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4 <!entity newfeatures SYSTEM "newfeatures.sgml">
5 <!entity p-intro SYSTEM "privoxy.sgml">
6 <!entity seealso SYSTEM "seealso.sgml">
7 <!entity buildsource SYSTEM "buildsource.sgml">
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11 <!entity license SYSTEM "license.sgml">
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16 <!entity changelog SYSTEM "changelog.sgml">
17 <!entity p-version "3.0.35">
18 <!entity p-status "UNRELEASED">
19 <!entity % p-authors-formal "INCLUDE"> <!-- include additional text, etc -->
20 <!entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE">
21 <!entity % p-stable "IGNORE">
22 <!entity % p-text "IGNORE"> <!-- define we are not a text only doc -->
23 <!entity % p-doc "INCLUDE"> <!-- and we are a formal doc -->
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25 <!entity % user-man "IGNORE">
26 <!entity % config-file "IGNORE">
27 <!entity % p-supp-userman "IGNORE"> <!-- Omit some from supported.sgml -->
28 <!entity my-copy "©"> <!-- kludge for docbook2man -->
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31 <!entity my-app "<application>Privoxy</application>">
34 File : doc/source/user-manual.sgml
38 Copyright (C) 2001-2023 Privoxy Developers https://www.privoxy.org/
41 ========================================================================
42 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
43 anything in this, or other Privoxy documentation.
44 ========================================================================
51 <title>Privoxy &p-version; User Manual</title>
55 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
56 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
57 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001-2023 by
58 <ulink url="https://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
64 Note: the following should generate a separate page, and a live link to it,
65 all nicely done. But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave
66 commented unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the
67 copyright/license declarations will be in their own sgml.
80 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
81 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
82 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
88 The <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> gives users information on how to
89 install, configure and use <ulink
90 url="https://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy</ulink>.
93 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
95 <!-- end privoxy.sgml -->
98 You can find the latest version of the <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> at <ulink
99 url="https://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">https://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>.
100 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> on how to
101 contact the developers.
108 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
109 <sect1 label="1" id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
111 This documentation is included with the current &p-status; version of
112 <application>Privoxy</application>, &p-version;<![%p-not-stable;[,
113 and is mostly complete at this point. The most up to date reference for the
114 time being is still the comments in the source files and in the individual
115 configuration files. Development of a new version is currently nearing
116 completion, and includes significant changes and enhancements over
120 <!-- include only in non-stable versions -->
123 Since this is a &p-status; version, not all new features are well tested. This
124 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with
125 <ulink url="https://www.privoxy.org/gitweb/?p=privoxy.git;a=summary">git sources</ulink>).
126 And there <emphasis>may be</emphasis> bugs, though hopefully
131 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
132 <sect2 id="features"><title>Features</title>
134 In addition to the core
135 features of ad blocking and
136 <ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookie</ulink> management,
137 <application>Privoxy</application> provides many supplemental
138 features<![%p-not-stable;[, some of them currently under development]]>,
139 that give the end-user more control, more privacy and more freedom:
141 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml boilerplate here: -->
143 <!-- end boilerplate -->
148 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
151 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
152 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
155 <application>Privoxy</application> is available both in convenient pre-compiled
156 packages for a wide range of operating systems, and as raw source code.
157 For most users, we recommend using the packages, which can be downloaded from our
158 <ulink url="https://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Project
164 On some platforms, the installer may remove previously installed versions, if
165 found. (See below for your platform). In any case <emphasis>be sure to backup
166 your old configuration if it is valuable to you.</emphasis> See the <link
167 linkend="upgradersnote">note to upgraders</link> section below.
170 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
171 <sect2 id="installation-packages"><title>Binary Packages</title>
173 How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
176 <!-- XXX: The installation sections should be sorted -->
178 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
179 <sect3 id="installation-deb"><title>Debian and Ubuntu</title>
181 DEBs can be installed with <literal>apt-get install privoxy</literal>,
182 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location of
187 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
188 <sect3 id="installation-pack-win"><title>Windows</title>
191 Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through
192 the installation process. You will find the configuration files
193 in the same directory as you installed <application>Privoxy</application> in.
196 Version 3.0.5 beta introduced full <application>Windows</application> service
197 functionality. On Windows only, the <application>Privoxy</application>
198 program has two new command line arguments to install and uninstall
199 <application>Privoxy</application> as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>.
203 <term>Arguments:</term>
206 <replaceable class="parameter">--install</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
209 <replaceable class="parameter">--uninstall</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
215 After invoking <application>Privoxy</application> with
216 <command>--install</command>, you will need to bring up the
217 <application>Windows</application> service console to assign the user you
218 want <application>Privoxy</application> to run under, and whether or not you
219 want it to run whenever the system starts. You can start the
220 <application>Windows</application> services console with the following
221 command: <command>services.msc</command>. If you do not take the manual step
222 of modifying <application>Privoxy's</application> service settings, it will
223 not start. Note too that you will need to give Privoxy a user account that
224 actually exists, or it will not be permitted to
225 write to its log and configuration files.
230 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
231 <sect3 id="installation-mac"><title>Mac OS X</title>
233 Installation instructions for the OS X platform depend upon whether
234 you downloaded a ready-built installation package (.pkg or .mpkg) or have
235 downloaded the source code.
238 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="OS-X-install-from-package">
239 <title>Installation from ready-built package</title>
241 The downloaded file will either be a .pkg (for OS X 10.5 upwards) or a bzipped
242 .mpkg file (for OS X 10.4). The former can be double-clicked as is and the
243 installation will start; double-clicking the latter will unzip the .mpkg file
244 which can then be double-clicked to commence the installation.
247 The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful installation
248 (and thereafter every time your computer starts up) however you will need to
249 configure your web browser(s) to use it. To do so, configure them to use a
250 proxy for HTTP and HTTPS at the address 127.0.0.1:8118.
253 To prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your computer
254 starts up, remove or rename the file <literal>/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.ijbswa.privoxy.plist</literal>
255 (on OS X 10.5 and higher) or the folder named
256 <literal>/Library/StartupItems/Privoxy</literal> (on OS X 10.4 'Tiger').
259 To manually start or stop the privoxy service, use the scripts startPrivoxy.sh
260 and stopPrivoxy.sh supplied in /Applications/Privoxy. They must be run from an
261 administrator account, using sudo.
264 To uninstall, run /Applications/Privoxy/uninstall.command as sudo from an
265 administrator account.
268 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="OS-X-install-from-source">
269 <title>Installation from source</title>
271 To build and install the Privoxy source code on OS X you will need to obtain
272 the macsetup module from the Privoxy Sourceforge CVS repository (refer to
273 Sourceforge help for details of how to set up a CVS client to have read-only
274 access to the repository). This module contains scripts that leverage the usual
275 open-source tools (available as part of Apple's free of charge Xcode
276 distribution or via the usual open-source software package managers for OS X
277 (MacPorts, Homebrew, Fink etc.) to build and then install the privoxy binary
278 and associated files. The macsetup module's README file contains complete
279 instructions for its use.
282 The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful installation
283 (and thereafter every time your computer starts up) however you will need to
284 configure your web browser(s) to use it. To do so, configure them to use a
285 proxy for HTTP and HTTPS at the address 127.0.0.1:8118.
288 To prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your computer
289 starts up, remove or rename the file <literal>/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.ijbswa.privoxy.plist</literal>
290 (on OS X 10.5 and higher) or the folder named
291 <literal>/Library/StartupItems/Privoxy</literal> (on OS X 10.4 'Tiger').
294 To manually start or stop the privoxy service, use the Privoxy Utility
295 for Mac OS X (also part of the macsetup module). This application can start
296 and stop the privoxy service and display its log and configuration files.
299 To uninstall, run the macsetup module's uninstall.sh as sudo from an
300 administrator account.
304 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
305 <sect3 id="installation-freebsd"><title>FreeBSD and ElectroBSD</title>
308 Privoxy is part of FreeBSD's Ports Collection, you can build and install
309 it with <literal>cd /usr/ports/www/privoxy; make install clean</literal>.
312 If your system is configured to install binary packages you can
313 try to install &my-app; with <literal>pkg install privoxy</literal>.
319 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
320 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Building from Source</title>
323 The most convenient way to obtain the <application>Privoxy</application> source
324 code is to download the source tarball from our
325 <ulink url="https://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/files/Sources/">
326 project download page</ulink>,
327 or you can get the up-to-the-minute, possibly unstable, development version from
328 <ulink url="https://www.privoxy.org/">https://www.privoxy.org/</ulink>.
331 <!-- include buildsource.sgml boilerplate: -->
333 <!-- end boilerplate -->
336 <sect3 id="WINBUILD-CYGWIN"><title>Windows</title>
338 <sect4 id="WINBUILD-SETUP"><title>Setup</title>
340 Install the Cygwin utilities needed to build <application>Privoxy</application>.
341 If you have a 64 bit CPU (which most people do by now), get the
342 Cygwin setup-x86_64.exe program <ulink url="https://cygwin.com/setup-x86_64.exe">here</ulink>
343 (the .sig file is <ulink url="https://cygwin.com/setup-x86_64.exe.sig">here</ulink>).
346 Run the setup program and from View / Category select:
358 mingw64-i686-gcc-core
363 libxslt: GNOME XSLT library (runtime)
379 If you haven't already downloaded the Privoxy source code, get it now:
384 git clone https://www.privoxy.org/git/privoxy.git
388 Get the source code (.zip or .tar.gz) for tidy from
389 <ulink url="https://github.com/htacg/tidy-html5/releases">
390 https://github.com/htacg/tidy-html5/releases</ulink>,
391 unzip into <root-dir> and build the software:
395 cd tidy-html5-x.y.z/build/cmake
396 cmake ../.. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBUILD_SHARED_LIB:BOOL=OFF -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local
401 If you want to be able to make a Windows release package, get the NSIS .zip file from
402 <!-- FIXME: which version(s) are known to work? -->
403 <ulink url="https://sourceforge.net/projects/nsis/files/NSIS%203/">
404 https://sourceforge.net/projects/nsis/files/NSIS%203/</ulink>
405 and extract the NSIS directory to <literal>/<root-dir>/nsis/</literal>.
406 Then edit the <filename>windows/GNUmakefile</filename> to set the location
407 of the NSIS executable - eg:
411 MAKENSIS = /<root-dir>/nsis/makensis.exe
415 Get the latest 8.x PCRE code from
416 <ulink url="https://sourceforge.net/projects/pcre/files/pcre/">PCRE
417 https://sourceforge.net/projects/pcre/files/pcre/</ulink>
418 and build the static PCRE libraries with
421 export CFLAGS="-O2 -fstack-protector-strong -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2"
422 export LDFLAGS="-fstack-protector-strong"
423 export CPPFLAGS="-DPCRE_STATIC"
425 ./configure --host=i686-w64-mingw32 \
426 --prefix=/usr/local/i686-w64-mingw32 \
427 --enable-utf --enable-unicode-properties \
429 --enable-newline-is-anycrlf \
432 --disable-pcregrep-libbz2 \
433 --disable-pcregrep-libz \
434 --disable-pcretest-libreadline \
435 --disable-stack-for-recursion \
436 --enable-static --disable-shared \
443 If you want to be able to have Privoxy do TLS Inspection, get the latest
444 2.28.x MBED-TLS library source code from
445 <ulink url="https://github.com/Mbed-TLS/mbedtls/tags">
446 https://github.com/Mbed-TLS/mbedtls/tags</ulink>,
447 extract the tar file into <literal><root-dir></literal>
448 and build the static libraries with
450 export WINDOWS_BUILD=1
451 # build for a Windows platform
455 export CC=i686-w64-mingw32-gcc
456 export LD=i686-w64-mingw32-gcc
457 export CFLAGS="-O2 -fstack-protector-strong -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2"
458 export LDFLAGS="${LDFLAGS} -fstack-protector-strong"
461 # build the libraries
467 Get the brotli library from
468 <ulink url="https://github.com/google/brotli/releases">
469 https://github.com/google/brotli/releases</ulink>
470 and build the static libraries with
473 # to create the GNU autotools files
477 export CFLAGS="-O2 -fstack-protector-strong -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2"
478 export LDFLAGS="${LDFLAGS} -fstack-protector-strong"
480 ./configure --host=i686-w64-mingw32 \
481 --prefix=/usr/local/i686-w64-mingw32 \
485 --disable-silent-rules \
494 <sect4 id="WINBUILD-BUILD"><title>Build</title>
497 To build just the Privoxy executable and not the whole installation package, do:
500 cd <root-dir>/privoxy
501 ./windows/MYconfigure && make
505 Privoxy uses the <ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_build_system">GNU Autotools</ulink>
506 for building software, so the process is:
509 autoheader # creates config.h.in
510 autoconf # uses config.h.in to create the configure shell script
511 ./configure [options] # creates GNUmakefile
512 make [options] # builds the program
516 The usual <literal>configure</literal> options for building a native Windows application under cygwin are
519 <literallayout class="Monospaced">
520 --host=i686-w64-mingw32
523 --enable-static-linking
530 You can set the <literal>CFLAGS</literal> and <literal>LDFLAGS</literal> envars before
531 running <literal>configure</literal> to set compiler and linker flags. For example:
535 $ export CFLAGS="-O2" # set gcc optimization level
536 $ export LDFLAGS="-Wl,--nxcompat" # Enable DEP
537 $ ./configure --host=i686-w64-mingw32 --enable-mingw32 --enable-zlib \
538 > --enable-static-linking --disable-pthread
539 $ make # build Privoxy
543 See the <ulink url="../developer-manual/newrelease.html#NEWRELEASE-WINDOWS">Developer's Manual</ulink>
544 for building a Windows release package.
552 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
553 <sect2 id="installation-keepupdated"><title>Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date</title>
556 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
557 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
558 url="https://lists.privoxy.org/mailman/listinfo/privoxy-announce">subscribe
559 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, privoxy-announce@lists.privoxy.org.
563 In order not to lose your personal changes and adjustments when updating
564 to the latest <literal>default.action</literal> file we <emphasis>strongly
565 recommend</emphasis> that you use <literal>user.action</literal> and
566 <literal>user.filter</literal> for your local
567 customizations of <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
568 linkend="actions-file">Chapter on actions files</link> for details.
576 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
578 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
579 <sect1 id="whatsnew">
580 <title>What's New in this Release</title>
584 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
586 <sect2 id="upgradersnote">
587 <title>Note to Upgraders</title>
590 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier
591 versions of <application>Privoxy</application>:
598 The recommended way to upgrade &my-app; is to backup your old
599 configuration files, install the new ones, verify that &my-app;
600 is working correctly and finally merge back your changes using
601 <application>diff</application> and maybe <application>patch</application>.
604 There are a number of new features in each &my-app; release and
605 most of them have to be explicitly enabled in the configuration
606 files. Old configuration files obviously don't do that and due
607 to syntax changes using old configuration files with a new
608 &my-app; isn't always possible anyway.
613 Note that some installers remove earlier versions completely,
614 including configuration files, therefore you should really save
615 any important configuration files!
620 On the other hand, other installers don't overwrite existing configuration
621 files, thinking you will want to do that yourself.
626 In the default configuration only fatal errors are logged now.
627 You can change that in the <link linkend="DEBUG">debug section</link>
628 of the configuration file. You may also want to enable more verbose
629 logging until you verified that the new &my-app; version is working
636 Three other config file settings are now off by default:
637 <link linkend="enable-remote-toggle">enable-remote-toggle</link>,
638 <link linkend="enable-remote-http-toggle">enable-remote-http-toggle</link>,
639 and <link linkend="enable-edit-actions">enable-edit-actions</link>.
