News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Cheaper than free: paying for music after searching for a free download. Parent comment

Re:Cheaper than free: paying for music after searching for a... by ars on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @05:57PM (#3421718)
From the referer header. If someone clicks from google the search fields are transmitted in the referrer.

If this bothers you, use duckduckgo.com which has a special bounce-page to hide this info.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cheaper than free: paying for music after searching for a... by spindritf on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @06:14PM (#3421779)
> If this bothers you, use duckduckgo.com which has a special bounce-page to hide this info.

Or something like RefControl http://www.stardrifter.org/refcontrol/ for Firefox and control what and to whom you send.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cheaper than free: paying for music after searching for a... by ohgodthecat on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @06:11PM (#3421765)
Or use https search, google doesn't even require you to go to encrypted.google.com [1]

[1] https://www.google.com/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cheaper than free: paying for music after searching for a... by spindritf on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @06:15PM (#3421781)
Won't the referrer still be sent if the target site is available over SSL?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cheaper than free: paying for music after searching for a... by ComputerGuru on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @06:21PM (#3421810)
Yes, but the referrer will only be google.com.

Google SSL uses POST for the search query parameters, so the referrer URI w/ GET parameters will not leak your search terms.

[ Parent | on HN ]