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Referrer-Policy

What This Does

This protection controls how much referral information is shared when users navigate away from your site.

It determines what data is included in the Referer header sent to other websites.

Why It Matters

When a user clicks a link, their browser may send the previous page’s URL as a referrer.

This can expose:

  • full URLs (including query parameters)
  • internal paths
  • sensitive information in links

Without a defined policy, more information may be shared than necessary.

When to Apply It

This protection is recommended for most websites.

Apply it when:

  • you want to limit information shared with external sites
  • you are concerned about data leakage through URLs
  • you want to follow modern privacy best practices

When Not to Apply It

You may choose a less restrictive policy if:

  • your site depends on referral data for analytics
  • integrations require full referrer information
  • marketing tools rely on detailed referral tracking

How Steel Security Applies This

Steel Security sets the Referrer-Policy HTTP header.

Common values include:

  • no-referrer — no referrer information is sent
  • same-origin — referrer sent only within your site
  • strict-origin-when-cross-origin — limited referrer for external requests (recommended default)

The selected policy balances privacy and functionality.

What to Expect After Applying

After applying this protection:

  • less referral data will be shared with external sites
  • user privacy is improved
  • some analytics or tracking tools may receive less information

In most cases, there is no visible impact on site functionality.

How to Verify

To verify the protection:

  1. Open your browser developer tools
  2. Navigate to the Network tab
  3. Inspect a page request
  4. Look for the Referrer-Policy header

You should see the configured policy value.

How to Revert (Rollback)

To revert this protection:

  1. Navigate to the hardening section in Steel Security
  2. Disable or adjust the control
  3. Confirm the change
  4. Re-check the response headers

Common Issues

Analytics Data Is Reduced

This may occur if:

  • a restrictive policy limits referrer information
  • external tools rely on full URL data

To resolve:

  • choose a less restrictive policy
  • balance privacy with tracking needs

No Visible Change

This is expected.

The protection affects how browsers send data, not how your site behaves visually.

Header Not Appearing

  • verify server supports header rules
  • check for CDN or caching layers
  • confirm configuration was applied correctly
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