640 If you use or want these, you will need to explicitly enable them, and
641 be aware of the security issues involved.
648 What constitutes a <quote>default</quote> configuration has changed,
649 and you may want to review which actions are <quote>on</quote> by
650 default. This is primarily a matter of emphasis, but some features
651 you may have been used to, may now be <quote>off</quote> by default.
652 There are also a number of new actions and filters you may want to
653 consider, most of which are not fully incorporated into the default
654 settings as yet (see above).
661 The default actions setting is now <literal>Cautious</literal>. Previous
662 releases had a default setting of <literal>Medium</literal>. Experienced
663 users may want to adjust this, as it is fairly conservative by &my-app;
664 standards and past practices. See <ulink
665 url="http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default">
666 http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default</ulink>. New users
667 should try the default settings for a while before turning up the volume.
673 The default setting has filtering turned <emphasis>off</emphasis>, which
674 subsequently means that compression is <emphasis>on</emphasis>. Remember
675 that filtering does not work on compressed pages, so if you use, or want to
676 use, filtering, you will need to force compression off. Example:
679 { +<link linkend="filter">filter</link>{google} +<link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link> }
683 Or if you use a number of filters, or filter many sites, you may just want
684 to turn off compression for all sites in
685 <filename>default.action</filename> (or
686 <filename>user.action</filename>).
693 Also, <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> is
694 off by default now. If you've liked this feature in the past, you may want
695 to turn it back on in <filename>user.action</filename> now.
702 Some installers may not automatically start
703 <application>Privoxy</application> after installation.
713 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
714 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using Privoxy</title>
720 Install <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
721 linkend="installation">Installation Section</link> below for platform specific
728 Advanced users and those who want to offer <application>Privoxy</application>
729 service to more than just their local machine should check the <link
730 linkend="config">main config file</link>, especially the <link
731 linkend="access-control">security-relevant</link> options. These are
738 Start <application>Privoxy</application>, if the installation program has
739 not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
740 <link linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link>.
746 Set your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application> as HTTP and
747 HTTPS (SSL) <ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>
748 by setting the proxy configuration for address of
749 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> and port <literal>8118</literal>.
750 <emphasis>DO NOT</emphasis> activate proxying for <literal>FTP</literal> or
751 any protocols besides HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) unless you intend to prevent your
752 browser from using these protocols.
758 Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad images.
759 If using <application>Privoxy</application> to manage
760 <ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
761 you should remove any currently stored cookies too.
767 A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for
768 most. There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
769 configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little
770 to no initial configuration is required in most cases, you may want
772 <ulink url="config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">web-based action editor</ulink> though.
773 Be sure to read the warnings first.
776 See the <link linkend="configuration">Configuration section</link> for more
777 configuration options, and how to customize your installation.
778 You might also want to look at the <link
779 linkend="quickstart-ad-blocking">next section</link> for a quick
780 introduction to how <application>Privoxy</application> blocks ads and
787 If you experience ads that slip through, innocent images that are
788 blocked, or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune
789 <application>Privoxy's</application> behavior, take a look at the <link
790 linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>. As a quick start, you might
791 find the <link linkend="act-examples">richly commented examples</link>
792 helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files through the <ulink
793 url="http://config.privoxy.org">web-based user interface</ulink>. The
794 Appendix <quote><link linkend="actionsanat">Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an
795 Action</link></quote> has hints on how to understand and debug actions that
796 <quote>misbehave</quote>.
802 Please see the section <link linkend="contact">Contacting the
803 Developers</link> on how to report bugs, problems with websites or to get
810 Now enjoy surfing with enhanced control, comfort and privacy!
817 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
819 <sect2 id="quickstart-ad-blocking">
820 <title>Quickstart to Ad Blocking</title>
822 NOTE: This section is deliberately redundant for those that don't
823 want to read the whole thing (which is getting lengthy).
826 Ad blocking is but one of <application>Privoxy's</application>
827 array of features. Many of these features are for the technically minded advanced
828 user. But, ad and banner blocking is surely common ground for everybody.
831 This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so
832 you can get up to speed quickly without having to read the more extensive
833 information provided below, though this is highly recommended.
836 First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the
837 more aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block
838 things that were not intended. And the more likely that some things
839 may not work as intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want
840 extreme ad free browsing, be prepared to deal with more
841 <quote>problem</quote> sites, and to spend more time adjusting the
842 configuration to solve these unintended consequences. In short, there is
843 not an easy way to eliminate <emphasis>all</emphasis> ads. Either take
844 the easy way and settle for <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads blocked with the
845 default configuration, or jump in and tweak it for your personal surfing
846 habits and preferences.
849 Secondly, a brief explanation of <application>Privoxy's </application>
850 <quote>actions</quote>. <quote>Actions</quote> in this context, are
851 the directives we use to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to perform
852 some task relating to HTTP transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell
853 <application>Privoxy</application> to take some <quote>action</quote>. Each
854 action has a unique name and function. While there are many potential
855 <application>actions</application> in <application>Privoxy's</application>
856 arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking. <link
857 linkend="actions">Actions</link>, and <link linkend="actions-file">action
858 configuration files</link>, are explained in depth below.
861 Actions are specified in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
862 followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
863 can actually be URL type <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> that use
864 wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs. The
865 actions, together with the URL patterns are called a section.
868 When you connect to a website, the full URL will either match one or more
869 of the sections as defined in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
870 or not. If so, then <application>Privoxy</application> will perform the
871 respective actions. If not, then nothing special happens. Furthermore, web
872 pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web browser will
873 use to load additional components of the page, as it parses the
874 original page's HTML content. An ad image for instance, is just an URL
875 embedded in the page somewhere. The image itself may be on the same server,
876 or a server somewhere else on the Internet. Complex web pages will have many
877 such embedded URLs. &my-app; can deal with each URL individually, so, for
878 instance, the main page text is not touched, but images from such-and-such
883 The most important actions for basic ad blocking are: <literal><link
884 linkend="block">block</link></literal>, <literal><link
885 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
887 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal>,and
888 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>:
895 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> - this is perhaps
896 the single most used action, and is particularly important for ad blocking.
897 This action stops any contact between your browser and any URL patterns
898 that match this action's configuration. It can be used for blocking ads,
899 but also anything that is determined to be unwanted. By itself, it simply
900 stops any communication with the remote server and sends
901 <application>Privoxy</application>'s own built-in BLOCKED page instead to
902 let you now what has happened (with some exceptions, see below).
908 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> -
909 tells <application>Privoxy</application> to treat this URL as an image.
910 <application>Privoxy</application>'s default configuration already does this
911 for all common image types (e.g. GIF), but there are many situations where this
912 is not so easy to determine. So we'll force it in these cases. This is particularly
913 important for ad blocking, since only if we know that it's an image of
914 some kind, can we replace it with an image of our choosing, instead of the
915 <application>Privoxy</application> BLOCKED page (which would only result in
916 a <quote>broken image</quote> icon). There are some limitations to this
917 though. For instance, you can't just brute-force an image substitution for
918 an entire HTML page in most situations.
924 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> -
925 sends an empty document instead of <application>Privoxy's</application>
926 normal BLOCKED HTML page. This is useful for file types that are neither
927 HTML nor images, such as blocking JavaScript files.
934 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> - tells
935 <application>Privoxy</application> what to display in place of an ad image that
936 has hit a block rule. For this to come into play, the URL must match a
937 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action somewhere in the
938 configuration, <emphasis>and</emphasis>, it must also match an
939 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action.
942 The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
946 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad
947 replacement is obvious. This is the default.
952 <emphasis>blank</emphasis> - A very small empty GIF image is displayed.
953 This is the so-called <quote>invisible</quote> configuration option.
958 <emphasis>http://<URL></emphasis> - A redirect to any image anywhere
959 of the user's choosing (advanced usage).
967 Advanced users will eventually want to explore &my-app;
968 <literal><link linkend="filter">filters</link></literal> as well. Filters
969 are very different from <literal><link
970 linkend="block">blocks</link></literal>.
971 A <quote>block</quote> blocks a site, page, or unwanted contented. Filters
972 are a way of filtering or modifying what is actually on the page. An example
973 filter usage: a text replacement of <quote>no-no</quote> for
974 <quote>nasty-word</quote>. That is a very simple example. This process can be
975 used for ad blocking, but it is more in the realm of advanced usage and has
976 some pitfalls to be wary off.
980 The quickest way to adjust any of these settings is with your browser through
981 the special <application>Privoxy</application> editor at <ulink
982 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
983 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>). This
984 is an internal page, and does not require Internet access.
988 Note that as of <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.7 beta the
989 action editor is disabled by default. Check the
990 <ulink url="config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions
991 section in the configuration file</ulink> to learn why and in which
992 cases it's safe to enable again.
996 If you decided to enable the action editor, select the appropriate
997 <quote>actions</quote> file, and click
998 <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>. It is best to put personal or
999 local preferences in <filename>user.action</filename> since this is not
1000 meant to be overwritten during upgrades, and will over-ride the settings in
1001 other files. Here you can insert new <quote>actions</quote>, and URLs for ad
1002 blocking or other purposes, and make other adjustments to the configuration.
1003 <application>Privoxy</application> will detect these changes automatically.
1007 A quick and simple step by step example:
1014 Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select
1015 <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote> from the
1023 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1028 Find <filename>user.action</filename> in the top section, and click
1029 on <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>:
1032 <!-- image of editor and actions files selections -->
1033 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Actions Files in Use</title>
1036 <imagedata fileref="files-in-use.jpg" format="jpg">
1039 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Actions Files in Use ]</phrase>
1047 You should have a section with only
1048 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> listed under
1049 <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1050 If not, click a <quote><guibutton>Insert new section below</guibutton></quote>
1051 button, and in the new section that just appeared, click the
1052 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button right under the word <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1053 This will bring up a list of all actions. Find
1054 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> near the top, and click
1055 in the <quote>Enabled</quote> column, then <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote>
1056 just below the list.
1061 Now, in the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> actions section,
1062 click the <quote><guibutton>Add</guibutton></quote> button, and paste the URL the
1063 browser got from <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote>.
1064 Remove the <literal>http://</literal> at the beginning of the URL. Then, click
1065 <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote> (or
1066 <quote><guibutton>OK</guibutton></quote> if in a pop-up window).
1071 Now go back to the original page, and press <keycap>SHIFT-Reload</keycap>
1072 (or flush all browser caches). The image should be gone now.
1079 This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
1080 wildcard pattern match to include potentially similar images from the same
1081 site. For a more extensive explanation of <quote>patterns</quote>, and
1082 the entire actions concept, see <link linkend="actions-file">the Actions
1087 For advanced users who want to hand edit their config files, you might want
1088 to now go to the <link linkend="act-examples">Actions Files Tutorial</link>.
1089 The ideas explained therein also apply to the web-based editor.
1092 There are also various
1093 <link linkend="filter">filters</link> that can be used for ad blocking
1094 (filters are a special subset of actions). These
1095 fall into the <quote>advanced</quote> usage category, and are explained in
1096 depth in later sections.
1103 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1106 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1107 <sect1 id="startup">
1108 <title>Starting Privoxy</title>
1110 Before launching <application>Privoxy</application> for the first time, you
1111 will want to configure your browser(s) to use
1112 <application>Privoxy</application> as a HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)
1113 <ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>. The default is
1114 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions
1115 used port 8000). This is the one configuration step <emphasis>that must be done
1119 Please note that <application>Privoxy</application> can only proxy HTTP and
1120 HTTPS traffic. It will not work with FTP or other protocols.
1123 <!-- image of Mozilla Proxy configuration -->
1124 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1125 Mozilla Firefox HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) Settings</title>
1128 <imagedata fileref="proxy_setup.jpg" format="jpg">
1131 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Mozilla Firefox Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1138 With <application>Firefox</application>, this is typically set under:
1142 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Network Settings</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Settings</guibutton>
1146 Or optionally on some platforms:
1150 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>General</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connection Settings</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Manual Proxy Configuration</guibutton>
1155 With <application>Netscape</application> (and
1156 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under:
1161 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
1162 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
1163 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Proxies</guibutton> -> <guibutton>HTTP Proxy</guibutton>
1167 For <application>Internet Explorer v.5-7</application>:
1171 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Internet Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connections</guibutton> -> <guibutton>LAN Settings</guibutton>
1175 Then, check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info
1176 (Address: 127.0.0.1, Port: 8118). Include HTTPS (SSL), if you want HTTPS
1177 proxy support too (sometimes labeled <quote>Secure</quote>). Make sure any
1178 checkboxes like <quote>Use the same proxy server for all protocols</quote> is
1179 <emphasis>UNCHECKED</emphasis>. You want only HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)!
1182 <!-- image of IE Proxy configuration -->
1183 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1184 Internet Explorer HTTP and HTTPS (Secure) Settings</title>
1187 <imagedata fileref="proxy2.jpg" format="jpg">
1190 <phrase>[ Screenshot of IE Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1197 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
1198 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. Remove
1199 any <ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
1200 if you want <application>Privoxy</application> to manage that. You are now
1201 ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
1202 <application>Privoxy</application>!
1206 <application>Privoxy</application> itself is typically started by specifying the
1207 main configuration file to be used on the command line. If no configuration
1208 file is specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application>
1209 will look for a file named <filename>config</filename> in the current
1210 directory. Except on Win32 where it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>.
1213 <sect2 id="start-debian">
1214 <title>Debian</title>
1216 We use a script. Note that Debian typically starts &my-app; upon booting per
1217 default. It will use the file
1218 <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1222 # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1226 <sect2 id="start-freebsd">
1227 <title>FreeBSD and ElectroBSD</title>
1229 To start <application>Privoxy</application> upon booting, add
1230 "privoxy_enable='YES'" to <filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename>.
1231 <application>Privoxy</application> will use
1232 <filename>/usr/local/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main
1236 If you installed <application>Privoxy</application> into a jail, the
1237 paths above are relative to the jail root.
1240 To start <application>Privoxy</application> manually, run:
1243 # service privoxy onestart
1247 <sect2 id="start-windows">
1248 <title>Windows</title>
1250 Click on the &my-app; Icon to start <application>Privoxy</application>. If no configuration file is
1251 specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application> will look
1252 for a file named <filename>config.txt</filename>. Note that Windows will
1253 automatically start &my-app; when the system starts if you chose that option
1257 <application>Privoxy</application> can run with full Windows service functionality.
1258 On Windows only, the &my-app; program has two new command line arguments
1259 to install and uninstall &my-app; as a service. See the
1260 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Windows Installation
1261 instructions</link> for details.
1265 <sect2 id="start-unices">
1266 <title>Generic instructions for Unix derivates (Solaris, NetBSD, HP-UX etc.)</title>
1268 Example Unix startup command:
1271 # /usr/sbin/privoxy --user privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
1274 Note that if you installed <application>Privoxy</application> through
1275 a package manager, the package will probably contain a platform-specific
1276 script or configuration file to start <application>Privoxy</application>
1281 <sect2 id="start-macosx">
1282 <title>Mac OS X</title>
1284 The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful installation
1285 (and thereafter every time your computer starts up) however you will need to
1286 configure your web browser(s) to use it. To do so, configure them to use a
1287 proxy for HTTP and HTTPS at the address 127.0.0.1:8118.
