>> Referers are important, because otherwise sites could "steal" files of
>> another site
>
>Oh that's nonsense, referer's can't be trusted anyway.
What did you smoke today? The browser sends the referrer, so if the
major browser platforms implement referrers then this kind of control
works. The question is not if every referer can be trusted but if
admins can find out which site is stealing their traffic. There exist
a few more tricks around referers, e.g. log file analysis ("How long
did visitors stay on my site and through how many docs did they surf,
in average?") and limiting file access to http requests which contain
a certain referer.
If it come to spiing, there exist much worse things than referers,
e.g. have you noticed how many web servers use the ARP protocol to
find out the MAC adress of your NIC/Modem/ISDN adapter? Or take
Carnivore - nothing is safe unless it�s strongly encrypted. And some
things cannot get enctypted at all, by purpose and design.
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