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Referers are a privacy trade-off though, and personally I have never seen a good reason why the desire of some website to track where I am coming from should tr

Referers are a privacy trade-off though, and personally I have never seen a good reason why the desire of some website to track where I am coming from should trump my desire to not broadcast this information to the world. Therefore I like to switch of referers anyway.

claudius 13y ago
I am doing the same. Fortunately, the websites requiring the referer to be set are getting fewer and fewer – some years ago, I regularly got placeholder images ‘THIS IMAGE WAS STOLEN FROM XYZ’ when browsing XYZ without referers.
- joosters 13y ago
  This is one of the good uses of HTTP referrers! I host a small, very low traffic website. One day, the bandwidth shoots through the roof and stays high. The reason? One of the images on a page got added to the .sig of someone in a popular forum. Suddenly thousands of people are fetching the image. The solution was to filter by referrer header, letting the image be seen by visitors to the actual page, but linking from other sites gets blocked. Note that usually it's best to allow requests that have no referrer header at all, otherwise you'll be blocking some legitimate viewers of your site. End result: bandwidth back down to the usual, tiny levels. It's not that I cared about people copying the images, I just didn't want to foot the bill for the traffic!
  - graue 13y ago
    I think you misunderstand — this seems to have been claudius' point: > Note that usually it's best to allow requests that have no referrer header at all, otherwise you'll be blocking some legitimate viewers of your site.
    - joosters 13y ago
      It was probably a badly-placed reply; my point was to illustrate a use for referrer headers and to state that sites blocking based on the lack of a referrer were doing it wrong.
- huhtenberg 13y ago
  Typekit and other @fontface providers rely heavily on them. So, with referrers off, every fancy designer website renders in Georgia.
  - claudius 13y ago
    I would call that a feature (though I prefer to use DejaVu Serif or Garamond rather than Georgia).
NameNickHN 13y ago
In our case referrers can sometimes be really helpful. More than once a (potential) customer has posted a link to our website with questions or comments about our products. This allowed us to head over there and answer those questions or generally get in touch with your target audience.
Nursie 13y ago
Yup. It's just another way that (for some reason) my browser leaks information without asking me if I want to. It gets switched off now, along with cookies, analytics and most other stuff.
monkeyspaw 13y ago
I respect your desire to not be tracked via referer headers, and to turn them off/use SSL/use extensions. You are a person, and your privacy is important to you. I also respect a site owner's desire to track your referer, and to decide the rules for who gets to access their content. They are (often) a business, and knowing where to focus their efforts to make money is important to them. I don't respect either side feeling they are owed tracking information, or content, if they aren't willing to respect the other agent's rules and preferences.

claudius 13y ago

I am doing the same. Fortunately, the websites requiring the referer to be set are getting fewer and fewer – some years ago, I regularly got placeholder images ‘THIS IMAGE WAS STOLEN FROM XYZ’ when browsing XYZ without referers.

joosters 13y ago
This is one of the good uses of HTTP referrers! I host a small, very low traffic website. One day, the bandwidth shoots through the roof and stays high. The reason? One of the images on a page got added to the .sig of someone in a popular forum. Suddenly thousands of people are fetching the image. The solution was to filter by referrer header, letting the image be seen by visitors to the actual page, but linking from other sites gets blocked. Note that usually it's best to allow requests that have no referrer header at all, otherwise you'll be blocking some legitimate viewers of your site. End result: bandwidth back down to the usual, tiny levels. It's not that I cared about people copying the images, I just didn't want to foot the bill for the traffic!
- graue 13y ago
  I think you misunderstand — this seems to have been claudius' point: > Note that usually it's best to allow requests that have no referrer header at all, otherwise you'll be blocking some legitimate viewers of your site.
  - joosters 13y ago
    It was probably a badly-placed reply; my point was to illustrate a use for referrer headers and to state that sites blocking based on the lack of a referrer were doing it wrong.
huhtenberg 13y ago
Typekit and other @fontface providers rely heavily on them. So, with referrers off, every fancy designer website renders in Georgia.
- claudius 13y ago
  I would call that a feature (though I prefer to use DejaVu Serif or Garamond rather than Georgia).

NameNickHN 13y ago

In our case referrers can sometimes be really helpful. More than once a (potential) customer has posted a link to our website with questions or comments about our products. This allowed us to head over there and answer those questions or generally get in touch with your target audience.

Nursie 13y ago

Yup. It's just another way that (for some reason) my browser leaks information without asking me if I want to. It gets switched off now, along with cookies, analytics and most other stuff.

monkeyspaw 13y ago

I respect your desire to not be tracked via referer headers, and to turn them off/use SSL/use extensions. You are a person, and your privacy is important to you. I also respect a site owner's desire to track your referer, and to decide the rules for who gets to access their content. They are (often) a business, and knowing where to focus their efforts to make money is important to them. I don't respect either side feeling they are owed tracking information, or content, if they aren't willing to respect the other agent's rules and preferences.