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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-31T10:18:15+00:00

I was just trying to analyse all the HTTP header fields in Firefox plugin

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I was just trying to analyse all the HTTP header fields in Firefox plugin – Firebug. First I logged out from Stack Overflow and then cleared all the cookies from my browser.

Then I went to the Stack Overflow’s home page. I mean while saw the HTTP request and response header fields. This is what I saw:

Response Headers
Via    1.0 proxy_server
Content-Length    135
Date    Mon, 05 Mar 2012 06:01:33 GMT
Content-Type    application/json
Cache-Control    private
X-Cache    MISS from sampark.ncb.ernet.in


Request Headers
Host    stackoverflow.com
User-Agent    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:12.0a2) Gecko/20120303 Firefox/12.0a2
Accept    application/json, text/javascript, */*; q=0.01
Accept-Language    en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding    gzip, deflate
Proxy-Connection    keep-alive
X-Requested-With    XMLHttpRequest
Referer    http://stackoverflow.com/
Cookie    __qca=P0-383120279-1330927291125; __utma=140029553.974890682.1330927291.1330927291.1330927291.1; __utmb=140029553.1.10.1330927291; __utmc=140029553; __utmz=140029553.1330927291.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); gauthed=1

There is a cookie included in the request header. But as I said I have removed all the cookies from my browser. How is the cookie included in the request? What is actually happening here?

I did as Andy Davies told. I first cleared all the cookies, restarted Firefox and then went to www.stackoverflow.com. Firebug shows this:

   GET http://stackoverflow.com/tags/ios/subscriber-info?_=1331946084371

The headers for the above request contained:

Cache-Control    private
Content-Encoding    gzip
Content-Length    390
Content-Type    text/html; charset=utf-8
Date    Sat, 17 Mar 2012 01:01:19 GMT
Vary    Accept-Encoding<Br>

Request Headers
Accept    text/html, */*; q=0.01
Accept-Encoding    gzip, deflate
Accept-Language    en-us,en;q=0.5
Connection    keep-alive
Cookie    __utma=140029553.1336172974.1331946082.1331946082.1331946082.1; __utmb=140029553.1.10.1331946082; __utmc=140029553; __utmz=140029553.1331946082.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __qca=P0-115511794-1331946081644; gauthed=1
Host    stackoverflow.com
Referer    http://stackoverflow.com/
User-Agent    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:12.0a2) Gecko/20120303 Firefox/12.0a2
X-Requested-With    XMLHttpRequest

If this is not the first request, then why is it not showing the first request?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Did you restart the browser after clearing the cookies as, from my memory, some browsers don’t clear the cookies for any sites currently open?

    The snippet you’ve posted looks like a JSON response part way through loading the page, so it is not the initial request for the HTML page.

    When the HTML page would have been requested again, the Google Analytics cookie (which is what you’ve got above) would have been resent, so any subsequent components on the page will also get the cookie too.

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