asked on

block referrer information coldfusion

Hi There,

I am currently running a number of ad campaigns that I am buying on behalf of a client. To preserve my Intellectual Property, I do not wish to pass on the referrer to their website.

How can I write a page in coldfusion that will not pass on the referrer id or alternatively how can I make sure that I only pass through the url of our ad server (which is preferable).?

I may want to host this page on our 'ad server' so that all tracking links will be formatted like

http://www.myadserver.com?url=http://www.finaldestinationurl.com

where http://www.myadserver.com is where I will host this page

and http://www.finaldestinationurl.com is where I want to send the visitor.

If I could put the referrer as www.myadserver.com, that would be preferable.

dgrafx

I could be wrong of course but I don't believe that you can set what another server or browser calculates as referrer when doing a url redirect.

Would it help you at all if you used a lookup id instead of a domain?
i.e. www.myadserver.com?url=sdf456
where sdf456 is kept in your DB and translates to finaldestination.com
or maybe that's what you are already doing ???

you can however set the referrer when doing a cfhttp call - but that's a different story ...

-----------------------

But maybe I misunderstand a couple things
If someone clicks http://www.myadserver.com?url=http://www.finaldestinationurl.com and this takes them to your site and you relocate to finaldestination.com - 2 questions
How are you relocating? cflocation or meta refresh or ???
And what does the referrer report as now with whichever method (from the destination point)?
I believe there will be a difference reported with different methods

bradderick

ASKER

Hi dgrafx,

I am open to using cflocation or meta refresh, as long as it doesn't add a lot of time to complete the redirect.

Either way if we can block the referrers or use the ad server as the referrer, I don't mind. Just need a solution that will do it.

Thanks,

Brad

bradderick

ASKER

I'm trying to use something that works like http://nullreferrer.com/

dgrafx

will look into it later - just going to grab a snack ...

cflocation will appear instantaneous and meta refresh waits for just a tad but figure around 1 second.

am I correct in saying that you don't use anything yet - you're building it now ???
i would say just try one method then the other and see what the referer turns out to be

<cflocation url="http://www.finaldestination.com" addtoken="0">
on the target domain dump <cfdump var="#cgi.http_referer#">

or try

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://www.finaldestination.com" />
and also on the target domain dump <cfdump var="#cgi.http_referer#">

is there a difference?

bradderick

ASKER

Hi dgrafx,

The meta refresh loses the referrer, which is good, however it takes a second or 2 to load.

The cflocation is instant, but still passes the referrer.

Thanks,

Brad

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

dgrafx

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dgrafx

Glad it worked out for you!