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If HTTP referrers never existed, the web would still be huge and would still be full of amazing content. Why should we care about retaining referrers? I think

If HTTP referrers never existed, the web would still be huge and would still be full of amazing content. Why should we care about retaining referrers? I think the only reason that people dislike the idea of losing them, is because they've got used to them being there. I don't particularly like the fact that sites which I click through to can see where I'm coming from, or what I was searching for, so I've installed a Firefox addon called RefControl to get around it. The majority of people don't know anything about referrers though. I'm sure that brick and mortar shops would also love to know how I was referred to them when I walk through their door. They don't get this information unless I consciously decide to give it to them though. And even though they don't get this information, they still manage to sell products.

alexchamberlain 15y ago
Inertia shouldn't stop us doing something. Where a visitor comes from is very valuable (not just monetarily), and I don't think it really infringes on privacy.
- mike-cardwell 15y ago
  It absolutely does infringe on privacy. The only thing that is up for question is by how much and if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. People who benefit from them existing are obviously going to have a different view point to everyone else (on average). I don't think that referrers should ever have been a part of the protocol and I don't think that the commercial value of them existing should have any influence on whether or not HTTP continues to include them. Unfortunately, both Google and Microsoft benefit financially from the existence of referrer headers, so I don't see them going anywhere in Chrome or IE at least.
rmc 15y ago
Referrer information allows website owners to see who is linking to their site. It's like a private, reverse form of <a> tags
- mike-cardwell 15y ago
  I agree that referrer information is useful to site owners. What you need to understand is that just because something is good for site owners, doesn't mean it's good for site visitors, or the web in general. If you wanted to see who was linking to your site, and referrer headers didn't exist, you'd use a search engine. Hell, people would build dedicated search engines which alert you when somebody links to your site. Referrers are good for identifying where a user came from, or what they were searching for when they land on your site. Well, sometimes they don't want you to have that information, and most of the time people are completely unaware that you're getting it.
  - rmc 15y ago
    The interests of web site owners align a lot with the web itself. And referrer headers are much easier than having to build a search engine and being at their whims.
    - mike-cardwell 15y ago
      "The interests of web site owners align a lot with the web itself." Not in this particular case. "And referrer headers are much easier than having to build a search engine and being at their whims." Absolutely. And if your browser sent a HTTP header containing your name, address, sexual preferences and date of birth, that would also make things even better for website owners. Just imagine how much better they could target their adverts!
rplnt 15y ago
> If HTTP referrers never existed, the web would still be huge and would still be full of amazing content. While we're at it, let's get rid of User-Agent. No sarcasm intended, I'm serious. It only does bad things.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  I disagree - it's nice to be able to serve a mobile layout to a mobile device. If I'm trying to load, say, CNN or ESPN on an older mobile phone, I don't need all the cruft that comes with the desktop version. (We can get into all the evils suggested by http://xkcd.com/869/ http://xkcd.com/869/ , but for the purposes of this argument I'm assuming that web developers and sysadmins are competent and not evil.)
  - Zirro 15y ago
    What about media queries? (https://developer.mozilla.org/En/CSS/Media_queries https://developer.mozilla.org/En/CSS/Media_queries)
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      Those don't really affect the HTML that gets sent. # wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3" http://www.cnn.com/ -O cnn.mobile.html # wget http://www.cnn.com/ -O cnn.standard.html # ls -lhrt | grep cnn -rw-r--r-- 1 pavel staff 29K Feb 24 13:12 cnn.mobile.html -rw-r--r-- 1 pavel staff 104K Feb 24 13:13 cnn.standard.html I don't need 100K worth of stuff on BlackBerry 1.half's browser that can't render most of it.
  - rplnt 15y ago
    And then you get served mobile version of the site because you are using Opera and some incompetent web developer[1] decided that it's a mobile browser. But you got a point. However, deciding what to show should be based on the device (resolution, size, orientation, input methods, ...) and not the browser. Now, just for fun and laughs, check out what user-agent string is sent by Chrome. I guess Google assumes everyone is like them and their poor browser would get blocked if they just said it's a Chrome. 1. https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/topic/checkout-merchant/bOTe54PVzNs/discussion https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/topic/...
harryh 15y ago
Ya this is definitely a valid point of view. I'm not sure if we can get from here to there though. So much of the way that business online is done today is based on the status quo that changing it is pretty hard. Could happen though I suppose. /shrug/

alexchamberlain 15y ago

Inertia shouldn't stop us doing something. Where a visitor comes from is very valuable (not just monetarily), and I don't think it really infringes on privacy.

