Mozilla is adding new capabilities in the beta version of Firefox 36 to give users and website owners more control over what data, if any, is sent to other websites during browsing.
When a user navigates to a new website by clicking on a link or pulls an image or video file from another site, the browser typically sends the new site the address of the page that referred it. It’s useful for webmasters to see where someone has come from but a privacy worry since other sensitive data can be revealed.
“As the Web got more complex, the amount of information in the referrer header ballooned, leading to bigger privacy problems,”
wrote Sid Stamm, principal security and privacy engineer at Mozilla.
