I do not see the point to anonymize the referrer. Why anonymize?
Because it shouldn’t be anyone’s business to know that a blog owner has visited them, what IP the blog owner has, what URL the blog owner comes from.
Take for example your own plugin. I as the blog owner click on a referrer link (e.g. maliciouswebsite.com) and then the owner of maliciouswebsite.com knows that I come from http://myblog.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=statpress-visitors/admin/luc_admin.php
He now knows what IP I have and knows that I use statpress and if statpress has some vulnerability then lord knows what he can do with my IP.
I give you another example:
A spammer sends me a fake referrer link.
By clicking on it the spammer knows that his link worked and hence will send me 100s more.
I understand what you say, but I have no idea how to do this! All I’ve found are commercial sites.
Do you have any sources for this?
Simply prepend “http://anonym.to/?” to every link under the “Latest Referrers” tab.
The problem is that this link is created in the tab like this :
<td><a target='_blank' href='" . urldecode($rk->referrer) . "'>" . urldecode($rk->referrer) . "</a></td>
and the referrer is provided by the user’s browser through the $ _SERVER variable.
Then simply change
<td><a target='_blank' href='" . urldecode($rk->referrer) . "'>" . urldecode($rk->referrer) . "</a></td>
to
<td><a target='_blank' href='http://anonym.to/?" . urldecode($rk->referrer) . "'>" . urldecode($rk->referrer) . "</a></td>
No change to the database needed, merely to the output.
But the variable $ _SERVER [‘HTTP_REFERER’] will always be properly completed by the browser.
This requires to modify this variable as shown here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/857427/php-referer-redirect-script
But to do this, it is necessary to conduct tests, so you have to have two different internet sites that can be used to test this procedure
I still don’t know whether you understand what my suggestion is about.
What I propose is a harmless modification of your plugin, that requires 10 seconds of your time.
It doesn’t make any changes to $ _SERVER [‘HTTP_REFERER’] nor to the database nor does it require additional redirection scripts.
I merely suggest that you prepend outgoing links (i.e. from my blog) with “http://anonym.to/?”
If I have a website (mywebsite.com) and someone, let’s say CNN, links to me then CURRENTLY your plugin (on the “Latest Referrer” tab) lists “cnn.com” as the referrer and links to “http://www.cnn.com”.
What I suggest is that it doesn’t link to “http://www.cnn.com” but to “http://anonym.to/?http://www.cnn.com”.
That’s all.
Your suggestion is not possible cause the link will ultimately shape http://the_site_where_you_want_to_go
but the $_SERVER[‘HTTP_REFERER’] variable will be filled by the browser automatically with the address of your own site
What?
CNN.com will not know that I came from mywebsite.com.
CNN.com will only know that I came from “http://anonym.to/
And this is the whole purpose: CNN.com does not know what site I originally came from.
It may be that I misunderstood, I use Google translate to translate into French and English.
Any visit to a website sends a variable $_SERVER[‘HTTP_REFERER’] who is automatically filled with your internet browser.
To anonymize you must change this variable, see http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.server.php
And you still misunderstand.
What I suggest is to change
href='" . urldecode($rk->referrer) . "'>"
to
href='http://anonym.to/?" . urldecode($rk->referrer) . "'>"
THAT IS ALL.
Okay, I’ll add in the options page. So that everyone can choose to use or not.