1290 To prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your computer
1291 starts up, remove or rename the file <literal>/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.ijbswa.privoxy.plist</literal>
1292 (on OS X 10.5 and higher) or the folder named
1293 <literal>/Library/StartupItems/Privoxy</literal> (on OS X 10.4 'Tiger').
1296 To manually start or stop the privoxy service, use the scripts startPrivoxy.sh
1297 and stopPrivoxy.sh supplied in /Applications/Privoxy. They must be run from an
1298 administrator account, using sudo.
1306 See the section <link linkend="cmdoptions">Command line options</link> for
1310 must find a better place for this paragraph
1313 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
1314 point. Most of the per site configuration is done in the
1315 <ulink url="actions-file.html"><quote>actions</quote></ulink> files. These are
1316 where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking, and other
1317 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. There are several
1318 such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.
1322 You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites for which you may prefer
1323 persistent cookies, and add these to your actions configuration as needed. By
1324 default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser
1325 session (aka <quote>session cookies</quote>), unless you add them to the
1326 configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will need
1327 to edit <filename>user.action</filename> (or through the web based interface)
1328 and disable this feature. If you use more than one browser, it would make
1329 more sense to let <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which
1330 case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
1334 Another feature where you will probably want to define exceptions for trusted
1335 sites is the popup-killing (through <ulink
1336 url="actions-file.html#FILTER-POPUPS"><quote>+filter{popups}</quote></ulink>),
1337 because your favorite shopping, banking, or leisure site may need
1338 popups (explained below).
1342 <application>Privoxy</application> does not support all of the optional HTTP/1.1
1343 features yet. In the unlikely event that you experience inexplicable problems
1344 with browsers that use HTTP/1.1 per default
1345 (like <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.), you might
1346 try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look under <literal>Edit ->
1347 Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
1348 Alternatively, set the <quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote> config option in
1349 <filename>default.action</filename> which will downgrade your browser's HTTP
1350 requests from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0 before processing them.
1354 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
1355 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
1356 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
1357 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote>
1358 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
1359 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1360 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1361 and then follow the link to <quote>View & Change the Current Configuration</quote>.
1362 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
1366 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
1367 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
1368 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
1369 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
1370 to a given URL. In addition to the actions file
1371 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
1372 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> (toggled) from this page.
1376 If you encounter problems, try loading the page without
1377 <application>Privoxy</application>. If that helps, enter the URL where
1378 you have the problems into <ulink url="http://p.p/show-url-info">the browser
1379 based rule tracing utility</ulink>. See which rules apply and why, and
1380 then try turning them off for that site one after the other, until the problem
1381 is gone. When you have found the culprit, you might want to turn the rest on
1386 If the above paragraph sounds gibberish to you, you might want to <link
1387 linkend="actions-file">read more about the actions concept</link>
1388 or even dive deep into the <link linkend="actionsanat">Appendix
1393 If you can't get rid of the problem at all, think you've found a bug in
1394 Privoxy, want to propose a new feature or smarter rules, please see the
1395 section <link linkend="contact"><quote>Contacting the
1396 Developers</quote></link> below.
1401 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1402 <sect2 id="cmdoptions">
1403 <title>Command Line Options</title>
1405 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
1406 command-line options:
1413 <emphasis>--config-test</emphasis>
1416 Exit after loading the configuration files before binding to
1417 the listen address. The exit code signals whether or not the
1418 configuration files have been successfully loaded.
1421 If the exit code is 1, at least one of the configuration files
1422 is invalid, if it is 0, all the configuration files have been
1423 successfully loaded (but may still contain errors that can
1424 currently only be detected at run time).
1427 This option doesn't affect the log setting, combination with
1428 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis> is recommended if a configured
1429 log file shouldn't be used.
1434 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
1437 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
1442 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
1445 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
1450 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
1453 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
1454 leader, and don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
1459 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
1462 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
1463 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failure to create or delete the
1464 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
1465 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
1470 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
1473 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
1474 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
1475 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
1480 <emphasis>--chroot</emphasis>
1483 Before changing to the user ID given in the <emphasis>--user</emphasis> option,
1484 chroot to that user's home directory, i.e. make the kernel pretend to the &my-app;
1485 process that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
1486 the impact of possible vulnerabilities in &my-app; to the files contained in that hierarchy.
1492 <emphasis>--pre-chroot-nslookup hostname</emphasis>
1495 Specifies a hostname (for example www.privoxy.org) to look up before doing a chroot.
1496 On some systems, initializing the resolver library involves reading config files from
1497 /etc and/or loading additional shared libraries from /lib.
1498 On these systems, doing a hostname lookup before the chroot reduces
1499 the number of files that must be copied into the chroot tree.
1502 For fastest startup speed, a good value is a hostname that is not in /etc/hosts but that
1503 your local name server (listed in /etc/resolv.conf) can resolve without recursion
1504 (that is, without having to ask any other name servers). The hostname need not exist,
1505 but if it doesn't, an error message (which can be ignored) will be output.
1511 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
1514 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
1515 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
1516 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
1517 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
1518 full path to avoid confusion. If no config file is found,
1519 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
1526 On <application>MS Windows</application> only there are two additional
1527 command-line options to allow <application>Privoxy</application> to install and
1528 run as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>. See the
1529 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Window Installation section</link>
1537 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1540 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1541 <sect1 id="configuration"><title>Privoxy Configuration</title>
1543 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is stored
1544 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
1545 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
1546 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
1550 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1552 <sect2 id="control-with-webbrowser">
1553 <title>Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser</title>
1555 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface can be reached through the special
1556 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1557 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1558 which is a built-in page and works without Internet access.
1559 You will see the following section:
1562 <!-- Needs to be put in a table and colorized -->
1563 <screen><!-- want the background color that goes with screen -->
1565 <bridgehead renderas="sect2"> Privoxy Menu</bridgehead>
1568 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View & change the current configuration</ulink>
1571 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/client-tags">View or toggle the tags that can be set based on the client's address</ulink>
1574 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">View the request headers.</ulink>
1577 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">Look up which actions apply to a URL and why</ulink>
1580 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">Toggle Privoxy on or off</ulink>
1583 ▪ <ulink
1584 url="https://www.privoxy.org/&p-version;/user-manual/">Documentation</ulink>
1592 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
1593 <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, which is where the ad, banner,
1594 cookie, and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
1595 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
1596 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
1597 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
1601 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
1602 have problems with your current actions and filters. You can in fact use
1603 it as a test to see whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
1604 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
1605 to run as a proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e.
1606 <application>Privoxy</application> acts like a normal forwarding proxy.
1610 Note that several of the features described above are disabled by default
1611 in <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.7 beta and later.
1613 <ulink url="config.html">configuration file</ulink> to learn why
1614 and in which cases it's safe to enable them again.
1619 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1624 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1626 <sect2 id="confoverview">
1627 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
1629 For Unix, *BSD and GNU/Linux, all configuration files are located in
1630 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows
1631 these are all in the same directory as the
1632 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. <![%p-not-stable;[ The name
1633 and number of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
1634 subject to change as development progresses.]]>
1638 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though
1639 some settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the
1640 principle configuration files are:
1647 The <link linkend="config">main configuration file</link> is named <filename>config</filename>
1648 on GNU/Linux, Unix, BSD, and <filename>config.txt</filename>
1649 on Windows. This is a required file.
1655 <filename>match-all.action</filename> is used to define which <quote>actions</quote>
1656 relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups, content modification, cookie handling
1657 etc should be applied by default. It should be the first actions file loaded.
1660 <filename>default.action</filename> defines many exceptions (both positive and negative)
1661 from the default set of actions that's configured in <filename>match-all.action</filename>.
1662 It should be the second actions file loaded and shouldn't be edited by the user.
1665 Multiple actions files may be defined in <filename>config</filename>. These
1666 are processed in the order they are defined. Local customizations and locally
1667 preferred exceptions to the default policies as defined in
1668 <filename>match-all.action</filename> (which you will most probably want
1669 to define sooner or later) are best applied in <filename>user.action</filename>,
1670 where you can preserve them across upgrades. The file isn't installed by all
1671 installers, but you can easily create it yourself with a text editor.
1674 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from
1676 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1678 url="http://p.p/show-status">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>) for the
1679 various actions files.
1685 <quote>Filter files</quote> (the <link linkend="filter-file">filter
1686 file</link>) can be used to re-write the raw page content, including
1687 viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript, and whatever else
1688 lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only pre-defined here;
1689 whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
1690 <filename>default.filter</filename> includes various filters made
1691 available for use by the developers. Some are much more intrusive than
1692 others, and all should be used with caution. You may define additional
1693 filter files in <filename>config</filename> as you can with
1694 actions files. We suggest <filename>user.filter</filename> for any
1695 locally defined filters or customizations.
1702 The syntax of the configuration and filter files may change between different
1703 Privoxy versions, unfortunately some enhancements cost backwards compatibility.
1704 <!-- Add link to documentation-->
1708 All files use the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a
1709 comment (the rest of the line will be ignored) and understand line continuation
1710 through placing a backslash ("<literal>\</literal>") as the very last character
1711 in a line. If the <literal>#</literal> is preceded by a backslash, it looses
1712 its special function. Placing a <literal>#</literal> in front of an otherwise
1713 valid configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
1714 out" that line. Blank lines are ignored.
1718 The actions files and filter files
1719 can use Perl style <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> for
1720 maximum flexibility.
1724 After making any changes, there is no need to restart
1725 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
1726 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> detects such changes
1727 automatically. Note, however, that it may take one or two additional
1728 requests for the change to take effect. When changing the listening address
1729 of <application>Privoxy</application>, these <quote>wake up</quote> requests
1730 must obviously be sent to the <emphasis>old</emphasis> listening address.
1735 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
1736 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
1737 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
1738 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
1744 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1747 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1749 <!-- **************************************************** -->
1750 <!-- Include config.sgml here -->
1751 <!-- This is where the entire config file is detailed. -->
1753 <!-- end include -->
1756 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1760 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1762 <sect1 id="actions-file"><title>Actions Files</title>
1766 XXX: similar descriptions are in the Configuration Files sections.
1767 We should only describe them at one place.
1770 The actions files are used to define what <emphasis>actions</emphasis>
1771 <application>Privoxy</application> takes for which URLs, and thus determines
1772 how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
1773 transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof).
1774 There are a number of such actions, with a wide range of functionality.
1775 Each action does something a little different.
1776 These actions give us a veritable arsenal of tools with which to exert
1777 our control, preferences and independence. Actions can be combined so that
1778 their effects are aggregated when applied against a given set of URLs.
1782 are three action files included with <application>Privoxy</application> with
1788 <filename>match-all.action</filename> - is used to define which
1789 <quote>actions</quote> relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups,
1790 content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default.
1791 It should be the first actions file loaded
1796 <filename>default.action</filename> - defines many exceptions (both
1797 positive and negative) from the default set of actions that's configured
1798 in <filename>match-all.action</filename>. It is a set of rules that should
1799 work reasonably well as-is for most users. This file is only supposed to
1800 be edited by the developers. It should be the second actions file loaded.
1805 <filename>user.action</filename> - is intended to be for local site
1806 preferences and exceptions. As an example, if your ISP or your bank
1807 has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
1808 thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
1813 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Cautious</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Medium</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Advanced</guibutton>
1816 These have increasing levels of aggressiveness <emphasis>and have no
1817 influence on your browsing unless you select them explicitly in the
1818 editor</emphasis>. A default installation should be pre-set to
1819 <literal>Cautious</literal>. New users should try this for a while before
1820 adjusting the settings to more aggressive levels. The more aggressive
1821 the settings, then the more likelihood there is of problems such as sites
1822 not working as they should.
1825 The <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button allows you to turn each
1826 action on/off individually for fine-tuning. The <guibutton>Cautious</guibutton>
1827 button changes the actions list to low/safe settings which will activate
1828 ad blocking and a minimal set of &my-app;'s features, and subsequently
1829 there will be less of a chance for accidental problems. The
1830 <guibutton>Medium</guibutton> button sets the list to a medium level of
1831 other features and a low level set of privacy features. The
1832 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> button sets the list to a high level of
1833 ad blocking and medium level of privacy. See the chart below. The latter
1834 three buttons over-ride any changes via with the
1835 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button. More fine-tuning can be done in the
1836 lower sections of this internal page.
1839 While the actions file editor allows to enable these settings in all
1840 actions files, they are only supposed to be enabled in the first one
1841 to make sure you don't unintentionally overrule earlier rules.
1844 The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
1845 <filename>default.action</filename> are:
1847 <table frame=all id="default-configurations"><title>Default Configurations</title>
1848 <tgroup cols=4 align=left colsep=1 rowsep=1>
1849 <colspec colname=c1>
1850 <colspec colname=c2>
1851 <colspec colname=c3>
1852 <colspec colname=c4>
1855 <entry>Feature</entry>
1856 <entry>Cautious</entry>
1857 <entry>Medium</entry>
1858 <entry>Advanced</entry>
1863 <!-- <entry>f1</entry> -->
1864 <!-- <entry>f2</entry> -->
1865 <!-- <entry>f3</entry> -->
1866 <!-- <entry>f4</entry> -->
1872 <entry>Ad-blocking Aggressiveness</entry>
1873 <entry>medium</entry>
1879 <entry>Ad-filtering by size</entry>
1886 <entry>Ad-filtering by link</entry>
1892 <entry>Pop-up killing</entry>
1893 <entry>blocks only</entry>
1894 <entry>blocks only</entry>
1895 <entry>blocks only</entry>
1899 <entry>Privacy Features</entry>
1901 <entry>medium</entry>
1902 <entry>medium/high</entry>
1906 <entry>Cookie handling</entry>
1908 <entry>session-only</entry>
1913 <entry>Referer forging</entry>
1920 <entry>GIF de-animation</entry>
1927 <entry>Fast redirects</entry>
1934 <entry>HTML taming</entry>
1941 <entry>JavaScript taming</entry>
1948 <entry>Web-bug killing</entry>
1955 <entry>Image tag reordering</entry>
1969 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
1970 file, and are processed in the order they are defined (e.g.
1971 <filename>default.action</filename> is typically processed before
1972 <filename>user.action</filename>). The content of these can all be viewed and
1974 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
1975 The over-riding principle when applying actions, is that the last action that
1976 matches a given URL wins. The broadest, most general rules go first
1977 (defined in <filename>default.action</filename>),
1978 followed by any exceptions (typically also in
1979 <filename>default.action</filename>), which are then followed lastly by any
1980 local preferences (typically in <emphasis>user</emphasis><filename>.action</filename>).
1981 Generally, <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word.
1985 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use
1986 <quote>aliases</quote> in an actions file, you have to place the (optional)
1987 <link linkend="aliases">alias section</link> at the top of that file.
1988 Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally to all
1989 sites and pages (be <emphasis>very careful</emphasis> with using such a
1990 universal set in <filename>user.action</filename> or any other actions file after
1991 <filename>default.action</filename>, because it will override the result
1992 from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
1993 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard
1994 <filename>user.action</filename> as an appendix to <filename>default.action</filename>,
1995 with the advantage that it is a separate file, which makes preserving your
1996 personal settings across <application>Privoxy</application> upgrades easier.
