I observed some cases where a website would receive empty referrer information if the external link the user clicked on had the rel="noopener attribute.
To summarize what I am seeing:
- the server variable
HTTP_REFERER(theRefererHTTP header) is empty, due to... rel="noopenerbeing set on the source link.
I am 100% sure it is the rel="noopener causing the empty referrer, because when I use chrome dev tools to remove the attribute on the source link, then click it, the HTTP_REFERER value shows up correctly on the server side.
Is there any way I can still get ANY referrer information in this scenario even if it is just the root domain of the referring page?
The site runs on IIS 8.5, and I can accommodate a solution in javascript, jquery, vbscript, or classic asp 3.0, but I am open to any and all suggestions.
I have looked at the many other questions about getting referrer when the Referer header is empty, but none of them are specifically about when rel="noopener is the root cause of it being empty, and none of them provide an answer specific to this, well, specific question.