1 <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN"[
2 <!entity % dummy "IGNORE">
3 <!entity supported SYSTEM "supported.sgml">
4 <!entity newfeatures SYSTEM "newfeatures.sgml">
5 <!entity p-intro SYSTEM "privoxy.sgml">
6 <!entity seealso SYSTEM "seealso.sgml">
7 <!entity contacting SYSTEM "contacting.sgml">
8 <!entity history SYSTEM "history.sgml">
9 <!entity copyright SYSTEM "copyright.sgml">
10 <!entity license SYSTEM "license.sgml">
11 <!entity p-version "3.0.18">
12 <!entity p-status "UNRELEASED">
13 <!entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE">
14 <!entity % p-stable "IGNORE">
15 <!entity % p-text "IGNORE"> <!-- define we are not a text only doc -->
16 <!entity % p-doc "INCLUDE"> <!-- and we are a formal doc -->
17 <!entity % p-supp-userman "INCLUDE"> <!-- Include all from supported.sgml -->
18 <!entity my-copy "©"> <!-- kludge for docbook2man -->
19 <!entity % p-newstuff "INCLUDE"> <!-- exclude stuff from devel versions -->
20 <!entity % seealso-extra "INCLUDE"> <!-- extra stuff from seealso.sgml -->
21 <!entity my-app "<application>Privoxy</application>">
24 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/faq.sgml,v $
27 This file belongs into
28 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
30 $Id: faq.sgml,v 2.80 2011/08/18 11:42:50 fabiankeil Exp $
32 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Privoxy Developers http://www.privoxy.org/
35 Based partially on the Internet Junkbuster FAQ originally written by and
36 Copyright (C) 1997 Anonymous Coders and Junkbusters Corporation.
37 http://www.junkbusters.com/
39 <Qandaset defaultlabel='qanda'>
54 ========================================================================
55 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
58 Please we keep the info in this file as version independent as possible
59 so we only have to maintain one FAQ. Where significant changes are
60 made to Privoxy configuration, please note the change in such a way that
61 it makes sense to both users of older and newer versions.
62 ========================================================================
68 <article id="index" class="faq">
70 <title>Privoxy Frequently Asked Questions</title>
74 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
75 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
76 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001-2011 by
77 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
81 <pubdate>$Id: faq.sgml,v 2.80 2011/08/18 11:42:50 fabiankeil Exp $</pubdate>
85 Note: this should generate a separate page, and a live link to it.
86 But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave commented
87 unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the copyright
88 statement will be in copyright.smgl.
92 <legalnotice id="legalnotice">
94 text goes here ........
104 <orgname>By: Privoxy Developers</orgname>
113 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
114 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
115 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
120 This FAQ gives quick answers to frequently asked questions about
121 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy</ulink>.
122 It is not a substitute for the
123 <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html"><citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle></ulink>.
125 This works, at least in some situtations:
126 Test: <ulink url="privoxy-user-manual.pdf"><citetitle>User Manual</citetitle></ulink>.
130 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
131 <para>What is Privoxy?</para> &p-intro;
132 <!-- end boilerplate -->
135 Please note that this document is a work in progress. This copy represents
136 the state at the release of version &p-version;.
137 You can find the latest version of the document at <ulink
138 url="http://www.privoxy.org/faq/">http://www.privoxy.org/faq/</ulink>.
139 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> if you want to
140 contact the developers.
144 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
150 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
152 <sect1 id="general"><title>General Information</title>
153 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="who-uses"><title>Who should give &my-app; a try?</title>
155 Anyone who is interested in security, privacy, or in
156 finer-grained control over their web and Internet experience.
160 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="bestchoice"><title>Is Privoxy the best choice for
163 &my-app; is certainly a good choice, especially for those who want more
164 control and security. Those with the willingness to read the documentation
165 and the ability to fine-tune their installation will benefit the most.
168 One of <application>Privoxy's</application>
169 strengths is that it is highly configurable giving you the ability to
170 completely personalize your installation. Being familiar with, or at least
171 having an interest in learning about <ulink
172 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Http">HTTP</ulink> and other networking
173 protocols, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html">HTML</ulink>, and
174 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
175 Expressions</quote></ulink>
176 will be a big plus and will help you get the most out of &my-app;.
177 A new installation just includes a very basic configuration. The user
178 should take this as a starting point only, and enhance it as he or she
179 sees fit. In fact, the user is encouraged, and expected to, fine-tune the
183 Much of <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration can be done
184 with a <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser">Web browser</ulink>.
185 But there are areas where configuration is done using a
186 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_editors">text editor</ulink>
187 to edit configuration files. Also note that the web-based action editor
188 doesn't use authentication and should only be enabled in environments
189 where all clients with access to &my-app; listening port can be trusted.
193 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="proxymoron"><title>What is a <quote>proxy</quote>? How does
194 Privoxy work? </title>
196 A <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">web proxy</ulink>
197 is a service, based on a software such as &my-app;, that clients
198 (i.e. browsers) can use instead of connecting to web servers directly.
199 The clients then ask the proxy to request objects (web pages, images, movies etc)
200 on their behalf and to forward the data to the clients.
201 It is a <quote>go-between</quote>. For details, see
202 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">Wikipedia's proxy definition</ulink>.
205 There are many reasons to use web proxies, such as security (firewalling),
206 efficiency (caching) and others, and there are any number of proxies
207 to accommodate those needs.
210 &my-app; is a proxy that is primarily focused on
211 privacy enhancement, ad and junk elimination and freeing the user from
212 restrictions placed on his activities. Sitting between your browser(s) and the Internet,
213 it is in a perfect position to filter outbound personal information that your
214 browser is leaking, as well as inbound junk. It uses a variety of techniques to do
215 this, all of which are under your complete control via the various configuration
216 files and options. Being a proxy also makes it easier to share
217 configurations among multiple browsers and/or users.
221 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="otherstuff">
222 <title>Does Privoxy do anything more than ad blocking?</title>
224 Yes, ad blocking is but one possible use. There are many, many ways &my-app;
225 can be used to sanitize and customize web browsing.
229 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newjb"><title>What is this new version of
230 <quote><citetitle>Junkbuster</citetitle></quote>?</title>
232 <!-- Include history.sgml -->
239 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
240 <title id="whyprivoxy">Why <quote>Privoxy</quote>? Why change the name from
241 Junkbuster at all?</title>
243 Though outdated, <ulink url="http://junkbusters.com/">Junkbusters Corporation</ulink>
244 continues to offer their original version of the <application>Internet
245 Junkbuster</application>, so publishing our
246 <application> Junkbuster</application>-derived software under the same name
250 There are also potential legal complications from our use of the
251 <application>Junkbuster</application> name, which is a registered trademark of
252 <ulink url="http://junkbusters.com/">Junkbusters Corporation</ulink>.
253 There are, however, no objections from Junkbusters Corporation to the
254 <application>Privoxy</application> project itself, and they, in fact, still
255 share our ideals and goals.
258 The developers also believed that there are so many improvements over the original
259 code, that it was time to make a clean break from the past and make
260 a name in their own right.
263 <application>Privoxy</application> is the
264 <quote><emphasis>Privacy Enhancing Proxy</emphasis></quote>. Also, its content
265 modification and junk suppression gives <emphasis>you</emphasis>, the user, more
266 control, more freedom, and allows you to browse your personal and
267 <quote><emphasis>private</emphasis> edition</quote> of the web.
271 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="differs"><title>How does Privoxy differ
272 from the old Junkbuster?</title>
274 <application>Privoxy</application> picks up where
275 <application>Junkbuster</application> left off.
276 The new <application>Privoxy</application> still blocks ads and banners,
278 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>, and still
279 helps protect your privacy. But, most of these features have been enhanced,
280 and many new ones have been added, all in the same vein.
283 <application>Privoxy</application>'s new features include:
286 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml: -->
292 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whatsanad">
293 <title id="knows">How does Privoxy know what is
294 an ad, and what is not?</title>
296 <application>Privoxy</application>'s approach to blocking ads is twofold:
299 First, there are certain patterns in the <emphasis>locations</emphasis> (URLs)
300 of banner images. This applies to both the path (you wouldn't guess how many
301 web sites serve their banners from a directory called <quote>banners</quote>!)
302 and the host (blocking the big banner hosting services like doublecklick.net
303 already helps a lot). <application>Privoxy</application> takes advantage of this
304 fact by using <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#AF-PATTERNS">URL
305 patterns</ulink> to sort out and block the requests for things that sound
306 like they would be ads or banners.
309 Second, banners tend to come in certain <emphasis>sizes</emphasis>. But you
310 can't tell the size of an image by its URL without downloading it, and if you
311 do, it's too late to save bandwidth. Therefore, <application>Privoxy</application>
312 also inspects the HTML sources of web pages while they are loaded, and replaces
313 references to images with standard banner sizes by dummy references, so that
314 your browser doesn't request them anymore in the first place.
317 Both of this involves a certain amount of guesswork and is, of course, freely
318 and readily configurable.
322 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
323 <title id="mistakes">Can Privoxy make mistakes?
324 This does not sound very scientific.</title>
326 Actually, it's a black art ;-) And yes, it is always possible to have a broad
327 rule accidentally block or change something by mistake. You will almost surely
328 run into such situations at some point. It is tricky writing rules to
329 cover every conceivable possibility, and not occasionally get false positives.
333 But this should not be a big concern since the
334 <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is very flexible, and
335 includes tools to help identify these types of situations so they can be
336 addressed as needed, allowing you to customize your installation.
337 (<link linkend="badsite">See the Troubleshooting section below</link>.)
342 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
343 <title id="configornot">Will I have to configure Privoxy
344 before I can use it?</title>
346 That depends on your expectations.
347 The default installation should give you a good starting
348 point, and block <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads and unwanted content,
349 but many of the more advanced features are off by default, and require
350 you to activate them.
353 You do have to set up your browser to use
354 <application>Privoxy</application> (see the <link
355 linkend="firststep">Installation section below</link>).
358 And you will certainly run into situations where there are false positives,
359 or ads not being blocked that you may not want to see. In these cases, you
360 would certainly benefit by customizing <application>Privoxy's</application>
361 configuration to more closely match your individual situation. And we
362 encourage you to do this. This is where the real power of
363 <application>Privoxy</application> lies!
368 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="lan">
369 <title>Can Privoxy run as a server on a network?</title>
371 Yes, &my-app; runs as a server already, and can easily be configured to
372 <quote>serve</quote> more than one client. See <link linkend="lanconfig">
373 How can I set up Privoxy to act as a proxy for my LAN</link> below.
377 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="browsers2"><title>My browser does the same things as
378 Privoxy. Why should I use Privoxy at all?</title>
380 Modern browsers do indeed have <emphasis>some</emphasis> of the same
381 functionality as <application>Privoxy</application>. Maybe this is
382 adequate for you. But <application>Privoxy</application> is very
383 versatile and powerful, and can probably do a number of things
384 your browser just can't.
387 In addition, a proxy is good choice if you use multiple browsers, or
388 have a LAN with multiple computers since &my-app; can run as a server
389 application. This way all the configuration is in one place, and you don't
390 have to maintain a similar configuration for possibly many browsers or
394 Note, however, that it's recommended to leverage both your browser's
395 and <application>Privoxy's</application> privacy enhancing features
396 at the same time. While your browser probably lacks some features
397 &my-app; offers, it should also be able to do some things more
398 reliable, for example restricting and suppressing JavaScript.
402 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whytrust"><title>Why should I trust Privoxy?</title>
404 The most important reason is because you have access to
405 <emphasis>everything</emphasis>, and you can control everything. You can
406 check every line of every configuration file yourself. You can check every
407 last bit of source code should you desire. And even if you can't read code,
408 there should be some comfort in knowing that <!-- thousands of -->other people can,
409 and do read it. You can build the software from scratch, if you want,
410 so that you know the executable is clean, and that it is
411 <emphasis>yours</emphasis>. In fact, we encourage this level of scrutiny. It
412 is one reason we use &my-app; ourselves.
416 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="license"><title>Is there is a license or fee? What about a
417 warranty? Registration?</title>
419 <application>Privoxy</application> is free software and licensed under the <ulink
420 url="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html">GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2</ulink>.
421 It is free to use, copy, modify or distribute as you wish under the terms of this
422 license. Please see the <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> section for more
423 information on the license and copyright. Or the <filename>LICENSE</filename> file
424 that should be included.
427 There is <emphasis>no warranty</emphasis> of any kind, expressed, implied or otherwise.
428 That is something that would cost real money ;-) There is no registration either.
433 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="spyware">
434 <title>Can Privoxy remove spyware? Adware? Viruses?</title>
436 No, at least not reliably enough to trust it. &my-app; is not designed to be
437 a malware removal tool and the default configuration doesn't even try to
438 filter out any malware.
441 &my-app; could help prevent contact from (known) sites that use such
442 tactics with appropriate configuration rules, and thus could conceivably
443 prevent contamination from such sites. However, keeping such a configuration
444 up to date would require a lot of time and effort that would be better spend
445 on keeping your software itself up to date so it doesn't have known
451 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="otherads">
452 <title>Can I use Privoxy with other ad-blocking software?</title>
454 &my-app; should work fine with other proxies and other software in general.
457 But it is probably not necessary to use &my-app; in conjunction with other
458 ad-blocking products, and this could conceivably cause undesirable results.
459 It might be better to choose one software or the other and work a little to
460 tweak its configuration to your liking.
463 Note that this is an advice specific to ad blocking.
467 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="help-the-developers"><title id="jointeam">I would like to help you, what can I do?</title>
469 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="participate"><title id="jointeam-work">Would you like to participate?</title>
471 Well, we <emphasis>always</emphasis> need help. There is something for
472 everybody who wants to help us. We welcome new developers, packagers,
473 testers, documentation writers or really anyone with a desire to help in
474 any way. You <emphasis>DO NOT</emphasis> need to be a
475 <quote>programmer</quote>. There are many other tasks available. In fact,
476 the programmers often can't spend as much time programming because of some
477 of the other, more mundane things that need to be done, like checking the
478 Tracker feedback sections or responding to user questions on the mailing
482 So first thing, subscribe to the <ulink
483 url="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-users">Privoxy Users</ulink>
484 or the <ulink url="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-developers">Privoxy
485 Developers</ulink> mailing list, join the discussion, help out other users, provide general
486 feedback or report problems you noticed.
489 If you intend to help out with the trackers, you also might want to <ulink
490 url="https://sourceforge.net/account/register.php">get an account on SourceForge.net</ulink>
491 so we don't confuse you with the other name-less users.
494 We also have a <ulink
495 url="../developer-manual/index.html">Developer's Manual</ulink>.
496 While it is partly out of date, it's still worth reading.
499 Our <ulink url="http://ijbswa.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ijbswa/current/TODO?view=markup">TODO list</ulink>
500 may be of interest to you as well.
501 Please let us know if you want to work on one of the items listed.
505 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="donate"><title>Would you like to donate?</title>
507 <application>Privoxy</application> is developed by unpaid volunteers
508 and thus our current running costs are pretty low. Nevertheless, we
509 have plans that will cost money in the future. We would like to get
510 this money through donations made by our users.