2000 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
2001 just some obnoxious URL whose content you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
2002 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
2003 written to disk), content can be modified, some JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
2004 fooled, and much more. See below for a <link linkend="actions">complete list
2008 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2009 <sect2 id="right-mix">
2010 <title>Finding the Right Mix</title>
2012 Note that some <link linkend="actions">actions</link>, like cookie suppression
2013 or script disabling, may render some sites unusable that rely on these
2014 techniques to work properly. Finding the right mix of actions is not always easy and
2015 certainly a matter of personal taste. And, things can always change, requiring
2016 refinements in the configuration. In general, it can be said that the more
2017 <quote>aggressive</quote> your default settings (in the top section of the
2018 actions file) are, the more exceptions for <quote>trusted</quote> sites you
2019 will have to make later. If, for example, you want to crunch all cookies per
2020 default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for sites that you
2021 regularly use and that require cookies for actually useful purposes, like maybe
2022 your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
2026 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
2027 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
2028 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
2029 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again :).
2033 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2034 <sect2 id="how-to-edit">
2035 <title>How to Edit</title>
2037 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by
2038 using our browser-based editor, which can be reached from <ulink
2039 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2040 Note: the config file option <link
2041 linkend="enable-edit-actions">enable-edit-actions</link> must be enabled for
2042 this to work. The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single
2043 feature on a per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults
2044 like <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> or
2045 <quote>Advanced</quote>. Warning: the <quote>Advanced</quote> setting is more
2046 aggressive, and will be more likely to cause problems for some sites.
2047 Experienced users only!
2051 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
2052 the actions files with your favorite text editor. Look at
2053 <filename>default.action</filename> which is richly commented with many
2059 <sect2 id="actions-apply">
2060 <title>How Actions are Applied to Requests</title>
2062 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections,
2063 like the <quote><link linkend="aliases">alias</link></quote> sections which will
2064 be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on regular sections: They have a
2065 heading line (often split up to multiple lines for readability) which consist
2066 of a list of actions, separated by whitespace and enclosed in curly braces.
2067 Below that, there is a list of URL and tag patterns, each on a separate line.
2071 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
2072 compared to all URL patterns in each <quote>action file</quote>.
2073 Every time it matches, the list of applicable actions for the request is
2074 incrementally updated, using the heading of the section in which the
2075 pattern is located. The same is done again for tags and tag patterns later on.
2079 If multiple applying sections set the same action differently,
2080 the last match wins. If not, the effects are aggregated.
2081 E.g. a URL might match a regular section with a heading line of <literal>{
2082 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link> }</literal>,
2083 then later another one with just <literal>{
2084 +<link linkend="block">block</link> }</literal>, resulting
2085 in <emphasis>both</emphasis> actions to apply. And there may well be
2086 cases where you will want to combine actions together. Such a section then
2091 { +<literal>handle-as-image</literal> +<literal>block{Banner ads.}</literal> }
2092 # Block these as if they were images. Send no block page.
2094 media.example.com/.*banners
2095 .example.com/images/ads/
2099 You can trace this process for URL patterns and any given URL by visiting <ulink
2100 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>.
2104 Examples and more detail on this is provided in the Appendix, <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">
2105 Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</link> section.
2109 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2110 <sect2 id="af-patterns">
2111 <title>Patterns</title>
2113 As mentioned, <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>patterns</quote>
2114 to determine what <emphasis>actions</emphasis> might apply to which sites and
2115 pages your browser attempts to access. These <quote>patterns</quote> use wild
2116 card type <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> matching to achieve a high degree of
2117 flexibility. This allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match
2118 against many similar patterns.
2122 Generally, an URL pattern has the form
2123 <literal><host><port>/<path></literal>, where the
2124 <literal><host></literal>, the <literal><port></literal>
2125 and the <literal><path></literal> are optional. (This is why the special
2126 <literal>/</literal> pattern matches all URLs). Note that the protocol
2127 portion of the URL pattern (e.g. <literal>http://</literal>) should
2128 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be included in the pattern. This is assumed already!
2131 The pattern matching syntax is different for the host and path parts of
2132 the URL. The host part uses a simple globbing type matching technique,
2133 while the path part uses more flexible
2134 <ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2135 Expressions</quote></ulink> (POSIX 1003.2).
2138 The port part of a pattern is a decimal port number preceded by a colon
2139 (<literal>:</literal>). If the host part contains a numerical IPv6 address,
2140 it has to be put into angle brackets
2141 (<literal><</literal>, <literal>></literal>).
2146 <term><literal>www.example.com/</literal></term>
2149 is a host-only pattern and will match any request to <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2150 regardless of which document on that server is requested. So ALL pages in
2151 this domain would be covered by the scope of this action. Note that a
2152 simple <literal>example.com</literal> is different and would NOT match.
2157 <term><literal>www.example.com</literal></term>
2160 means exactly the same. For host-only patterns, the trailing <literal>/</literal> may
2166 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html</literal></term>
2169 matches all the documents on <literal>www.example.com</literal>
2170 whose name starts with <literal>/index.html</literal>.
2175 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html$</literal></term>
2178 matches only the single document <literal>/index.html</literal>
2179 on <literal>www.example.com</literal>.
2184 <term><literal>/index.html$</literal></term>
2187 matches the document <literal>/index.html</literal>, regardless of the domain,
2188 i.e. on <emphasis>any</emphasis> web server anywhere.
2193 <term><literal>/</literal></term>
2196 Matches any URL because there's no requirement for either the
2197 domain or the path to match anything.
2202 <term><literal>:8000/</literal></term>
2205 Matches any URL pointing to TCP port 8000.
2210 <term><literal>10.0.0.1/</literal></term>
2213 Matches any URL with the host address <literal>10.0.0.1</literal>.
2214 (Note that the real URL uses plain brackets, not angle brackets.)
2219 <term><literal><2001:db8::1>/</literal></term>
2222 Matches any URL with the host address <literal>2001:db8::1</literal>.
2223 (Note that the real URL uses plain brackets, not angle brackets.)
2228 <term><literal>index.html</literal></term>
2231 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
2232 there is no top-level domain called <literal>.html</literal>. So its
2240 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2241 <sect3 id="host-pattern"><title>The Host Pattern</title>
2244 The matching of the host part offers some flexible options: if the
2245 host pattern starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
2246 The host pattern is often referred to as domain pattern as it is usually
2247 used to match domain names and not IP addresses.
2253 <term><literal>.example.com</literal></term>
2256 matches any domain with first-level domain <literal>com</literal>
2257 and second-level domain <literal>example</literal>.
2258 For example <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2259 <literal>example.com</literal> and <literal>foo.bar.baz.example.com</literal>.
2260 Note that it wouldn't match if the second-level domain was <literal>another-example</literal>.
2265 <term><literal>www.</literal></term>
2268 matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
2269 <literal>www.</literal> (It also matches the domain
2270 <literal>www</literal> but most of the time that doesn't matter.)
2275 <term><literal>.example.</literal></term>
2278 matches any domain that <emphasis>CONTAINS</emphasis> <literal>.example.</literal>.
2279 And, by the way, also included would be any files or documents that exist
2280 within that domain since no path limitations are specified. (Correctly
2281 speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains <literal>example</literal> as
2282 a domain.) This might be <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2283 <literal>news.example.de</literal>, or
2284 <literal>www.example.net/cgi/testing.pl</literal> for instance. All these
2292 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
2293 themselves. These work similarly to shell globbing type wild-cards:
2294 <quote>*</quote> represents zero or more arbitrary characters (this is
2296 <ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2297 Expression</quote></ulink> based syntax of <quote>.*</quote>),
2298 <quote>?</quote> represents any single character (this is equivalent to the
2299 regular expression syntax of a simple <quote>.</quote>), and you can define
2300 <quote>character classes</quote> in square brackets which is similar to
2301 the same regular expression technique. All of this can be freely mixed:
2306 <term><literal>ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2309 matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
2310 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>
2315 <term><literal>*ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2318 matches all of the above, and then some.
2323 <term><literal>.?pix.com</literal></term>
2326 matches <literal>www.ipix.com</literal>,
2327 <literal>pictures.epix.com</literal>, <literal>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</literal> etc.
2332 <term><literal>www[1-9a-ez].example.c*</literal></term>
2335 matches <literal>www1.example.com</literal>,
2336 <literal>www4.example.cc</literal>, <literal>wwwd.example.cy</literal>,
2337 <literal>wwwz.example.com</literal> etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
2338 <literal>wwww.example.com</literal>.
2345 While flexible, this is not the sophistication of full regular expression based syntax.
2349 When compiled with FEATURE_PCRE_HOST_PATTERNS patterns can be prefixed with
2350 <quote>PCRE-HOST-PATTERN:</quote> in which case full regular expression
2351 (PCRE) can be used for the host pattern as well.
2356 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2359 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2360 <sect3 id="path-pattern"><title>The Path Pattern</title>
2363 <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>modern</quote> POSIX 1003.2
2364 <ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2365 Expressions</quote></ulink> for matching the path portion (after the slash),
2366 and is thus more flexible.
2370 There is an <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link> with a brief quick-start into regular
2371 expressions, you also might want to have a look at your operating system's documentation
2372 on regular expressions (try <literal>man re_format</literal>).
2376 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the <quote>/</quote>,
2377 i.e. it matches as if it would start with a <quote>^</quote> (regular expression speak
2378 for the beginning of a line).
2382 Please also note that matching in the path is <emphasis>CASE INSENSITIVE</emphasis>
2383 by default, but you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
2384 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch: <literal>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</literal> will match
2385 only documents whose path starts with <literal>PaTtErN</literal> in
2386 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
2391 <term><literal>.example.com/.*</literal></term>
2394 Is equivalent to just <quote>.example.com</quote>, since any documents
2395 within that domain are matched with or without the <quote>.*</quote>
2396 regular expression. This is redundant
2401 <term><literal>.example.com/.*/index.html$</literal></term>
2404 Will match any page in the domain of <quote>example.com</quote> that is
2405 named <quote>index.html</quote>, and that is part of some path. For
2406 example, it matches <quote>www.example.com/testing/index.html</quote> but
2407 NOT <quote>www.example.com/index.html</quote> because the regular
2408 expression called for at least two <quote>/'s</quote>, thus the path
2409 requirement. It also would match
2410 <quote>www.example.com/testing/index_html</quote>, because of the
2411 special meta-character <quote>.</quote>.
2416 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)?index\.html$</literal></term>
2419 This regular expression is conditional so it will match any page
2420 named <quote>index.html</quote> regardless of path which in this case can
2421 have one or more <quote>/'s</quote>. And this one must contain exactly
2422 <quote>.html</quote> (and end with that!).
2427 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)</literal></term>
2430 This regular expression will match any path of <quote>example.com</quote>
2431 that contains any of the words <quote>ads</quote>, <quote>banner</quote>,
2432 <quote>banners</quote> (because of the <quote>?</quote>) or <quote>junk</quote>.
2433 The path does not have to end in these words, just contain them.
2434 The path has to contain at least two slashes (including the one at the beginning).
2439 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)/.*\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$</literal></term>
2442 This is very much the same as above, except now it must end in either
2443 <quote>.jpg</quote>, <quote>.jpeg</quote>, <quote>.gif</quote> or <quote>.png</quote>. So this
2444 one is limited to common image formats.
2451 There are many, many good examples to be found in <filename>default.action</filename>,
2452 and more tutorials below in <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>.
2457 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2460 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2461 <sect3 id="tag-pattern"><title>The Request Tag Pattern</title>
2464 Request tag patterns are used to change the applying actions based on the
2465 request's tags. Tags can be created based on HTTP headers with either
2466 the <link linkend="CLIENT-HEADER-TAGGER">client-header-tagger</link>
2467 or the <link linkend="SERVER-HEADER-TAGGER">server-header-tagger</link> action.
2471 Request tag patterns have to start with <quote>TAG:</quote>, so &my-app;
2472 can tell them apart from other patterns. Everything after the colon
2473 including white space, is interpreted as a regular expression with
2474 path pattern syntax, except that tag patterns aren't left-anchored
2475 automatically (&my-app; doesn't silently add a <quote>^</quote>,
2476 you have to do it yourself if you need it).
2480 To match all requests that are tagged with <quote>foo</quote>
2481 your pattern line should be <quote>TAG:^foo$</quote>,
2482 <quote>TAG:foo</quote> would work as well, but it would also
2483 match requests whose tags contain <quote>foo</quote> somewhere.
2484 <quote>TAG: foo</quote> wouldn't work as it requires white space.
2488 Sections can contain URL and request tag patterns at the same time,
2489 but request tag patterns are checked after the URL patterns and thus
2490 always overrule them, even if they are located before the URL patterns.
2494 Once a new request tag is added, Privoxy checks right away if it's matched by one
2495 of the request tag patterns and updates the action settings accordingly. As a result
2496 request tags can be used to activate other tagger actions, as long as these other
2497 taggers look for headers that haven't already be parsed.
2501 For example you could tag client requests which use the
2502 <literal>POST</literal> method,
2503 then use this tag to activate another tagger that adds a tag if cookies
2504 are sent, and then use a block action based on the cookie tag. This allows
2505 the outcome of one action, to be input into a subsequent action. However if
2506 you'd reverse the position of the described taggers, and activated the
2507 method tagger based on the cookie tagger, no method tags would be created.
2508 The method tagger would look for the request line, but at the time
2509 the cookie tag is created, the request line has already been parsed.
2513 While this is a limitation you should be aware of, this kind of
2514 indirection is seldom needed anyway and even the example doesn't
2515 make too much sense.
2520 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2521 <sect3 id="negative-tag-patterns"><title>The Negative Request Tag Patterns</title>
2524 To match requests that do not have a certain request tag, specify a negative tag pattern
2525 by prefixing the tag pattern line with either <quote>NO-REQUEST-TAG:</quote>
2526 or <quote>NO-RESPONSE-TAG:</quote> instead of <quote>TAG:</quote>.
2530 Negative request tag patterns created with <quote>NO-REQUEST-TAG:</quote> are checked
2531 after all client headers are scanned, the ones created with <quote>NO-RESPONSE-TAG:</quote>
2532 are checked after all server headers are scanned. In both cases all the created
2533 tags are considered.
2537 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2538 <sect3 id="client-tag-pattern"><title>The Client Tag Pattern</title>
2540 <!-- XXX: This section contains duplicates content from the
2541 client-specific-tag documentation. -->
2544 Client tag patterns are not set based on HTTP headers but based on
2545 the client's IP address. Users can enable them themselves, but the
2546 Privoxy admin controls which tags are available and what their effect
2551 After a client-specific tag has been defined with the
2552 <link linkend="client-specific-tag">client-specific-tag</link>,
2553 directive, action sections can be activated based on the tag by using a
2554 CLIENT-TAG pattern. The CLIENT-TAG pattern is evaluated at the same priority
2555 as URL patterns, as a result the last matching pattern wins. Tags that
2556 are created based on client or server headers are evaluated later on
2557 and can overrule CLIENT-TAG and URL patterns!
2560 The tag is set for all requests that come from clients that requested
2561 it to be set. Note that "clients" are differentiated by IP address,
2562 if the IP address changes the tag has to be requested again.
2565 Clients can request tags to be set by using the CGI interface <ulink
2566 url="http://config.privoxy.org/client-tags">http://config.privoxy.org/client-tags</ulink>.
2574 # If the admin defined the client-specific-tag circumvent-blocks,
2575 # and the request comes from a client that previously requested
2576 # the tag to be set, overrule all previous +block actions that
2577 # are enabled based on URL to CLIENT-TAG patterns.
