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Dear visitor! This page provides a means to specify your preferred language; this selection will have priority over the preferences set in your browser. In order to do this, we set a cookie; you can reset it with the first option in this list, and your browser will reset it at the end of your session.

How do you know my native language? Are you spying on us?

As you browse the Web, your browser sends a header with the request of any document that indicates your language preference. This is usually something you can configure in your browser settings. If you downloaded a browser localized in Danish, it probably came preconfigured to send Accept-Language: da. Our servers are configured to respond to this header by providing the page in the requested language, if the translation exists; otherwise, the original English page is sent.

We recently added a “Set Language” link on the top of each page to allow you to override that setting and “fix” a certain language different from your browser's default setting. For example, you could choose English to browse gnu.org even if your browser is set to Danish. This feature uses a cookie.

If you're concerned about your privacy on the Web you can try the Tor Browser Bundle available from https://torproject.org/. Among many other improvements over generic browsers with regard to privacy, the TBB comes configured to appear to be like a Windows-based, US-English browser.

You're right that the language setting of your browser can be used by some sites or third-parties to identify your specific browser and target you for advertising. Tor provides the safest way we know to avoid such targeting. Nevertheless, the GNU project does not use this nor any other targeting methods, not even cookies (exception made of the optional language override mentioned above): we simply care for our users and have no interest in spying on you. The Accept-Language header is a common way to localize contents according to user preferences. You can learn more about it from the W3C.

We also do not track IP addresses of our visitors, and the site itself is mostly made of static pages, and does not use Javascript. Rest assured that the GNU project and the FSF are very careful about users' privacy. If you have any doubt, feel free to contact us.

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