Problems with referrers blocking

[chris_goulet]

* Your Operating System and version.
Win 98 4.10.1998
* Outpost interface version (Help ?> About).
1.0.1511.1038
* Version of Outpost?s main driver filtnt (Help ?>About).
1.0.228
* What application or system services were blocked or allowed by mistake?
Netscape 6.2
* What rules have you created for this application or service that should have blocked or allow its activity?
See below
* Do you have this application in ?Options ?>Application?? If yes, then in what category: Blocked, Partially Allowed or Trusted? If the application is in ?Partially allowed?, please name ALL the rules that were created for the application. You can view them all by double clicking on this application using the left mouse button.
Trusted application
* What Policy do you use? (Options ?>Policy).
Rules Wizard
* Put your mouse cursor on the Outpost icon in the system tray. Does it show your IP address?
Yes


Many free web hosting sites are adding restrictions to reduce costs, because of the on-line advertizing market crash. For example Geocities no longer allows images, Adobe .pdf files etc... to be accessed from sites outside of Geocities. There was abuse by people using their free site to store files for external linking (ex: images for Ebay auctions).

The way Geocities does this is to require the referral tag to be from within Geocities. I have the Outpost firewall free version 1.0.1511.1038 with the latest updates. I discovered that if the referrers are disabled in the Active Content plug-in, any Adobe .pdf link clicked on the page:

http://www.geocities.com/albertaipe/newsletter.html

returns an error page:
"This page is not available.
We're sorry, but this page is currently unavailable for viewing."

Having no idea about the referrers restriction at the time, I had a HELL OF A HARD TIME finding out about it because of the following BUGS:

* Referrers blocking was NOT reported in the Active Content information panel.
* Unchecking "Enable active content blocking", which includes referrers blocking, did NOT disable referrers blocking.
* Setting the Policy to "disable mode" did NOT disable referrers blocking.

Only by exiting and shutting down Outpost were referrers allowed.

Of course if I knew that referrers were the problem I would have enabled "referers" [sic] in the Active Content menu, which works just fine, but I was shutting off entire plug-ins to isolate the problem.

[root]

Hi Chris. Sorry you had so much trouble. Some parts of Outpost take some getting used to. There is a slight learning curve to get the full potential of this firewall.
Referrers will soon be allowed or blocked on a site to site basis I hope.
Some changes, when made, need to be saved and Outpost restarted.
Referrers are not reported as active content as they are not the same as JS, cookies, Java applets, etc.
Disable mode is for the firewall only, not plugins. I think its in the manual and help file. I learned the hard way.
Yes I know. Some of the design features do not please every body. Some are in the process of being changed.
Yes I also know, some of the features are not exactly intuitive.
We try to help here on the board when people struggle with some of the less obvious features.
If you have more problems, or whatever, please use the suppt and tshooting forum. This forum doesn't get as much traffic.