PHP - Referer redirect script

Question

Often, when searching for answers, I have found that certain websites will allow you to read the information they offer if the referer is, for example, google.com. Yet, if y

Answer 1

The referer is set by your browser, not by any server side mechanism. You could, I guess, construct a proxy in PHP that makes the request of the remote server and sets the referer header appropriately. It seems more useful to just use a Firefox plugin, e.g. http://www.stardrifter.org/refcontrol/.

Edit: I'd reword your question to make it clear you want to write a PHP proxy, with a custom referrer header. I'd probably just modify something like http://sourceforge.net/projects/poxy/ to take the referrer parameter and pass it on.

Edit again: You may be clear on what you're asking, but asking for the impossible doesn't make it possible. The browser is responsible for setting the referrer header; it uses the URI that caused it to redirect to a new resource. You're asking for a script that says "Please visit http://example.net, but pretend that I'm actually www.foo.com when you do so". There is no mechanism for the server to instruct the browser to "lie" about where it came from.

I suppose it may be possible via some convoluted JavaScript hacking, but it would be hacking in the black hat sense - a web site being able to force a browser to spoof the referrer would be a real security hole.