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Way to confirm before redirect

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  • Last reply by zeroknight

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Any way to confirm before automatic redirects?

Any way to confirm before automatic redirects?

Chosen solution

Redirections can occur for different reasons. Sometimes the server will send a 301 Permanent Redirect or 302 Temporary Redirect header and specify the new URL. You never even see the missing page.

But if the server sends a 200 Success status and the page contains a meta tag or script that performs the redirect, Firefox would need to be able to detect that this was automated and not a user-initiated request. There might be a way to do it, just as Firefox knows why a popup window was triggered.

There is an ancient setting in Firefox which partially blocks redirects -- it blocks some but not all. You could experiment with this and see whether you find it more useful than annoying. As the name implies, its primary purpose was to reduce confusion of screen readers and other assistive technologies rather than serving as a security feature.

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. The moderators would like us to remind you that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste accessibility.blockautorefresh and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the preference to switch the value from false to true

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All Replies (8)

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No, redirects are non-interactive. The destination can be blocked but the redirect cannot be avoided.

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If you're talking about links, just hover over it to see where it's going to take you, but a lot of times they use shortened urls.

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zeroknight said

No, redirects are non-interactive. The destination can be blocked but the redirect cannot be avoided.

Can't it be implemented as a new feature?

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It would be nice to have a confirmation dialog before redirect from privacy standpoint.

Suppose we are browsing a site through archive.is and if we click on a link that is not archived, it redirects us to the original site which we definitely don't want.

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Chosen Solution

Redirections can occur for different reasons. Sometimes the server will send a 301 Permanent Redirect or 302 Temporary Redirect header and specify the new URL. You never even see the missing page.

But if the server sends a 200 Success status and the page contains a meta tag or script that performs the redirect, Firefox would need to be able to detect that this was automated and not a user-initiated request. There might be a way to do it, just as Firefox knows why a popup window was triggered.

There is an ancient setting in Firefox which partially blocks redirects -- it blocks some but not all. You could experiment with this and see whether you find it more useful than annoying. As the name implies, its primary purpose was to reduce confusion of screen readers and other assistive technologies rather than serving as a security feature.

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. The moderators would like us to remind you that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste accessibility.blockautorefresh and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the preference to switch the value from false to true

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jscher2000 - Support Volunteer said

Redirections can occur for different reasons. Sometimes the server will send a 301 Permanent Redirect or 302 Temporary Redirect header and specify the new URL. You never even see the missing page. But if the server sends a 200 Success status and the page contains a meta tag or script that performs the redirect, Firefox would need to be able to detect that this was automated and not a user-initiated request. There might be a way to do it, just as Firefox knows why a popup window was triggered. There is an ancient setting in Firefox which partially blocks redirects -- it blocks some but not all. You could experiment with this and see whether you find it more useful than annoying. As the name implies, its primary purpose was to reduce confusion of screen readers and other assistive technologies rather than serving as a security feature. (1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk. More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. The moderators would like us to remind you that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future. (2) In the search box in the page, type or paste accessibility.blockautorefresh and pause while the list is filtered (3) Double-click the preference to switch the value from false to true

This indeed worked for my use case. Any way to get it included as one of the privacy settings in Firefox?

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Note that setting accessibility.blockautorefresh to false can in some cases prevent you from continuing to the actual page (i.e. nothing happens if you click continue).

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It would be preferable to selectively block meta refresh for specific sites to minimize breakage. This can be done with uBlock Origin by adding the following line to the "My filters" tab:

website.com##^meta[http-equiv="refresh"]