In what cases will HTTP_REFERER be empty

Question

I know it\'s possible to get an empty HTTP_REFERER. Under what circumstances does this happen? If I get an empty one, does it always mean that the user changed it? Is gettin

Answer 1

I have found the browser referer implementation to be really inconsistent.

For example, an anchor element with the "download" attribute works as expected in Safari and sends the referer, but in Chrome the referer will be empty or "-" in the web server logs.

click to download

Is broken in Chrome - no referer sent.