GreenguyandJim Fighting Zango

[cd34]

Originally Posted by darksoul

You can easily see that all no referer users are NOT sent to the Zango page and I really don't see the reason for it.

Here's the scenario that I came up with that was a problem.

Surfer with privacy software that doesn't send a referrer hits the site, has the ZangoToolbar installed. They are redirected.

They read through the page, remove the links, but, haven't restarted IE yet. While the toolbar is indeed removed so that the next time they run IE, it won't advertise the ZangoToolbar user agent, their current surfing session will still say that ZangoToolbar is installed.

They click the link at the bottom of the page, continue on to the site.

Their referrer is still blank due to the privacy software, the user is then redirected back to the Zango page.

I saw no simple way to keep that surfer without allowing the empty referrer.

Setting a cookie would be a little nasty and would lump any efforts right back into the antispyware vendors that pop up ads every time someone visits a site. Not to mention, their privacy software probably wouldn't accept the cookie in the first place. Requiring webmasters to install a small script that checked an IP database against surfers that had originally hit the site would work, unless the surfer used AOL and their apparant IP address changed from one of AOLs multiple proxies.

I felt it was a compromise that seemed to affect the smallest group of people without irritating a large number of people.