[snakeanus]

> if I link to an image, javascript file, or even an iframe to ycombinator.com, your browser will make a request to ycombinator.com most likely without you knowing.

True, which is why many people (including me) use something like umatrix with every 3rd party request disabled unless whitelisted. This should be the default to be honest.

> if ycombinator.com logs information on that request, is that okay?

You are willingly letting your traffic be logged by the original site that you connected to. Does it matter if another party (usually trusted by the first party) gets the logs as well?

> and your browser decides to prefetch the contents of that link?

Change browser or configure it properly. Who even thought that prefetching is a good idea?

Anyway, the one at fault at this specific case is your browser (and maybe you, considering how you selected to use that browser or didn't bother configuring it).

[Klathmon]

So in the case of this .NET issue isn't the fault on you since you didn't configure your PC to block this request?

[snakeanus]

Not exactly. In the link case the application is the browser instead of the site and there are many browsers that you can select from, in the .net case however the .net itself is the application.