The full privacy policy with formatting intact is available at http://adblockplus.org/en/privacy.

Extension update checks

Your browser periodically checks for updates of all 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 as well as updates for Adblock Plus on Android and Internet Explorer are handled by AdblockPlus.org website and the data transmitted is subject to its privacy policy. Updates to stable Adblock Plus for Firefox releases are handled by Addons.Mozilla.Org website and are subject to the Firefox Privacy Policy. Updates to stable Adblock Plus for Chrome releases are handled by the Google Web Store website and is subject to the Google Privacy Policy. Updates to stable Adblock Plus for Opera releases are handled by the Opera Add-ons website and are subject to the Opera 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 as well as some general information like your Adblock Plus version, browser and browser version. 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

Adblock Plus for Firefox 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 or to update the user 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.

Emergency notification

Recent Adblock Plus versions contain an emergency notification mechanism that allows them to notify users about important issues affecting their Adblock Plus installation. This feature requires all Adblock Plus installations to query an address in the AdblockPlus.org domain regularly to retrieve the list of active notifications. This request makes your IP address visible to the website and also sends some general information like your Adblock Plus version, browser and browser version. This data allows serving different notifications to different clients and is subject to the usual AdblockPlus.org privacy policy.

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.