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RefControl

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:
Get RefControl v0.8.17 (64K).
What's new in v0.8.17:
Full ChangeLog
Screenshot:
screenshot
Instructions:
You create a list of sites, and the referrer that should be sent for each site. To adjust settings for a single site, use the name of that site in the list (for instance www.example.com).
If you use example.com in the site list then the action will apply to all sites in the example.com domain (mail.example.com, images.example.com, etc.). More specific items in the list take precedence. Assume the following settings:
Site Action
example.com <Block>
www.example.com <Forge>
Then the referrer will be forged for requests to www.example.com and it will be blocked for requests to all other example.com sites.
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). Examples:

Page With Link Page Linked To 3rd Party Request?
http://www.example.com/ http://www.example.net/ Yes
http://www.example.com/ http://images.example.com/ Yes
http://www.example.net/ http://www.example.net/page2.html No
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.
Testing:
There's a test page which will display the referrer that was sent by your browser. You can use this to test your installation and settings.
If you want to see the referrer that Firefox sent for a page, you can enable the status bar display. There are two options:
  • None - Nothing will appear in the statusbar at all.
  • Referer - The Referer will be displayed directly in the status bar, possibly trimmed if it is long. Hovering over this with the mouse will show the full Referer in a tooltip.
If you'd rather not use the status bar display, you can also right click on the page and select "View Page Info". Then, on the General tab, look for Referring URL.
Contact: refcontrol <AT> stardrifter.org

Copyright © 2011 James Abbatiello
$LastChangedDate: 2014-12-07 22:32:09 -0500 (Sun, 07 Dec 2014) $