Why does AdBlock request these permissions?
Short version: AdBlock needs these permissions to block and hide ads on every site you visit. While the browser’s warning sounds alarming, AdBlock does not track your browsing, collect your personal information, or alter anything you submit online.
Longer version: When you first install AdBlock, your browser may show a warning like: “AdBlock can read, modify, and transmit content from all web pages. This could include sensitive information like passwords, phone numbers, and credit cards.”
The exact wording varies by browser, but it’s designed to sound serious—because you should always be aware of what extensions are allowed to do.
Here’s what those permissions really mean in the case of AdBlock:
Access every page you visit
AdBlock needs to see the pages you open so it can block or hide ads everywhere. This means AdBlock knows the URLs of the sites you visit.Read page content
AdBlock checks the content of each page to detect ads that weren’t blocked before loading. Technically, this means it could see things like forms or activity on that tab—but AdBlock does not collect or store that information.Modify page content
To hide ads, AdBlock adds small snippets of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript to the page. This only changes how the page looks—it doesn’t change the content you submit.“Webpage Contents” permission
This permission allows AdBlock (and all ad blockers) to hide ads that can’t be blocked at the request level by altering the page’s code.Other changes (allowlisting)
In most versions, AdBlock also modifies the page code to show the “allowlist” option when you request it. On Mac, the AdBlock Icon extension handles this in Safari and requires the same “Webpage Contents” permission to open settings.
Important: AdBlock never records your browsing history, captures what you type in forms (like passwords or credit cards), or alters any data you submit.
Do you collect any information?
We do collect some information to make AdBlock a better ad blocking extension and it's important to us to keep that information to a minimum. Here's what we do collect:
Information associated with a unique userID
Most of the data we collect is about your browser and how you use AdBlock, and is tied to a unique userID that is randomly generated when you install AdBlock, not to you personally. For instance, we know this userID opened AdBlock's /installed page at this time, or that userID opened the AdBlock menu at that time. We use this information to make AdBlock better.
From our privacy policy:
When you visit the AdBlock website we collect IP address, unique ID, logging of some of the button clicks on our website (clicking download, for example) and user event logging data. When the AdBlock extension communicates with AdBlock servers, we receive the computer’s IP address.
We know more about you personally if you have paid for AdBlock.
From our privacy policy:
When you donate from the AdBlock website, we collect and store all information, excluding the credit card number, given during the payment process. This includes IP address, unique ID, logging some of the button clicks (payment, download buttons) and user event logging. AdBlock does not handle or have access to full credit card numbers, bank account details or payment account login information. Each payment processor stores and uses the data you provide them differently.
We do not target or sell any of the data we collect, personally identifiable or not. Selling user data goes against everything we stand for as a company. And after a certain length of time, we obfuscate all personally identifiable information in our logs, making all the data we have completely anonymous.
Anonymous Statistics
We get statistics from Google Analytics and the AdBlock extension, such as the language your browser is set to and the country you're in. None of that information is personally identifiable.
From our privacy policy:
The AdBlock extension captures anonymous usage information including, but not limited to, the version number of the extension, preferred language, Acceptable Ads opt-in, opt-in to advanced features like our local content caching service, number of blocked requests, number of ads blocked, and browser and operating system type. The AdBlock extension also assigns an anonymous, unique ID to each installation. We store this information on AdBlock servers and we utilize this information to help us identify and fix potential issues with AdBlock as well as to determine the performance of AdBlock features.
If you want to prevent us from seeing the data we get from Google Analytics, you can subscribe to the EasyPrivacy filter list in AdBlock's options.
Troubleshooting Information
If you provide debugging information as part of troubleshooting an issue, AdBlock tells us your operating system version, which browser you're using and its version, how long it's been since you installed AdBlock, which version of AdBlock you're using, which options you have enabled, which filter lists you're subscribed to, any custom filters you've added, and (if you give us permission to collect it) which extensions you have installed and whether they're enabled.
You can read this information yourself to see what you're giving us. Open AdBlock's options and on the Support tab, click the "Copy debug data". Your debug data will display and you're welcome to edit any information you don't want to share.
If you have enabled the option to Allow AdBlock to collect anonymous filter list usage and data, we get a subset of the same data that's contained in the debugging information without your having to send it to us.
AdBlock Privacy Policy
We invite you to read our privacy policy, which goes into great detail about the information we collect, why we collect it, and how we use it.