What Global Privacy Control Is and How to Turn It On in Your Browser

Most web browsers will tell a website your screen size, your operating system, your language and even your graphics chip if the site asks. Telling websites to stop selling your data to other companies is still confusing, Lifehacker says. About a dozen U.S. states, including California, Delaware, New Jersey and Texas, now require businesses to respect people's privacy choices online. But most browsers do not have a built-in way to send that choice automatically. A California law called the Opt Me Out Act, which starts on January 1, 2027, will make it mandatory for browsers to offer one.

Until then, support is uneven. Privacy-focused browsers such as Brave, DuckDuckGo and Firefox turn the feature on by default, while Chrome and Edge need an add-on, such as the EFF's Privacy Badger.

The feature is called Global Privacy Control, or GPC. It is an open-source privacy standard created by several universities, media groups and privacy-focused tech companies. Instead of looking for a "Do Not Sell" link on every site and app, you turn on GPC once in your browser. The browser then sends a message to every site you visit saying you want to opt out of sharing your data and of targeted ads. Technically, it works by sending a special header and a script property with each request to a site.

Unlike the older Do Not Track setting in Firefox, GPC is backed by major data protection laws, including Europe's GDPR and California's CCPA, so websites are more likely to honor it. More than 150 million people use it and more than 66,000 websites take part. Backers include the Mozilla Foundation, The Washington Post, Automattic, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and The New York Times, and it is an official work item at the World Wide Web Consortium.

It is not perfect. Researchers at USENIX found that about 45% of the 11,708 sites they checked did not honor the signal even where local law required it. Still, it is better than having no opt-out, since blockers for cookies and trackers can break parts of some sites.

Browsers fall into two groups. Brave, DuckDuckGo and Firefox have a built-in switch or turn it on automatically. Mainstream browsers like Chrome, Edge and Safari offer limited support through add-ons, or none. Brave has GPC on by default on Windows, macOS and Android.