Verifying that a user comes from a 'partner' site?

Posted by matt_tm on Pro Webmasters See other posts from Pro Webmasters or by matt_tm
Published on 2011-02-28T13:53:25Z Indexed on 2011/02/28 15:33 UTC
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ssl

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http

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http-headers

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referrer

We're building a Drupal module that is going to be given to trusted 'corporate partners'. When a user clicks on a link, he should be redirected to our site as if he's a logged in user.

How should I verify that the user is indeed coming from that site? It does not look like 'HTTP_REFERER' is enough because it appears it can be faked.

We are providing these partner sites with API Keys. If I receive the API-key as a POST value, sent over https, would that be a sufficient indicator that the user is a genuine partner-site user?

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