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It may seem minor, but unless these things are fought, they will slowly creep until anything that's not a corporate-approved computer/OS/browser is effectively quarantined from the internet. It will make adoption of free software even harder.
Agreed 100%. User-agent discrimination should be illegal. People always use the "security" excuse against it, but if changing your UA header is enough to get past the checks, it's clearly in the realm of security theater.

It will make adoption of free software even harder.

Depends what you mean by "free software", but I assume you're referring to independent/competing implementations and not "software developed corporate interests, who have only decided to make the source public" (like Big Browser.) Chrom[e/ium], and browsers based on it, are "free" after all.

That said, remote attestation is the real enemy of your freedom and privacy.

> For reference, Chase whitelists the user agents that can do online banking.

Never underestimate the second order effects of decisions made due to politics and/or internal power struggles between fiefdoms.

J.P. Morgan Chase is the poster child of them.

"I bet Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase's CEO) still uses a BlackBerry or flip phone, dial-up, and IE6."

If that - I'll bet someone else prints his email for him to read later and types in his dictated responses.

Having worked previously in Chase (JPM side of it), I wouldn't be surprised if this is due to a hardcoded list of user agents somewhere - rather than an intentional blocking of Linux on ARM.