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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-25T15:55:46+00:00

Today I encountered an interesting problem. When I navigate to a particular website and

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Today I encountered an interesting problem. When I navigate to a particular website and I click on a redirection URL, it works perfectly but copy-pasting the exact same URL will give me a 404 error!

It made me think that there was some JavaScript involved but after more investigation I found this URL: http://bib-alex.net/status.php?name=a-d-aadl-abw-zhrh–khald-a-ar_ptiff.pdf

Having looked at the source I cannot see any scripts. So I am a bit confused! Why does it behave like this and is it intentional?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Those links rely on the existence of the Referer HTTP header.

    If you click on one of those links, your browser will send a Referer header, set to the page you came from, in the request to the URL you’re going to. If you copy/paste the URL, there is no originating page, so no such header is set.

    Sites usually do this to prevent leeching, e.g. because they don’t want others to “steal” their bandwidth, or because they don’t want others to download their files without also seeing their ads.

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