How does it work?
Lot’s of websites, especially the bigger ones have a so called deeplink protection on their images. A deeplink protection makes sure that only the original website can display the images. If any other website links to their images, the images will simply not show.
A deeplink protection is based on a thing called Referer Headers. Every browser sends a bundle of information to the website that the visitor is watching, such as country of origin, browser version and other non-identifiable information. One of these is the Referer Header. This contains the URL of the website that linked to this page and/or image. A deeplink protector checks the Referer Header for every image and matches it up with the URL of the original site. If it doesn’t match, the image doesn’t show.
There are several ways to disable the Referer Header and Firefox comes with a build in option for it. Follow the instructions below and you’ll be done in no time!
Step 1
Open Firefox and type “about:config” in the address bar.
about:config is a build in page in Firefox that allows you to tweak all settings, including some that are not found in the Preferences menu.
Step 2
On the config page you’ll find a field called Filter at the top. In the filter field type: “referer”
Step 3
The preference rule “network.http.sendRefererHeader” will remain in the list. By default the value of this rule is set to 2. Double-click this rule and change the value to 0 (zero).
When it’s set to 2, Firefox will send the so called Referer Header to every webpage you request. With this information a deeplink protector can see if the image was requested by the original site or a different one (e.g. Strip Dir.) When it’s set to 0, Firefox wil not send any Referer data and the deeplink protection will fail.