Can someone explain why my browser provides referer info at all? Why isn't this a permission I need to give away? What common features that the user needs on the web rely on it?
In the URL bar, type the following and press enter:
about:config
network.http.sendRefererHeader
Note that some sites won‘t allow you to sign in or register if the referrer header is disabled (e.g. Pinterest), so you may have to temporarily enable the referrer header in those instances.
A final point is that this Firefox setting obviously has no effect if referral info is already appended to the URL (as is the case with Google search results).
network.http.referer.spoofSource
e.g. in HN's HTML you find
<meta name="referrer" content="origin">
- Website owners and content creators use the Referer to see where their users are coming from, which allows them to make content which is more suitable, which indirectly benefits the user.
- It helps prevent hotlinking, so it can protect small websites from getting hammered, which again could indirectly benefit the user.
I guess the point is that everyone's a "user" of HTTP, including website owners, and their interests are partly linked to yours. In an objective sense I find the standard still makes sense. In an individualistic sense, things are more complicated.
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945#section-10.13
Note: Because the source of a link may be private information or
may reveal an otherwise private information source, it is strongly
recommended that the user be able to select whether or not the
Referer field is sent. For example, a browser client could have a
toggle switch for browsing openly/anonymously, which would
respectively enable/disable the sending of Referer and From
information.