Saturday, September 19, 2009

Blocking Referer Page

By default, browsers tell servers what page they're coming from, i.e., the page on which the link to the page was clicked. The justification for this is hazy--I can't imagine why I would want to give this information to any server.

I used to use RefControl to block referring information (note the HTTP spelling is referer[sic]). Unfortunately, the current version of RefControl doesn't work with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.14) Gecko/2009090216 Ubuntu/8.04 (hardy) Firefox/3.0.14, so I went in search of something that would work. I tried No-Referer and Refspoof, neither of which appear to work at all.

A little Googling led to the Web Developer Toolbar, which does successfully block the referring page. It's a bit heavier weight than I wanted, but it works, and it does have other features I may use over time.

Check to see if your referer information is shared.

1 comment:

Jeff Martens said...

Curiously, RefControl is working with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.14) Gecko/2009090216 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.14, so possibly it's a bad interaction between addons in the other installation.