mike-cardwell 15y ago
It absolutely does infringe on privacy. The only thing that is up for question is by how much and if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. People who benefit from them existing are obviously going to have a different view point to everyone else (on average). I don't think that referrers should ever have been a part of the protocol and I don't think that the commercial value of them existing should have any influence on whether or not HTTP continues to include them. Unfortunately, both Google and Microsoft benefit financially from the existence of referrer headers, so I don't see them going anywhere in Chrome or IE at least.

rmc 15y ago

Referrer information allows website owners to see who is linking to their site. It's like a private, reverse form of <a> tags

mike-cardwell 15y ago
I agree that referrer information is useful to site owners. What you need to understand is that just because something is good for site owners, doesn't mean it's good for site visitors, or the web in general. If you wanted to see who was linking to your site, and referrer headers didn't exist, you'd use a search engine. Hell, people would build dedicated search engines which alert you when somebody links to your site. Referrers are good for identifying where a user came from, or what they were searching for when they land on your site. Well, sometimes they don't want you to have that information, and most of the time people are completely unaware that you're getting it.
- rmc 15y ago
  The interests of web site owners align a lot with the web itself. And referrer headers are much easier than having to build a search engine and being at their whims.
  - mike-cardwell 15y ago
    "The interests of web site owners align a lot with the web itself." Not in this particular case. "And referrer headers are much easier than having to build a search engine and being at their whims." Absolutely. And if your browser sent a HTTP header containing your name, address, sexual preferences and date of birth, that would also make things even better for website owners. Just imagine how much better they could target their adverts!

rplnt 15y ago

> If HTTP referrers never existed, the web would still be huge and would still be full of amazing content. While we're at it, let's get rid of User-Agent. No sarcasm intended, I'm serious. It only does bad things.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
I disagree - it's nice to be able to serve a mobile layout to a mobile device. If I'm trying to load, say, CNN or ESPN on an older mobile phone, I don't need all the cruft that comes with the desktop version. (We can get into all the evils suggested by http://xkcd.com/869/ http://xkcd.com/869/ , but for the purposes of this argument I'm assuming that web developers and sysadmins are competent and not evil.)
- Zirro 15y ago
  What about media queries? (https://developer.mozilla.org/En/CSS/Media_queries https://developer.mozilla.org/En/CSS/Media_queries)
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    Those don't really affect the HTML that gets sent. # wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3" http://www.cnn.com/ -O cnn.mobile.html # wget http://www.cnn.com/ -O cnn.standard.html # ls -lhrt | grep cnn -rw-r--r-- 1 pavel staff 29K Feb 24 13:12 cnn.mobile.html -rw-r--r-- 1 pavel staff 104K Feb 24 13:13 cnn.standard.html I don't need 100K worth of stuff on BlackBerry 1.half's browser that can't render most of it.
- rplnt 15y ago
  And then you get served mobile version of the site because you are using Opera and some incompetent web developer[1] decided that it's a mobile browser. But you got a point. However, deciding what to show should be based on the device (resolution, size, orientation, input methods, ...) and not the browser. Now, just for fun and laughs, check out what user-agent string is sent by Chrome. I guess Google assumes everyone is like them and their poor browser would get blocked if they just said it's a Chrome. 1. https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/topic/checkout-merchant/bOTe54PVzNs/discussion https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/topic/...

harryh 15y ago

Ya this is definitely a valid point of view. I'm not sure if we can get from here to there though. So much of the way that business online is done today is based on the status quo that changing it is pretty hard. Could happen though I suppose. /shrug/