I have seen a few cases where users complain that our mobile app (which runs in a webview inside a native app) doesn't work for them. When we look in the server logs, we find a user agent string that indicates a user is running iOS 11.4.1. My theory is that the older version indicates that the client's mobile device has run out of storage space. The device can't download the update to iOS 13.x since there is insufficient storage available on the device.<p>Even if the user frees-up some space on their device, not enough to upgrade to iOS 13.x, but enough to run our app theoretically, our app still fails to run for them. Uninstalling and reinstalling the native app that contains the webview that runs our web app doesn't solve the problem either. My theory is that there are truncated versions of some of our javascript files left over from when the device ran out of storage that don't get re-downloaded even when storage is later made available....<p>I've been telling people to free-up space on their device and upgrade it to iOS 13 to fix the problem. I sure hope that works...<p>If all user agents become a fixed string, how on god's green earth will we troubleshoot problems reported by users? I sure hope we get another header that will tell us the real client platform information so we can eventually repeat this exercise after another few years...<p>This scenario is complicated, but my point is really that of course we need a User Agent to accurately tell what platform the client is running for entirely legitimate reasons and mega corporations should not do patently evil things to make the lives of developers and support people even more frustrating than they already are. There should be laws against things like this. It really is fraud to change something like the User Agent string to a constant value that is incorrect, and it WILL lead to damaging events in real people's lives if it happens. People could be fired for being led down the wrong investigative path when troubleshooting problems. From the article, it sounds like significant damage has already been done.