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Some images on the Internet have what is called "hotlink protection" (for example, when image searching on Google).
I understand the reasoning for this and that it saves bandwidth.
However, how does the webserver know that the browser is loading the page from another page that is not the original? E.g how does it know it's a google search?
Notably, this means that this "protection" is actually an honor system which works because most users use normal standard browsers that don't lie to you. It's not protecting against individual savvy users who still want your embedded images to load for them - it's protecting against other websites pointing normal users to your stuff from their pages. A browser which simply faked the
Referer
header would circumvent this "protection". – mtraceur – 2017-02-25T23:55:23.073