514 <application>Privoxy</application> has therefore become an associated
515 project of <ulink url="http://www.spi-inc.org/about-spi/about-spi">Software
516 in the Public Interest (SPI)</ulink>, which allows us to receive tax-deductible
517 donations in most western countries.
521 We intend to use the donations to pay for our domain after transferring
522 it to SPI. Our goal is to make sure there's no single point of failure
523 and the bill gets paid and the site keeps running even if a some of
524 the currently active developers were to suddenly disappear for a while.
528 We would also like to spend some money on more reliable hosting,
529 on hardware to help make sure <application>Privoxy</application>
530 keeps running on platforms the developers currently can't test on,
531 and on technical books to educate our developers about said platforms
532 or to improve their knowledge in general.
536 If you enjoy our software and feel like helping out with a donation,
537 please have a look at
538 <ulink url="http://www.spi-inc.org/donations">SPI's donation page</ulink>
539 to see what the options are.
548 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
550 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
552 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whichbrowsers">
553 <title>Which browsers are supported by Privoxy?</title>
555 Any browser that can be configured to use a proxy, which
556 should be virtually all browsers, including
557 <application>Firefox</application>, <application>Internet
558 Explorer</application>, <application>Opera</application>, and
559 <application>Safari</application> among others.
560 Direct browser support is not an absolute requirement since
561 <application>Privoxy</application> runs as a separate application and talks
562 to the browser in the standardized HTTP protocol, just like a web server
567 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whichos">
568 <title>Which operating systems are supported?</title>
570 Include supported.sgml here:
575 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="email-client">
576 <title>Can I use Privoxy with my email client?</title>
578 As long as there is some way to set a HTTP proxy for the client, then yes,
579 any application can be used, whether it is strictly speaking a
580 <quote>browser</quote> or not. Though this may not be the best approach for
581 dealing with some of the common abuses of HTML in email. See <link
582 linkend="outlook">How can I configure <application>Privoxy</application>
583 with <application>Outlook</application>?</link> below for more on
587 Be aware that HTML email presents a number of unique security and privacy
588 related issues, that can require advanced skills to overcome. The developers
589 recommend using email clients that can be configured to convert HTML to plain
590 text for these reasons.
594 <!-- Nobody is going to still be doing this!
595 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newinstall"><title>Can I install
596 Privoxy over Junkbuster?</title>
598 We recommend you un-install <application>Junkbuster</application>
599 first to minimize conflicts and confusion. You may want to
600 save your old configuration files for future reference. The configuration
601 files and syntax have substantially changed, so you will need to manually
602 port your old patterns. See the <ulink url="../user-manual/upgradersnote.html">note
603 to upgraders</ulink> and <ulink url="../user-manual/installation.html">installation
604 chapter</ulink> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User Manual</ulink>
608 Note: Some installers may automatically un-install
609 <application>Junkbuster</application>, if present!
615 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="firststep">
616 <title>I just installed Privoxy. Is there anything
617 special I have to do now?</title>
620 All browsers should be told to use <application>Privoxy</application>
621 as a proxy by specifying the correct proxy address and port number
622 in the appropriate configuration area for the browser. It's possible
623 to combine &my-app; with a packet filter to intercept HTTP requests
624 even if the client isn't explicitly configured to use &my-app;,
625 but where possible, configuring the client is recommended. See
626 <ulink url="../user-manual/startup.html">the User Manual for more
627 details</ulink>. You should also flush your browser's memory and disk
628 cache to get rid of any cached junk items, and remove any stored
629 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>.
635 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="localhost"><title>What is the proxy address of Privoxy?</title>
637 If you set up the <application>Privoxy</application> to run on
638 the computer you browse from (rather than your ISP's server or some
639 networked computer on a LAN), the proxy will be on <literal>127.0.0.1</literal>
640 (sometimes referred to as <quote>localhost</quote>,
641 which is the special name used by every computer on the Internet to refer
642 to itself) and the port will be 8118 (unless you used the <ulink
643 url="../user-manual/config.html#LISTEN-ADDRESS">listen-address</ulink>
644 config option to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to run on
648 When configuring your browser's proxy settings you typically enter
649 the word <quote>localhost</quote> or the IP address <quote>127.0.0.1</quote>
650 in the boxes next to <quote>HTTP</quote> and <quote>Secure</quote> (HTTPS) and
651 then the number <quote>8118</quote> for <quote>port</quote>.
652 This tells your browser to send all web requests to <application>Privoxy</application>
653 instead of directly to the Internet.
656 <application>Privoxy</application> can also be used to proxy for
657 a Local Area Network. In this case, your would enter either the IP
658 address of the LAN host where <application>Privoxy</application>
659 is running, or the equivalent hostname, e.g. <literal>192.168.1.1</literal>.
660 Port assignment would be same as above. Note that
661 <application>Privoxy</application> doesn't listen on any LAN interfaces by
665 <application>Privoxy</application> does not currently handle
666 any other protocols such as FTP, SMTP, IM, IRC, ICQ, etc.
670 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="nothing">
671 <title>I just installed Privoxy, and nothing is happening.
672 All the ads are there. What's wrong?</title>
675 Did you configure your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application>
676 as a proxy? It does not sound like it. See above. You might also try flushing
677 the browser's caches to force a full re-reading of pages. You can verify
678 that <application>Privoxy</application> is running, and your browser
679 is correctly configured by entering the special URL:
680 <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>.
681 <!-- Use http://p.p/ instead of http://config.privoxy.org/ here because
682 of potential redirect caching problem (see next Q). -->
683 This should take you to a page titled <quote>This is Privoxy..</quote> with
684 access to <application>Privoxy's</application> internal configuration.
685 If you see this, then you are good to go. If you receive a page saying
686 <quote>Privoxy is not running</quote>, then the browser is not set up to use
687 your <application>Privoxy</application> installation.
688 If you receive anything else (probably nothing at all), it could either
689 be that the browser is not set up correctly, or that
690 <application>Privoxy</application> is not running at all. Check the <ulink
691 url="../user-manual/config.html#LOGFILE">log file</ulink>. For instructions
692 on starting <application>Privoxy</application> and browser configuration,
693 see the <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/startup.html">chapter
694 on starting <application>Privoxy</application></ulink> in the
695 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">User Manual</ulink>.
700 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="notused">
701 <title>I get a <quote>Privoxy is not being used</quote> dummy page although
702 Privoxy is running and being used.</title>
705 First, make sure that Privoxy is <emphasis>really</emphasis> running and
706 being used by visiting <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>. You
707 should see the <application>Privoxy</application> main page. If not, see
708 the <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/startup.html">chapter
709 on starting <application>Privoxy</application></ulink> in the
710 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">User Manual</ulink>.
714 Now if <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> works for you, but
715 other parts of <application>Privoxy</application>'s web interface show
716 the dummy page, your browser has cached a redirection it encountered before
717 <application>Privoxy</application> was being used. You need to clear your
718 browser's cache. Note that shift-reloading the dummy page won't help, since
719 that'll only refresh the dummy page, not the redirection that lead you there.
723 The procedure for clearing the cache varies from browser to browser. For
724 example, <application>Mozilla/Netscape</application> users would click
725 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -->
726 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Cache</guibutton> and
727 then click both <quote><guibutton>Clear Memory Cache</guibutton></quote>
728 and <quote><guibutton>Clear Disk Cache</guibutton></quote>.
729 In some <application>Firefox</application> versions it's
730 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Options</guibutton> -->
731 <guibutton>Privacy</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Cache</guibutton> and
732 then click <quote><guibutton>Clear Cache Now</guibutton></quote>.
733 <!-- In my Firefox versions it's the Netscape way. fk 2007-11-19-->
740 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
742 <sect1 id="configuration"><title>Configuration</title>
743 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
744 <title id="actionsfile">What exactly is an <quote>actions</quote> file?</title>
747 &my-app; utilizes the concept of <quote>
748 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACTIONS">actions</ulink></quote>
749 that are used to manipulate and control web page data.
750 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">Actions files</ulink>
751 are where these <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACTIONS">actions</ulink>
752 that <application>Privoxy</application> could take while processing a certain
753 request, are configured. Typically, you would define a set of default actions
754 that apply globally to all URLs, then add exceptions to these defaults where needed.
755 There is a wide array of actions available that give the user a high degree
756 of control and flexibility on how to process each and every web page.
760 Actions can be defined on a <ulink
761 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#AF-PATTERNS">URL pattern</ulink> basis, i.e.
762 for single URLs, whole web sites, groups or parts thereof etc. Actions can also be
763 grouped together and then applied to requests matching one or more patterns.
764 There are many possible actions that might apply to any given site. As an example,
765 if you are blocking <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>
766 as one of your default actions, but need to accept cookies from a given site,
767 you would need to define an exception for this site in one of your actions
768 files, preferably in <filename>user.action</filename>.
773 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="actionss">
774 <title>The <quote>actions</quote> concept confuses me. Please list
775 some of these <quote>actions</quote>.</title>
777 For a comprehensive discussion of the actions concept, please refer
778 to the <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">actions file
779 chapter</ulink> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User
780 Manual</ulink>. It includes a <ulink
781 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACTIONS">list of all actions</ulink>
782 and an <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACT-EXAMPLES">actions
783 file tutorial</ulink> to get you started.
788 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
789 <title id="actconfig">How are actions files configured? What is the easiest
790 way to do this?</title>
793 Actions files are just text files in a special syntax and can be edited
794 with a text editor. But probably the easiest way is to access
795 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface with your web browser
796 at <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
797 (Shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>) and then select
798 <quote><ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View &
799 change the current configuration</ulink></quote> from the menu. Note
800 that this feature must be explicitly enabled in the main config file
802 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions</ulink>).
807 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
808 <title>There are several different <quote>actions</quote> files. What are
809 the differences?</title>
811 Please have a look at the <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">the actions chapter</ulink>
812 in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User Manual</ulink> for a detailed explanation.
817 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="getupdates"><title>Where can I get updated Actions Files?</title>
819 Based on your feedback and the continuing development, updates of
820 <filename>default.action</filename> will be
821 made available from time to time on the <ulink
822 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">files section</ulink> of
823 our <ulink url="http://sf.net/projects/ijbswa/">project page</ulink>.
827 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
828 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
829 url="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-announce/">subscribe
830 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
835 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newconfig"><title>Can I use my old config files?</title>
837 The syntax and purpose of configuration files has remained roughly the
838 same throughout the 3.x series, but backwards compatibility is not guaranteed.
839 Also each release contains updated, <quote>improved</quote> versions and it is
840 therefore strongly recommended to install the newer configuration files
841 and merge back your modifications.
845 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="difficult">
846 <title>Why is the configuration so complicated?</title>
848 <quote>Complicated</quote> is in the eye of the beholder. Those that are
849 familiar with some of the underlying concepts, such as regular expression
850 syntax, take to it like a fish takes to water. Also, software that tries
851 hard to be <quote>user friendly</quote>, often lacks sophistication and
852 flexibility. There is always that trade-off there between power vs.
853 easy-of-use. Furthermore, anyone is welcome to contribute ideas and
854 implementations to enhance &my-app;.
858 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="yahoo"><title>How can I make my Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail account work?</title>
860 The default configuration shouldn't impact the usability of any of these services.
861 It may, however, make all <ulink
862 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>
863 temporary, so that your browser will forget your
864 login credentials in between browser sessions. If you would like not to have to log
865 in manually each time you access those websites, simply turn off all cookie handling
866 for them in the <filename>user.action</filename> file. An example for yahoo might
870 <screen># Allow all cookies for Yahoo login:
872 { -<ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</ulink> -<ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</ulink> -<ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</ulink> }
873 .login.yahoo.com</screen>
876 These kinds of sites are often quite complex and heavy with
877 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript">Javascript</ulink> and
878 thus <quote>fragile</quote>. So if <emphasis>still</emphasis> a problem,
880 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ALIASES">alias</ulink> just for such
884 <screen># Gmail is a _fragile_ site:
886 { <literal>fragile</literal> }
888 mail.google.com</screen>
891 Be sure to flush your browser's caches whenever making these kinds of
892 changes, just to make sure the changes <quote>take</quote>.
895 Make sure the domain, host and path are appropriate as well. Your browser can
896 tell you where you are specifically and you should use that information for
897 your configuration settings. Note that above it is not referenced as
898 <literal>gmail.com</literal>, which is a valid domain name.
903 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="configfiles"> <title>What's the difference between the
904 <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> and <quote>Advanced</quote> defaults?</title>
906 Configuring <application>Privoxy</application> is not entirely trivial. To
907 help you get started, we provide you with three different default action
908 <quote>profiles</quote> in the web based actions file editor at <ulink
909 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
910 See the <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html"><citetitle>User
911 Manual</citetitle></ulink> for a list of actions, and how the default
916 Where the defaults are likely to break some sites, exceptions for
917 known popular <quote>problem</quote> sites are included, but in
918 general, the more aggressive your default settings are, the more exceptions
919 you will have to make later. New users are best to start off in
920 <quote>Cautious</quote> setting. This is safest and will have the fewest
921 problems. See the <ulink
922 url="../user-manual/index.html"><citetitle>User Manual</citetitle></ulink>
923 for a more detailed discussion.
927 It should be noted that the <quote>Advanced</quote> profile (formerly known
928 as the <quote>Adventuresome</quote> profile) is more
929 aggressive, and will make use of some of
930 <application>Privoxy's</application> advanced features. Use at your own risk!
935 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="browseconfig"> <title>Why can I change the configuration
936 with a browser? Does that not raise security issues?</title>
938 It may seem strange that regular users can edit the config files with their
939 browsers, although the whole <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> hierarchy
940 belongs to the user <quote>privoxy</quote>, with only 644 permissions.
943 When you use the browser-based editor, <application>Privoxy</application>
944 itself is writing to the config files. Because
945 <application>Privoxy</application> is running as the user <quote>privoxy</quote>,
946 it can update its own config files.
949 If you run <application>Privoxy</application> for multiple untrusted users (e.g. in
950 a LAN) or aren't entirely in control of your own browser, you will probably want
951 to make sure that the web-based editor and remote toggle features are
952 <quote>off</quote> by setting <quote><literal><ulink
953 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions</ulink>
954 0</literal></quote> and <quote><literal><ulink
955 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-REMOTE-TOGGLE">enable-remote-toggle</ulink>
956 0</literal></quote> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html">main configuration file</ulink>.
959 As of &my-app; 3.0.7 these options are disabled by default.
964 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
965 <title id="filterfile">What is the <filename>default.filter</filename> file? What is a <quote>filter</quote>?</title>
967 The <ulink url="../user-manual/filter-file.html"><filename>default.filter</filename></ulink>
968 file is where <emphasis>filters</emphasis> as supplied by the developers are defined.
969 Filters are a special subset of actions that can be used to modify or
970 remove web page content or headers on the fly. Content filters can
971 be applied to <emphasis>anything</emphasis> in the page source,
972 header filters can be applied to either server or client headers.
