When I specify that the font used on my page can be accessed at a particular URL, I’m neither asking you to download it (the font might already be installed on your system), nor am I requesting that, if you do download it, you pass along a “referer” header. I am not only not making your browser do this - I’m not even asking it to do so.

> When I specify that the font used on my page can be accessed at a particular URL

But this is not what you are specifying with Google Fonts (usually). You are saying: "To properly see this page, download this instruction file (CSS) from this other host". It doesn't matter if I have the font already installed, I still ask the CSS file to Google.

"We recommend using the font provided at this link, however your browser may fall back to a suitable built-in font if you choose."

The system is designed to do it. If you don't want your system operating as it was designed to do don't use it.

It's not hacking.

I doubt that WWW was designed with intention to allow that. A bunch of different people with different goals do stuff they want and the result is something that just happens without anyone's intention. And we have legal systems and regulations to clear up such situations.

It was explicitly designed to do that. HTML is explicitly designed to allow content from multiple places; it is designed to do so. Your browser is designed to read that HTML and fetch those resources to render the page. The internet is designed to cache that content. Your browser cache is designed to cache that content so future fetch requests are faster.

There's so many pieces explicitely designed to do this, for exactly this reason, that there is no question as to this being the intended behavior.

Font servers are decades old. CSS added support for it in 1998, replacing earlier less common methods. This is not new or unintended behavior.

Technology changes behaviour and therefore society, "don't use it" is not an option in many cases, for instance in the old days it was common pay bills by filling out forms attached to a bill and then snail mail or walk into the bank or a postal office for a clerk to either manual or automatic process it.

With internet banking much of that old style payment system has disappeared and many banks no longer accept that style of payment or even has an office that you can visit and if it is still possible there is hefty fee attached. Not using a browser is not really an option in current society.

And in addition to not being hacking, it's called taking responsibility - probably along with getting out of a coddled, learned helplessness state.