2579 CLIENT-TAG:^circumvent-blocks$
2581 # This section is not overruled because it's located after
2583 {+block{Nobody is supposed to request this.}}
2584 example.org/blocked-example-page</screen>
2590 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2593 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2595 <sect2 id="actions">
2596 <title>Actions</title>
2598 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
2599 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a
2600 <quote>+</quote>, and turned off if preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. So a
2601 <literal>+action</literal> means <quote>do that action</quote>, e.g.
2602 <literal>+block</literal> means <quote>please block URLs that match the
2603 following patterns</quote>, and <literal>-block</literal> means <quote>don't
2604 block URLs that match the following patterns, even if <literal>+block</literal>
2605 previously applied.</quote>
2609 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
2610 separated by whitespace, like in
2611 <literal>{+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}}</literal>,
2612 followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which they apply.
2613 Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up a section
2614 of the actions file.
2618 Actions fall into three categories:
2624 Boolean, i.e the action can only be <quote>enabled</quote> or
2625 <quote>disabled</quote>. Syntax:
2628 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # enable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
2629 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
2632 Example: <literal>+handle-as-image</literal>
2639 Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of action.
2643 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and set parameter to <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>,
2644 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
2645 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action. The parameter can be omitted
2648 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized action,
2649 the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are simply ignored.
2652 Example: <literal>+hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070602 Firefox/2.0.0.4}</literal>
2658 Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions,
2659 but they behave differently: If the action applies multiple times to the
2660 same URL, but with different parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> the parameters
2661 from <emphasis>all</emphasis> matches are remembered. This is used for actions
2662 that can be executed for the same request repeatedly, like adding multiple
2663 headers, or filtering through multiple filters. Syntax:
2666 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and add <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> to the list of parameters
2667 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # remove the parameter <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> from the list of parameters
2668 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
2669 <replaceable class="parameter">-name</replaceable> # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list
2672 Examples: <literal>+add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text}</literal> and
2673 <literal>+filter{html-annoyances}</literal>
2680 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no <quote>actions</quote> are
2681 taken. So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
2682 normal, non-blocking, non-filtering proxy. You must specifically enable the
2683 privacy and blocking features you need (although the provided default actions
2684 files will give a good starting point).
2688 Later defined action sections always over-ride earlier ones of the same type.
2689 So exceptions to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
2690 in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files such
2691 as <filename>user.action</filename>). For multi-valued actions, the actions
2692 are applied in the order they are specified. Actions files are processed in
2693 the order they are defined in <filename>config</filename> (the default
2694 installation has three actions files). It also quite possible for any given
2695 URL to match more than one <quote>pattern</quote> (because of wildcards and
2696 regular expressions), and thus to trigger more than one set of actions! Last
2700 <!-- start actions listing -->
2702 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> actions are:
2706 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2707 <!-- Please note the below defined actions use id's that are -->
2708 <!-- probably linked from other places, so please don't change. -->
2710 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2713 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2715 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="add-header">
2716 <title>add-header</title>
2720 <term>Typical use:</term>
2722 <para>Confuse log analysis, custom applications</para>
2727 <term>Effect:</term>
2730 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
2737 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2739 <para>Multi-value.</para>
2744 <term>Parameter:</term>
2747 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not checked.
2748 It is recommended that you use the <quote><literal>X-</literal></quote> prefix
2758 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
2759 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
2760 <quote>HTTP headers</quote> are, you definitely don't need to worry about this
2764 Headers added by this action are not modified by other actions.
2770 <term>Example usage:</term>
2772 <screen># Add a DNT ("Do not track") header to all requests,
2773 # event to those that already have one.
2775 # This is just an example, not a recommendation.
2777 # There is no reason to believe that user-tracking websites care
2778 # about the DNT header and depending on the User-Agent, adding the
2779 # header may make user-tracking easier.
2780 {+add-header{DNT: 1}}
2788 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2789 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="block">
2790 <title>block</title>
2794 <term>Typical use:</term>
2796 <para>Block ads or other unwanted content</para>
2801 <term>Effect:</term>
2804 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the
2805 requests are trapped by &my-app; and the requested URL is never retrieved,
2806 but is answered locally with a substitute page or image, as determined by
2808 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2810 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>, and
2812 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> actions.
2820 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2822 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2827 <term>Parameter:</term>
2829 <para>A block reason that should be given to the user.</para>
2837 <application>Privoxy</application> sends a special <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page
2838 for requests to blocked pages. This page contains the block reason given as
2839 parameter, a link to find out why the block action applies, and a click-through
2840 to the blocked content (the latter only if the force feature is available and
2844 A very important exception occurs if <emphasis>both</emphasis>
2845 <literal>block</literal> and <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2846 apply to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
2847 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
2848 (see below) also applies, the type of image will be determined by its parameter,
2849 if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is sent.
2852 It is important to understand this process, in order
2853 to understand how <application>Privoxy</application> deals with
2854 ads and other unwanted content. Blocking is a core feature, and one
2855 upon which various other features depend.
2858 The <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
2859 action can perform a very similar task, by <quote>blocking</quote>
2860 banner images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
2861 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
2862 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse the two.
2868 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2871 {+block{No nasty stuff for you.}}
2872 # Block and replace with "blocked" page
2873 .nasty-stuff.example.com
2875 {+block{Doubleclick banners.} +handle-as-image}
2876 # Block and replace with image
2880 {+block{Layered ads.} +handle-as-empty-document}
2881 # Block and then ignore
2882 adserver.example.net/.*\.js$
2892 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2893 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="change-x-forwarded-for">
2894 <title>change-x-forwarded-for</title>
2898 <term>Typical use:</term>
2900 <para>Improve privacy by not forwarding the source of the request in the HTTP headers.</para>
2905 <term>Effect:</term>
2908 Deletes the <quote>X-Forwarded-For:</quote> HTTP header from the client request,
2916 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2918 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2923 <term>Parameter:</term>
2927 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header.</para>
2931 <quote>add</quote> to create the header (or append
2932 the client's IP address to an already existing one).
2943 It is safe and recommended to use <literal>block</literal>.
2946 Forwarding the source address of the request may make
2947 sense in some multi-user setups but is also a privacy risk.
2952 <term>Example usage:</term>
2954 <screen>+change-x-forwarded-for{block}</screen>
2960 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2961 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-header-filter">
2962 <title>client-header-filter</title>
2966 <term>Typical use:</term>
2969 Rewrite or remove single client headers.
2975 <term>Effect:</term>
2978 All client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
2979 the specified regular expression based substitutions.
2986 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2988 <para>Multi-value.</para>
2993 <term>Parameter:</term>
2996 The name of a client-header filter, as defined in one of the
2997 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
3006 Client-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
3007 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
3008 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
3009 You can do that by using tags though.
3012 Client-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
3013 and use their output as input.
3016 If the request URI gets changed, &my-app; will detect that and use the new
3017 one. This can be used to rewrite the request destination behind the client's
3018 back, for example to specify a Tor exit relay for certain requests.
3021 Note that to change the destination host for
3022 <link linkend="HTTPS-INSPECTION">https-inspected</link>
3023 requests a protocol and host has to be added to the URI.
3026 If <link linkend="HTTPS-INSPECTION">https inspection</link>
3027 is enabled, the protocol can be downgraded from https to http
3028 but upgrading a request from http to https is currently not
3032 After detecting a rewrite, &my-app; does not update the actions
3033 used for the request based on the new host.
3036 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
3037 to learn which client-header filters are available by default, and how to
3045 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3048 # Hide Tor exit notation in Host and Referer Headers
3049 {+client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}}
3058 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3059 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-body-filter">
3060 <title>client-body-filter</title>
3064 <term>Typical use:</term>
3067 Rewrite or remove client request body.
3073 <term>Effect:</term>
3076 All request bodies to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
3077 the specified regular expression based substitutions.
3084 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3086 <para>Multi-value.</para>
3091 <term>Parameter:</term>
3094 The name of a client-body filter, as defined in one of the
3095 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
3104 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
3105 to learn how to create your own client-body filters.
3108 The distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file contains a selection of
3109 client-body filters for example purposes.
3112 The amount of data that can be filtered is limited by the
3113 <literal><link linkend="buffer-limit">buffer-limit</link></literal>
3114 option in the main <link linkend="config">config file</link>. The
3115 default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the whole
3116 request body is passed through unfiltered.
3122 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3125 # Remove "test" everywhere in the request body
3126 {+client-body-filter{remove-test}}
3136 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3137 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-body-tagger">
3138 <title>client-body-tagger</title>
3142 <term>Typical use:</term>
3145 Block requests based on the content of the body data.
3151 <term>Effect:</term>
3154 Client request bodies to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
3155 the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as tag.
3162 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3164 <para>Multi-value.</para>
3169 <term>Parameter:</term>
3172 The name of a client-body tagger, as defined in one of the
3173 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
3182 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
3183 to learn how to create your own client-body tagger.
3186 Client-body taggers are applied to each request body on its own,
3187 and as the body isn't modified, each tagger "sees" the original.
3190 Chunk-encoded request bodies currently can't be tagged.
3191 Request bodies larger than the buffer-limit can't be tagged either.
3197 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3200 # Apply blafasel tagger.
3201 {+client-body-tagger{blafasel}}
3204 # Block request based on the tag created by the blafasel tagger.
3205 {+block{Request body contains blafasel}}
3206 TAG:^content contains blafasel$
3215 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3216 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-header-tagger">
3217 <title>client-header-tagger</title>
3221 <term>Typical use:</term>
3224 Block requests based on their headers.
3230 <term>Effect:</term>
3233 Client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
3234 the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
3242 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3244 <para>Multi-value.</para>
3249 <term>Parameter:</term>
3252 The name of a client-header tagger, as defined in one of the
3253 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
3262 Client-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
3263 and as the header isn't modified, each tagger <quote>sees</quote>
3267 Client-header taggers are the first actions that are executed
3268 and their tags can be used to control every other action.
3274 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3277 # Tag every request with the User-Agent header
3278 {+client-header-tagger{user-agent}}
3281 # Tagging itself doesn't change the action
3282 # settings, sections with TAG patterns do:
3284 # If it's a download agent, use a different forwarding proxy,
3285 # show the real User-Agent and make sure resume works.
3286 {+forward-override{forward-socks5 10.0.0.2:2222 .} \
3287 -hide-if-modified-since \
3288 -overwrite-last-modified \
3293 TAG:^User-Agent: NetBSD-ftp/
3294 TAG:^User-Agent: Novell ZYPP Installer
3295 TAG:^User-Agent: RPM APT-HTTP/
3296 TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/
3297 TAG:^User-Agent: Ubuntu APT-HTTP/
3298 TAG:^User-Agent: MPlayer/
3302 # Tag all requests with the Range header set
3303 {+client-header-tagger{range-requests}}
3306 # Disable filtering for the tagged requests.
3308 # With filtering enabled Privoxy would remove the Range headers
3309 # to be able to filter the whole response. The downside is that
3310 # it prevents clients from resuming downloads or skipping over
3311 # parts of multimedia files.
3312 {-filter -deanimate-gifs}
3317 # Tag all requests with the client IP address
3319 # (Technically the client IP address isn't included in the
3320 # client headers but client-header taggers can set it anyway.
3321 # For details see the tagger in default.filter)
3322 {+client-header-tagger{client-ip-address}}
3325 # Change forwarding settings for requests coming from address 10.0.0.1
3326 {+forward-override{forward-socks5 127.0.1.2:2222 .}}
3327 TAG:^IP-ADDRESS: 10\.0\.0\.1$
3336 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3337 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="content-type-overwrite">
3338 <title>content-type-overwrite</title>
3342 <term>Typical use:</term>
3344 <para>Stop useless download menus from popping up, or change the browser's rendering mode</para>
3349 <term>Effect:</term>
3352 Replaces the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header.
3359 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3361 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3366 <term>Parameter:</term>
3378 The <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header is used by the
3379 browser to decide what to do with the document. The value of this
3380 header can cause the browser to open a download menu instead of
3381 displaying the document by itself, even if the document's format is
3382 supported by the browser.
3385 The declared content type can also affect which rendering mode
3386 the browser chooses. If XHTML is delivered as <quote>text/html</quote>,
3387 many browsers treat it as yet another broken HTML document.
3388 If it is send as <quote>application/xml</quote>, browsers with
3389 XHTML support will only display it, if the syntax is correct.
3392 If you see a web site that proudly uses XHTML buttons, but sets
3393 <quote>Content-Type: text/html</quote>, you can use &my-app;
3394 to overwrite it with <quote>application/xml</quote> and validate
3395 the web master's claim inside your XHTML-supporting browser.
3396 If the syntax is incorrect, the browser will complain loudly.
3399 You can also go the opposite direction: if your browser prints
3400 error messages instead of rendering a document falsely declared
3401 as XHTML, you can overwrite the content type with
3402 <quote>text/html</quote> and have it rendered as broken HTML document.
3405 By default <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal> only replaces
3406 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> headers that look like some kind of text.
3407 If you want to overwrite it unconditionally, you have to combine it with
3408 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>.
3409 This limitation exists for a reason, think twice before circumventing it.
3412 Most of the time it's easier to replace this action with a custom
3413 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
3414 It allows you to activate it for every document of a certain site and it will still
3415 only replace the content types you aimed at.
3418 Of course you can apply <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal>
3419 to a whole site and then make URL based exceptions, but it's a lot
3420 more work to get the same precision.
3426 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
3428 <screen># Check if www.example.net/ really uses valid XHTML
3429 { +content-type-overwrite{application/xml} }
3432 # but leave the content type unmodified if the URL looks like a style sheet
3433 {-content-type-overwrite}
3434 www.example.net/.*\.css$
3435 www.example.net/.*style
3443 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3444 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-client-header">
3448 <title>crunch-client-header</title>
3452 <term>Typical use:</term>
3454 <para>Remove a client header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3459 <term>Effect:</term>
3462 Deletes every header sent by the client that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3469 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3471 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3476 <term>Parameter:</term>
3488 This action allows you to block client headers for which no dedicated
3489 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists.
3490 <application>Privoxy</application> will remove every client header that
3491 contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3494 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3495 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3496 they contain the same string.
3499 <literal>crunch-client-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3500 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3501 parts of them, you should use a
3502 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header filter</link></literal>.
3506 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3513 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3515 <screen># Block the non-existent "Privacy-Violation:" client header
3516 { +crunch-client-header{Privacy-Violation:} }
3525 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3526 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-if-none-match">
3527 <title>crunch-if-none-match</title>
3533 <term>Typical use:</term>
3535 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
3540 <term>Effect:</term>
3543 Deletes the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header.
3550 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3552 <para>Boolean.</para>
3557 <term>Parameter:</term>
3569 Removing the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header
3570 is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
3571 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote> which
3572 would cause the browser to use a cached copy of the page.
3575 It is also useful to make sure the header isn't used as a cookie
3576 replacement (unlikely but possible).
3579 Blocking the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> header shouldn't cause any
3580 caching problems, as long as the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> header
3581 isn't blocked or missing as well.
3584 It is recommended to use this action together with
3585 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
3587 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>.
3593 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3595 <screen># Let the browser revalidate cached documents but don't
3596 # allow the server to use the revalidation headers for user tracking.