973 Regular expressions are used to accomplish this.
976 There are a number of pre-defined filters to deal with common annoyances. The
977 filters are only defined here, to invoke them, you need to use the
979 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER"><literal>filter</literal>
980 action</ulink> in one of the actions files. Content filtering is automatically
981 disabled for inappropriate MIME types, but if you know better than Privoxy
982 what should or should not be filtered you can filter any content you like.
986 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be confused with <ulink
987 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK"><literal>blocks</literal></ulink>, which
988 is a completely different action, and is more typically used to block ads and
993 If you are familiar with regular expressions, and HTML, you can look at
994 the provided <filename>default.filter</filename> with a text editor and define
995 your own filters. This is potentially a very powerful feature, but
996 requires some expertise in both regular expressions and HTML/HTTP.
997 <![%p-newstuff;[ You should
998 place any modifications to the default filters, or any new ones you create
999 in a separate file, such as <filename>user.filter</filename>, so they won't
1000 be overwritten during upgrades.
1001 The ability to define multiple filter files
1002 in <filename>config</filename> is a new feature as of v. 3.0.5.]]>
1006 There is no GUI editor option for this part of the configuration,
1007 but you can disable/enable the various pre-defined filters of the included
1008 <filename>default.filter</filename> file with the <ulink
1009 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">web-based actions file editor</ulink>.
1010 Note that the custom actions editor must be explicitly enabled in
1011 the main config file (see <ulink
1012 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions</ulink>).
1016 If you intend to develop your own filters, you might want to have a look at
1018 url="http://www.fabiankeil.de/sourcecode/pft/">Privoxy-Filter-Test</ulink>.
1023 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="lanconfig">
1024 <title>How can I set up Privoxy to act as a proxy for my
1027 By default, <application>Privoxy</application> only responds to requests
1028 from <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> (localhost). To have it act as a server for
1029 a network, this needs to be changed in the <ulink
1030 url="../user-manual/config.html">main configuration file</ulink>. Look for
1032 url="../user-manual/config.html#LISTEN-ADDRESS">listen-address</ulink></literal>
1033 option, which may be commented out with a <quote>#</quote> symbol. Make sure
1034 it is uncommented, and assign it the address of the LAN gateway interface,
1035 and port number to use. Assuming your LAN address is 192.168.1.1 and you
1036 wish to run <application>Privoxy</application> on port 8118, this line
1042 listen-address 192.168.1.1:8118</screen>
1046 Save the file, and restart <application>Privoxy</application>. Configure
1047 all browsers on the network then to use this address and port number.
1051 Alternately, you can have <application>Privoxy</application> listen on
1052 all available interfaces:
1057 listen-address :8118</screen>
1061 And then use <application>Privoxy's</application>
1063 url="../user-manual/config.html#PERMIT-ACCESS">permit-access</ulink>
1064 feature to limit connections. A firewall in this situation is recommended
1069 The above steps should be the same for any TCP network, regardless of
1074 If you run <application>Privoxy</application> on a LAN with untrusted users,
1075 we recommend that you double-check the <ulink
1076 url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCESS-CONTROL">access control and security</ulink>
1083 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1084 <title id="noseeum">Instead of ads, now I get a checkerboard pattern. I don't want to see anything.</title>
1086 The replacement for blocked images can be controlled with the <ulink
1087 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><literal>set-image-blocker</literal>
1088 action</ulink>. You have the choice of a checkerboard pattern, a transparent 1x1 GIF
1089 image (aka <quote>blank</quote>), or a redirect to a custom image of your choice.
1090 Note that this choice only has effect for images which are blocked as images, i.e.
1091 whose URLs match both a <literal><ulink
1092 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</ulink></literal>
1093 <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><ulink
1094 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">block</ulink></literal> action.
1097 If you want to see nothing, then change the <ulink
1098 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><literal>set-image-blocker</literal>
1099 action</ulink> to <quote>blank</quote>. This can be done by editing the
1100 <filename>user.action</filename> file, or through the <ulink
1101 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">web-based actions file editor</ulink>.
1106 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1107 <title id="whyseeum">Why would anybody want to see a checkerboard pattern?</title>
1109 Remember that <link linkend="whatsanad">telling which image is an ad and which
1110 isn't</link>, is an educated guess. While we hope that the standard configuration
1111 is rather smart, it will make occasional mistakes. The checkerboard image is visually
1112 decent, and it shows you where images have been blocked, which can be very
1113 helpful in case some navigation aid or otherwise innocent image was
1114 erroneously blocked. It is recommended for new users so they can
1115 <quote>see</quote> what is happening. Some people might also enjoy seeing how
1116 many banners they <emphasis>don't</emphasis> have to see.
1121 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1122 <title id="blockedbytext">I see some images being replaced with text
1123 instead of the checkerboard image. Why and how do I get rid of this?</title>
1125 This happens when the banners are not embedded in the HTML code of the
1126 page itself, but in separate HTML (sub)documents that are loaded into (i)frames
1127 or (i)layers, and these external HTML documents are blocked. Being non-images
1128 they get replaced by a substitute HTML page rather than a substitute image,
1129 which wouldn't work out technically, since the browser expects and accepts
1130 only HTML when it has requested an HTML document.
1133 The substitute page adapts to the available space and shows itself as a
1134 miniature two-liner if loaded into small frames, or full-blown with a
1135 large red "BLOCKED" banner if space allows.
1138 If you prefer the banners to be blocked by images, you must see to it that
1139 the HTML documents in which they are embedded are not blocked. Clicking
1140 the <quote>See why</quote> link offered in the substitute page will show
1141 you which rule blocked the page. After changing the rule and un-blocking
1142 the HTML documents, the browser will try to load the actual banner images
1143 and the usual image blocking will (hopefully!) kick in.
1148 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="srvany">
1149 <title>Can Privoxy run as a service
1150 on Win2K/NT/XP?</title>
1153 Yes. Version 3.0.5 introduces full <application>Windows</application> service
1154 functionality. See <ulink url="../user-manual/installation.html#installation-pack-win">
1155 the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle></ulink> for details on how to install and configure
1156 <application>Privoxy</application> as a service.
1159 Earlier ]]>3.x versions could run as a system service using <command>srvany.exe</command>.
1160 See the discussion at <ulink
1161 url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=361118&aid=485617&group_id=11118">http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=361118&aid=485617&group_id=11118</ulink>,
1162 for details, and a sample configuration.
1167 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="otherproxy">
1168 <title>How can I make Privoxy work with other proxies?</title>
1170 This can be done and is often useful to combine the benefits of
1171 <application>Privoxy</application> with those of a another proxy,
1172 for example to cache content.
1174 url="../user-manual/config.html#FORWARDING">forwarding chapter</ulink>
1175 in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User Manual</ulink> which
1176 describes how to do this. If you intend to use Privoxy with Tor,
1177 please also have a look at
1178 <link linkend="TOR">How do I use Privoxy together with Tor</link>.
1182 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="port-80">
1183 <title>Can I just set Privoxy to use port 80
1184 and thus avoid individual browser configuration?</title>
1187 No, its more complicated than that. This only works with special kinds
1188 of proxies known as <quote>intercepting</quote> proxies
1189 (<link linkend="INTERCEPTING">see below</link>).
1194 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="transparent">
1195 <title>Can Privoxy run as a <quote>transparent
1196 </quote> proxy?</title>
1198 The whole idea of Privoxy is to modify client requests
1199 and server responses in all sorts of ways and therefore
1200 it's not a transparent proxy as described in
1201 <ulink url="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616">RFC 2616</ulink>.
1204 However, some people say <quote>transparent proxy</quote> when they
1205 mean <quote>intercepting proxy</quote>. If you are one of them,
1206 please read the <link linkend="INTERCEPTING">next entry</link>.
1211 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="intercepting">
1212 <title>Can Privoxy run as a <quote>intercepting</quote> proxy?</title>
1214 <application>Privoxy</application> can't intercept traffic itself,
1215 but it can handle requests that where intercepted and redirected
1216 with a packet filter (like <application>PF</application> or
1217 <application>iptables</application>), as long as the <literal>Host</literal>
1221 As the <literal>Host</literal> header is required by HTTP/1.1 and as most
1222 web sites rely on it anyway, this limitation shouldn't be a problem.
1225 Please refer to your packet filter's documentation to learn how to
1226 intercept and redirect traffic into <application>Privoxy</application>.
1227 Afterward you just have to configure <application>Privoxy</application> to
1228 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCEPT-INTERCEPTED-REQUESTS">accept
1229 intercepted requests</ulink>.
1234 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="outlook">
1235 <title>How can I configure Privoxy for use with Outlook?</title>
1237 Versions of <application>Outlook</application> prior to Office 2007, use
1238 <application>Internet Explorer</application> components to both render HTML,
1239 and fetch any HTTP requests that may be embedded in an HTML email. So however
1240 you have <application>Privoxy</application> configured to work with IE, this
1241 configuration should automatically be shared, at least with older version of
1245 Starting with Office 2007, Microsoft is instead using the MS-Word rendering
1246 engine with Outlook. It is unknown whether this can be configured to use a
1248 <!-- FIXME HB 2009-02-15 -->
1252 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="outlook-more">
1253 <title>How can I have separate rules just for HTML mail?</title>
1255 The short answer is, you can't. <application>Privoxy</application> has no way
1256 of knowing which particular application makes a request, so there is no way to
1257 distinguish between web pages and HTML mail.
1258 <application>Privoxy</application> just blindly proxies all requests. In the
1259 case of <application>Outlook Express</application> (see above), OE uses
1260 IE anyway, and there is no way for <application>Privoxy</application> to ever
1261 be able to distinguish between them (nor could any other proxy type application for
1265 For a good discussion of some of the issues involved (including privacy and
1266 security issues), see
1267 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=211118&aid=629518&group_id=11118">http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=211118&aid=629518&group_id=11118</ulink>.
1271 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="sneaky-cookies">
1272 <title>I sometimes notice cookies sneaking through. How?</title>
1275 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">Cookies</ulink> can be
1276 set in several ways. The classic method is via the
1277 <literal>Set-Cookie</literal> HTTP header. This is straightforward, and an
1278 easy one to manipulate, such as the &my-app; concept of
1279 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</ulink>.
1280 There is also the possibility of using
1281 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript">Javascript</ulink> to
1282 set cookies (&my-app; calls these <literal>content-cookies</literal>). This
1283 is trickier because the syntax can vary widely, and thus requires a certain
1284 amount of guesswork. It is not realistic to catch all of these short of
1285 disabling Javascript, which would break many sites. And lastly, if the
1286 cookies are embedded in a HTTPS/SSL secure session via Javascript, they are beyond
1287 <application>Privoxy's</application> reach.
1290 All in all, &my-app; can help manage cookies in general, can help minimize
1291 the loss of privacy posed by cookies, but can't realistically stop all
1296 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="evil-cookies">
1297 <title>Are all cookies bad? Why?</title>
1299 No, in fact there are many beneficial uses of
1301 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>. Cookies are just a
1302 method that browsers can use to store data between pages, or between browser
1303 sessions. Sometimes there is a good reason for this, and the user's life is a
1304 bit easier as a result. But there is a long history of some websites taking
1305 advantage of this layer of trust, and using the data they glean from you and
1306 your browsing habits for their own purposes, and maybe to your potential
1307 detriment. Such sites are using you and storing their data on your system.
1308 That is why the privacy conscious watch from whom those cookies come, and why
1309 they really <emphasis>need</emphasis> to be there.
1313 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">Wikipedia cookie
1314 definition</ulink> for more.
1318 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="allow-cookies">
1319 <title>How can I allow permanent cookies for my trusted sites?</title>
1322 There are several actions that relate to cookies. The default behavior is to
1323 allow only <quote>session cookies</quote>, which means the cookies only last
1324 for the current browser session. This eliminates most kinds of abuse related
1325 to cookies. But there may be cases where you want cookies to last.
1328 To disable all cookie actions, so that cookies are allowed unrestricted,
1329 both in and out, for <literal>example.com</literal>:
1333 { -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies -session-cookies-only -filter{content-cookies} }
1334 .example.com</screen>
1337 Place the above in <filename>user.action</filename>. Note that some of these may
1338 be off by default anyway, so this might be redundant, but there is no harm
1339 being explicit in what you want to happen. <filename>user.action</filename>
1340 includes an alias for this situation, called
1341 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal>.
1345 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="multiples">
1346 <title>Can I have separate configurations for different users?</title>
1348 Each instance of <application>Privoxy</application> has its own
1349 configuration, including such attributes as the TCP port that it listens on.
1350 What you can do is run multiple instances of <application>Privoxy</application>, each with
1352 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#LISTEN-ADDRESS">listen-address</ulink>
1353 configuration setting, and configuration path, and then
1354 each of these can have their own configurations. Think of it as per-port
1358 Simple enough for a few users, but for large installations, consider having
1359 groups of users that might share like configurations.
1363 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whitelists">
1364 <title>Can I set-up Privoxy as a whitelist of
1365 <quote>good</quote> sites?</title>
1367 Sure. There are a couple of things you can do for simple white-listing.
1368 Here's one real easy one:
1371 ############################################################
1373 ############################################################
1374 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">+block</ulink> }
1375 / # Block *all* URLs
1377 ############################################################
1379 ############################################################
1380 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">-block</ulink> }
1383 games.example.com</screen>
1385 This allows access to only those three sites by first blocking all URLs, and
1386 then subsequently allowing three specific exceptions.
1389 Another approach is <application>Privoxy's</application>
1390 <literal>trustfile</literal> concept, which incorporates the notion of
1391 <quote>trusted referrers</quote>. See the <ulink
1392 url="../user-manual/config.html#TRUSTFILE">Trust documentation</ulink>
1396 These are fairly simple approaches and are not completely foolproof. There
1397 are various other configuration options that should be disabled (described
1398 elsewhere here and in <ulink url="../user-manual/">the User Manual</ulink>)
1399 so that users can't modify their own configuration and easily circumvent the
1404 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="no-adblock">
1405 <title>How can I turn off ad-blocking?</title>
1407 Ad blocking is achieved through a complex application of various &my-app;
1408 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">actions</ulink>. These
1409 actions are deployed against simple images, banners, flash animations,
1410 text pages, JavaScript, pop-ups and pop-unders, etc., so its not as simple as
1411 just turning one or two actions off. The various actions that make up
1412 &my-app; ad blocking are hard-coded into the default configuration files. It
1413 has been assumed that everyone using &my-app; is interested in this
1417 If you want to do without this, there are several approaches you can take:
1418 You can manually undo the many block rules in
1419 <filename>default.action</filename>. Or even easier, just create your own
1420 <filename>default.action</filename> file from scratch without the many ad
1421 blocking rules, and corresponding exceptions. Or lastly, if you are not
1422 concerned about the additional blocks that are done for privacy reasons, you
1423 can very easily over-ride <emphasis>all</emphasis> blocking with the
1424 following very simple rule in your <filename>user.action</filename>:
1428 # Unblock everybody, everywhere
1429 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">-block</ulink> }
1430 / # UN-Block *all* URLs</screen>
1433 Or even a more comprehensive reversing of various ad related actions:
1437 # Unblock everybody, everywhere, and turn off appropriate filtering, etc
1438 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">-block</ulink> \
1439 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE">-filter{banners-by-size}</ulink> \
1440 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER-BANNERS-BY-LINK">-filter{banners-by-link}</ulink> \
1441 <literal>allow-popups</literal> \
1443 / # UN-Block *all* URLs and allow ads</screen>
1446 This last <quote>action</quote> in this compound statement,
1447 <literal>allow-popups</literal>, is an <ulink
1448 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ALIASES">alias</ulink> that disables
1449 various pop-up blocking features.
