rel="noopener

The noopener keyword for the rel attribute of the {{HTMLElement("a")}}, {{HTMLElement("area")}}, and {{HTMLElement("form")}} elements instructs the browser to navigate to the target resource without granting the new browsing context access to the document that opened it — by not setting the {{DOMxRef("Window.opener")}} property on the opened window (it returns null).

This is especially useful when opening untrusted links, in order to ensure they cannot tamper with the originating document via the {{DOMxRef("Window.opener")}} property (see About rel=noopener for more details), while still providing the Referer HTTP header (unless noreferrer is used as well).

Note that when noopener is used, nonempty target names other than _top, _self, and _parent are all treated like _blank in terms of deciding whether to open a new window/tab.

[!NOTE] Setting target="_blank" on <a>, <area> and <form> elements implicitly provides the same rel behavior as setting rel="noopener" which does not set window.opener.

Specifications

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Browser compatibility

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