The original HTTP specification really didn’t think of the web as an adversarial environment. The RFC that specified the ‘referer’ header [1] described it as ha

The original HTTP specification really didn’t think of the web as an adversarial environment. The RFC that specified the ‘referer’ header [1] described it as having the following purpose: [Referer]... allows the client to specify, for the server's benefit, the address (URI) of the resource from which the Request-URI was obtained. This allows a server to generate lists of back-links to resources for interest, logging, optimized caching, etc. It also allows obsolete or mistyped links to be traced for maintenance. The idea of how a user benefits from sharing it was that it would help the webmasters upon whom they were reliant to do a better job of curating their websites. It clearly expects a benevolent relationship between the owner of the linked site, the host of the link, and the user. Idealistic, sure, but understandable in a collaborative, academic context. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945#section-10.13 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945#section-10.13