Privacy Policy
General notes
The general privacy policy of the Adblock Plus project is to avoid collecting more data than is required for the extensions and the AdblockPlus.org website to function correctly. The data gathered is anonymized if possible and removed when no longer required. It is never shared with any third parties. This policy lists the data that is collected and the processing applied to it.
AdblockPlus.org website
Website logs
All requests to the AdblockPlus.org website are recorded in the website logs. The data stored includes your IP address, time of the request, the web address accessed, the browser identifier and the referring page. This data is used to generate usage statistics as well as to investigate potential security issues and forum/blog spam. The detailed logs are retained for a period of 30 days after which only the aggregated usage statistics remain.
Stored IP addresses
The web applications installed on AdblockPlus.org store your IP address when you create a forum post, add a blog comment or translate a page. This allows administrators to address spam content and security breaches effectively. All stored IP addresses are removed after 30 days.
Cookies
Several areas of the Adblock Plus website use cookies to recognize logged in users or to store settings. Cookies are not evaluated in any other manner and are never used to track website visitors.
Forum registration
Data entered during forum registration is used to form user's public profile and is therefore visible to other forum visitors. There are two exceptions:
- Passwords go through one-way encryption before being stored on the server. This means that they cannot be recovered by anybody, even with access to the database.
- Email addresses are only displayed in the public profile if explicitly agreed to. By default they are only used for the sending of notifications you subscribed to.
Registration is not required to participate in the forums.
Blog comments
When a comment is added on the Adblock Plus blog an email address can optionally be specified. Unlike the other fields it is never displayed and is only used to notify the comment author about replies.
Adblock Plus extension
Extension update checks
Your browser periodically checks for updates of your extensions including Adblock Plus. Some general information, such as browser version, extension version, operating system and your IP address, are transmitted during an update check. Adblock Plus nightly build updates are handled by AdblockPlus.org website and the data transmitted is subject to its privacy policy. Updates to stable releases are handled by Addons.Mozilla.Org website and are subject to the Firefox Privacy Policy.
Subscription downloads
If you add filter subscriptions to your Adblock Plus installation the subscription will be requested regularly to retrieve updates. Every update results in the hosting website receiving your IP address. This data is subject to the privacy policy of the website in question.
Furthermore, if a subscription download fails on several consecutive occasions, the updated address of the filter list is requested from the AdblockPlus.org domain. The data transmitted includes Adblock Plus version, subscription address, and information about the error encountered. This data is used to identify issues that have not been reported by subscription maintainers and is subject to the usual AdblockPlus.org privacy policy.
Issue reporter
This feature was introduced in Adblock Plus 1.3 and allows you to send issue reports to be temporarily stored on AdblockPlus.org domain. These reports contain information required to investigate the issue including Adblock Plus version, browser version, address of the web page where the problem is visible, blockable items on this web page, matching filters and active subscriptions. Parameter values are removed from all transmitted addresses to avoid unintentionally leaking private information. It is also possible to provide additional information, which may be privacy-sensitive:
- Website screenshot provides a scaled-down and color-reduced version of the page viewed. It is possible to remove particularly sensitive sections of the page before the report is sent.
- Email address is only used to request more information on the issue.
- List of installed extensions is necessary for the investigation of conflicts with other extensions.
The processed reports can only be accessed by somebody who knows their unique address. These addresses are only shared with the maintainers of the filter subscriptions mentioned in the report and are unlikely to be found by others unless a link is provided. All reports and their associated data are automatically removed after 30 days.
Further AdblockPlus.org website requests
Adblock Plus may make further requests to the AdblockPlus.org website as required, for example if a documentation link is clicked or if the full list of filter subscriptions needs to be downloaded. These requests are subject to the usual AdblockPlus.org privacy policy.
Data retention
Adblock Plus stores some data in the Firefox profile on your computer. Adblock Plus never transmits this data to any servers, but other extensions and services, such as Firefox Sync, may do so. Most of the data (your preferences, filter subscriptions and custom filters) is unobjectionable privacy-wise. However, filter hit statistics and recent issue reports could be used to reconstruct your browsing history. Adblock Plus treats this information identically to how history data is treated by the browser: this data isn't stored if you are using Private Browsing mode and is removed if you choose to clear your browsing history.
Element Hiding Helper extension
Extension update checks
Your browser periodically checks for updates of your extensions including Element Hiding Helper. Some general information, such as browser version, extension version, operating system and your IP address, is transmitted during an update check. Element Hiding Helper nightly build updates are handled by AdblockPlus.org website and the data transmitted is subject to its privacy policy. Updates to stable releases are handled by Addons.Mozilla.Org website and are subject to the Firefox Privacy Policy.