Disable Meta Refresh in Internet Explorer

For a more secure, less annoying experience

Among the more annoying features of the Internet, the Meta Refresh is an anachronistic relic of the past that seems to persist only as a tool of black hat website owners. Fortunately, Internet Explorer gives you the option to disable meta refreshing as both a security measure and a means to reduce annoying automatic refreshing of web pages.

What is a Meta Refresh?

A Meta Refresh is nothing more than a brief piece of HTML code that automatically reloads a web page after a specified number of seconds. This code can also redirect your browser to a new webpage. The Meta Refresh code looks like this:

This particular example would redirect you to http://www.newpage.com after 5 seconds. Setting the CONTENT variable to zero would make the page automatically refresh without first loading the page.

Why Disable Meta Refreshing?

In the old days of the Internet, Meta Refreshes were used to cloak content, refresh advertisements that were programmed to randomly load, and artificially inflate hit counters to make a page appear more popular than it really was.

Some of the legitimate reasons for using Meta Refreshes include redirecting visitors to the new location of a moved website, sending users to the home page after displaying a “thank you” page for a short time, and forcing the viewer to refresh the page to avoid displaying old content in the user’s cache.

Although not particularly dangerous, Meta Refreshes are often used by unscrupulous webpage programmers to draw you into a web page using one piece of content and then redirect you to another page with some other content. Referred to as a black hat technique, most of the major search engines are smart enough not to fall for this method of “cloaking” web content.

There are other consequences of Meta Refreshes that aren’t so benign. Some web content contains viruses and other security risks. Being redirected to a page with malicious content can be dangerous. Although not a major security risk, some web surfers prefer not to be victims of a Meta Refresh and opt to disable them in IE.

How to Disable Meta Refreshes in IE

Disabling Meta Refreshes in IE is quite simple. First, click onTool>Internet Optionsto open up the Internet Options Window.

Then click on theSecuritytab and locate theCustom levelbutton. Click on theCustom levelbutton to open up the Security Settings – Internet Zone window.

In theSettingspane, scroll down to theMiscellaneoussection and locate theAllow META REFRESHoption. Under theAllow META REFRESHoption, change the option fromEnabletoDisable. That’s it. You won’t be annoyed by Meta Refreshes in IE again.

Keep in mind, however, that there are some legitimate reasons why a webpage programmer may use a Meta Refresh. If your browser isn’t displaying content correctly or a web page is acting funny, you may want to try enabling Meta Refreshing again to see if the problem clears up.

Founder of Help Desk Geek and managing editor. He began blogging in 2007 and quit his job in 2010 to blog full-time. He has over 15 years of industry experience in IT and holds several technical certifications.Read Aseem’s Full Bio

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