1453 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="templates">
1454 <title>How can I have custom template pages, like the
1455 <emphasis>BLOCKED</emphasis> page?</title>
1457 &my-app; <quote>templates</quote> are specialized text files utilized by
1458 &my-app; for various purposes and can easily be modified using any text
1459 editor. All the template pages are installed in a sub-directory appropriately
1460 named: <filename>templates</filename>. Knowing something about HTML syntax
1461 will of course be helpful.
1464 Be forewarned that the default templates are subject to being overwritten
1465 during upgrades. You can, however, create completely new templates,
1466 place them in another directory and specify the alternate path in the main
1467 <filename>config</filename>. For details, have a look at the <ulink
1468 url="../user-manual/config.html#templdir">templdir</ulink> option.
1472 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="blockall">
1473 <title>How can I remove the <quote>Go There Anyway</quote> link from
1474 the <emphasis>BLOCKED</emphasis> page?</title>
1476 There is more than one way to do it (although Perl is not involved).
1479 Editing the BLOCKED template page (see above) may dissuade some users, but
1480 this method is easily circumvented. Where you need this level of control, you
1481 might want to build &my-app; from source, and disable various features that are
1482 available as compile-time options. You should
1483 <command>configure</command> the sources as follows:
1487 ./configure --disable-toggle --disable-editor --disable-force</screen>
1490 This will create an executable with hard-coded security features so that
1491 &my-app; does not allow easy bypassing of blocked sites, or changing the
1492 current configuration via any connected user's web browser.
1495 Finally, all of these features can also be toggled on/off via options in
1496 <application>Privoxy's</application> main <ulink
1497 url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCESS-CONTROL">config</ulink> file which
1498 means you don't have to recompile anything.
1504 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1507 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1509 <sect1 id="misc"><title>Miscellaneous</title>
1511 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1512 <title id="slowsme">How much does Privoxy slow my browsing down? This
1513 has to add extra time to browsing.</title>
1515 How much of an impact depends on many things, including the CPU of the host
1516 system, how aggressive the configuration is, which specific actions are being triggered,
1517 the size of the page, the bandwidth of the connection, etc.
1520 Overall, it should not slow you down any in real terms, and may actually help
1521 speed things up since ads, banners and other junk are not typically being
1522 retrieved and displayed. The actual processing time required by
1523 <application>Privoxy</application> itself for each page, is relatively small
1524 in the overall scheme of things, and happens very quickly. This is typically
1525 more than offset by time saved not downloading and rendering ad images and
1526 other junk content (if ad blocking is being used).
1530 <quote>Filtering</quote> content via the <literal><ulink
1531 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER">filter</ulink></literal> or
1533 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</ulink></literal>
1534 actions may cause a perceived slowdown, since the entire document
1535 needs to be buffered before displaying. And on very large documents,
1536 filtering may have some measurable impact. How much depends on the page size,
1537 the actual definition of the filter(s), etc. See below. Most other actions
1538 have little to no impact on speed.
1541 Also, when filtering is enabled but zlib support isn't available, compression
1542 is often disabled (see <ulink
1543 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</ulink>).
1544 This can have an impact on speed as well, although it's probably smaller than
1545 you might think. Again, the page size, etc. will determine how much of an impact.
1551 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="loadingtimes"><title>I notice considerable
1552 delays in page requests. What's wrong?</title>
1554 If you use any <literal><ulink
1555 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER">filter</ulink></literal> action,
1556 such as filtering banners by size, web-bugs etc, or the <literal><ulink
1557 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</ulink></literal>
1558 action, the entire document must be loaded into memory in order for the filtering
1559 mechanism to work, and nothing is sent to the browser during this time.
1562 The loading time typically does not really change much in real numbers, but
1563 the feeling is different, because most browsers are able to start rendering
1564 incomplete content, giving the user a feeling of "it works". This effect is
1565 more noticeable on slower dialup connections. Extremely large documents
1566 may have some impact on the time to load the page where there is filtering
1567 being done. But overall, the difference should be very minimal. If there is a
1568 big impact, then probably some other situation is contributing (like
1569 anti-virus software).
1572 Filtering is automatically disabled for inappropriate MIME types. But note
1573 that if the web server mis-reports the MIME type, then content that should
1574 not be filtered, could be. <application>Privoxy</application> only knows how
1575 to differentiate filterable content because of the MIME type as reported by
1576 the server, or because of some configuration setting that enables/disables
1581 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="configurl"><title>What are "http://config.privoxy.org/" and
1582 "http://p.p/"?</title>
1584 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink> is the
1585 address of <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in user interface, and
1586 <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> is a shortcut for it.
1589 Since <application>Privoxy</application> sits between your web browser and the Internet,
1590 it can simply intercept requests for these addresses and answer them with its built-in
1591 <quote>web server</quote>.
1594 This also makes for a good test for your browser configuration: If entering the
1595 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1596 takes you to a page saying <quote>This is Privoxy ...</quote>, everything is OK.
1597 If you get a page saying <quote>Privoxy is not working</quote> instead, then
1598 your browser didn't use <application>Privoxy</application> for the request,
1599 hence it could not be intercepted, and you have accessed the <emphasis>real</emphasis>
1600 web site at config.privoxy.org.
1606 out of date 09/02/06 HB
1607 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="blocklist"><title>Do you still maintain the blocklists?</title>
1609 No. The patterns for blocking now reside (among other things) in the <ulink
1610 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">actions files</ulink>, which are
1611 actively maintained instead. See next question ...
1615 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newads"><title>How can I submit new ads, or report
1618 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> for
1619 various ways to interact with the developers.
1624 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newads2"><title>If I do submit missed ads, will
1625 they be included in future updates?</title>
1627 Whether such submissions are eventually included in the
1628 <filename>default.action</filename> configuration file depends on how
1629 significant the issue is. We of course want to address any potential
1630 problem with major, high-profile sites such as <citetitle>Google</citetitle>,
1631 <citetitle>Yahoo</citetitle>, etc. Any site with global or regional reach,
1632 has a good chance of being a candidate. But at the other end of the spectrum
1633 are any number of smaller, low-profile sites such as for local clubs or
1634 schools. Since their reach and impact are much less, they are best handled by
1635 inclusion in the user's <filename>user.action</filename>, and thus would be
1636 unlikely to be included.
1642 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="noonecares"><title>Why doesn't anyone answer my support
1645 Rest assured that it has been read and considered. Why it is not answered,
1646 could be for various reasons, including no one has a good answer for it, no
1647 one has had time to yet investigate it thoroughly, it has been reported
1648 numerous times already, or because not enough information was provided to help
1649 us help you. Your efforts are not wasted, and we do appreciate them.
1655 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="ip"><title>How can I hide my IP address?</title>
1657 If you run both the browser and &my-app; locally, you cannot hide your IP
1658 address with <application>Privoxy</application> or ultimately any other
1659 software alone. The server needs to know your IP address so that it knows
1660 where to send the responses back.
1663 There are many publicly usable "anonymous" proxies out there, which
1664 provide a further level of indirection between you and the web server.
1667 However, these proxies are called "anonymous" because you don't need
1668 to authenticate, not because they would offer any real anonymity.
1669 Most of them will log your IP address and make it available to the
1670 authorities in case you violate the law of the country they run in. In fact
1671 you can't even rule out that some of them only exist to *collect* information
1672 on (those suspicious) people with a more than average preference for privacy.
1675 If you want to hide your IP address from most adversaries,
1676 you should consider chaining <application>Privoxy</application>
1677 with <ulink url="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</ulink>.
1678 The configuration details can be found in
1679 <ulink url="#TOR">How do I use <application>Privoxy</application> together
1680 with <application>Tor</application> section</ulink>
1685 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1686 <title id="anonforsure">Can Privoxy guarantee I am anonymous?</title>
1688 No. Your chances of remaining anonymous are improved, but unless you
1689 <ulink url="#TOR">chain <application>Privoxy</application> with <application>Tor</application></ulink>
1690 or a similar proxy and know what you're doing when it comes to configuring
1691 the rest of your system, you should assume that everything you do
1692 on the Web can be traced back to you.
1695 <application>Privoxy</application> can remove various information about you,
1696 and allows <emphasis>you</emphasis> more freedom to decide which sites
1697 you can trust, and what details you want to reveal. But it neither
1698 hides your IP address, nor can it guarantee that the rest of the system
1699 behaves correctly. There are several possibilities how a web sites can find
1700 out who you are, even if you are using a strict <application>Privoxy</application>
1701 configuration and chained it with <application>Tor</application>.
1704 Most of <application>Privoxy's</application> privacy-enhancing features can be easily subverted
1705 by an insecure browser configuration, therefore you should use a browser that can
1706 be configured to only execute code from trusted sites, and be careful which sites you trust.
1707 For example there is no point in having <application>Privoxy</application>
1708 modify the User-Agent header, if websites can get all the information they want
1709 through JavaScript, ActiveX, Flash, Java etc.
1712 A few browsers disclose the user's email address in certain situations, such
1713 as when transferring a file by FTP. <application>Privoxy</application>
1714 does not filter FTP. If you need this feature, or are concerned about the
1715 mail handler of your browser disclosing your email address, you might
1716 consider products such as <application>NSClean</application>.
1719 Browsers available only as binaries could use non-standard headers to give
1720 out any information they can have access to: see the manufacturer's license
1721 agreement. It's impossible to anticipate and prevent every breach of privacy
1722 that might occur. The professionally paranoid prefer browsers available as
1723 source code, because anticipating their behavior is easier. Trust the source,
1729 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1730 <title id="proxytest">A test site says I am not using a Proxy.</title>
1732 Good! Actually, they are probably testing for some other kinds of proxies.
1733 Hiding yourself completely would require additional steps.
1737 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="tor"><title>How do I use Privoxy
1738 together with Tor?</title>
1740 Before you configure <application>Privoxy</application> to use
1741 <ulink url="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</ulink>,
1742 please follow the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> chapters
1743 <ulink url="../user-manual/installation.html">2. Installation</ulink> and
1744 <ulink url="../user-manual/startup.html">5. Startup</ulink> to make sure
1745 <application>Privoxy</application> itself is setup correctly.
1748 If it is, refer to <ulink url="https://www.torproject.org/documentation.html">Tor's
1749 extensive documentation</ulink> to learn how to install <application>Tor</application>,
1750 and make sure <application>Tor</application>'s logfile says that
1751 <quote>Tor has successfully opened a circuit</quote> and it
1752 <quote>looks like client functionality is working</quote>.
1755 If either <application>Tor</application> or <application>Privoxy</application>
1756 isn't working, their combination most likely will neither. Testing them on their
1757 own will also help you to direct problem reports to the right audience.
1758 If <application>Privoxy</application> isn't working, don't bother the
1759 <application>Tor</application> developers. If <application>Tor</application>
1760 isn't working, don't send bug reports to the <application>Privoxy</application> Team.
1763 If you verified that <application>Privoxy</application> and <application>Tor</application>
1764 are working, it is time to connect them. As far as <application>Privoxy</application>
1765 is concerned, <application>Tor</application> is just another proxy that can be reached
1766 by socks4, socks4a and socks5. Most likely you are interested in <application>Tor</application>
1767 to increase your anonymity level, therefore you should use socks5, to make sure DNS
1768 requests are done through <application>Tor</application> and thus invisible to your
1769 local network. Using socks4a would work too, but with socks5 you get more precise error
1775 Since <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.5, its
1776 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html">main configuration file</ulink>
1777 is already prepared for <application>Tor</application>, if you are using a
1778 default <application>Tor</application> configuration and run it on the same
1779 system as &my-app;, you just have to edit the
1780 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#FORWARDING">forwarding section</ulink>
1781 and uncomment the line:
1785 # forward-socks5 / 127.0.0.1:9050 .
1789 This is enough to reach the Internet, but additionally you might want to
1790 uncomment the following forward rules, to make sure your local network is still
1791 reachable through Privoxy:
1795 # forward 192.168.*.*/ .
1796 # forward 10.*.*.*/ .
1797 # forward 127.*.*.*/ .
1801 Unencrypted connections to systems in these address ranges will
1802 be as (un)secure as the local network is, but the alternative is
1803 that your browser can't reach the network at all. Then again,
1804 that may actually be desired and if you don't know for sure
1805 that your browser has to be able to reach the local network,
1806 there's no reason to allow it.
1809 If you want your browser to be able to reach servers in your local
1810 network by using their names, you will need additional exceptions
1811 that look like this:
1815 # forward localhost/ .
1819 Save the modified configuration file and open
1820 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status/</ulink>
1821 in your browser, confirm that <application>Privoxy</application> has reloaded its configuration
1822 and that there are no other forward lines, unless you know that you need them. If everything looks good,
1824 <ulink url="https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#IsMyConnectionPrivate">Tor
1825 Faq 4.2</ulink> to learn how to verify that you are really using <application>Tor</application>.
1828 Afterward, please take the time to at least skim through the rest
1829 of <application>Tor's</application> documentation. Make sure you understand
1830 what <application>Tor</application> does, why it is no replacement for
1831 application level security, and why you probably don't want to
1832 use it for unencrypted logins.
1836 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1837 <title id="sitebreak">Might some things break because header information or
1838 content is being altered?</title>
1841 Definitely. It is common for sites to use browser type, browser version,
1842 HTTP header content, and various other techniques in order to dynamically
1843 decide what to display and how to display it. What you see, and what I see,
1844 might be very different. There are many, many ways that this can be handled,
1845 so having hard and fast rules, is tricky.
1849 The <quote>User-Agent</quote> is sometimes used in this way to identify
1850 the browser, and adjust content accordingly.
1854 Also, different browsers use different encodings of non-English
1855 characters, certain web servers convert pages on-the-fly according to the
1856 User Agent header. Giving a <quote>User Agent</quote> with the wrong
1857 operating system or browser manufacturer causes some sites in these languages
1858 to be garbled; Surfers to Eastern European sites should change it to
1859 something closer. And then some page access counters work by looking at the
1860 <quote>Referer</quote> header; they may fail or break if unavailable. The
1861 weather maps of Intellicast have been blocked by their server when no
1862 <quote>Referer</quote> or cookie is provided, is another example. (But you
1863 can forge both headers without giving information away). There are
1864 many other ways things can go wrong when trying to fool a web server. The
1865 results of which could inadvertently cause pages to load incorrectly,
1866 partially, or even not at all. And there may be no obvious clues as to just
1867 what went wrong, or why. Nowhere will there be a message that says
1868 <quote><emphasis>Turn off <literal>fast-redirects</literal> or else!</emphasis>
1873 Similar thoughts apply to modifying JavaScript, and, to a lesser degree,
1878 If you have problems with a site, you will have to adjust your configuration
1879 accordingly. Cookies are probably the most likely adjustment that may
1880 be required, but by no means the only one.
