Notes for users of
Norton Internet Security/Firewall

Some contestants have reported problems submitting their picks. The symptom is a response page that says "Bad REFERER" when the "submit" button is pushed. This problem seems to be limited to those people who have Norton Internet Security/Firewall installed and running on their computers. By default Norton blocks "referrer" information, which is the information identifying what web page you came from to get to the current one. The canned CGI script used to process the picks data in this contest apparently needs that information. So, there are two ways to get around this. One is the cheesy way, and one is the right way. THE CHEESY WAY - temporarily turn off Norton 1. Go ahead and enter your picks info, but before you press "Submit", 2. Start Norton from the tool bar or just right click on the Norton icon in your system tray (the little globe) if it is there. 3. Choose "disable" and then answer "Yes" to the popup box. 4. Press "submit" on the entry page. 5. When you're all done submitting (one race or several), re-enable Norton the same way. THE RIGHT WAY - make an entry in Norton to allow this site Follow these steps to permanently allow mcchump.com referer info. Symantec's service note How to pass referer information to specific Web pages. (Note: These instuctions are apparently for an older version of NIS. I've included notes in parentheses as to how I did it in in the 2003 version. ) 1. Open NIS. (Tool bar, or right click icon and choose top line.) 2. Click Options. 3. Click Internet Security (or Personal Firewall in some versions). 4. Click Advanced Options. (2003: There are no Advanced Options.) 5. Click the Web tab. (2003: Web Content.) 6. Click Add Site. A new site/domain box appears. 7. Enter the name of the site that you want to receive the referer information and click OK. That site name appears in the left frame of the Advanced Options (2003: Web Content) window. (You should enter www.mcchump.com here.) 8. Click the name of the new site. (should be highlighted) 9. Click the Privacy tab. (2003: Go to Global Settings tab if you aren't already.) 10. Check the "Use these rules for..." box. (2003: N/A) 11. Change the Referer from "Block" to "Allow." (2003: In the box labelled "Information about Visited Sites, unclick "use defaults" and then click "Permit".) 12. Click Apply, and then click OK. (2003: just OK.) 13. Click OK to close the Options window. (2003: whatever, you are done) When you have completed this, you should not encounter the "bad REFERER" problem any more in the future. However, if all else fails and it still happens, send your entries by email with an explanation of what you did and what symptoms still happened.