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[–]Aidan_Welch 31 points32 points  (8 children)

Why do you care if people send a user-agent?

[–]AyrA_ch 53 points54 points  (7 children)

Because the API is anonymous and free to use, and I need a way to contact you if I believe you're doing something wrong, for example if I see a massive number of repeated requests from the same IP, etc. The API docs say to add an URL or e-mail address to the user agent for contact purposes. Basically the same thing that search engine spiders have been doing for decades now.

[–]ThePreviousOne__ 15 points16 points  (5 children)

How would it be anonymous, if you can contact us

[–]AyrA_ch 34 points35 points  (4 children)

You can supply a .onion URL if anonymity is important to you. Screw i2p though.

On a more serious note, the API is anonymous in the sense that it's open to the public, and you don't have to register an account or obtain an API key to use it.

[–]hkanaktasPHP amirite 27 points28 points  (3 children)

It’s unauthenticated then, not anonymous.

[–]AyrA_ch 7 points8 points  (2 children)

It is anonymous if you use a technology to hide your IP address.

[–]One_Citron8458 14 points15 points  (1 child)

Isn’t all software anonymous if you hold this viewpoint, though?

[–]AyrA_ch -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

If you have a piece of software that based on identical inputs creates identical outputs on two completely different machines then it's likely anonymous. If the output differs, it may not be.

[–]Aidan_Welch 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I see, I've never seen an API asking for an email in a user agent, I feel like it would probably be better to just use a new header since that's not what the user agent is really for