Security News > 2021 > March > Mozilla Firefox adopts new privacy-enhancing Referrer Policy
Mozilla has announced that it will introduce a more privacy-focused default Referrer Policy to protect Firefox users' privacy, starting with the web browser's next version.
Once updated, the web browser will automatically trim user-sensitive information like path and query string information accessible from the Referrer URL. This URL is sent together with the HTTP Referrer header between websites during subresources requests and navigating between sites by clicking on links.
"As illustrated in the example above, this new stricter referrer policy will not only trim information for requests going from HTTPS to HTTP, but will also trim path and query information for all cross-origin requests," they added.
"With that update, Firefox will apply the new default Referrer Policy to all navigational requests, redirected requests, and subresource requests, thereby providing a significantly more private browsing experience."
To benefit from this added privacy protection, Firefox users will only have to update their browsers to version 87, which will come with the new 'strict-origin-when-cross-origin' referrer-policy that crops any user sensitive info from referrer URLs.
By applying the new Referrer Policy to all navigational, redirected, and subresource requests, Firefox will provide a more private browsing experience to all users after its release on Tuesday.