`check/referer` gives confusing results due to more default restrictive referer policies in browsers

[jamesrschmidt]

The W3C validators for html and css are no longer recognizing the correct referrer url from my website (they used to). Possibly, this is because there is a tilde (~) in the url. In particular, (http://users.ugent.be/~jaschmid/) shows the validation for (http://users.ugent.be/) with the recommended code <a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer"> (html) and <a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer"> (css). I am able to get the correct validation with <a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=users.ugent.be/~jaschmid/"> and <a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=users.ugent.be/~jaschmid/">, however.

[mosbth]

Any update on this?

We are using it for education and the student server uses ~stud21 to host the student websites.

[dontcallmedom]

re-titled the issue in light of the investigation conducted in w3c/markup-validator#34 which also lists some possible workarounds

[aditsu]

Workaround: add referrerpolicy="unsafe-url" to the validation link.