Is Referrer blocking possible?

September 12th, 2003, 6:33 am

I have a site that contains a ton of links. I need people to be able to use those links, but I don’t want my site to appear on the linked site's referrer list. Any suggestions?

Also, is there any easy way to identify which sites are using referrers?

[Bigwebmaster]

September 12th, 2003, 6:39 am

For your second question, you can sometimes tell if a site is tracking visitors, but there is no way to tell if they are not. They can be tracking visitors/referrers easily without you ever having a clue. For example they could use their server logs to track referrers.

For your first question you could use a javascript based link which would limit the passing of the referral site on many browsers. I think the latest browsers now pass the referral site even through JavaScript, so it wouldn't prevent it completely.

For the most part though, you cannot prevent your visitors from showing they came from your site when they visit another, at least that I know. You could make an intermediate page if you do not want them to know exactly what page they came from.

Now the actual visitor could easily prevent them from passing referral data to the sites they visit by using some kind of software to block it. I know many AntiVirus programs has this built in, Norton AntiVirus being one of them. However, as a webmaster this does you no good because you do not have control of what programs are on their computer.

September 12th, 2003, 7:00 am

Hmmm. Oy! Okay. Thanks for responding so quickly.

(And sorry my SUBJECT wasn't clearer. )

September 12th, 2003, 10:46 pm

The easiest way to do this is simply to use target="_blank" for all links you do not want to show referer to the site.

[Bigwebmaster]

September 12th, 2003, 11:21 pm

nuclei wrote:

The easiest way to do this is simply to use target="_blank" for all links you do not want to show referer to the site.

The referrer info will still be passed. That will not stop it. The only special thing it will do is open the site in a new window, that is it. Nice try though

September 12th, 2003, 11:27 pm

Try it

As far as I have seen in our apache logs over 13 differant servers, no referer carries over when using a target="_blank"

[Bigwebmaster]

September 12th, 2003, 11:30 pm

Well I know I am right for sure on this one. I actually program tracking scripts:

http://uts.bigwebmaster.com/
http://www.darkvenom.com/

and know this area very well. I have done tons of tests in this area to figure out all kinds of ways to track visitors and where they come from. I use target=_blank on most of my sites and everything is tracked perfectly, how it should be

Click on your link in your signature that goes to your site and you will see in your logs that you came from Ozzu. Your link in your sig is using target=_blank already.

September 12th, 2003, 11:35 pm

Maybe it is just the way my techs setup our boxes, but.....


216.175.77.24 - - [12/Sep/2003:23:24:36 -0700] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 304 - "" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"

[Bigwebmaster]

September 12th, 2003, 11:44 pm

Well it depends on what they have turned on with their logs. By default Apache will not log referers. (I am assuming you are using Apache).

Here is what Apache usually uses for the default logging scheme:

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common

Now if your admin's would switch to using this one:

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined

The referrer info will be stored in your logfiles with that.

[Bigwebmaster]

September 12th, 2003, 11:47 pm

It is also possible that your client machine you are on does not pass the referrer variable. You wouldn't be happening to use Norton Antivirus would you? By default that program will prohibit you from passing the referrer variable to other sites you visit.

September 12th, 2003, 11:48 pm

we get all other referers fine.

September 12th, 2003, 11:48 pm

Nope, if I click on a regular link it passes referer.

[Bigwebmaster]

September 12th, 2003, 11:50 pm

Well I am sure there is another explanation then. I target _blank between all my sites and everything for me is tracked perfectly. I have been doing that for years.

[Bigwebmaster]

September 13th, 2003, 12:05 am

Click on this link nuclei:

<a href="http://www.bigwebmaster.com/test.cgi" target="_blank">CLICK THIS</a>

and then copy and paste what you see.

September 15th, 2003, 10:54 am

Bigwebmaster wrote:

You wouldn't be happening to use Norton Antivirus would you?

I think you mean Norton's Internet Security.
The antivirus doesn't have this problem.