[Solved] Google is blocking Edge from using google drive

[HotCakeX]

Microsoft Edge Version 82.0.459.1 (Official build) canary (64-bit)

[#2]

@HotCakeX 

I see a possible pattern here.  A couple of weeks ago Google announced that Chromium based Edge isn't secure.  But that would also imply that Chrome isn't secure since they share a lot of the codebase.

[#3]

@obermd 

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@obermd wrote:

@HotCakeX 

I see a possible pattern here.  A couple of weeks ago Google announced that Chromium based Edge isn't secure.  But that would also imply that Chrome isn't secure since they share a lot of the codebase.

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Hi,

that seems to have another reason why they did that

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/chrome-extensions-warning/m-p/1220945/highlight/t...

[#4]

I used an extension to change user-agent to chrome or Firefox, then I could access google drive again.

didn't have to update anything after all

[#5]

@HotCakeX can you tell me exactly how you go to that error message? When I go to drive.google.com it works as expected with no warning signs.

-John

[#6]

@johnjansen 

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@johnjansen wrote:

@HotCakeX can you tell me exactly how you go to that error message? When I go to drive.google.com it works as expected with no warning signs.

-John

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I can make a video but i believe it's not necessary (unless you want to). but I go here: https://drive.google.com

and then I get that message.

Microsoft Edge Version 82.0.459.1 (Official build) canary (64-bit)

I'm not doing anything special. it happens also if I type "google drive" in Bing and go from there.

[#7]

@johnjansen 

By the way it also happens in InPrivate mode. first it asks me to enter my email and pass, then 2step verification and then shows me that message.

[#8]

@HotCakeX I have not been able to repro this, and it's really frustrating. Typically, what we see is that google will change a library somewhere internally that has a hard-coded string for UA string checking; when we find we are being blocked, we ping someone over there and they fix it.  

[#9]

@johnjansen 

Okay so looking at the flags I have enabled, I noticed I had one that had "user agent" in its title, I turned it off and the problem was solved.

could you please explain why it's causing that problem with Google drive?

Freeze User-Agent request header

Set the User-Agent request header to a static string that conforms to the current User-Agent string format but only reveals desktop vs Android and if the 'mobile' flag is set – Mac, Windows

#freeze-user-agent

[#10 · Accepted solution]

@HotCakeX 

User Agents are getting deprecated, they can't be completely removed considering the amount of problems it will cause for older legacy websites.

Freezing them will prevent the browser version from updating, similar to this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/75.0.3764.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/75.0.131.0

They will only be used to distinguish between mobile and desktop devices.

[#11]

Hi@Thraetaona 

Thanks for the response, now I get why Google drive was thinking my browser wasn't up to date, because the UA was frozen using that flag and stuck at an older version of Edge canary.

found these about it:

https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5704553745874944

https://css-tricks.com/freezing-user-agent-strings/

and how feature detection is better than UA detection

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Tools_and_testing/Cross_browser_testing/Feature_detec...

ever since I enabled it, which was around 2 weeks ago, Google drive was the only website having problem with it.

[#12]

@HotCakeX 

You're welcome,

Right, it reported an end-of-life version, hence the error message.

Well it should not have much of an advantage or benefit, UA is soft-deprecated (i.e still exists due to backwards compatibility but with reduced functionality or support).

It is only intended for detecting user's device (like mobile/desktop).

About privacy, It indeed supplies less information (Exact version of your browser for example) to websites, although even lower could be achieved by modifying the user agent to something other than the browser you are using that is still supported, like chrome's default UA.

UA checking and blocking users in general is not the best practice, simply displaying a warning should be enough for most cases.

[#13]

@HotCakeX I'm glad you noticed that you enabled that flag. I've logged a bug internally because I think locking our UA string to v 75 may be a little too old. Either we should rev it until we actually decide to lock it, or we should do a test pass with 75 enabled to see what else is broken. Good news is that you've been running with it for a couple weeks and only noticed this one site, so that's actually pretty promising.

-John

[#14]

Thank you!

[#15]

@johnjansen 

Yeah, well now that you've said that, I think i will turn it on again to produce more data and find out which other websites are broken and will report them using feedback on Edge.

Thanks again!

[#16]

is there anybody recommend me a VPN app? because of i am in china ,couldn't login google or other website,it is better to be free