1886 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1887 <title id="caching">Can Privoxy act as a <quote>caching</quote> proxy to
1888 speed up web browsing?</title>
1890 No, it does not have this ability at all. You want something like
1891 <ulink url="http://www.squid-cache.org/">Squid</ulink> or
1892 <ulink url="http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/polipo/">Polipo</ulink> for this.
1893 And, yes, before you ask, <application>Privoxy</application> can co-exist
1894 with other kinds of proxies like <application>Squid</application>.
1895 See the <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#FORWARDING">forwarding
1896 chapter</ulink> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">user
1897 manual</ulink> for details.
1901 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1902 <title id="firewall">What about as a firewall? Can Privoxy protect me?</title>
1904 Not in the way you mean, or in the way some firewall vendors claim they can.
1905 <application>Privoxy</application> can help protect your privacy, but can't
1906 protect your system from intrusion attempts. It is, of course, perfectly possible
1907 to use <emphasis>both</emphasis>.
1911 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1912 <title id="wasted">I have large empty spaces / a checkerboard pattern now where
1913 ads used to be. Why?</title>
1915 It is technically possible to eliminate banners and ads in a way that frees
1916 their allocated page space. This could easily be done by blocking with
1917 <application>Privoxy's</application> filters,
1918 and eliminating the <emphasis>entire</emphasis> image references from the
1922 But, this would consume considerably more CPU resources (IOW, slow things
1923 down), would likely destroy the layout of some web pages which rely on the
1924 banners utilizing a certain amount of page space, and might fail in other
1925 cases, where the screen space is reserved (e.g. by HTML tables for instance).
1926 Also, making ads and banners disappear without any trace complicates
1927 troubleshooting, and would sooner or later be problematic.
1930 The better alternative is to instead let them stay, and block the resulting
1931 requests for the banners themselves as is now the case. This leaves either
1932 empty space, or the familiar checkerboard pattern.
1935 So the developers won't support this in the default configuration, but you
1936 can of course define appropriate filters yourself to achieve this.
1940 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1941 <title id="ssl">How can Privoxy filter Secure (HTTPS) URLs?</title>
1943 Since secure HTTP connections are encrypted SSL sessions between your browser
1944 and the secure site, and are meant to be reliably <emphasis>secure</emphasis>,
1945 there is little that <application>Privoxy</application> can do but hand the raw
1946 gibberish data though from one end to the other unprocessed.
1949 The only exception to this is blocking by host patterns, as the client needs
1950 to tell <application>Privoxy</application> the name of the remote server,
1951 so that <application>Privoxy</application> can establish the connection.
1952 If that name matches a host-only pattern, the connection will be blocked.
1955 As far as ad blocking is concerned, this is less of a restriction than it may
1956 seem, since ad sources are often identifiable by the host name, and often
1957 the banners to be placed in an encrypted page come unencrypted nonetheless
1958 for efficiency reasons, which exposes them to the full power of
1959 <application>Privoxy</application>'s ad blocking.
1962 <quote>Content cookies</quote> (those that are embedded in the actual HTML or
1963 JS page content, see <literal><ulink
1964 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</ulink></literal>),
1965 in an SSL transaction will be impossible to block under these conditions.
1966 Fortunately, this does not seem to be a very common scenario since most
1967 cookies come by traditional means.
1972 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1973 <title id="secure">Privoxy runs as a <quote>server</quote>. How
1974 secure is it? Do I need to take any special precautions?</title>
1976 On Unix-like systems, <application>Privoxy</application> can run as a non-privileged
1977 user, which is how we recommend it be run. Also, by default
1978 <application>Privoxy</application> listens to requests from <quote>localhost</quote>
1982 The server aspect of <application>Privoxy</application> is not itself directly
1983 exposed to the Internet in this configuration. If you want to have
1984 <application>Privoxy</application> serve as a LAN proxy, this will have to
1985 be opened up to allow for LAN requests. In this case, we'd recommend
1986 you specify only the LAN gateway address, e.g. 192.168.1.1, in the main
1987 <application>Privoxy</application> configuration file and check all <ulink
1988 url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCESS-CONTROL">access control and security
1989 options</ulink>. All LAN hosts can then use this as their proxy address
1990 in the browser proxy configuration, but <application>Privoxy</application>
1991 will not listen on any external interfaces. ACLs can be defined in addition,
1992 and using a firewall is always good too. Better safe than sorry.
1997 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="turnoff">
1998 <title>Can I temporarily disable Privoxy?</title>
2000 &my-app; doesn't have a transparent proxy mode,
2001 but you can toggle off blocking and content filtering.
2004 The easiest way to do that is to point your browser
2005 to the remote toggle URL: <ulink
2006 url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>.
2009 See the <ulink url="../user-manual/appendix.html#BOOKMARKLETS">Bookmarklets section</ulink>
2010 of the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> for an easy way to access this
2011 feature. Note that this is a feature that may need to be enabled in the main
2012 <filename>config</filename> file.
2017 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="reallyoff">
2018 <title>When <quote>disabled</quote> is Privoxy totally
2019 out of the picture?</title>
2021 No, this just means all optional filtering and actions are disabled.
2022 <application>Privoxy</application> is still acting as a proxy, but just
2023 doing less of the things that <application>Privoxy</application> would
2024 normally be expected to do. It is still a <quote>middle-man</quote> in
2025 the interaction between your browser and web sites. See below to bypass
2030 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="turnoff2">
2031 <title>How can I tell Privoxy to totally ignore certain sites?</title>
2033 Bypassing a proxy, or proxying based on arbitrary criteria, is purely a browser
2034 configuration issue, not a &my-app; issue. Modern browsers typically do have
2035 settings for not proxying certain sites. Check your browser's help files.
2040 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="crunch">
2041 <title>My logs show Privoxy <quote>crunches</quote>
2042 ads, but also its own internal CGI pages. What is a <quote>crunch</quote>?</title>
2044 A <quote>crunch</quote> simply means <application>Privoxy</application> intercepted
2045 <emphasis>something</emphasis>, nothing more. Often this is indeed ads or
2046 banners, but <application>Privoxy</application> uses the same mechanism for
2047 trapping requests for its own internal pages. For instance, a request for
2048 <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration page at: <ulink
2049 url="http://config.privoxy.org">http://config.privoxy.org</ulink>, is
2050 intercepted (i.e. it does not go out to the 'net), and the familiar CGI
2051 configuration is returned to the browser, and the log consequently will show
2052 a <quote>crunch</quote>.
2055 Since version 3.0.7, Privoxy will also log the crunch reason.
2056 If you are using an older version you might want to upgrade.
2060 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="downloads">
2061 <title>Can Privoxy effect files that I download
2062 from a webserver? FTP server?</title>
2064 From the webserver's perspective, there is no difference between
2065 viewing a document (i.e. a page), and downloading a file. The same is true of
2066 <application>Privoxy</application>. If there is a match for a <literal><ulink
2067 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">block</ulink></literal> pattern,
2068 it will still be blocked, and of course this is obvious.
2071 Filtering is potentially more of a concern since the results are not always
2072 so obvious, and the effects of filtering are there whether the file is simply
2073 viewed, or downloaded. And potentially whether the content is some obnoxious
2074 advertisement, or Mr. Jimmy's latest/greatest source code jewel. Of course,
2075 one of these presumably is <quote>bad</quote> content that we don't want, and
2076 the other is <quote>good</quote> content that we do want.
2077 <application>Privoxy</application> is blind to the differences, and can only
2078 distinguish <quote>good from bad</quote> by the configuration parameters
2079 <emphasis>we</emphasis> give it.
2082 <application>Privoxy</application> knows the differences in files according
2083 to the <quote>Content Type</quote> as reported by the webserver. If this is
2084 reported accurately (e.g. <quote>application/zip</quote> for a zip archive),
2085 then <application>Privoxy</application> knows to ignore these where
2086 appropriate. <application>Privoxy</application> potentially can filter HTML
2087 as well as plain text documents, subject to configuration parameters of
2088 course. Also, documents that are of an unknown type (generally assumed to be
2089 <quote>text/plain</quote>) can be filtered, as will those that might be
2090 incorrectly reported by the webserver. If such a file is a downloaded file
2091 that is intended to be saved to disk, then any content that might have been
2092 altered by filtering, will be saved too, for these (probably rare) cases.
2095 Note that versions later than 3.0.2 do NOT filter document types reported as
2096 <quote>text/plain</quote>. Prior to this, <application>Privoxy</application>
2097 did filter this document type.
2100 In short, filtering is <quote>ON</quote> if a) the content type as reported
2101 by the webserver is appropriate <emphasis>and</emphasis> b) the configuration
2102 allows it (or at least does not disallow it). That's it. There is no magic
2103 cookie anywhere to say this is <quote>good</quote> and this is
2104 <quote>bad</quote>. It's the configuration that lets it all happen or not.
2107 If you download text files, you probably do not want these to be filtered,
2108 particularly if the content is source code, or other critical content. Source
2109 code sometimes might be mistaken for Javascript (i.e. the kind that might
2110 open a pop-up window). It is recommended to turn off filtering for download
2111 sites (particularly if the content may be plain text files and you are using
2112 version 3.0.2 or earlier) in your <filename>user.action</filename> file. And
2113 also, for any site or page where making <emphasis>any</emphasis> changes at
2114 all to the content is to be avoided.
2117 <application>Privoxy</application> does not do FTP at all, only HTTP
2118 and HTTPS (SSL) protocols.
2122 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="downloads2">
2123 <title>I just downloaded a Perl script, and Privoxy
2124 altered it! Yikes, what is wrong!</title>
2130 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="hostsfile">
2131 <title>Should I continue to use a <quote>HOSTS</quote> file for ad-blocking?</title>
2133 One time-tested technique to defeat common ads is to trick the local DNS
2134 system by giving a phony IP address for the ad generator in the local
2135 <filename>HOSTS</filename> file, typically using <literal>127.0.0.1</literal>, aka
2136 <literal>localhost</literal>. This effectively blocks the ad.
2139 There is no reason to use this technique in conjunction with
2140 <application>Privoxy</application>. <application>Privoxy</application>
2141 does essentially the same thing, much more elegantly and with much more
2142 flexibility. A large <filename>HOSTS</filename> file, in fact, not only
2143 duplicates effort, but may get in the way and seriously slow down your system.
2144 It is recommended to remove such entries from your <filename>HOSTS</filename> file. If you think
2145 your hosts list is neglected by <application>Privoxy's </application>
2146 configuration, consider adding your list to your <filename>user.action</filename> file:
2153 ads.galore.example.com
2154 etc.example.com</screen>
2158 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="seealso">
2159 <title>Where can I find more information about Privoxy
2160 and related issues?</title>
2161 <!-- Include seealso.sgml boilerplate: -->
2163 <!-- end boilerplate -->
2168 <ulink url="../user-manual/seealso.html">user-manual</ulink> for
2174 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="microsuck">
2175 <title>I've noticed that Privoxy changes <quote>Microsoft</quote> to
2176 <quote>MicroSuck</quote>! Why are you manipulating my browsing?</title>
2179 We're not. The text substitutions that you are seeing are disabled
2180 in the default configuration as shipped. You have either manually
2181 activated the <quote><literal>fun</literal></quote> filter which
2182 is clearly labeled <quote>Text replacements for subversive browsing
2183 fun!</quote> or you are using an older Privoxy version and have implicitly
2184 activated it by choosing the <quote>Advanced</quote> profile in the
2185 web-based editor. Please upgrade.
2189 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="valid">
2190 <title>Does Privoxy produce <quote>valid</quote> HTML (or XHTML)?</title>
2193 Privoxy generates HTML in both its own <quote>templates</quote>, and possibly
2194 whenever there are text substitutions via a &my-app; filter. While this
2195 should always conform to the HTML 4.01 specifications, it has not been
2196 validated against this or any other standard.
2200 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="surprise-privoxy">
2201 <title>How did you manage to get Privoxy on my computer without my consent?</title>
2204 We didn't. We make Privoxy available for download, but we don't go
2205 around installing it on other people's systems behind their back.
2206 If you discover Privoxy running on your system and are sure you didn't
2207 install it yourself, somebody else did. You may not even be running
2208 the real Privoxy, but maybe something else that only pretends to be
2209 Privoxy, or maybe something that is based on the real Privoxy,
2210 but has been modified.
2213 Lately there have been reports of problems with some kind of
2214 Privoxy versions that come preinstalled on some Netbooks.
2215 Some of the problems described are inconsistent with the behaviour
2216 of official Privoxy versions, which suggests that the preinstalled
2217 software may contain vendor modifications that we don't know about
2218 and thus can't debug.
2221 Privoxy's <link linkend="copyright">license</link> allows vendor
2222 modifications, but the vendor has to comply with the license,
2223 which involves informing the user about the changes and to make
2224 the changes available under the same license as Privoxy itself.
2227 If you are having trouble with a modified Privoxy version,
2228 please try to talk to whoever made the modifications before
2229 reporting the problem to us. Please also try to convince
2230 whoever made the modifications to talk to us. If you think
2231 somebody gave you a modified Privoxy version without complying
2232 to the license, please let us know.
2240 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2242 <sect1 id="trouble">
2243 <title>Troubleshooting</title>
2245 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
2246 <title id="refused">I cannot connect to any websites. Or, I am getting
2247 <quote>connection refused</quote> message with every web page. Why?</title>
2249 There are several possibilities:
2254 <application>Privoxy</application> is not running. Solution: verify
2255 that &my-app; is installed correctly, has not crashed, and is indeed running.
2256 Turn on <application>Privoxy's</application> logging, and look at the logs to see what they say.
2258 <listitem><para>Or your browser is configured for a different port than what
2259 <application>Privoxy</application> is using. Solution: verify that &my-app;
2260 and your browser are set to the same port (<literal>listen-address</literal>).
2262 <listitem><para>Or if using a forwarding rule, you have a configuration problem or a
2263 problem with a host in the forwarding chain. Solution: temporarily alter your
2264 configuration and take the forwarders out of the equation.
2267 Or you have a firewall that is interfering and blocking you. Solution:
2268 try disabling or removing the firewall as a simple test.
2275 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2276 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="error503">
2277 <title>Why am I getting a 503 Error (WSAECONNREFUSED) on every page?</title>
2279 More than likely this is a problem with your TCP/IP networking. ZoneAlarm has
2280 been reported to cause this symptom -- even if not running! The solution is
2281 to either fight the ZA configuration, or uninstall ZoneAlarm, and then find
2282 something better behaved in its place. Other personal firewall type products
2283 may cause similar type problems if not configured correctly.
2287 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
2288 <title id="flushit">I just added a new rule, but the steenkin ad is
2289 still getting through. How?</title>
2291 If the ad had been displayed before you added its URL, it will probably be
2292 held in the browser's cache for some time, so it will be displayed without
2293 the need for any request to the server, and <application>Privoxy</application>
2294 will not be involved. Flush the browser's caches, and then try again.
