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# Privacy & Security Preferences

The sections listed below describe the Privacy & Security preferences. To see the preference panels, follow these steps:

1. Open the &brandShortName; Edit menu and choose Preferences.
2. Click the Privacy & Security category. If no subcategories are visible, double-click Privacy & Security to expand the list, then click the name for the preferences you want to view or change.

For help with a panel's settings, click the appropriate link below.

Related sections:

- Privacy & Security
- Private Data
- Cookies
- Images
- Popup Windows
- Passwords
- Master Passwords
- SSL/TLS
- Certificates

## Privacy & Security Preferences - Privacy & Security

This section describes how to use the main Privacy & Security preferences panel. If you're not already viewing it, follow these steps:

1. Open the &brandShortName; Edit menu and choose Preferences.
2. Click the Privacy & Security category.

### User Tracking

These settings allow you to communicate your tracking preferences to websites and to actively block tracking requests from known tracking sites. User tracking refers to websites (including advertisers, analytics providers, and social sites) collecting and analyzing comprehensive data on your web browsing patterns, thus affecting your privacy. For more information on this topic, see Why and How Are Websites Tracking Me? The following options are available in this section:

- Tell websites that I do not want to be tracked: Check this to instruct &brandShortName; to inform every website you explicitly visit (along with any providers of third-party content embedded in its pages) that you don't want your browsing behavior being tracked. If checked, a Do Not Track request is sent to each website visited.
- Prevent tracking activities by known sites: Check this to instruct &brandShortName; to actively block connections to websites which are known to provide tracking services. You may not see any content coming from these sites in the web page visited.
- Warn me when known tracking activities were detected: Check this to be presented with a notification bar when content was blocked which can be used for tracking. This bar contains the following buttons:
  - Keep Blocking: Dismiss the notification bar without loading the content from an identified tracking site.
  - Unblock: Allow such content to be loaded now and automatically when this page is visited again in the future.
  - Preferences: Open the Privacy & Security preference panel.

Notes:

- Honoring a Do Not Track request is voluntary, thus individual websites are not required to obey it. Websites and services that follow the policy should stop gathering and using information about your web browsing pattern for all activity for which Do Not Track is selected.
- Requesting Do Not Track from a website should not affect your ability to use the website properly (e.g., when using a web application or when putting items into a cart while shopping).
- Note that Do Not Track does not prevent advertisements from being presented to you while browsing. Since the website is not allowed to gather and utilize information about you, the content of the advertisements will be less specific if you have the Do Not Track option selected.
- Tracking prevention actively blocks content known to be used for tracking in a web page. Thus, the page may appear incomplete. Such sites are identified by periodically downloading a list of known tracking sites which are to be blocked if enabled. Tracking sites not on that list will still be connected to until they are listed.
- The selection of Unblock in the notification bar for a specific site can be revoked in the Permissions tab of the Data Manager. When in a private window, these options aren't present in the notification bar.

### Location Aware Browsing

Websites may want to obtain more detailed information about the user's location, e.g., to offer specific services close to the current position. For that purpose, they can request the longitude and latitude (along with other information like altitude and heading, as available) from a browser. &brandShortName; will never provide that information without the user's consent. However, a notification is displayed for a page that requests the location at least the first time that this site is visited. The preferences located in the center section of the Privacy & Security panel allow you to disable this feature entirely:

- Prompt me for permission if a request is made: Select this if you want &brandShortName; to prompt you if the website you are visiting is requesting geolocation information. The notification provides the following options:
  - Share location: Select this option if you want the current location to be determined and forwarded to the requesting site, for this request only.
  - Not for this request: Select this option if you do not want the current location to be determined and forwarded to the requesting site, prompt again for the next request.
  - Always for this site: Select this option if you want the current location to be determined and forwarded to the requesting site, also for all future requests.
  - Never for this site: Select this option if you do not want the current location to be determined and forwarded to the requesting site, also for all future requests.
  Closing or dismissing the notification will not give any response to the requesting page at all.
- Disable this feature and deny all requests: Select this option for not being prompted for geolocation requests. &brandShortName; will appear to a website as if it doesn't support this feature.

Notes:

- Geolocation is a third-party web-based service. &brandShortName; collects certain information about your internet access (e.g., wireless access points) and sends those to this service.
- The accuracy of the response varies and may range from city level to within a few meters of your actual location.
- No information about the requesting site itself is provided to the geolocation service. The information returned by that service is provided to the website by &brandShortName; in response to its request.
- The requesting site receives an identification token that allows it to track your movement for a limited time using the geolocation service.

### Safe Browsing

Some websites contain potentially dangerous content and may have been reported as malicious. The preferences located in the lower section of the Privacy & Security panel allow you to select which types of reported websites will be blocked. If enabled, &brandShortName; compares each website's address you are about to visit against regularly updated lists. A warning is issued prior to actually loading a reported website, thus giving you the opportunity to cancel the loading process. The following options are available in this section:

- Block reported attack sites: Check this if you want &brandShortName; to warn you if the website you are about to visit has been reported as a site that is trying to infect your computer with malicious software. Such malware may interfere with your computer's functions or steal your personal information. It is also frequently used to send spam email or to spread more malware.
- Block reported web forgeries: Check this if you want &brandShortName; to warn you if the website you are about to visit has been reported as a site that pretends to be a legitimate website of some well-known organization or service. Websites like this are frequently set up to mislead you in providing username and password or other sensitive personal information (commonly known as phishing).

When you are trying to visit a website that has been reported as malicious (and the feature is enabled), you will see one of the following warnings:

- Reported Attack Page! This website has been reported as a website trying to infect your computer with malware.
- Reported Web Forgery! This website has been reported as a website trying to steal your personal information.

No harm has been done at this point. Select one of the following options:

- Get me out of here! Do not load this website. Instead, go to &brandShortName;'s default start page.
- Why was this page blocked? Opens a web page showing you the information reported on this specific website (this is an external page located with the provider of this service). If no such report data is available, a page with general information is shown.
- Ignore this warning: Proceed with loading the page. Only use this when you are certain that the selected page is authentic and safe to visit. At the top of the page, a notification bar will appear, giving you an option to report errors to the provider of this service:
  - This isn't an attack site or This isn't a web forgery: Click this button to open a new tab allowing you to report false warnings (this is an external page).

Important: The Safe Browsing feature is switched on by default. It is not recommended to disable either function as this may result in you visiting unsafe sites.

Note: If no warning is shown for a specific website, it does not guarantee that this site is trustworthy; it just means that it has not been reported. Attack and phishing websites may look safe but are secretly trying to attack you or to steal personal information. The website's owner or provider may not be aware that the site has been compromised.

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