Comments on: Privacy Tip #3: Block Referer Headers in Firefox

By: Chloe

Chloe — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:02:28 +0000

Anything that can be done to stop website ops tracking and abusing information is a good thing. One particular blogger named Waldo Jaquith, who considers himself the bee’s knees in all things internetty, blogged that a certain political adversary who visited his site had arrived via an embarrassing adult website. He based this claim on the x-referrer information that most people tend to ignore and posted it in an attempt to embarrass the gentleman into silence. Since the x-referrer was believed to be bulletproof at the time, Waldo thought it was rock-solid and gleefully announced the info to his many adoring groupies with the result being that the guy’s reputation was sullied without a chance of rebuttal.
The bottom line is that anyone who says it’s not necessary to worry about needing to hide the referrer and taking other precautions against abuse is kidding themselves.

By: How to Fix MODx CSRF Error that Occurs in Firefox : Belafonte Code

How to Fix MODx CSRF Error that Occurs in Firefox : Belafonte Code — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:12:32 +0000

[...] some information about the different sendRefererHeader settings in the Firefox about:config from The Cafes that helps explain what’s going on here. Setting it to 1 sends a referer header when [...]

By: Browser: Stop Google, Yahoo and Bing tracking your clicks « Clicko

Browser: Stop Google, Yahoo and Bing tracking your clicks « Clicko — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:40:13 +0000

[...] you can disable the sending of the HTTP referrer to the websites you visit. While it is possible to disable the HTTP referrer entirely in Firefox’s about:config, this can break certain [...]

By: How to Stop Google, Yahoo, & Bing from Tracking Your Clicks

How to Stop Google, Yahoo, & Bing from Tracking Your Clicks — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:43:31 +0000

[...] you can disable the sending of the HTTP referrer to the websites you visit. While it is possible to disable the HTTP referrer entirely in Firefox’s about:config, this can break certain [...]

By: Elliotte Rusty Harold

Elliotte Rusty Harold — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:38:34 +0000

Dave. You typed “about.config” instead of “about:config”. Change the period to a colon.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:18:16 +0000

This does not work. about.config goes to a page 504 Connect to about.config:80 failed: SOCKS error: host unreachable

The following error occurred while trying to access http://about.config/:

504 Connect to about.config:80 failed: SOCKS error: host unreachable
Generated Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:16:42 Pacific Daylight Time by Polipo on localhost:8118.

By: Me

Me — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:14:18 +0000

Does anybody know wether Firefox sends the referrer when you open a link in a new tab by right-clicking and selecting “open in new tab”?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:51:36 +0000

@Jason:
Yes, prefix the url with http://www.de-referer.com/?, thus the link would become:

http://www.de-referer.com/?http://de-referer.com/homophobia.com

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:26:31 +0000

Is there a way to configure a link on my site to block the referer header – for instance, if I manage gay.com and have links to homophobia.com on my site – could I protect the privacy of my visitors?

By: Jake

Jake — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:40:44 +0000

@bloogie: In a real life sense, this would only make sense if Walmart had actually told you to go to Target. It does make sense in real life in some occasions, even if it is not really necessary (the same thing as here).

For instance, I need to book a hotel. I go to Days Inn and they tell me that they are out of rooms, but Holiday Inn has a room for me. I go to Holiday Room and told them that Days Inn just sent me here and I would like a room. While not necessary per se, it just makes sense.

Your example would not be how a referer works. A referer only happens in server logs when you click a link to go from one website to another. If I type in http://yahoo.com/ and then http://google.com/, Google would not know I got to their website after visiting Yahoo!. But if I clicked a link at http://yahoo.com/ to go to http://google.com, Google would know I got to their site via Yahoo!.