3597 {+hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
3598 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
3599 +crunch-if-none-match}
3608 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3609 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-incoming-cookies">
3610 <title>crunch-incoming-cookies</title>
3614 <term>Typical use:</term>
3617 Prevent the web server from setting HTTP cookies on your system
3623 <term>Effect:</term>
3626 Deletes any <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from server replies.
3633 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3635 <para>Boolean.</para>
3640 <term>Parameter:</term>
3652 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> HTTP cookies. For
3653 <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> HTTP cookies, use
3654 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>.
3655 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable HTTP cookies completely.
3658 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3659 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3660 since it would prevent the session cookies from being set. See also
3661 <literal><link linkend="filter-content-cookies">filter-content-cookies</link></literal>.
3667 <term>Example usage:</term>
3669 <screen>+crunch-incoming-cookies</screen>
3676 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3677 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-server-header">
3678 <title>crunch-server-header</title>
3684 <term>Typical use:</term>
3686 <para>Remove a server header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3691 <term>Effect:</term>
3694 Deletes every header sent by the server that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3701 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3703 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3708 <term>Parameter:</term>
3720 This action allows you to block server headers for which no dedicated
3721 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists. <application>Privoxy</application>
3722 will remove every server header that contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3725 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3726 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3727 they contain the same string.
3730 <literal>crunch-server-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3731 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3732 parts of them, you should use a custom
3733 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
3737 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3744 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3746 <screen># Crunch server headers that try to prevent caching
3747 { +crunch-server-header{no-cache} }
3756 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3757 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-outgoing-cookies">
3758 <title>crunch-outgoing-cookies</title>
3762 <term>Typical use:</term>
3765 Prevent the web server from reading any HTTP cookies from your system
3771 <term>Effect:</term>
3774 Deletes any <quote>Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from client requests.
3781 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3783 <para>Boolean.</para>
3788 <term>Parameter:</term>
3800 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> HTTP cookies. For
3801 <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> HTTP cookies, use
3802 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>.
3803 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable HTTP cookies completely.
3806 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3807 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3808 since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
3814 <term>Example usage:</term>
3816 <screen>+crunch-outgoing-cookies</screen>
3824 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3825 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="deanimate-gifs">
3826 <title>deanimate-gifs</title>
3830 <term>Typical use:</term>
3832 <para>Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.</para>
3837 <term>Effect:</term>
3840 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
3847 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3849 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3854 <term>Parameter:</term>
3857 <quote>last</quote> or <quote>first</quote>
3866 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
3867 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
3868 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last
3869 frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
3870 most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
3871 last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
3874 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
3875 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
3882 <term>Example usage:</term>
3884 <screen>+deanimate-gifs{last}</screen>
3891 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3892 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="delay-response">
3893 <title>delay-response</title>
3897 <term>Typical use:</term>
3899 <para>Delay responses to the client to reduce the load</para>
3904 <term>Effect:</term>
3907 Delays responses to the client by sending the response in ca. 10 byte chunks.
3914 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3916 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3921 <term>Parameter:</term>
3924 <quote>Number of milliseconds</quote>
3933 Sometimes when JavaScript code is used to fetch advertisements
3934 it doesn't respect Privoxy's blocks and retries to fetch the
3935 same resource again causing unnecessary load on the client.
3938 This action delays responses to the client and can be combined
3939 with <literal><link linkend="block">blocks</link></literal>
3940 to slow down the JavaScript code, thus reducing
3941 the load on the client.
3944 When used without <literal><link linkend="block">blocks</link></literal>
3945 the action can also be used to simulate a slow internet connection.
3951 <term>Example usage:</term>
3953 <screen>+delay-response{100}</screen>
3960 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3961 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="downgrade-http-version">
3962 <title>downgrade-http-version</title>
3966 <term>Typical use:</term>
3968 <para>Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1</para>
3973 <term>Effect:</term>
3976 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
3983 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3985 <para>Boolean.</para>
3990 <term>Parameter:</term>
4002 This is a left-over from the time when <application>Privoxy</application>
4003 didn't support important HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the
4004 unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1-related problems with some server
4008 Note that enabling this action is only a workaround. It should not
4009 be enabled for sites that work without it. While it shouldn't break
4010 any pages, it has an (usually negative) performance impact.
4013 If you come across a site where enabling this action helps, please report it,
4014 so the cause of the problem can be analyzed. If the problem turns out to be
4015 caused by a bug in <application>Privoxy</application> it should be
4016 fixed so the following release works without the work around.
4022 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4024 <screen>{+downgrade-http-version}
4025 problem-host.example.com</screen>
4033 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4034 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="external-filter">
4035 <title>external-filter</title>
4039 <term>Typical use:</term>
4041 <para>Modify content using a programming language of your choice.</para>
4046 <term>Effect:</term>
4049 All instances of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which
4050 this action applies, can be filtered on-the-fly through the specified external
4052 By default plain text documents are exempted from filtering, because web
4053 servers often use the <literal>text/plain</literal> MIME type for all files
4054 whose type they don't know.)
4061 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
4063 <para>Multi-value.</para>
4068 <term>Parameter:</term>
4071 The name of an external content filter, as defined in the
4072 <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>.
4073 External filters can be defined in one or more files as defined by the
4074 <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
4075 option in the <link linkend="config">config file</link>.
4078 When used in its negative form,
4079 and without parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> filtering with external
4080 filters is completely disabled.
4089 External filters are scripts or programs that can modify the content in
4090 case common <literal><link linkend="filter">filters</link></literal>
4091 aren't powerful enough. With the exception that this action doesn't
4092 use pcrs-based filters, the notes in the
4093 <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> section apply.
4097 Currently external filters are executed with &my-app;'s privileges.
4098 Only use external filters you understand and trust.
4102 This feature is experimental, the <literal><link
4103 linkend="external-filter-syntax">syntax</link></literal>
4104 may change in the future.
4107 If you want to apply external filters to images or other content
4108 that isn't text-based, enable the
4109 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>
4117 <term>Example usage:</term>
4119 <screen>+external-filter{fancy-filter}</screen>
4125 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4126 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="fast-redirects">
4127 <title>fast-redirects</title>
4131 <term>Typical use:</term>
4133 <para>Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links.</para>
4138 <term>Effect:</term>
4141 Detects redirection URLs and redirects the browser without contacting
4142 the redirection server first.
4149 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
4151 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4156 <term>Parameter:</term>
4161 <quote>simple-check</quote> to just search for the string <quote>http://</quote>
4162 to detect redirection URLs.
4167 <quote>check-decoded-url</quote> to decode URLs (if necessary) before searching
4168 for redirection URLs.
4179 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
4180 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
4181 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
4182 resulting from this scheme typically look like:
4183 <quote>http://www.example.org/click-tracker.cgi?target=http%3a//www.example.net/</quote>.
4186 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
4187 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
4188 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
4189 to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
4190 browser asks the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
4194 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
4195 If it is enabled by default, you will have to create some exceptions to
4196 this action. It can lead to failures in several ways:
4199 Not every URLs with other URLs as parameters is evil.
4200 Some sites offer a real service that requires this information to work.
4201 For example a validation service needs to know, which document to validate.
4202 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> assumes that every URL parameter that
4203 looks like another URL is a redirection target, and will always redirect to
4204 the last one. Most of the time the assumption is correct, but if it isn't,
4205 the user gets redirected anyway.
4208 Another failure occurs if the URL contains other parameters after the URL parameter.
4210 <quote>http://www.example.org/?redirect=http%3a//www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
4211 contains the redirection URL <quote>http://www.example.net/</quote>,
4212 followed by another parameter. <literal>fast-redirects</literal> doesn't know that
4213 and will cause a redirect to <quote>http://www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
4214 Depending on the target server configuration, the parameter will be silently ignored
4215 or lead to a <quote>page not found</quote> error. You can prevent this problem by
4216 first using the <literal><link linkend="redirect">redirect</link></literal> action
4217 to remove the last part of the URL, but it requires a little effort.
4220 To detect a redirection URL, <literal>fast-redirects</literal> only
4221 looks for the string <quote>http://</quote>, either in plain text
4222 (invalid but often used) or encoded as <quote>http%3a//</quote>.
4223 Some sites use their own URL encoding scheme, encrypt the address
4224 of the target server or replace it with a database id. In these cases
4225 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> is fooled and the request reaches the
4226 redirection server where it probably gets logged.
4232 <term>Example usage:</term>
4235 { +fast-redirects{simple-check} }
4238 { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
4239 another.example.com/testing
4248 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4249 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter">
4250 <title>filter</title>
4254 <term>Typical use:</term>
4256 <para>Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
4257 do fun text replacements, add personalized effects, etc.</para>
4262 <term>Effect:</term>
4265 All instances of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which
4266 this action applies, can be filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular
4267 expression based substitutions. (Note: as of version 3.0.3 plain text documents
4268 are exempted from filtering, because web servers often use the
4269 <literal>text/plain</literal> MIME type for all files whose type they don't know.)
4276 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
4278 <para>Multi-value.</para>
4283 <term>Parameter:</term>
4286 The name of a content filter, as defined in the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>.
4287 Filters can be defined in one or more files as defined by the
4288 <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
4289 option in the <link linkend="config">config file</link>.
4290 <filename>default.filter</filename> is the collection of filters
4291 supplied by the developers. Locally defined filters should go
4292 in their own file, such as <filename>user.filter</filename>.
4295 When used in its negative form,
4296 and without parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> filtering is completely disabled.
4305 For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
4306 in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below for
4310 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
4311 slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
4312 passed the filters. (The total time until the page is completely rendered
4313 doesn't change much, but it may be perceived as slower since the page is
4314 not incrementally displayed.)
4315 This effect will be more noticeable on slower connections.
4318 <quote>Rolling your own</quote>
4319 filters requires a knowledge of
4320 <ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
4321 Expressions</quote></ulink> and
4322 <ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html"><quote>HTML</quote></ulink>.
4323 This is very powerful feature, and potentially very intrusive.
4324 Filters should be used with caution, and where an equivalent
4325 <quote>action</quote> is not available.
4328 The amount of data that can be filtered is limited by the
4329 <literal><link linkend="buffer-limit">buffer-limit</link></literal>
4330 option in the main <link linkend="config">config file</link>. The
4331 default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the buffered
4332 data, and all pending data, is passed through unfiltered.
4335 Inappropriate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
4336 (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data
4337 (from HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate
4338 the integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might
4339 be necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering
4340 by defining appropriate <literal>-filter</literal> exceptions.
4343 Compressed content can't be filtered either, but if &my-app;
4344 is compiled with zlib support and a supported compression algorithm
4345 is used (gzip or deflate), &my-app; can first decompress the content
4349 If you use a &my-app; version without zlib support, but want filtering to work on
4350 as much documents as possible, even those that would normally be sent compressed,
4351 you must use the <literal><link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link></literal>
4352 action in conjunction with <literal>filter</literal>.
4355 Content filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
4356 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
4357 action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism
4358 works quite differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners
4359 based on their size (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat
4363 <link linkend="contact">Feedback</link> with suggestions for new or
4364 improved filters is particularly welcome!
4367 The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
4368 predefined filter. There are <link linkend="predefined-filters">more
4369 verbose explanations</link> of what these filters do in the <link
4370 linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>.
4376 <term>Example usage (with filters from the distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file).
4377 See <link linkend="PREDEFINED-FILTERS">the Predefined Filters section</link> for
4378 more explanation on each:</term>
4381 <anchor id="filter-js-annoyances">
4383 <screen>+filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.</screen>
4385 <anchor id="filter-js-events">
4387 <screen>+filter{js-events} # Kill JavaScript event bindings and timers (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites).</screen>
4389 <anchor id="filter-html-annoyances">
4391 <screen>+filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse.</screen>
4393 <anchor id="filter-content-cookies">
4395 <screen>+filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content.</screen>
4397 <anchor id="filter-refresh-tags">
4399 <screen>+filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags if refresh time is larger than 9 seconds.</screen>
4401 <anchor id="filter-unsolicited-popups">
4403 <screen>+filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows.</screen>
4405 <anchor id="filter-all-popups">
4407 <screen>+filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML.</screen>
4409 <anchor id="filter-img-reorder">
4411 <screen>+filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective.</screen>
4413 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-size">
4415 <screen>+filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size.</screen>
4417 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-link">
4419 <screen>+filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers.</screen>
4421 <anchor id="filter-webbugs">
4423 <screen>+filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking).</screen>
4425 <anchor id="filter-tiny-textforms">
4427 <screen>+filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap.</screen>
4429 <anchor id="filter-jumping-windows">
4431 <screen>+filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves.</screen>
4433 <anchor id="filter-frameset-borders">
4435 <screen>+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizable.</screen>
4437 <anchor id="filter-iframes">
4439 <screen>+filter{iframes} # Removes all detected iframes. Should only be enabled for individual sites.</screen>
4441 <anchor id="filter-demoronizer">
4443 <screen>+filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets.</screen>
4445 <anchor id="filter-shockwave-flash">
4447 <screen>+filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects.</screen>
4449 <anchor id="filter-quicktime-kioskmode">
4451 <screen>+filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies saveable.</screen>
4453 <anchor id="filter-fun">
4455 <screen>+filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!</screen>
4457 <anchor id="filter-crude-parental">
4459 <screen>+filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering. Note that this filter doesn't work reliably.</screen>
4461 <anchor id="filter-ie-exploits">
4463 <screen>+filter{ie-exploits} # Disable some known Internet Explorer bug exploits.</screen>
4465 <anchor id="filter-site-specifics">
4467 <screen>+filter{site-specifics} # Cure for site-specific problems. Don't apply generally!</screen>
4469 <anchor id="filter-no-ping">
4471 <screen>+filter{no-ping} # Removes non-standard ping attributes in <a> and <area> tags.</screen>
4473 <anchor id="filter-bundeswehr.de">
4475 <screen>+filter{bundeswehr.de} # Hide the cookie and privacy info banner on bundeswehr.de.</screen>
4477 <anchor id="filter-github">
4479 <screen>+filter{github} # Removes the annoying "Sign-Up" banner and the Cookie disclaimer.</screen>
4481 <anchor id="filter-google">
4483 <screen>+filter{google} # CSS-based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation and the toolbar advertisement.</screen>
4485 <anchor id="filter-imdb">
4487 <screen>+filter{imdb} # Removes some ads on IMDb.</screen>
4489 <anchor id="filter-yahoo">
4491 <screen>+filter{yahoo} # CSS-based block for Yahoo text ads. Also removes a width limitation.</screen>
4493 <anchor id="filter-msn">
4495 <screen>+filter{msn} # CSS-based block for MSN text ads. Also removes tracking URLs and a width limitation.</screen>
4497 <anchor id="filter-blogspot">
4499 <screen>+filter{blogspot} # Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this.</screen>
4501 <anchor id="filter-sourceforge">
4503 <screen>+filter{sourceforge} # Reduces the amount of ads for proprietary software on SourceForge.</screen>
4510 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4511 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="force-text-mode">
4512 <title>force-text-mode</title>
4518 <term>Typical use:</term>
4520 <para>Force <application>Privoxy</application> to treat a document as if it was in some kind of <emphasis>text</emphasis> format. </para>
4525 <term>Effect:</term>
4528 Declares a document as text, even if the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> isn't detected as such.