2298 If this doesn't help, you probably have an error in the rule you
2299 applied. Try pasting the full URL of the offending ad into <ulink
2300 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
2301 and see if it really matches your new rule. Blocking ads is like blocking
2302 spam: a lot of tinkering is required to stay ahead of the game. And
2303 remember you need to block the URL of the ad in question, which may be
2304 entirely different from the site URL itself. Most ads are hosted on different
2305 servers than the main site itself. If you right-click on the ad, you should
2306 be able to get all the relevant information you need. Alternately, you can
2307 find the correct URL by looking at <application>Privoxy's</application> logs
2308 (you may need to enable logging in the main config file if its disabled).
2311 Below is a slightly modified real-life log snippet that originates with one
2312 requested URL: <literal>www.example.com</literal> (name of site was changed
2313 for this example, the number of requests is real). You can see in this the
2314 complexity of what goes into making up this one <quote>page</quote>. There
2315 are eight different domains involved here, with thirty two separate URLs
2316 requested in all, making up all manner of images, Shockwave Flash,
2317 JavaScript, CSS stylesheets, scripts, and other related content. Some of this
2318 content is obviously <quote>good</quote> or <quote>bad</quote>, but not all.
2319 Many of the more questionable looking requests, are going to outside domains
2320 that seem to be identifying themselves with suspicious looking names, making
2321 our job a little easier. &my-app; has <quote>crunched</quote> (meaning caught
2322 and BLOCKED) quite a few items in this example, but perhaps missed a few as well.
2327 Request: www.example.com/
2328 Request: www.example.com/favicon.ico
2329 Request: img.example.com/main.css
2330 Request: img.example.com/sr.js
2331 Request: example.betamarker.com/example.html
2332 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/bestsellers/skyscraper.php?likref=BSellers
2333 Request: img.example.com/pb.png
2334 Request: www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js crunch! (Blocked)
2335 Request: www.advertising-department.com/ats/switch.ps.php?26856 crunch! (Blocked)
2336 Request: img.example.com/p.gif
2337 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/assign.php?l=example&mode=behind crunch! (Blocked)
2338 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/scripts/popup.php?hid=5c3cf&tmpl=PBa.tmpl crunch! (Blocked)
2339 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/assign.php?l=example crunch! (Blocked)
2340 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/best_sellers.css
2341 Request: www.adtrak.net/adx.js crunch! (Blocked)
2342 Request: img.example.com/hbg.gif
2343 Request: img.example.com/example.jpg
2344 Request: img.example.com/mt.png
2345 Request: img.example.com/mm.png
2346 Request: img.example.com/mb.png
2347 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/scripts/popup.php?hid=a71b91fa5&tmpl=Ua.tmp crunch! (Blocked)
2348 Request: www.example.com/tracker.js
2349 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/lsi_head.gif
2350 Request: www.adtrak.net/adjs.php?n=020548130&what=zone:61 crunch! (Blocked)
2351 Request: www.adtrak.net/adjs.php?n=463594413&what=zone:58&source=Ua crunch! (Blocked)
2352 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/bottomani.swf
2353 Request: mmm.elitemediagroup.net/install.php?allowpop=no&popupmincook=0&allowsp2=1 crunch! (Blocked)
2354 Request: www.example.com/tracker.js?screen=1400x1050&win=962x693
2355 Request: www.adtrak.net/adlog.php?bannerid=1309&clientid=439&zoneid=61 crunch! (Blocked)
2356 Request: 66.70.21.80/scripts/click.php?hid=5c3cf599a9efd0320d26&si
2357 Request: 66.70.21.80/img/pixel.gif
2358 Request: www.adtrak.net/adlog.php?bannerid=1309&clientid=439&zoneid=58&source=Ua&block=86400 crunch! (Blocked)
2359 Request: 66.70.21.80/scripts/click.php?hid=a71b9f6504b0c5681fa5&si=Ua
2364 Despite 12 out of 32 requests being blocked, the page looked, and seemed to
2365 behave perfectly <quote>normal</quote> (minus some ads, of course).
2370 <sect2 id="badsite" renderas="sect3">
2371 <title >One of my favorite sites does not work with Privoxy.
2372 What can I do?</title>
2375 First verify that it is indeed a <application>Privoxy</application> problem,
2376 by toggling off <application>Privoxy</application> through <ulink
2377 url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
2378 (the toggle feature may need to be enabled in the main
2379 <filename>config</filename>),
2380 and then shift-reloading the problem page (i.e. holding down the shift key
2381 while clicking reload. Alternatively, flush your browser's disk and memory
2386 If the problem went away, we know we have a configuration related problem.
2388 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
2389 and paste the full URL of the page in question into the prompt. See which
2390 actions are being applied to the URL, and which matches in which actions
2391 files are responsible for that. It might be helpful also to look at your logs
2392 for this site too, to see what else might be happening (note: logging may need
2393 to be enabled in the main config file). Many sites are
2394 complex and require a number of related pages to help present their content.
2395 Look at what else might be used by the page in question, and what of that
2396 might be <emphasis>required</emphasis>.
2397 Now, armed with this information, go to
2399 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
2400 and select the appropriate actions files for editing. </para>
2402 You can now either look for a section which disables the actions that
2403 you suspect to cause the problem and add a pattern for your site there,
2404 or make up a completely new section for your site. In any case, the recommended
2405 way is to disable only the prime suspect, reload the problem page, and only
2406 if the problem persists, disable more and more actions until you have
2407 identified the culprit. You may or may not want to turn the other actions
2408 on again. Remember to flush your browser's caches in between any such changes!
2411 Alternately, if you are comfortable with a text editor, you can accomplish
2412 the same thing by editing the appropriate actions file. Probably the easiest
2413 way to deal with such problems when editing by hand is to add your
2414 site to a <literal>{ fragile }</literal> section in <filename>user.action</filename>,
2415 which is an alias that turns off most <quote>dangerous</quote>
2416 actions, but is also likely to turn off more actions then needed, and thus lower
2417 your privacy and protection more than necessary,
2420 Troubleshooting actions is discussed in more detail in the <ulink
2421 url="../user-manual/appendix.html#ACTIONSANAT">User Manual appendix,
2422 Troubleshooting: the Anatomy of an Action</ulink>.
2423 There is also an <ulink
2424 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACT-EXAMPLES">actions tutorial</ulink>
2425 with general configuration information and examples.
2428 As a last resort, you can always see if your browser has a setting that will
2429 bypass the proxy setting for selective sites. Modern browsers can do this.
2435 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2436 <sect2 id="dun" renderas="sect3">
2437 <title>After installing Privoxy, I have to log in
2438 every time I start IE. What gives?</title>
2441 This is a quirk that effects the installation of
2442 <application>Privoxy</application>, in conjunction with Internet Explorer and
2443 Internet Connection Sharing on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The symptoms may
2444 appear to be corrupted or invalid DUN settings, or passwords.
2448 When setting up an NT based Windows system with
2449 <application>Privoxy</application> you may find that things do not seem to be
2450 doing what you expect. When you set your system up you will probably have set
2451 up Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) with Dial up Networking (DUN) when
2452 logged in with administrator privileges. You will probably have made this DUN
2453 connection available to other accounts that you may have set-up on your
2454 system. E.g. Mum or Dad sets up the system and makes accounts suitably
2455 configured for the kids.
2459 When setting up <application>Privoxy</application> in this environment you
2460 will have to alter the proxy set-up of Internet Explorer (IE) for the
2461 specific DUN connection on which you wish to use
2462 <application>Privoxy</application>. When you do this the ICS DUN set-up
2463 becomes user specific. In this instance you will see no difference if you
2464 change the DUN connection under the account used to set-up the connection.
2465 However when you do this from another user you will notice that the DUN
2466 connection changes to make available to "Me only". You will also find that
2467 you have to store the password under each different user!
2471 The reason for this is that each user's set-up for IE is user specific. Each
2472 set-up DUN connection and each LAN connection in IE store the settings for
2473 each user individually. As such this enforces individual configurations
2474 rather than common ones. Hence the first time you use a DUN connection after
2475 re-booting your system it may not perform as you expect, and prompt you for
2476 the password. Just set and save the password again and all should be OK.
2480 [Thanks to Ray Griffith for this submission.]
2485 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2486 <sect2 id="ftp" renderas="sect3">
2487 <title>I cannot connect to any FTP sites. Privoxy
2488 is blocking me.</title>
2490 <application>Privoxy</application> cannot act as a proxy for FTP traffic,
2491 so do not configure your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application>
2492 as an FTP proxy. The same is true for <emphasis>any protocol other than HTTP
2493 or HTTPS (SSL)</emphasis>.
2496 Most browsers understand FTP as well as HTTP. If you connect to a site, with
2497 a URL like <literal>ftp://ftp.example.com</literal>, your browser is making
2498 an FTP connection, and not a HTTP connection. So while your browser may
2499 speak FTP, <application>Privoxy</application> does not, and cannot proxy
2503 To complicate matters, some systems may have a generic <quote>proxy</quote>
2504 setting, which will enable various protocols, including
2505 <emphasis>both</emphasis> HTTP and FTP proxying! So it is possible to
2506 accidentally enable FTP proxying in these cases. And of course, if this
2507 happens, <application>Privoxy</application> will indeed cause problems since
2508 it does not know FTP. <![%p-newstuff;[Newer version will give a sane error
2509 message if a FTP connection is attempted.]]> Just disable the FTP setting
2510 and all will be well again.
2513 Will <application>Privoxy</application> ever proxy FTP traffic? Unlikely.
2514 There just is not much reason, and the work to make this happen is more than
2519 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2520 <sect2 id="macosxie" renderas="sect3">
2521 <title>In Mac OS X, I can't configure Microsoft Internet Explorer to use
2522 Privoxy as the HTTP proxy.</title>
2524 Microsoft Internet Explorer (in versions like 5.1) respects system-wide
2525 network settings. In order to change the HTTP proxy, open System
2526 Preferences, and click on the Network icon. In the settings pane that
2527 comes up, click on the Proxies tab. Ensure the "Web Proxy (HTTP)" checkbox
2528 is checked and enter <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> in the entry field.
2529 Enter <literal>8118</literal> in the Port field. The next time you start
2530 IE, it should reflect these values.
2534 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2535 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="macosxuninstall">
2536 <title>In Mac OS X, I dragged the Privoxy folder to the trash in order to
2537 uninstall it. Now the finder tells me I don't have sufficient privileges to
2538 empty the trash.</title>
2540 Note: This ONLY applies to privoxy 3.0.6 and earlier.
2543 Just dragging the <application>Privoxy</application> folder to the trash is
2544 not enough to delete it. <application>Privoxy</application> supplies an
2545 <application>uninstall.command</application> file that takes care of
2546 these details. Open the trash, drag the <application>uninstall.command</application>
2547 file out of the trash and double-click on it. You will be prompted for
2548 confirmation and the administration password.
2551 The trash may still appear full after this command; emptying the trash
2552 from the desktop should make it appear empty again.
2557 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2558 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="macosximages">
2559 <title>In Mac OS X Panther (10.3), images often fail to load and/or I
2560 experience random delays in page loading. I'm using
2561 <literal>localhost</literal> as my browser's proxy setting.</title>
2563 We believe this is due to an IPv6-related bug in Mac OS X, but don't fully
2564 understand the issue yet. In any case, changing the proxy setting to
2565 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> instead of <literal>localhost</literal>
2566 works around the problem.
2570 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2571 <!-- XXX: Is this still relevant now that we have gzip support? -->
2572 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="blankpage">
2573 <title>I get a completely blank page at one site. <quote>View Source</quote>
2574 shows only: <markup><![CDATA[<html><body></body></html>]]></markup>. Without
2575 Privoxy the page loads fine.</title>
2577 Chances are that the site suffers from a bug in
2578 <ulink url="http://www.php.net/"><application>PHP</application></ulink>,
2579 which results in empty pages being sent if the client explicitly requests
2580 an uncompressed page, like <application>Privoxy</application> does.
2581 This bug has been fixed in PHP 4.2.3.
2584 To find out if this is in fact the source of the problem, try adding
2585 the site to a <literal>-prevent-compression</literal> section in
2586 <filename>user.action</filename>:
2589 # Make exceptions for ill-behaved sites:
2591 {-prevent-compression}
2592 .example.com</screen>
2594 If that works, you may also want to report the problem to the
2595 site's webmasters, telling them to use zlib.output_compression
2596 instead of ob_gzhandler in their PHP applications (workaround)
2597 or upgrade to PHP 4.2.3 or later (fix).
2601 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="nohostname">
2602 <title>My logs show many <quote>Unable to get my own hostname</quote> lines.
2605 <application>Privoxy</application> tries to get the hostname of the system
2606 its running on from the IP address of the system interface it is bound to
2607 (from the <filename>config</filename> file
2608 <emphasis>listen-address</emphasis> setting). If the system cannot supply
2609 this information, <application>Privoxy</application> logs this condition.
2612 Typically, this would be considered a minor system configuration error. It is
2613 not a fatal error to <application>Privoxy</application> however, but may
2614 result in a much slower response from <application>Privoxy</application> on
2615 some platforms due to DNS timeouts.
2618 This can be caused by a problem with the local <filename>hosts</filename>
2619 file. If this file has been changed from the original, try reverting it to
2620 see if that helps. Make sure whatever name(s) are used for the local system,
2621 that they resolve both ways.
2624 You should also be able to work around the problem with the
2625 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#HOSTNAME">hostname option</ulink>.
2629 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="inuse">
2630 <title>When I try to launch Privoxy, I get an
2631 error message <quote>port 8118 is already in use</quote> (or similar wording).
2634 Port 8118 is <application>Privoxy's</application> default TCP
2635 <quote>listening</quote> port. Typically this message would mean that there
2636 is already one instance of <application>Privoxy</application> running, and
2637 your system is actually trying to start a second
2638 <application>Privoxy</application> on the same port, which will not work.
2639 (You can have multiple instances but they must be assigned different ports.)
2640 How and why this might happen varies from platform to platform, but you need
2641 to check your installation and start-up procedures.
2645 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="demoronizer">
2647 Pages with UTF-8 fonts are garbled.
2650 This is caused by the <quote>demoronizer</quote> filter. You should either
2651 upgrade <application>Privoxy</application>, or at least upgrade to the most
2652 recent <filename>default.action</filename> file available from <ulink
2653 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">SourceForge</ulink>.
2654 Or you can simply disable the demoronizer filter.
2658 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="demoronizer2">
2660 Why are binary files (such as images) corrupted when Privoxy
2664 This may also be caused by the <quote>demoronizer</quote> filter,
2665 in conjunction with a web server that is misreporting the content type. Binary
2666 files are exempted from <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering
2667 (unless the web server by mistake says the file is something else). Either
2668 upgrade <application>Privoxy</application>, or go to the most recent
2669 <filename>default.action</filename> file available from <ulink
2670 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">SourceForge</ulink>.
