Passing the Referrer URL

Question

I have this scenario: https://site1.com has a link to http://site2.com which auto redirects to http://site3.com using PHP Header Location. The user clicks on the link in site1 and ends up in site3.

As expected, the referrer is not passed from site1 to site2 (HTTPS to HTTP) but I would expect that on site3 I should have as referrer site2 (both being on HTTP). There is no referrer information on site3.

Is this normal or am I doing something wrong? I use PHP's $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] to read the referrer info.

@Brian Yes I can do that. In fact, the idea of using site2 is because I have limited access to site1 and site3 — Octav, Mar 13 '15 at 15:34
Does this answer your question? [HTTP Referer not always being passed](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5643773/http-referer-not-always-being-passed) — Michael Freidgeim, Nov 20 '20 at 12:46

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Dec 15 '20 at 10:50

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sYou can't rely on 'HTTP_REFERER' being there as it is stripped out by some browsers and most security software. I have a similar issue detecting which search engine traffic has come from.

I would pass the referring URL as a parameter on the URL for site 2 & 3, that way you can guarantee it is there.

edited Dec 15 '20 at 10:50

Aman Kumar

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answered Mar 13 '15 at 15:16

Horaland

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Passing the Referrer URL

1 Answers1