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You can already try out the change starting from Chrome 81: visit chrome://flags/#reduced-referrer-granularity in Chrome and enable the flag. # Test the change, and figure out if this will impact your site

You can also use this demo to detect what policy is applied in the Chrome instance you are running. To understand what the new default changes in practice, you can check out this demo. # What do you need to do?Ĭhrome plans to start rolling out the new default referrer policy in 85 (July 2020 for beta, August 2020 for stable).

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Server-side logging or analytics that rely on the full referrer URL being available are likely to be impacted by reduced granularity in that information. With strict-origin-when-cross-origin: Referer: stuff/detail?tag=redīased on discussions with other browsers and Chrome's own experimentation run in Chrome 84, user-visible breakage is expected to be limited.Within the same origin, the Referer header value is the full URL.įor example: Same-origin request, sent from stuff/detail?tag=red to …:.This way, if your website uses HTTPS ( if not, make it a priority), your website's URLs won't leak in non-HTTPS requests-because anyone on the network can see these, so this would expose your users to man-in-the-middle-attacks. Like no-referrer-when-downgrade, strict-origin-when-cross-origin is secure: no referrer ( Referer header and document.referrer) is present when the request is made from an HTTPS origin (secure) to an HTTP one (insecure).With strict-origin-when-cross-origin: Referer.With no-referrer-when-downgrade: Referer: stuff/detail?tag=red.Referer sent (and document.referrer) for a cross-origin request, depending on the policy.Ĭross-origin request, sent from stuff/detail?tag=red to …: This prevents leaks of private data that may be accessible from other parts of the full URL such as the path and query string. With this policy, only the origin is sent in the Referer header of cross-origin requests.

Strict-origin-when-cross-origin offers more privacy. Check Digging into the Privacy Sandbox for more details. This step to help reduce silent cross-site user tracking is part of a larger initiative: the Privacy Sandbox. Note that you can still set a policy of your choice this change will only have an effect on websites that have no policy set. This means that if no policy is set for your website, Chrome will use strict-origin-when-cross-origin by default. But now many browsers are in some stage of moving to more privacy-enhancing defaults.Ĭhrome plans to switch its default policy from no-referrer-when-downgrade to strict-origin-when-cross-origin, starting in version 85. Up until recently, no-referrer-when-downgrade has been a widespread default policy across browsers. Websites often defer to the browser’s default.įor navigations and iframes, the data present in the Referer header can also be accessed via JavaScript using document.referrer. When no policy is set, the browser's default is used. The Referer-Policy header defines what data is made available in the Referer header, and for navigation and iframes in the destination's document.referrer.Įxactly what information is sent in the Referer header in a request from your site is determined by the Referrer-Policy header you set. HTTP requests may include the optional Referer header, which indicates the origin or web page URL the request was made from.

Beyond the referrer policy, the way browsers deal with referrers might change-so keep an eye on it.

You can also check out this demo to see the change in action.

To try out the change in Chrome, enable the flag at chrome://flags/#reduced-referrer-granularity.

This is the new default, but websites can still pick a policy of their choice.

Chrome plans to gradually enable strict-origin-when-cross-origin as the default policy in 85 this may impact use cases relying on the referrer value from another origin.

Browsers are evolving towards privacy-enhancing default referrer policies, to provide a good fallback when a website has no policy set.

The Referrer-Policy header and referrer in JavaScript and the DOM are spelled correctly.

The Referer header is missing an R, due to an original misspelling in the spec.

If you're unsure of the difference between 'site' and 'origin', check out Understanding 'same-site' and 'same-origin'.

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