referrer blank sometimes

Anon

Hi,

I have a shopping system where I make use of referring URLs to insure things are being entered through the system, and not submitted form their hard drive.

Problem is, every once in a while I get a phone call from someone who is not allowed through the system because there is no referring URL. To date, non have been using Netscape 6, all have been windows, and all have been IE 5.X

This combo works for all but a few. What could be causing this for these rare few people? Can an ISP strip off the footprint using a proxy and then leave their customer with no way of producing a referring URL? Could that be it?

Any ideas or suggestions would be great.

Thank you,
Mark A. Clark

mrskhris

It's up to the browser to pass referring URL. It's not standard thing, so I would not rely on this feauture.

Anon

Any other ideas? Our site makes files available for download.

What else along these lines might work? I want to avoid someone being able to add files to the cart, then prior to checking out, having them be able to download the last page, change the amount of the order. Also, we don't allow orders to go to any free email services which is checked on the way in. Without a referring URL type of deal, they could not only change the price, but change the email address prior to submitting. Kinda renders the whole thing we have useless.

If you have any other alternatives, I would be more than welcome to any suggestions.

Thank you,
Mark A. Clark

mrskhris wrote:

It's up to the browser to pass referring URL. It's not standard thing, so I would not rely on this feauture.

mrskhris

It's not very wise to provide final amount of transaction as hidden field. Why don't recalculate the amount just before processing?

Anon

Thank you.

It finally dawned on me. Instead of passing variables, I just added a couple of tables to hold the info and extract it from there during the authorization script.

A couple of changes to some SQL statements and all seems to be well.

Thank you much for the advice,
Mark