Controlling the referrer variable can be useful under two circumstances. The first is plain paranoia. You do not want that sites can track your movement or know where you came from. This is probably going a bit far but some might find it useful. A far more interesting circumstance is the second in my opinion. Some websites protect their content by using referrer checks.

If you take the Wallstreet Journal Online site for instance. They check if a visitor came from Digg and if he did show him the whole article. If you open the site directly you only see an extract of it normally.

RefControl is a Firefox add-on that can change the referrer on a per site basis. If you want to use digg.com as the referrer when visiting wjo.com and the normal referrer on any other site then this is your extension.

By default the normal referrer is being used if no matching site is found in the user edited list of sites.

Apparently though the Wallstreet Journal website is making referrer checks to see if a user is coming from either Digg or Google News and will present the user the full story if the check is successful. Everyone else coming from different websites or opening the Wallstreet Journal page manually will only see the excerpt.

A referrer check is one of the weakest protections because referrers can easily be spoofed. The Firefox add-on refspoof provides users with an easy way of spoofing the referrer. Read on to find out how you can read all Wallstreet Journal articles in full length for free.

Install the refspoof Firefox extension or any other utility that is able to spoof the referrer. The refspoof toolbar becomes available after restarting Firefox, enable it under View > Toolbars > Refspoof Toolbar.

Now enter digg.com in the spoof filed and select static referrer by clicking on the R icon on the right end of the toolbar. Visit the Wallstreet Journal and surf around. You will notice that all articles are available. If you disable it many articles will only display an excerpt of the story.

Is it ethical to do so ? That’s honestly not my decision to make, it is yours. I think that the Wallstreet Journal wants that traffic, wants their stories to hit the frontpage of Digg and Digg would surely ban their website if their users were only to see an excerpt of the story.

Update: The Wallstreet Journal recently changed the way their website is accessed. The workaround no longer appears to be working.