4535 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4537 <para>Boolean.</para>
4542 <term>Parameter:</term>
4554 As explained <literal><link linkend="filter">above</link></literal>,
4555 <application>Privoxy</application> tries to only filter files that are
4556 in some kind of text format. The same restrictions apply to
4557 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite</link></literal>.
4558 <literal>force-text-mode</literal> declares a document as text,
4559 without looking at the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> first.
4563 Think twice before activating this action. Filtering binary data
4564 with regular expressions can cause file damage.
4571 <term>Example usage:</term>
4582 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4583 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="forward-override">
4584 <title>forward-override</title>
4590 <term>Typical use:</term>
4592 <para>Change the forwarding settings based on User-Agent or request origin</para>
4597 <term>Effect:</term>
4600 Overrules the forward directives in the configuration file.
4607 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4609 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4614 <term>Parameter:</term>
4618 <para><quote>forward .</quote> to use a direct connection without any additional proxies.</para>
4622 <quote>forward 127.0.0.1:8123</quote> to use the HTTP proxy listening at 127.0.0.1 port 8123.
4627 <quote>forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 .</quote> to use the socks4a proxy listening at
4628 127.0.0.1 port 9050. Replace <quote>forward-socks4a</quote> with <quote>forward-socks4</quote>
4629 to use a socks4 connection (with local DNS resolution) instead, use <quote>forward-socks5</quote>
4630 for socks5 connections (with remote DNS resolution).
4635 <quote>forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 proxy.example.org:8000</quote> to use the socks4a proxy
4636 listening at 127.0.0.1 port 9050 to reach the HTTP proxy listening at proxy.example.org port 8000.
4637 Replace <quote>forward-socks4a</quote> with <quote>forward-socks4</quote> to use a socks4 connection
4638 (with local DNS resolution) instead, use <quote>forward-socks5</quote>
4639 for socks5 connections (with remote DNS resolution).
4644 <quote>forward-webserver 127.0.0.1:80</quote> to use the HTTP
4645 server listening at 127.0.0.1 port 80 without adjusting the
4649 This makes it more convenient to use Privoxy to make
4650 existing websites available as onion services as well.
4653 Many websites serve content with hardcoded URLs and
4654 can't be easily adjusted to change the domain based
4655 on the one used by the client.
4658 Putting Privoxy between Tor and the webserver (or an stunnel
4659 that forwards to the webserver) allows to rewrite headers and
4660 content to make client and server happy at the same time.
4663 Using Privoxy for webservers that are only reachable through
4664 onion addresses and whose location is supposed to be secret
4665 is not recommended and should not be necessary anyway.
4676 This action takes parameters similar to the
4677 <link linkend="forwarding">forward</link> directives in the configuration
4678 file, but without the URL pattern. It can be used as replacement, but normally it's only
4679 used in cases where matching based on the request URL isn't sufficient.
4683 Please read the description for the <link linkend="forwarding">forward</link> directives before
4684 using this action. Forwarding to the wrong people will reduce your privacy and increase the
4685 chances of man-in-the-middle attacks.
4688 If the ports are missing or invalid, default values will be used. This might change
4689 in the future and you shouldn't rely on it. Otherwise incorrect syntax causes Privoxy
4690 to exit. Due to design limitations, invalid parameter syntax isn't detected until the
4691 action is used the first time.
4694 Use the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">show-url-info CGI page</ulink>
4695 to verify that your forward settings do what you thought the do.
4702 <term>Example usage:</term>
4705 # Use an ssh tunnel for requests previously tagged as
4706 # <quote>User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2.0</quote> and make sure
4707 # resuming downloads continues to work.
4709 # This way you can continue to use Tor for your normal browsing,
4710 # without overloading the Tor network with your FreeBSD ports updates
4711 # or downloads of bigger files like ISOs.
4713 # Note that HTTP headers are easy to fake and therefore their
4714 # values are as (un)trustworthy as your clients and users.
4715 {+forward-override{forward-socks5 10.0.0.2:2222 .} \
4716 -hide-if-modified-since \
4717 -overwrite-last-modified \
4719 TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2\.0$
4727 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4728 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-empty-document">
4729 <title>handle-as-empty-document</title>
4735 <term>Typical use:</term>
4737 <para>Mark URLs that should be replaced by empty documents <emphasis>if they get blocked</emphasis></para>
4742 <term>Effect:</term>
4745 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs.
4746 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
4747 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote>
4748 page, or an empty document will be sent to the client as a substitute for the blocked content.
4749 The <emphasis>empty</emphasis> document isn't literally empty, but actually contains a single space.
4756 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4758 <para>Boolean.</para>
4763 <term>Parameter:</term>
4775 Some browsers complain about syntax errors if JavaScript documents
4776 are blocked with <application>Privoxy's</application>
4777 default HTML page; this option can be used to silence them.
4778 And of course this action can also be used to eliminate the &my-app;
4779 BLOCKED message in frames.
4782 The content type for the empty document can be specified with
4783 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{}</link></literal>,
4784 but usually this isn't necessary.
4790 <term>Example usage:</term>
4792 <screen># Block all documents on example.org that end with ".js",
4793 # but send an empty document instead of the usual HTML message.
4794 {+block{Blocked JavaScript} +handle-as-empty-document}
4803 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4804 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-image">
4805 <title>handle-as-image</title>
4809 <term>Typical use:</term>
4811 <para>Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images <emphasis>if they do get blocked</emphasis>, rather than HTML pages)</para>
4816 <term>Effect:</term>
4819 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
4820 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
4821 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
4822 page, or a replacement image (as determined by the <literal><link
4823 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> action) will be sent to the
4824 client as a substitute for the blocked content.
4831 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4833 <para>Boolean.</para>
4838 <term>Parameter:</term>
4850 The below generic example section is actually part of <filename>default.action</filename>.
4851 It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
4855 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
4856 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
4857 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
4860 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (in-line) ad
4861 frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
4862 Forcing <literal>handle-as-image</literal> in this situation will not replace the
4863 ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
4869 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
4871 <screen># Generic image extensions:
4874 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
4876 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
4877 # blocked as images:
4879 {+block{Nasty banners.} +handle-as-image}
4880 nasty-banner-server.example.com/junk.cgi\?output=trash
4888 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4889 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-accept-language">
4890 <title>hide-accept-language</title>
4896 <term>Typical use:</term>
4898 <para>Pretend to use different language settings.</para>
4903 <term>Effect:</term>
4906 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> HTTP header in client requests.
4913 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4915 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4920 <term>Parameter:</term>
4923 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4932 Faking the browser's language settings can be useful to make a
4933 foreign User-Agent set with
4934 <literal><link linkend="hide-user-agent">hide-user-agent</link></literal>
4938 However some sites with content in different languages check the
4939 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> to decide which one to take by default.
4940 Sometimes it isn't possible to later switch to another language without
4941 changing the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header first.
4944 Therefore it's a good idea to either only change the
4945 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header to languages you understand,
4946 or to languages that aren't wide spread.
4949 Before setting the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header
4950 to a rare language, you should consider that it helps to
4951 make your requests unique and thus easier to trace.
4952 If you don't plan to change this header frequently,
4953 you should stick to a common language.
4959 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4961 <screen># Pretend to use Canadian language settings.
4962 {+hide-accept-language{en-ca} \
4963 +hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenBSD i386; en-CA; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060628 Firefox/1.5.0.4} \
4973 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4974 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-content-disposition">
4975 <title>hide-content-disposition</title>
4981 <term>Typical use:</term>
4983 <para>Prevent download menus for content you prefer to view inside the browser.</para>
4988 <term>Effect:</term>
4991 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header set by some servers.
4998 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5000 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5005 <term>Parameter:</term>
5008 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
5017 Some servers set the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header for
5018 documents they assume you want to save locally before viewing them.
5019 The <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header contains the file name
5020 the browser is supposed to use by default.
5023 In most browsers that understand this header, it makes it impossible to
5024 <emphasis>just view</emphasis> the document, without downloading it first,
5025 even if it's just a simple text file or an image.
5028 Removing the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header helps
5029 to prevent this annoyance, but some browsers additionally check the
5030 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> header, before they decide if they can
5031 display a document without saving it first. In these cases, you have
5032 to change this header as well, before the browser stops displaying
5036 It is also possible to change the server's file name suggestion
5037 to another one, but in most cases it isn't worth the time to set
5041 This action will probably be removed in the future,
5042 use server-header filters instead.
5048 <term>Example usage:</term>
5051 # Disarm the download link in Sourceforge's patch tracker
5053 +content-type-overwrite{text/plain} \
5054 +hide-content-disposition{block} \
5056 .sourceforge.net/tracker/download\.php
5064 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5065 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-if-modified-since">
5066 <title>hide-if-modified-since</title>
5072 <term>Typical use:</term>
5074 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
5079 <term>Effect:</term>
5082 Deletes the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> HTTP client header or modifies its value.
5089 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5091 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5096 <term>Parameter:</term>
5099 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or a user defined value that specifies a range of hours.
5108 Removing this header is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
5109 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the
5110 browser to use a cached copy of the page.
5113 Instead of removing the header, <literal>hide-if-modified-since</literal> can
5114 also add or subtract a random amount of time to/from the header's value.
5115 You specify a range of minutes where the random factor should be chosen from and
5116 <application>Privoxy</application> does the rest. A negative value means
5117 subtracting, a positive value adding.
5120 Randomizing the value of the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> makes
5121 it less likely that the server can use the time as a cookie replacement,
5122 but you will run into caching problems if the random range is too high.
5125 It is a good idea to only use a small negative value and let
5126 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>
5127 handle the greater changes.
5130 It is also recommended to use this action together with
5131 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>,
5132 otherwise it's more or less pointless.
5138 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5140 <screen># Let the browser revalidate but make tracking based on the time less likely.
5141 {+hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
5142 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
5143 +crunch-if-none-match}
5151 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5152 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-from-header">
5153 <title>hide-from-header</title>
5157 <term>Typical use:</term>
5159 <para>Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address</para>
5164 <term>Effect:</term>
5167 Deletes any existing <quote>From:</quote> HTTP header, or replaces it with the
5175 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5177 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5182 <term>Parameter:</term>
5185 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
5194 The keyword <quote>block</quote> will completely remove the header
5195 (not to be confused with the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
5199 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
5200 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
5201 is actually used by a real person.
5204 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send
5205 <quote>From:</quote> headers anymore.
5211 <term>Example usage:</term>
5213 <screen>+hide-from-header{block}</screen>
5215 <screen>+hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}</screen>
5222 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5223 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-referrer">
5224 <title>hide-referrer</title>
5225 <anchor id="hide-referer">
5228 <term>Typical use:</term>
5230 <para>Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site</para>
5235 <term>Effect:</term>
5238 Deletes the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) HTTP header from the client request,
5239 or replaces it with a forged one.
5246 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5248 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5253 <term>Parameter:</term>
5257 <para><quote>conditional-block</quote> to delete the header completely if the host has changed.</para>
5260 <para><quote>conditional-forge</quote> to forge the header if the host has changed.</para>
5263 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header unconditionally.</para>
5266 <para><quote>forge</quote> to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are talking to.</para>
5269 <para>Any other string to set a user defined referrer.</para>
5279 <literal>conditional-block</literal> is the only parameter,
5280 that isn't easily detected in the server's log file. If it blocks the
5281 referrer, the request will look like the visitor used a bookmark or
5282 typed in the address directly.
5285 Leaving the referrer unmodified for requests on the same host
5286 allows the server owner to see the visitor's <quote>click path</quote>,
5287 but in most cases she could also get that information by comparing
5288 other parts of the log file: for example the User-Agent if it isn't
5289 a very common one, or the user's IP address if it doesn't change between
5293 Always blocking the referrer, or using a custom one, can lead to
5294 failures on servers that check the referrer before they answer any
5295 requests, in an attempt to prevent their content from being
5296 embedded or linked to elsewhere.
5299 Both <literal>conditional-block</literal> and <literal>forge</literal>
5300 will work with referrer checks, as long as content and valid referring page
5301 are on the same host. Most of the time that's the case.
5304 <literal>hide-referer</literal> is an alternate spelling of
5305 <literal>hide-referrer</literal> and the two can be can be freely
5306 substituted with each other. (<quote>referrer</quote> is the
5307 correct English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it
5308 requires it to be spelled as <quote>referer</quote>.)
5314 <term>Example usage:</term>
5316 <screen>+hide-referrer{forge}</screen>
5318 <screen>+hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}</screen>
5325 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5326 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-user-agent">
5327 <title>hide-user-agent</title>
5331 <term>Typical use:</term>
5333 <para>Try to conceal your type of browser and client operating system</para>
5338 <term>Effect:</term>
5341 Replaces the value of the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> HTTP header
5342 in client requests with the specified value.
5349 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5351 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5356 <term>Parameter:</term>
5359 Any user-defined string.
5369 This can lead to problems on web sites that depend on looking at this header in
5370 order to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
5371 way, is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> the right thing to do: good web sites
5372 work browser-independently).
5376 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
5377 browsers will access the same <application>Privoxy</application> is
5378 <emphasis>not recommended</emphasis>. In single-user, single-browser
5379 setups, you might use it to delete your OS version information from
5380 the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known bugs for your
5381 OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to access
5382 sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
5383 reason in some cases).
5386 More information on known user-agent strings can be found at
5387 <ulink url="http://www.user-agents.org/">http://www.user-agents.org/</ulink>
5389 <ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent</ulink>.
5395 <term>Example usage:</term>
5397 <screen>+hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; ElectroBSD i386; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/78.0}</screen>
5404 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5405 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="https-inspection">
5406 <title>https-inspection</title>
5410 <term>Typical use:</term>
5412 <para>Filter encrypted requests and responses</para>
5417 <term>Effect:</term>
5420 Encrypted requests are decrypted, filtered and forwarded encrypted.
5427 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
5429 <para>Boolean.</para>
5434 <term>Parameter:</term>
5446 This action allows &my-app; to filter encrypted requests and responses.
5447 For this to work &my-app; has to generate a certificate for the web site
5448 and send it to the client which has to accept it.
5451 Before this works the directives in the
5452 <literal><ulink url="config.html#HTTPS-INSPECTION-DIRECTIVES">HTTPS inspection section</ulink></literal>
5453 of the config file have to be configured.
5456 Note that the action has to be enabled based on the CONNECT
5457 request which doesn't contain a path. Enabling it based on
5458 a pattern with path doesn't work as the path is only seen
5459 by &my-app; if the action is already enabled.
5465 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5467 <screen>{+https-inspection}
5468 www.example.com</screen>
5476 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5477 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="ignore-certificate-errors">
5478 <title>ignore-certificate-errors</title>
5482 <term>Typical use:</term>
5484 <para>Filter encrypted requests and responses without verifying the certificate</para>
5489 <term>Effect:</term>
5492 Encrypted requests are forwarded to sites without verifying the certificate.
5499 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5501 <para>Boolean.</para>
5506 <term>Parameter:</term>
5519 <link linkend="HTTPS-INSPECTION"><quote>+https-inspection</quote></link>
5520 action is used &my-app; by default verifies that the remote site uses a valid
5524 If the certificate can't be validated by &my-app; the connection is aborted.
5527 This action disables the certificate check so requests to sites
5528 with certificates that can't be validated are allowed.