2674 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="demoronizer3">
2676 What is the <quote>demoronizer</quote> and why is it there?
2679 The original demoronizer was a Perl script that cleaned up HTML pages which
2680 were created with certain Microsoft products. MS has used proprietary extensions
2681 to standardized font encodings (ISO 8859-1), which has caused problems for pages
2682 that are viewed with non-Microsoft products (and are expecting to see a
2683 standard set of fonts). The demoronizer corrected these errors so the pages
2684 displayed correctly. <application>Privoxy</application> borrowed from this
2685 script, introducing a filter based on the original demoronizer, which in turn could
2686 correct these errors on the fly.
2689 But this is only needed in some situations, and will cause serious problems in some
2693 If you are using Microsoft products, you do not need it. If you need to view
2694 pages with UTF-8 characters (such as Cyrillic or Chinese), then it will
2695 cause corruption of the fonts, and thus <emphasis>should not be on</emphasis>.
2698 On the other hand, if you use non-Microsoft products, and you occasionally
2699 notice weird characters on pages, you might want to try it.
2703 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="windowopen">
2705 Why do I keep seeing <quote>PrivoxyWindowOpen()</quote> in raw source code?
2708 <application>Privoxy</application> is attempting to disable malicious
2709 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript">Javascript</ulink>
2710 in this case, with the <literal>unsolicited-popups</literal>
2711 filter. <application>Privoxy</application> cannot tell very well
2712 <quote>good</quote> code snippets from <quote>bad</quote> code snippets.
2715 If you see this in HTML source, and the page displays without problems, then
2716 this is good, and likely some pop-up window was disabled. If you see this
2717 where it is causing a problem, such as a downloaded program source code file,
2718 then you should set an exception for this site or page such that the
2719 integrity of the page stays in tact by disabling all filtering.
2723 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="dnserrors">
2725 I am getting too many DNS errors like <quote>404 No Such Domain</quote>. Why
2726 can't Privoxy do this better?
2729 There are potentially several factors here. First of all, the DNS resolution
2730 is done by the underlying operating system -- not
2731 <application>Privoxy</application> itself. <application>Privoxy</application>
2732 merely initiates the process and hands it off, and then later reports
2733 whatever the outcome was and tries to give a coherent message if there seems
2734 to be a problem. In some cases, this might otherwise be mitigated by the
2735 browser itself which might try some work-arounds and alternate approaches (e.g
2736 adding <quote>www.</quote> to the URL).
2739 In other cases, if <application>Privoxy</application> is being chained
2740 with another proxy, this could complicate the issue, and cause undue
2741 delays and timeouts. In the case of a <quote>socks4a</quote> proxy, the socks
2742 server handles all the DNS. <application>Privoxy</application> would just be
2743 the <quote>messenger</quote> which is reporting whatever problem occurred
2744 downstream, and not the root cause of the error.
2748 In any case, versions newer than 3.0.3 include various improvements to help
2749 <application>Privoxy</application> better handle these cases.
2753 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="allcpu">
2755 At one site Privoxy just hangs, and starts taking
2756 all CPU. Why is this?
2759 This is probably a manifestation of the <quote>100% cpu</quote> problem that
2760 occurs on pages containing many (thousands upon thousands) of blank lines. The blank lines
2761 are in the raw HTML source of the page, and the browser just ignores them. But the
2762 pattern matching in <application>Privoxy's</application> page filtering
2763 mechanism is trying to match against absurdly long strings and this becomes
2764 very CPU-intensive, taking a long, long time to complete.
2767 Until a better solution comes along, disable filtering on these pages,
2768 particularly the <literal>js-annoyances</literal> and
2769 <literal>unsolicited-popups</literal> filters. If you run into this problem
2770 with a recent &my-app; version, please send a problem report.
2774 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="slowcrawl">
2775 <title>I just installed Privoxy, and all my
2776 browsing has slowed to a crawl. What gives? </title>
2778 This should not happen, and for the overwhelming number of users world-wide,
2779 it does not happen. I would suspect some inadvertent interaction of software
2780 components such as anti-virus software, spyware protectors, personal
2781 firewalls or similar components. Try disabling (or uninstalling) these one
2782 at a time and see if that helps. Either way, if you are using a
2783 recent &my-app; version, please report the problem.
2787 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="preventcomp">
2788 <title>Why do my filters work on some sites but not on others? </title>
2790 It's probably due to compression. It is a common practice for web servers to
2791 send their content <quote>compressed</quote> in order to speed things up, and
2792 then let the browser <quote>uncompress</quote> them. When compiled with zlib support
2793 &my-app; can decompress content before filtering, otherwise you may want to enable
2795 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</ulink>.
2798 As of &my-app; 3.0.9, zlib support is enabled in the default builds.
2803 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="ssl-warnings">
2804 <title>On some HTTPS sites my browser warns me about unauthenticated content,
2805 the URL bar doesn't get highlighted and the lock symbol appears to be broken.
2806 What's going on?</title>
2808 Probably the browser is requesting ads through HTTPS and &my-app;
2809 is blocking the requests. Privoxy's error messages are delivered
2810 unencrypted and while it's obvious for the browser that the HTTPS
2811 request is already blocked by the proxy, some warn about unauthenticated
2815 To work around the problem you can redirect those requests to an invalid
2816 local address instead of blocking them. While the redirects aren't
2817 encrypted either, many browsers don't care. They simply follow the
2818 redirect, fail to reach a server and display an error message instead
2822 To do that, enable logging to figure out which requests get blocked by
2823 &my-app; and add the hosts (no path patterns) to a section like this:
2828 {+redirect{http://127.0.0.1:0/} -block -limit-connect}
2834 Additionally you have to configure your browser to contact
2835 <quote>127.0.0.1:0</quote> directly (instead of through &my-app;).
2838 To add a proxy exception in <application>Mozilla Firefox</application>
2839 open the <quote>Preferences</quote>, click the <quote>Settings</quote>
2840 button located on the <quote>Network</quote> tab in the <quote>Advanced</quote>
2841 section, and add <quote>127.0.0.1:0</quote> in the <quote>No Proxy for:</quote>
2847 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="se-linux">
2848 <title>I get selinux error messages. How can I fix this?</title>
2850 Please report the problem to the creator of your selinux policies.
2853 The problem is that some selinux policy writers aren't familiar
2854 with the application they are trying to <quote>secure</quote> and
2855 thus create policies that make no sense.
2858 In <application>Privoxy's</application> case the problem usually
2859 is that the policy only allows outgoing connections for certain
2860 destination ports (e.g. 80 and 443). While this may cover the
2861 standard ports, websites occasionally use other ports as well.
2862 This isn't a security problem and therefore <application>Privoxy's</application>
2863 default configuration doesn't block these requests.
2866 If you really want to block these ports (and don't be able
2867 to load websites that don't use standard ports), you should
2868 configure Privoxy to block these ports as well, so it doesn't
2869 trigger the selinux warnings.
2874 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="gentoo-ricers">
2875 <title>I compiled &my-app; with Gentoo's portage and it appears to be very slow. Why?</title>
2877 Probably you unintentionally compiled &my-app; without threading support
2878 in which case requests have to be serialized and only one can be served
2882 Check your <quote>USE</quote> flags and make sure they include
2883 <quote>threads</quote>. If they don't, add the flag and rebuild &my-app;.
2886 If you compiled &my-app; with threading support (on POSIX-based systems),
2887 the <quote>Conditional #defines</quote> section on <ulink
2888 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
2889 will list <quote>FEATURE_PTHREAD</quote> as <quote>enabled</quote>.
2896 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2897 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests</title>
2898 <!-- Include contacting.sgml -->
2900 <!-- end contacting -->
2903 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2904 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Privoxy Copyright, License and History</title>
2906 <!-- Include copyright.sgml -->
2912 Portions of this document are <quote>borrowed</quote> from the original
2913 <application>Junkbuster</application> (tm) FAQ, and modified as
2914 appropriate for <application>Privoxy</application>.
2917 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2918 <sect2><title>License</title>
2919 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
2921 <!-- end copyright -->
2923 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2925 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2926 <sect2><title>History</title>
2927 <!-- Include history.sgml -->
2933 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2936 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2938 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See also</title>
2940 <!-- Include seealso.sgml -->
2951 Tue 09/11/01 06:38:14 PM EST: Test SGML doc by Hal Burgiss.
2953 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
2954 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
2955 Public License as published by the Free Software
2956 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
2957 your option) any later version.
2959 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
2960 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
2961 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
2962 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
2963 License for more details.
2965 The GNU General Public License should be included with
2966 this file. If not, you can view it at
2967 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
2968 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
2969 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
2972 Revision 2.80 2011/08/18 11:42:50 fabiankeil
2973 Bump some more documentation copyright ranges.
2975 Revision 2.79 2011/08/17 10:40:07 fabiankeil
2976 Update the entities.
2978 This commit is chronological out of order.
2980 Revision 2.78 2011/04/19 13:14:10 fabiankeil
2981 Fix spelling errors in the documentation. Found with codespell.
2983 Revision 2.77 2011/03/03 14:22:12 fabiankeil
2984 Remove duplicated 'the'
2986 Revision 2.76 2010/11/22 10:35:02 fabiankeil
2987 Mention socks5 in another part of the Tor section.
2989 Revision 2.75 2010/11/13 10:08:00 fabiankeil
2990 Fix a link to the 'intercepting' entry and add another one
2992 Revision 2.74 2010/11/13 10:07:46 fabiankeil
2993 Remove the product names in the 'otherproxy' entry's title.
2995 I'm tired of getting the 'otherproxy' entry as first hit
2996 when searching the index for the Tor FAQ.
2998 Revision 2.73 2010/11/06 12:55:48 fabiankeil
2999 Set p-version to 3.0.17
3001 Revision 2.72 2010/02/27 12:13:17 fabiankeil
3004 Revision 2.71 2010/02/27 12:12:13 fabiankeil
3005 Consistently recommending socks5 in the Tor entry and mention its advantage compared to socks4a.
3006 Reported by David in #2960129.
3008 Revision 2.70 2010/02/20 18:08:31 ler762
3011 Revision 2.69 2010/02/13 17:38:27 fabiankeil
3012 Update entities for 3.0.16 stable.
3014 Revision 2.68 2010/01/30 19:51:28 fabiankeil
3015 New FAQ entry: How did you manage to get Privoxy on my computer without my consent?
3017 Also bump copyright.
3019 Revision 2.67 2009/11/15 14:24:12 fabiankeil
3020 Prepare to generate docs for 3.0.16 UNRELEASED.
3022 Revision 2.66 2009/10/10 05:48:55 fabiankeil
3023 Prepare for 3.0.15 beta.
3025 Revision 2.65 2009/07/18 16:24:39 fabiankeil
3026 Bump entities for 3.0.14 beta.
3028 Revision 2.64 2009/07/18 12:18:52 fabiankeil
3029 Don't describe the action files in the FAQ when we can simply link to the description in the User Manual.
3031 Revision 2.63 2009/06/15 15:08:03 fabiankeil
3032 Patch #2806626 from Frédéric Crozat to fix a closing tag.
3034 Revision 2.62 2009/06/12 14:30:58 fabiankeil
3035 Update entities for 3.0.13 beta.
3037 Revision 2.61 2009/06/12 11:52:33 fabiankeil
3038 Mention the TODO list in the participate entry.
3040 Revision 2.60 2009/04/07 12:25:05 fabiankeil
3041 In the "I would like to help ..." entry:
3042 - Change the ids to more general ones as helping out doesn't require
3043 joining the team (and joining the team requires significantly helping
3045 - Add links to the subscription pages for the main mailing lists.
3047 Revision 2.59 2009/03/28 15:33:41 fabiankeil
3048 Recommend the use of forward-socks5 when forwarding to Tor.
3049 The error messages are more detailed than with forward-socks4a.
3051 Revision 2.58 2009/03/21 12:27:44 fabiankeil
3052 Turn the donation entry title into a question,
3053 also rephrase the content a bit.
3055 Revision 2.57 2009/03/19 19:07:49 fabiankeil
3056 First draft of a "Donating" entry. To be polished tomorrow.
3058 Revision 2.56 2009/02/19 17:05:05 fabiankeil
3059 Explain slowness when build with Gentoo's portage.
3061 Revision 2.55 2009/02/19 02:20:21 hal9
3062 Make some links in seealso conditional. Man page is now privoxy only links.
3064 Revision 2.54 2009/02/15 20:47:12 hal9
3067 Revision 2.53 2009/02/15 20:46:13 hal9
3068 Update Outlook HTML rendering engine comments re: Office 2007.
3070 Revision 2.52 2009/02/14 10:27:52 fabiankeil
3071 Finish last paragraph in the selinux entry which
3072 I unintentionally committed with the last commit.
3074 Revision 2.51 2009/02/12 16:08:26 fabiankeil
3075 Declare the code stable.
3077 Revision 2.50 2009/02/11 18:13:36 fabiankeil
3080 Revision 2.49 2009/02/10 16:30:20 fabiankeil
3081 Add a workaround for "unauthenticated content" warnings on HTTPS sites.
3083 Revision 2.48 2009/01/13 16:50:35 fabiankeil
3084 The standard.action file is gone.
3086 Revision 2.47 2008/11/24 18:29:39 fabiankeil
3087 Two changes suggested by Roger Dingledine:
3088 - Use https://www.torproject.org/ in section 4.7, too.
3089 - Replace the Tor wiki URL in section 4.10 with one
3090 with a more useful anchor name.
3092 Revision 2.46 2008/08/30 15:37:35 fabiankeil
3095 Revision 2.45 2008/08/16 08:51:28 fabiankeil
3096 Update version-related entities.
3098 Revision 2.44 2008/06/19 01:41:36 hal9
3099 Add short note about zlib being enabled in 3.0.9
3101 Revision 2.43 2008/06/14 13:21:25 fabiankeil
3102 Prepare for the upcoming 3.0.9 beta release.
3104 Revision 2.42 2008/06/07 13:11:15 fabiankeil
3105 - Note that the "100% cpu problem" is worth
3106 reporting if it happens with a recent release.
3107 - Mention the hostname option as a workaround for
3108 the "can't get my own hostname" issue.
3109 - The profile formerly known as "Adventuresome"
3110 is called "Advanced" now.
3111 - Some white-space fixes.
3113 Revision 2.41 2008/06/06 15:32:09 fabiankeil
3115 - Don't claim that all the old Junkbuster features remain.
