referer : Java Glossary

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©1996-2017 Roedy Green of Canadian Mind Products

referer
Let us say I put this link on my web page: Visit Borland! The 
<a class="offsite" href="http://www.borland.com">Borland</a>
When somebody clicks it, they will be taken to the Borland site. How do the Borland people know it was my site that referred them there? The browser automatically inserts a field called Referer in the header of the HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) request packet sent to Borland to fetch their home page that says the link came from mindprod.com/jglossr.html. Borland might write a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) program to extract it by refering to a variable like HTTP_REFERER.

Opera allows users to decide themselves if referring pages will be transmitted, under File ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Privacy ⇒ Enable referrer logging. Webmasters who want to analyze their traffic probably wont’t like you using that feature, but you can use it to protect your privacy. Some proxies are configured to strip the header or insert a bogus header, so you can’t rely on the referer field being set correctly.

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