295550 - Prefetch should be permanently disabled, significant fraud issues

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 175104

(Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[Chris]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

I just did a search on google and was shocked that the first site on their list
asked to set a cookie (I manually accept or decline cookies)

I wondered how the hell this happened, Was my browser compromised? Guess what
google has added a prefetch feature to the first entry on its search engine
results page. What right do they have to try and get me to download any
particular site? They don't pay for my bandwidth I do!

The idea of prefetch may have been a good one but in reality there are too many
downsides

Dump it altogether I say. or at least TURN IT OFF BY DEFAULT and let the user
decide if he wants to use prefetch

Just consider a site wanting to cause problems for another site. They could add
hidden prefetch urls on their pages which cause an oppositions bandwidth to
skyrocket. 

What about pay per click programs?

Prefetch represents a significant opportunity for Pay per Click publishers to
defraud Pay per Click advertisers. 
Never really receiving a click but their logs show that they did, so they can't
dispute their fee.


Whether you believe in the commercialisation of the internet or not you must
realise that it is what drives the internet forward.

Prefetch also causes inaccurate site stats, someone visited the site when in
reality they did not

Prefetch effects my bandwidth. downloading unwanted and unneeded content

Prefetch increases network congestion

AS Firefox and other prefetch enabled browsers gain ground this issue will
become more and more a serious problem. Remove Prefetch and send it to the never
to be revisited bin.

Reproducible: Always

Actual Results:  
site was prefetched

Expected Results:  
Nothing at all.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 175104 ***

Comment 2

[Darin Fisher]

It is a bug that the cookie dialog is shown when objects are prefetched.  
Otherwise, I think you misunderstand that the rest of your concerns are
not unique to prefetching.  It is trivial to load images or documents
from other domains, and do so in such a way as to hide the resulting
content from the user.