Referer

Information about Referer

For the rare occasions where de-referring links is needed in Wikipedia, see .

The referer, or HTTP referer, identifies, from the point of view of an internet webpage or resource, the address of the webpage (commonly the URL, the more generic URI or the i18n updated IRI) of the resource which links to it. By checking the referer, the new page can see where the request came from. Referer logging is used to allow websites and web servers to identify where people are visiting them from, for promotional or security purposes. Since the referer can easily be spoofed (faked), however, it is of limited use in this regard except on a casual basis.

A dereferer is a means to strip the details of the referring website from a link request so that the target website cannot identify the page which was clicked on to originate a request.

Referer is a common misspelling of the word . It is so common, in fact, that it made it into the official specification of HTTP – the communication protocol of the World Wide Web – and has therefore become the standard industry spelling when discussing HTTP referers.

Details

When visiting a webpage, the referer or referring page is the URL of the previous webpage from which a link was followed.

More generally, a referer is the URL of a previous item which led to this request. The referer for an image, for example, is generally the HTML page on which it is to be displayed. The referer is part of the HTTP request sent by the browser program to the web server.

Many web sites log referers as part of their attempt to track their users. Most web log analysis software can process this information. As referer information can violate privacy, some browsers allow the user to disable the sending of referer information. Some proxy and firewall software will also filter out referer information, to avoid leaking the location of non-public websites. This can in turn cause problems: some servers block parts of their site to browsers that don't send the right referer information, in an attempt to prevent deep linking or unauthorised use of images (bandwidth theft). Some proxy software has the ability to give the top-level address of the target site as the referer, which usually prevents these problems while still not divulging the user's last visited site.

Recently many blogs have started publishing referer information in order to link back to people who are linking to them, and hence broaden the conversation. This has led, in turn, to the rise of referer spam: the sending of fake referer information in order to popularize the spammer's site.

Many pornographic paysites utilize referer information to secure their materials: only browsers arriving from a small set of approved (login-) pages are given access; this facilitates the sharing of materials among a group of cooperating paysites. Referer spoofing is often used to gain free access to these sites.

Referer hiding

Most web servers will maintain logs of all traffic, and record the HTTP referer sent by the browser for each request. This raises a number of privacy concerns, and as a result a number of systems to prevent servers being sent the real referring URL have been developed. These systems work either by blanking the referer header or by replacing it with inaccurate data. Generally, internet security suites blank the referer data, while web based servers (known as dereferers) replace it with a false URL, usually their own - of course, this raises the problem of Referer spam. The technical details of both methods are fairly consistent - software applications act as a proxy server and manipulate the HTTP request, while web based methods load websites within frames, causing the browser to send a referrer URL of their website address. Some web browsers give their users the option to turn off referer headers.

References and external links

RFC 2616: Hypertext Transfer Protocol – HTTP/1.1
IRI – Internationalized Resource Identifiers

Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government
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A Web page or webpage is a resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext links.
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Uniform Resource Locator (URL) formerly known as Universal Resource Locator, is a technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings:

In popular usage, many technical documents, it is a synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI);

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Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), is a compact string of characters used to identify or name a resource. The main purpose of this identification is to enable interaction with representations of the resource over a network, typically the World Wide Web, using specific
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On the Internet, the Internationalized Resource Identifier (IRI) is a generalization of the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), which is in turn a generalization of the Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
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Log may refer to:

Wooden log, also known as timber, wood from trees used for construction or wood pulp for paper production
Data log, a record of sequential data
Logbook, a log of important events in the management, operation and navigation of a ship

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A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN.
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web server can mean one of two things:

A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which are known as web browsers, and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as HTML documents and

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In computer security, referer spoofing or ref tar spoofing is the sending of incorrect referer information along with an HTTP request, sometimes with the aim of gaining unauthorized access to a web site.
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A hyperlink, is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on a different website.

Hyperlinks are part of the foundation of the World Wide Web created by Tim Berners-Lee, but are not limited to
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Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a communications protocol used to transfer or convey information on the World Wide Web. Its original purpose was to provide a way to publish and retrieve HTML hypertext pages.
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protocol is a convention or standard that controls or enables the connection, communication, and data transfer between two computing endpoints. In its simplest form, a protocol can be defined as the rules governing the syntax, semantics, and synchronization of communication.
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World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, a user views web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks.
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Uniform Resource Locator (URL) formerly known as Universal Resource Locator, is a technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings:

In popular usage, many technical documents, it is a synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI);

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HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

File extension: .html, .htm
MIME type: text/html
Type code: TEXT
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A web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network.
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web server can mean one of two things:

A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which are known as web browsers, and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as HTML documents and

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Web log analysis software (also called a web log analyzer) is software that parses a log file from a web server (like Apache), and based on the values contained in the log file, derives indicators about who, when and how a web server is visited.
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Privacy has no definite boundaries and it has different meanings for different people. It is the ability of an individual or group to keep their lives and personal affairs out of public view, or to control the flow of information about themselves.
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In computer networks, a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application program) which services the requests of its clients by forwarding requests to other servers.
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firewall is a hardware or software device which is configured to permit, deny, or proxy data through a computer network which has different levels of trust.

Function

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Deep linking, on the World Wide Web, is making a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image on another website, instead of that website's main or home page. Such links are called deep links.

Example

This link: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.
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Inline linking is the placing of a linked object, often an image, from one site into a web page belonging to a second site. The second site is said to have an inline link to the site where the object is located.
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Referer spam is a kind of spamdexing (spamming aimed at search engines). The technique involves making repeated web site requests using a fake referer url that points to the site the spammer wishes to advertise.
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Internet security is the process of protecting data and privacy of devices connected to internet from information robbery, hacking, malware infection and unwanted software.
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This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.

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Referer

Information about Referer

Details

Referer hiding

See also

References and external links

Function

Example