M107 and above via Finch. - [[ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/#sample-ua-strings-phase-5 | Phase 5 ]]: Chrome 107 and above get reduced Desktop UA string where OS major version is set to "10.0" {F36999796} - we have observed a drop in count of distinct OS versions after this rollout ([[ https://superset.wikimedia.org/superset/explore/p/5dZbLdLba4D/ | superset chart ]]) starting February 21st, 2023: the Phase 6 rollout is enabled for 1% of Android clients on M110 and above via Finch. - [[ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/#sample-ua-strings-phase-6 | Phase 6 ]]: Chrome 110 and above the <deviceModel> token will be changed to “K” and the <androidVersion> token will be changed to a static “10” string on Android Mobile (and Tablet). Reduction Completion [[ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/#sample-ua-strings-final-reduced-state | Phase 7 ]]: Chrome 113 and above will receive the reduced UA string which is a combination of all the above phases **Other observations** - Automated traffic spikes we saw in March continued into April. We observed that automated traffic which usually shows up as None or Direct referer traffic is now increasing in External Search Engine referer traffic. ([[ https://superset.wikimedia.org/superset/explore/p/JxRQJo9XNWA/ | chart ]]) {F37030614} ##Request We would like Research and Data Engineering to investigate the impact of this change as we expect some reduction in unique devices (that are identified using finger printing+UA) as a result of this and an increase in human user traffic being flagged as automated. While we dont have a good way to measure the impact we want to know if there is some way of estimating the impact or if we should accept this as a change in the landscape and flag it as such.

We have been observing spikes in our automated bot traffic since June 2022. {F36999773} This coincides with the roll out of the [[ https://chromestatus.com/feature/5704553745874944 | User Agent deprecation ]] by Chrome. See phases of rollout here: https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/ Summary of the Reduction Rollout starting June 13th, 2022: the Phase 4 rollout is enabled for 100% of clients on M101 and above via Finch. - [[ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/#sample-ua-strings-phase-4 | Phase 4 ]]: Chrome v101 and above will get a reduced UA string where the <minorVersion> token is set to “0.0.0”. - Other than the rise in automated traffic we don't have a good way of verifying the impact of this change since we do not capture browser minor in the aggregated pageview tables and data in webrequest has been purged (90 day retention). starting Nov 3rd, 2022: the Phase 5 rollout is enabled for 1% of clients on M107 and above via Finch. - [[ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/#sample-ua-strings-phase-5 | Phase 5 ]]: Chrome 107 and above get reduced Desktop UA string where OS major version is set to "10.0" {F36999796} - we have observed a drop in count of distinct OS versions after this rollout ([[ https://superset.wikimedia.org/superset/explore/p/5dZbLdLba4D/ | superset chart ]]) starting February 21st, 2023: the Phase 6 rollout is enabled for 1% of Android clients on M110 and above via Finch. - [[ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/#sample-ua-strings-phase-6 | Phase 6 ]]: Chrome 110 and above the <deviceModel> token will be changed to “K” and the <androidVersion> token will be changed to a static “10” string on Android Mobile (and Tablet). Reduction Completion [[ https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/#sample-ua-strings-final-reduced-state | Phase 7 ]]: Chrome 113 and above will receive the reduced UA string which is a combination of all the above phases **Request**: Other observations** - Automated traffic spikes we saw in March continued into April. We observed that automated traffic which usually shows up as None or Direct referer traffic is now increasing in External Search Engine referer traffic. ([[ https://superset.wikimedia.org/superset/explore/p/JxRQJo9XNWA/ | chart ]]) {F37030614} ##Request We would like Research and Data Engineering to investigate the impact of this change as we expect some reduction in unique devices (that are identified using finger printing+UA) as a result of this and an increase in human user traffic being flagged as automated. While we dont have a good way to measure the impact we want to know if there is some way of estimating the impact or if we should accept this as a change in the landscape and flag it as such.