HTTP Referer is an optional HTTP header sent by web browsers with every request to the servers. It helps websites to find out their traffic sources, and many users prefer to block or spoof this information because of privacy issues. Chrome doesn’t have any built-in mechanism to block referrer information, but thankfully there are various Chrome extensions to block and spoof HTTP Referer information easily.
Users can view HTTP Referer in the Request Headers using Chrome’s DevTools as explained in this tutorial.
Referer Control Extension
To control your HTTP Referer settings, install the Referer Control Chrome extension by Keepa from here. You can set your preferences from its options page and the context menu of Chrome. To block or edit referrer information for any web site, simply right click anywhere on it and select the option in the context menu, as shown in the following screenshot:
This extension offers various advanced settings like blocking referrer information only for third-party sites, setting a URL as referrer string (referrer spoofing), site-specific and global settings etc. Users can set these parameters from extension’s options page.
Simple Privacy Settings
The Simple Privacy Settings is yet another useful extension for HTTP Referer control. It has an option to completely disable the HTTP referer header information. Hence, you can use it block referer headers in Chrome and other supported browsers like Microsoft Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave etc. Install it from this link.
Alternatively, users can try another Chrome extension External Noreferrer which uses a different approach for blocking referer information. It adds rel="noreferrer" attribute to all external links, which directs browsers to not send HTTP Referer information.