Web Browser Not Reporting HTTP_REFERER

synergypoint

Has anyone experienced any new browsers that do not report HTTP_REFERER info to PHP correctly?

I keep getting an error on a form processing script that compares the HTTP_REFERER value to a list of allowable domains.

This is the browser agent that seems to be causing the problem:

HTTP_USER_AGENT: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 8.0; Windows NT 5.1)

Is this AOL 8.0 causing the problem?

Has anyone else seen this?

WinterDragon

rofl... hey whoever it is, Tell them to go into add/remove programs and remove AOL8.0, no Just playing, Don't you could screw the registry all to hell... but seriously, what exactly are you trying to do? I know you are trying to get the HTTP_REFERRER but whats the error keep saying? er... hrm

synergypoint

I have a list of domains in an array:

$referers=array("domain1.com","domain2.com"...)

When a request is made for the page with my refering domain checker on it (it is basically a form processor page that mails the results), I compare the value of HTTP_REFERER with the domain list to make sure that the request was made from my web site and not a spamer trying to pass info through my mail/form processor.

This has worked fine up until recently when we started getting a lot of complaints that users were getting the error message we display if the HTTP_REFERER value doesn't match the array.

I started logging the failed requests and the first one I got looked like it came from an AOL 8.0 browser.

In the error report, the HTTP_REFERER value was blank so I assume the browser is not supplying that information to our server as all other browsers do.

I was wondering if this is a known bug or what?

superwormy

Lots of browsers don't send HTTP_REFERER headers for one reason or another. It's also very easy to spoof HTTP_REFERER headers in a number of browsers.

I don't know about that one imparticular... but it's not all that uncommon to not a get a HTTP_REFERER header.