Re: Zone Alarm 3.0 Some Bad News for web sites !
From: John S (nospam@nospam.com)Date: 03/16/02
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From: "John S" <nospam@nospam.com> Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 07:04:14 -0500
Norton has had this "feature" for some time. You can turn it off, but I have
not noticed any problems with it on. It is a privacy issue and we should
have the option of passing this on to the web site.
"Fox" <fox@connexions.net> wrote in message
news:7vak8.20$UC5.689@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net...
> I believe we all have a problem !
> Zone Alarm 3.0 shuts down browser header field "REFERER" by default.
> For those who do not know what this is, it is the bit of code sent to the
> website you are visiting, which tells that site which site you were on
when
> you clicked to go to their site. Touted as a privacy issue, it really is
not
> at all a privacy issue. It does not tell anyone who you are. But it does
> supply important info which makes the web world work as it does.
> This information is used in various ways, the two most common ways
> follow. First, this info can tell a website which is dependant on it, just
> which page or set of navigation menus to display for you. It can
> also tell a framed site whether to deliver the entire framed environment
> if you are coming from another site, or to just give you a single page
> within the frames if you are coming from already being on the site.
> This is one of the ways my client's sites uses this field. The second
> and most important need for this field, is that this tells a web site
> manager where the traffic comes from. The entire infrastructure regarding
> traffic flow and development is destroyed by the loss of this field.
> Businesses as well as educational as well as personal and even
> public service sites all depend on knwoing where their traffic comes
> from som they can manage their resources (time and/or money)
> in the best way to develop or improve their traffic. This also protect
> the web site owner from paying unscrupulous characters for traffic
> they do not deliver. All in all this should default to off rather than on.
> If you agree, please help stop what may quickly become a trend
> which will hurt web sites in a number of ways. Let me reiterate
> that this is a false issue which is and will be sold as a privacy issue
> when it really has no effect on privacy. It merely tells the next
> web site which web site you found their link on. If you type a
> link in manually, this field does not exist in that session since there
> is no referring site. It does not tell the last site you were at unless
> you clicked on the next site from there.
>
> If you agree with the need to stop the blocking of this field
> please email Zone Alarm and any others who may be inclined
> to follow this example. If no one is heard from, I would expect
> that Microsoft will probably end up defaulting to ON also. Please
> don't let yet another false concept interfere with the free development
> of the WEB.
>
> NOTE ALSO THAT WORK-A-ROUNDS such as queries, will not replace this loss
> other than in same site navigation, since search engines will not index
> pages with queries.
>
> I am a privacy advocate, so if anyone stands on a soapbox against this
> without some more knowledge than I have, you will quickly be known to be
> just a crank. So if I am wrong, please bring up some facts and not just
> flames. I will surely listen. I have people's best interest at heart here.
>
> If you have the upgrade installed and you go to a web site which starts
> showing frames within frames, and you want it to stop doing that, set your
> MSIE program privacy to OFF.
>
> Regards to all,
> Fox
>
>
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