3116 Some of them have been removed or replaced with better ones.
3118 Revision 2.40 2008/02/22 05:54:27 markm68k
3119 updates for mac os x
3121 Revision 2.39 2008/02/03 21:37:41 hal9
3122 Apply patch from Mark: s/OSX/OS X/
3124 Revision 2.38 2008/01/19 17:52:39 hal9
3125 Re-commit to fix various minor issues for new release.
3127 Revision 2.37 2008/01/19 15:03:05 hal9
3128 Doc sources tagged for 3.0.8 release.
3130 Revision 2.36 2008/01/17 01:49:51 hal9
3131 Change copyright notice for docs s/2007/2008/. All these will be rebuilt soon
3134 Revision 2.35 2007/11/19 17:57:59 fabiankeil
3135 A bunch of rewordings, minor updates and fixes.
3137 Revision 2.34 2007/11/19 02:38:11 hal9
3138 Minor revisions and rebuild
3140 Revision 2.33 2007/11/15 03:30:20 hal9
3141 Results of spell check.
3143 Revision 2.32 2007/11/13 03:03:42 hal9
3144 Various changes to reflect new features and revised configuration for the
3147 Revision 2.31 2007/11/05 02:34:53 hal9
3148 Various changes in preparation for the upcoming release. Much yet to be done.
3150 Revision 2.30 2007/11/04 15:16:40 hal9
3153 Revision 2.29 2007/11/04 15:12:47 hal9
3154 Various minor adjustments.
3156 Revision 2.28 2007/10/27 15:14:16 fabiankeil
3157 Change Tor links to use the new domain torproject.org.
3159 Revision 2.27 2007/10/22 19:47:05 fabiankeil
3160 - Bump version and copyright.
3161 - Adjust Tor section to make it clear that forward exceptions
3162 aren't required and may not even be desired.
3163 - A bunch of other minor rewordings.
3164 - Fix markup problems Roland noticed (hopefully without adding new ones).
3166 Revision 2.26 2007/08/05 15:37:55 fabiankeil
3167 - Don't claim that thousands of people read our code.
3168 - Specify the GPL version and link to GPLv2 instead of v3.
3169 - Note that configuration syntax may change between releases.
3170 - Mention zlib support.
3171 - Answer the "transparent proxy" question properly.
3172 - Add "intercepting proxy" entry.
3174 - Rephrase some other sentences for various reasons.
3176 Revision 2.25 2007/07/18 11:00:34 hal9
3177 Add misc note about valid mark-up in Privoxy.
3179 Revision 2.24 2006/11/14 01:57:46 hal9
3180 Dump all docs prior to 3.0.6 release. Various minor changes to faq and user
3183 Revision 2.23 2006/10/21 22:19:52 hal9
3184 Two new FAQs, a rewrite or two, and some touch ups.
3186 Revision 2.22 2006/10/14 20:33:10 hal9
3187 Three new FAQ's re: templates and blocking, and various minor touch-ups/improvements.
3189 Revision 2.21 2006/10/03 14:40:51 fabiankeil
3190 Added links from the Tor faq to the
3191 configuration chapter in the User Manual.
3193 Revision 2.20 2006/09/26 10:12:37 fabiankeil
3196 Revision 2.19 2006/09/22 10:54:32 hal9
3197 Change references to 3.0.4 to 3.0.5 and minor adjustments.
3199 Revision 2.18 2006/09/22 01:27:55 hal9
3200 Final commit of probably various minor changes here and there. Unless
3201 something changes this should be ready for pending release.
3203 Revision 2.17 2006/09/17 14:56:32 hal9
3204 This includes yet several more new FAQs, some improved wording, enhanced
3205 mark-up, various hyper links to wikipedia to explain key terminology to the
3206 uninitiated, etc. This is ready for release IMO pending final tagging of cvs
3207 and Privoxy version stamping.
3209 Revision 2.16 2006/09/10 15:30:46 hal9
3212 Revision 2.15 2006/09/08 23:05:07 hal9
3213 Fix broken links. Add faq on hosts files. Move most of new windows service
3214 feature to user manual and reference in faq. Various other small changes.
3216 Revision 2.14 2006/09/05 13:25:12 david__schmidt
3217 Add Windows service invocation stuff (duplicated) in FAQ and in user manual under Windows startup. One probably ought to reference the other.
3219 Revision 2.13 2006/09/04 19:20:33 fabiankeil
3220 Adjusted anonymity related sections to match reality.
3221 Added a section about using Privoxy with Tor.
3223 Revision 2.12 2006/09/03 14:15:30 hal9
3224 Various updates, including 7 or 8 new FAQs, and updates/changes to various
3225 other ones to better reflect improvements, additions and changes for the
3226 upcoming release. This is close to final form for 3.0.4 IMHO.
3228 Revision 2.11 2006/07/18 14:48:50 david__schmidt
3229 Reorganizing the repository: swapping out what was HEAD (the old 3.1 branch)
3230 with what was really the latest development (the v_3_0_branch branch)
3232 Revision 1.61.2.41 2004/04/05 13:44:05 oes
3233 Fixed allow-all-cookies alias name; closes SR #929746
3235 Revision 1.61.2.40 2004/01/30 17:00:33 oes
3236 Added Mac OS X Panther problem
3238 Revision 1.61.2.39 2004/01/29 22:53:08 hal9
3239 Minor changes for exempting docs of text/plain. Change copyright date.
3241 Revision 1.61.2.38 2003/12/10 03:39:45 hal9
3242 Added FAQs for: demoronizer, related problems and why its included. Also,
3243 port 8118 already in use questions, and PrivoxyWindowOpen() questions. All in
3244 troubleshooting section.
3246 Revision 1.61.2.37 2003/10/17 11:01:50 oes
3247 Added Q&A for "not being used" page problem
3249 Revision 1.61.2.36 2003/06/26 23:49:20 hal9
3250 More on the filter/source code problem.
3252 Revision 1.61.2.35 2003/06/26 13:38:08 hal9
3253 Add FAQ on whether configuring Privoxy is necessary or not.
3255 Revision 1.61.2.34 2003/06/26 03:00:03 hal9
3256 Sorry, found another copyright date.
3258 Revision 1.61.2.33 2003/06/26 02:57:05 hal9
3259 Fix typo (finally!) and very minor modifications.
3261 Revision 1.61.2.32 2003/06/26 02:52:04 hal9
3264 Revision 1.61.2.31 2003/06/25 01:27:51 hal9
3265 Fix copyright, and a few nits.
3267 Revision 1.61.2.30 2003/06/25 01:13:52 hal9
3270 - FAQ on "Unable to get my own hostname"
3271 - Another one on filtering effects on text files.
3273 Revision 1.61.2.29 2003/06/15 21:32:58 hal9
3274 Add to the 4.17 (filtering effects on downloaded files).
3276 Revision 1.61.2.28 2003/03/18 19:37:21 oes
3277 s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
3279 Revision 1.61.2.27 2002/12/01 06:31:58 hal9
3280 Add faq on win32 error 503 due to ZoneAlarm.
3282 Revision 1.61.2.26 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
3283 Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
3286 Revision 1.61.2.25 2002/10/29 03:21:50 hal9
3287 Add 3 Q/A's relating to HTML in email. Other minor touchups.
3289 Revision 1.61.2.24 2002/10/15 12:50:22 oes
3290 s/Advanced/Radical/ (stupid me)
3292 Revision 1.61.2.23 2002/10/15 12:38:56 oes
3293 Added Microsuck faq; more detail for PHP problem
3295 Revision 1.61.2.22 2002/10/12 01:13:13 hal9
3296 Updates for demoronizer, more commentary on Radical profile, and update on
3297 the srvany.exe/icon fix.
3299 Revision 1.61.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
3300 s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
3302 Revision 1.61.2.20 2002/09/26 01:22:45 hal9
3303 Small additions for LAN setup, content-cookies/SSL, and FTP non-support.
3305 Revision 1.61.2.19 2002/08/25 23:31:56 hal9
3306 Fix one grammatical error. Add brief FAQ relating to tranparent proxies (ie
3307 port 80 setting). Add FAQ on effects of Privoxy on downloaded files
3308 (especially filtering).
3310 Revision 1.61.2.18 2002/08/14 16:39:37 hal9
3311 Fix wrong tag on FAQ addition.
3313 Revision 1.61.2.17 2002/08/14 00:01:18 hal9
3316 Revision 1.61.2.16 2002/08/13 00:10:38 hal9
3317 Add faq to troubleshooting re: blank page syndrome, ie {-prevent-compression}.
3319 Revision 1.61.2.15 2002/08/10 11:34:22 oes
3320 Add disclaimer about probably being out-of-date
3322 Revision 1.61.2.14 2002/08/07 02:53:43 hal9
3323 Fix some minor markup errors, and move one Mac OS X Q/A to troubleshooting section.
3325 Revision 1.61.2.13 2002/08/06 11:55:32 oes
3326 Added missing close tag
3328 Revision 1.61.2.12 2002/08/06 11:43:46 david__schmidt
3329 Updated Mac OS X uninstall FAQ... we have an uninstall script now.
3331 Revision 1.61.2.11 2002/08/06 08:54:03 oes
3332 Style police: Fixed formatting details
3334 Revision 1.61.2.10 2002/08/02 14:00:25 david__schmidt
3335 Made the Mac OS X removal commands far less dangerous
3337 Revision 1.61.2.9 2002/08/02 13:14:45 oes
3338 Added warning about sudo rm -r for Mac OS X deinstallation; moved this item to install section
3340 Revision 1.61.2.8 2002/08/02 02:01:42 david__schmidt
3341 Add FAQ item for MSIE on Mac OS X HTTP proxy confusion
3343 Revision 1.61.2.7 2002/08/02 01:46:01 david__schmidt
3344 Added FAQ item for Mac OS X uninstall woes
3346 Revision 1.61.2.6 2002/07/30 20:04:56 hal9
3347 Fix typo: 'schould'.
3349 Revision 1.61.2.5 2002/07/26 15:22:58 oes
3350 - Updated to reflect changes in standard.action
3351 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
3353 Revision 1.61.2.4 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
3354 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
3356 Revision 1.61.2.3 2002/06/09 16:36:33 hal9
3357 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
3359 Revision 1.61.2.2 2002/06/06 02:51:34 hal9
3360 Fix typo in URL http:/config.privoxy.org
3362 Revision 1.61.2.1 2002/06/05 23:10:43 hal9
3363 Add new FAQ re: DUN/IE. Change release date from May to June :)
3365 Revision 1.61 2002/05/25 12:37:25 hal9
3366 Various minor changes and edits.
3368 Revision 1.60 2002/05/22 17:17:48 oes
3369 Proofread & added more links into u-m
3371 Revision 1.59 2002/05/15 04:03:30 hal9
3372 Fix ulink -> link markup.
3374 Revision 1.58 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
3375 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
3376 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
3377 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
3379 Revision 1.57 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
3380 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
3382 Revision 1.56 2002/05/04 08:44:44 swa
3385 Revision 1.55 2002/05/04 00:41:56 hal9
3386 -Remove TOC/first page kludge in favor of proper handling via dsl file.
3388 Revision 1.54 2002/05/03 05:06:44 hal9
3389 Add brief Q/A on transparent proxies.
3391 Revision 1.53 2002/05/03 01:34:52 hal9
3392 Fix section numbering for new sections (due to TOC kludge).
3394 Revision 1.52 2002/04/29 03:08:43 hal9
3395 -Added new Q/A on new actions file set up (pointer to u-m)
3396 -Fixed a few broken links and converted old actions as a result of
3399 Revision 1.51 2002/04/26 17:24:31 swa
3400 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
3402 Revision 1.50 2002/04/26 05:25:23 hal9
3403 Mass commit to catch a few scattered fixes.
3405 Revision 1.49 2002/04/12 10:10:18 swa
3408 Revision 1.48 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
3411 Revision 1.47 2002/04/10 04:05:32 hal9
3414 Revision 1.45 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
3415 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
3417 Revision 1.44 2002/04/07 21:24:29 hal9
3418 Touch up on name change.
3420 Revision 1.43 2002/04/04 21:59:53 hal9
3421 Added NT/W2K service/icon situation.
3423 Revision 1.42 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
3424 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
3426 Revision 1.41 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
3427 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
3428 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
3429 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
3430 eventually be set by Makefile.
3431 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
3433 Revision 1.40 2002/04/03 04:22:03 hal9
3434 Fixed several typos.
3436 Revision 1.39 2002/04/03 03:53:03 hal9
3437 Revert some changes, and then make some news, to layout, and appearance.
3439 Revision 1.38 2002/04/02 03:49:10 hal9
3440 Major changes to doc structure and layout. Sections are not automatically
3441 numbered now. TOC is on page by itself.
3443 Revision 1.37 2002/04/01 16:24:07 hal9
3444 -Rework of supported Q/A.
3445 -Set up entities to include boilerplate text.
3447 Revision 1.36 2002/03/31 23:18:47 hal9
3448 More on dealing with BLOCKED.
3450 Revision 1.35 2002/03/30 04:14:19 hal9
3451 Fix privoxy.org/config links.
3453 Revision 1.34 2002/03/29 04:35:56 hal9
3456 Revision 1.33 2002/03/29 01:31:48 hal9
3457 Several new Q/A's and other touch ups.
3459 Revision 1.32 2002/03/27 00:57:03 hal9
3460 Touch ups for name change.
3462 Revision 1.31 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
3463 we have a new homepage!
3465 Revision 1.30 2002/03/25 16:39:22 hal9
3466 A few new sections. Made all links relative to user-manual.
3468 Revision 1.29 2002/03/25 05:23:57 hal9
3469 Moved section, and touch ups.
3471 Revision 1.28 2002/03/25 04:27:33 hal9
3472 New section related to name change.
3474 Revision 1.25 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
3475 we are too lazy to make a block-built
3476 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
3478 Revision 1.24 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
3479 name change related issue.
3481 Revision 1.23 2002/03/24 12:33:01 swa
3484 Revision 1.22 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
3485 name change. changed filenames.
3487 Revision 1.21 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
3490 Revision 1.20 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
3491 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
3492 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
3493 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
3494 comments and remarks to history untouched.
3496 Revision 1.19 2002/03/21 17:01:54 hal9
3499 Revision 1.18 2002/03/18 16:40:31 hal9
3502 Revision 1.17 2002/03/18 03:53:53 hal9
3505 Revision 1.16 2002/03/17 21:32:56 hal9
3506 A few more additions.
3508 Revision 1.15 2002/03/17 07:25:59 hal9
3509 Correcting some of my typos, and some additions.
3511 Revision 1.14 2002/03/17 02:39:13 hal9
3512 A little more added ...
3514 Revision 1.13 2002/03/17 00:22:20 hal9
3515 Adding new stuff, and trying to incorporate stuff from old faq.
3517 Revision 1.12 2002/03/11 20:13:21 swa
3520 Revision 1.11 2002/03/11 18:42:27 swa
3523 Revision 1.10 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
3524 correct feedback channels
3526 Revision 1.9 2002/03/10 23:34:04 swa
3527 more info on not hiding ip address
3529 Revision 1.8 2002/03/09 15:55:48 swa
3530 added default config section
3532 Revision 1.7 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
3535 Revision 1.6 2002/03/07 13:16:31 oes
3536 Committing changes by Stefan
3538 Revision 1.5 2002/03/02 15:50:04 swa
3539 2.9.11 version. more input for docs.
3541 Revision 1.4 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
3542 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
3543 will work - no other changes are needed.
3545 Revision 1.3 2001/09/23 10:13:48 swa
3546 upload process established. run make webserver and
3547 the documentation is moved to the webserver. documents
3548 are now linked correctly.
3550 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:20:17 swa
3551 merged standards into developer manual
3553 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
3554 source files for junkbuster documentation
3556 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
3557 first proposal of a structure.
3559 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
3560 docs should have an author.
3562 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
3563 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.