RefControl is an extension for Firefox that lets you control what gets sent as the HTTP Referer on a per-site basis.
This can be useful in a number of situations:
· Privacy - Perhaps you think webmasters don't have any business knowing where you found the link to their site. You can configure RefControl to not send the referrer to any site except for ones you explicitly list.
· Broken sites - Some sites perform misguided referrer checks in the name of "security". These checks don't add any real security since the referrer is easily faked and can often cause problems when the browser's behavior changes. You can configure RefControl to send these sites whatever they are expecting and work around this kind of problem.
· Fun - Send humorous things, secure in the knowledge that they are being written into the server's log file for the amusement of anyone who might later discover them there. Ok, maybe that's not much fun, but RefControl will let you do it anyway.
Instructions:
You create a list of websites and the referrer that should be sent for each of these websites.
To adjust settings for a single site, use the name of that site in the list (for instance www.example.com). Alternatively, using just example.com (without the www) in the site list will apply to *.example.com. More specific items in the list take precedence, so if you have example.com and www.example.com in the list, the example.com action will apply to every *.example.com site except for www.example.com.
For the referrer, the following options are available:
· Normal - send the referrer as it would normally be sent without interference from RefControl.
· Block - send no referrer to this site.
· Forge - send the root of the site as the referrer. In the above screenshot, all pages from www.example.net will use http://www.example.net/ as the referrer.
· Custom - type in any string and RefControl will use that as the referrer. You can use variables in this string
There is also a checkbox 3rd Party requests only. If this box is checked, the option selected above will take effect only for 3rd Party requests (when the site is not the same as the referring site). For example, following a link from http://www.example.com/ to http://www.example.net/ counts as a 3rd Party request. Following a link from http://www.example.net/ to http://www.example.net/index2.html is not a 3rd Party request.
Additionally, you can specify the default behavior for any site not in the list. You can set this to something other than Normal if you want to be more protective about your privacy. Setting it to Block for 3rd Party requests only is a fairly good compromise between privacy and not breaking sites. If you change the default behavior and then want a site to get sent the actual referrer, add it to the list and set it to Normal.