# Smart Referer

> Improve your privacy by limiting Referer information leak! Please note that this extension has been largely superseded by better browser defaults for websites using HTTPS (almost all) and is not maintained anymore.

Canonical page: [https://chrome-stats.com/d/smart-referer](https://chrome-stats.com/d/smart-referer)

## Overview

- **ID:** `smart-referer`
- **Platform:** Firefox
- **Type:** Firefox add-on
- **Status:** Available
- **Publisher:** meh.
- **Category:** privacy-security
- **Daily users:** 2,429
- **Weekly downloads:** 15
- **Rating:** 4.08 / 5 (76 ratings)
- **Version:** 0.2.15
- **Last updated:** 2019-12-18
- **First published:** 2011-07-08
- **Size:** 159 KB
- **Data as of:** 2026-09-07
- **Store listing:** [Firefox Add-ons Store](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/smart-referer/)
- **Website:** [https://gitlab.com/smart-referer/smart-referer/issues](https://gitlab.com/smart-referer/smart-referer/issues)
- **Privacy policy:** [https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/smart-referer/privacy/](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/smart-referer/privacy/)

## Description

**Smart Referer** is a Chrome extension designed to improve your online privacy by automatically hiding HTTP Referer headers and JavaScript `document.referrer` values on cross-domain requests. This helps reduce referer information leaks when navigating between different domains, enhancing your browsing privacy.

The extension features a regularly updated whitelist of trusted domains to minimize website breakage. Users can view or customize this whitelist and explore advanced configuration options via the repository README. Although it supports browsers like Waterfox Classic, please note that Smart Referer is largely superseded by modern browser defaults for HTTPS sites and is no longer actively maintained.

## Rankings

- #1,943 — Overall
- #354 — Privacy & Security
- #3 — smart
- #6 — smart tool
- #7 — smartbook
- #12 — smartphone

## Permissions and access

### Permissions

- `menus`
- `storage`
- `theme`
- `webRequest`
- `webRequestBlocking`
- `*://*/*`

## Safety

- **Risk impact:** Moderate risk impact
- **Risk likelihood:** Low risk likelihood

### Analysis details

- Allows access to all websites, posing a significant security risk as it can monitor and modify data from any visited site.
- This extension has low user count. Unpopular extensions may not be stable or safe.

> Some risk analysis details are omitted from this free response. [Upgrade to view the full analysis](https://chrome-stats.com/pricing).

## Review summary

Users find Smart Referer generally effective, lightweight, and editable via a downloadable whitelist. Major complaints are the whitelist-only approach (no blacklist/per-site control), site breakage with no easy per-site disable, suspicious dweb/IPFS network requests for updates, an outdated/unmaintained project, and a clunky or unreliable exceptions UI.

### Pros

- Effectively modifies the Referer for many sites — users report it works in most cases.
- Allows a customizable whitelist (can be downloaded and edited as a local file).
- Lightweight and appreciated by some users for its core functionality.

### Cons

- Uses a whitelist-only model — users want blacklist or per-site control and find whitelist too restrictive.
- Breaks some websites and lacks an easy way to disable or create exceptions for individual domains (examples mentioned: pixiv.net, instagram.com).
- Fetches its whitelist via dweb/IPFS endpoints (globalupload.io, gateway.ipfs.io, ipfs.infura.io, etc.), which appears as suspicious network traffic and has frequent update checks.
- Outdated/unmaintained — last update reported years ago and the whitelist hasn’t been refreshed.
- Poor or unintuitive interface for managing rules and exceptions; exception list may not work reliably.

## Similar extensions and apps

- [Referer By Domain](https://chrome-stats.com/d/referer-by-domain) — 5 users, 5.00 / 5
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- [Full Request Referer Header Extension](https://chrome-stats.com/d/full-request-referer-extension) — 3 users, 5.00 / 5
- [Referer Control](https://chrome-stats.com/d/referercontrol) — 4,184 users, 3.02 / 5
- [Smart HTTPS](https://chrome-stats.com/d/smart-https-revived) — 16,301 users, 4.38 / 5
- [Link Cleaner](https://chrome-stats.com/d/link-cleaner-addon) — 102 users, 4.25 / 5

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Source: [Chrome-Stats](https://chrome-stats.com/d/smart-referer)