5531 Note that enabling this action allows Man-in-the-middle attacks.
5537 <term>Example usage:</term>
5540 {+ignore-certificate-errors}
5549 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5550 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="limit-connect">
5551 <title>limit-connect</title>
5555 <term>Typical use:</term>
5557 <para>Prevent abuse of <application>Privoxy</application> as a TCP proxy relay or disable SSL for untrusted sites</para>
5562 <term>Effect:</term>
5565 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
5572 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5574 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5579 <term>Parameter:</term>
5582 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
5583 defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
5592 By default, i.e. if no <literal>limit-connect</literal> action applies,
5593 <application>Privoxy</application> allows HTTP CONNECT requests to all
5594 ports. Use <literal>limit-connect</literal> if fine-grained control
5595 is desired for some or all destinations.
5598 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
5599 (<quote>https://</quote> URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
5600 the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
5601 short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
5602 This means CONNECT-enabled proxies can be used as TCP relays very easily.
5605 <application>Privoxy</application> relays HTTPS traffic without seeing
5606 the decoded content. Websites can leverage this limitation to circumvent &my-app;'s
5607 filters. By specifying an invalid port range you can disable HTTPS entirely.
5613 <term>Example usages:</term>
5615 <!-- I had trouble getting the spacing to look right in my browser -->
5616 <!-- I probably have the wrong font setup, bollocks. -->
5617 <!-- Apparently the emphasis tag uses a proportional font no matter what -->
5618 <screen>+limit-connect{443} # Port 443 is OK.
5619 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
5620 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
5621 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK
5622 +limit-connect{,} # No HTTPS/SSL traffic is allowed</screen>
5629 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5630 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="limit-cookie-lifetime">
5631 <title>limit-cookie-lifetime</title>
5635 <term>Typical use:</term>
5637 <para>Limit the lifetime of HTTP cookies to a couple of minutes or hours.</para>
5642 <term>Effect:</term>
5645 Overwrites the expires field in Set-Cookie server headers if it's above the specified limit.
5652 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5654 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5659 <term>Parameter:</term>
5662 The lifetime limit in minutes, or 0.
5671 This action reduces the lifetime of HTTP cookies coming from the
5672 server to the specified number of minutes, starting from the time
5673 the cookie passes Privoxy.
5676 Cookies with a lifetime below the limit are not modified.
5677 The lifetime of session cookies is set to the specified limit.
5680 The effect of this action depends on the server.
5683 In case of servers which refresh their cookies with each response
5684 (or at least frequently), the lifetime limit set by this action
5686 Thus, a session associated with the cookie continues to work with
5687 this action enabled, as long as a new request is made before the
5688 last limit set is reached.
5691 However, some servers send their cookies once, with a lifetime of several
5692 years (the year 2037 is a popular choice), and do not refresh them
5693 until a certain event in the future, for example the user logging out.
5694 In this case this action may limit the absolute lifetime of the session,
5695 even if requests are made frequently.
5698 If the parameter is <quote>0</quote>, this action behaves like
5699 <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal>.
5705 <term>Example usages:</term>
5707 <screen>+limit-cookie-lifetime{60}</screen>
5713 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5714 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="prevent-compression">
5715 <title>prevent-compression</title>
5719 <term>Typical use:</term>
5722 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
5723 passed through <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>s.
5729 <term>Effect:</term>
5732 Removes the Accept-Encoding header which can be used to ask for compressed transfer.
5739 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5741 <para>Boolean.</para>
5746 <term>Parameter:</term>
5758 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
5759 is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But the <literal><link
5760 linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> and
5761 <literal><link linkend="deanimate-gifs">deanimate-gifs</link></literal>
5762 actions need access to the uncompressed data.
5765 When compiled with zlib support (available since &my-app; 3.0.7), content that should be
5766 filtered is decompressed on-the-fly and you don't have to worry about this action.
5767 If you are using an older &my-app; version, or one that hasn't been compiled with zlib
5768 support, this action can be used to convince the server to send the content uncompressed.
5771 Most text-based instances compress very well, the size is seldom decreased by less than 50%,
5772 for markup-heavy instances like news feeds saving more than 90% of the original size isn't
5776 Not using compression will therefore slow down the transfer, and you should only
5777 enable this action if you really need it. As of &my-app; 3.0.7 it's disabled in all
5778 predefined action settings.
5781 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
5782 documents correctly. Broken PHP applications tend to send an empty document body,
5783 some IIS versions only send the beginning of the content and some content delivery
5784 networks let the connection time out.
5785 If you enable <literal>prevent-compression</literal> per default, you might
5786 want to add exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
5792 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
5795 # Selectively turn off compression, and enable a filter
5797 { +filter{tiny-textforms} +prevent-compression }
5798 # Match only these sites
5803 # Or instead, we could set a universal default:
5805 { +prevent-compression }
5808 # Then maybe make exceptions for broken sites:
5810 { -prevent-compression }
5820 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5821 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="overwrite-last-modified">
5822 <title>overwrite-last-modified</title>
5828 <term>Typical use:</term>
5830 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
5835 <term>Effect:</term>
5838 Deletes the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> HTTP server header or modifies its value.
5845 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5847 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5852 <term>Parameter:</term>
5855 One of the keywords: <quote>block</quote>, <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote>
5856 and <quote>randomize</quote>
5865 Removing the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header is useful for filter
5866 testing, where you want to force a real reload instead of getting status
5867 code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the browser to reuse the old
5868 version of the page.
5871 The <quote>randomize</quote> option overwrites the value of the
5872 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with a randomly chosen time
5873 between the original value and the current time. In theory the server
5874 could send each document with a different <quote>Last-Modified:</quote>
5875 header to track visits without using cookies. <quote>Randomize</quote>
5876 makes it impossible and the browser can still revalidate cached documents.
5879 <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote> overwrites the value of the
5880 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with the current time. You could use
5881 this option together with
5882 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
5883 to further customize your random range.
5886 The preferred parameter here is <quote>randomize</quote>. It is safe
5887 to use, as long as the time settings are more or less correct.
5888 If the server sets the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header to the time
5889 of the request, the random range becomes zero and the value stays the same.
5890 Therefore you should later randomize it a second time with
5891 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>,
5895 It is also recommended to use this action together with
5896 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>.
5902 <term>Example usage:</term>
5905 # Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
5906 { +hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
5907 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
5908 +crunch-if-none-match \
5918 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5919 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="redirect">
5920 <title>redirect</title>
5926 <term>Typical use:</term>
5929 Redirect requests to other sites.
5935 <term>Effect:</term>
5938 Convinces the browser that the requested document has been moved
5939 to another location and the browser should get it from there.
5946 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5948 <para>Parameterized</para>
5953 <term>Parameter:</term>
5956 An absolute URL or a single pcrs command.
5965 Requests to which this action applies are answered with a
5966 HTTP redirect to URLs of your choosing. The new URL is
5967 either provided as parameter, or derived by applying a
5968 single pcrs command to the original URL.
5971 The syntax for pcrs commands is documented in the
5972 <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link> section.
5975 Requests can't be blocked and redirected at the same time,
5976 applying this action together with
5977 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
5978 is a configuration error. Currently the request is blocked
5979 and an error message logged, the behavior may change in the
5980 future and result in Privoxy rejecting the action file.
5983 This action can be combined with
5984 <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects{check-decoded-url}</link></literal>
5985 to redirect to a decoded version of a rewritten URL.
5988 Use this action carefully, make sure not to create redirection loops
5989 and be aware that using your own redirects might make it
5990 possible to fingerprint your requests.
5993 In case of problems with your redirects, or simply to watch
5994 them working, enable <link linkend="DEBUG">debug 128</link>.
6000 <term>Example usages:</term>
6003 # Replace example.com's style sheet with another one
6004 { +redirect{http://localhost/css-replacements/example.com.css} }
6005 example.com/stylesheet\.css
6007 # Create a short, easy to remember nickname for a favorite site
6008 # (relies on the browser to accept and forward invalid URLs to &my-app;)
6009 { +redirect{https://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html} }
6012 # Always use the expanded view for Undeadly.org articles
6013 # (Note the $ at the end of the URL pattern to make sure
6014 # the request for the rewritten URL isn't redirected as well)
6015 {+redirect{s@$@&mode=expanded@}}
6016 undeadly.org/cgi\?action=article&sid=\d*$
6018 # Redirect Google search requests to MSN
6019 {+redirect{s@^http://[^/]*/search\?q=([^&]*).*@http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=$1@}}
6022 # Redirect MSN search requests to Yahoo
6023 {+redirect{s@^http://[^/]*/results\.aspx\?q=([^&]*).*@http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=$1@}}
6024 search.msn.com//results\.aspx\?q=
6026 # Redirect http://example.com/&bla=fasel&toChange=foo (and any other value but "bar")
6027 # to http://example.com/&bla=fasel&toChange=bar
6029 # The URL pattern makes sure that the following request isn't redirected again.
6030 {+redirect{s@toChange=[^&]+@toChange=bar@}}
6031 example.com/.*toChange=(?!bar)
6033 # Add a shortcut to look up illumos bugs
6034 {+redirect{s@^http://i([0-9]+)/.*@https://www.illumos.org/issues/$1@}}
6035 # Redirected URL = http://i4974/
6036 # Redirect Destination = https://www.illumos.org/issues/4974
6037 i[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]*/
6039 # Redirect requests for the old Tor Hidden Service of the Privoxy website to the new one
6040 {+redirect{s@^http://jvauzb4sb3bwlsnc.onion/@http://l3tczdiiwoo63iwxty4lhs6p7eaxop5micbn7vbliydgv63x5zrrrfyd.onion/@}}
6041 jvauzb4sb3bwlsnc.onion/
6043 # Redirect remote requests for this manual
6044 # to the local version delivered by Privoxy
6045 {+redirect{s@^http://www@http://config@}}
6046 www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</screen>
6054 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6055 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="server-header-filter">
6056 <title>server-header-filter</title>
6060 <term>Typical use:</term>
6063 Rewrite or remove single server headers.
6069 <term>Effect:</term>
6072 All server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly
6073 through the specified regular expression based substitutions.
6080 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
6082 <para>Multi-value.</para>
6087 <term>Parameter:</term>
6090 The name of a server-header filter, as defined in one of the
6091 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
6100 Server-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
6101 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
6102 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
6103 You can do that by using tags though.
6106 Server-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
6107 and use their output as input.
6110 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
6111 to learn which server-header filters are available by default, and how to
6118 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
6121 {+server-header-filter{html-to-xml}}
6122 example.org/xml-instance-that-is-delivered-as-html
6124 {+server-header-filter{xml-to-html}}
6125 example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
6134 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6135 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="server-header-tagger">
6136 <title>server-header-tagger</title>
6140 <term>Typical use:</term>
6143 Enable or disable filters based on the Content-Type header.
6149 <term>Effect:</term>
6152 Server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
6153 the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
6161 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
6163 <para>Multi-value.</para>
6168 <term>Parameter:</term>
6171 The name of a server-header tagger, as defined in one of the
6172 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
6181 Server-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
6182 and as the header isn't modified, each tagger <quote>sees</quote>
6186 Server-header taggers are executed before all other header actions
6187 that modify server headers. Their tags can be used to control
6188 all of the other server-header actions, the content filters
6189 and the crunch actions (<link linkend="redirect">redirect</link>
6190 and <link linkend="block">block</link>).
6193 Obviously crunching based on tags created by server-header taggers
6194 doesn't prevent the request from showing up in the server's log file.
6201 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
6204 # Tag every request with the content type declared by the server
6205 {+server-header-tagger{content-type}}
6208 # If the response has a tag starting with 'image/' enable an external
6209 # filter that only applies to images.
6211 # Note that the filter is not available by default, it's just a
6212 # <literal><link linkend="external-filter-syntax">silly example</link></literal>.
6213 {+external-filter{rotate-image} +force-text-mode}
6223 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6224 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="suppress-tag">
6225 <title>suppress-tag</title>
6229 <term>Typical use:</term>
6232 Suppress client or server tag.
6238 <term>Effect:</term>
6241 Server or client tags to which this action applies are not added to the request,
6242 thus making all actions that are specific to these request tags inactive.
6249 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
6251 <para>Multi-value.</para>
6256 <term>Parameter:</term>
6259 The result tag of a server-header or client-header tagger, as defined in one of the
6260 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
6266 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
6269 # Suppress tag produced by range-requests client-header tagger for requests coming from address 10.0.0.1
6270 {+suppress-tag{RANGE-REQUEST}}
6271 TAG:^IP-ADDRESS: 10\.0\.0\.1$
6280 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6281 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="session-cookies-only">
6282 <title>session-cookies-only</title>
6286 <term>Typical use:</term>
6289 Allow only temporary <quote>session</quote> cookies (for the current
6290 browser session <emphasis>only</emphasis>).
6296 <term>Effect:</term>
6299 Deletes the <quote>expires</quote> field from <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote>
6300 server headers. Most browsers will not store such cookies permanently and
6301 forget them in between sessions.
6308 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
6310 <para>Boolean.</para>
6315 <term>Parameter:</term>
6327 This is less strict than <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> /
6328 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal> and allows you to browse
6329 websites that insist or rely on setting cookies, without compromising your privacy too badly.
6332 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed by
6333 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal> and will forget about them between sessions.
6334 This makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
6335 that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
6336 sites, and is the recommended setting.
6339 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>
6340 together with <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> or
6341 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>. If you do, cookies
6342 will be plainly killed.
6345 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an <quote>expires</quote>
6346 field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out to be sure.
6349 This setting also has no effect on cookies that may have been stored
6350 previously by the browser before starting <application>Privoxy</application>.
6351 These would have to be removed manually.
6354 <application>Privoxy</application> also uses
6355 the <link linkend="filter-content-cookies">content-cookies filter</link>
6356 to block some types of cookies. Content cookies are not effected by
6357 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>.
6363 <term>Example usage:</term>
6365 <screen>+session-cookies-only</screen>
6372 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6373 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="set-image-blocker">
6374 <title>set-image-blocker</title>
6378 <term>Typical use:</term>
6380 <para>Choose the replacement for blocked images</para>
6385 <term>Effect:</term>
6388 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If <emphasis>both</emphasis>
6389 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><link
6390 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> <emphasis>also</emphasis>
6391 apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an image,
6392 <emphasis>then</emphasis> the parameter of this action decides what will be
6393 sent as a replacement.
6400 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
6402 <para>Parameterized.</para>
6407 <term>Parameter:</term>
6412 <quote>pattern</quote> to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is visually
6413 decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners were busted.
6418 <quote>blank</quote> to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners disappear
6419 completely, but makes it hard to detect where <application>Privoxy</application> has blocked
6420 images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if <application>Privoxy</application>
6421 has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
6426 <quote><replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable></quote> to
6427 send a redirect to <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>. You can redirect
6428 to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem via <quote>file:///</quote> URL.
6429 (But note that not all browsers support redirecting to a local file system).
6432 A good application of redirects is to use special <application>Privoxy</application>-built-in
6433 URLs, which send the built-in images, as <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>.
6434 This has the same visual effect as specifying <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote> in
6435 the first place, but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of requesting
6436 it over and over again.
6447 The URLs for the built-in images are <quote>http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=<replaceable
6448 class="parameter">type</replaceable></quote>, where <replaceable class="parameter">type</replaceable> is
6449 either <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote>.
6452 There is a third (advanced) type, called <quote>auto</quote>. It is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> to be
6453 used in <literal>set-image-blocker</literal>, but meant for use from <link linkend="filter-file">filters</link>.
6454 Auto will select the type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an image.
6460 <term>Example usage:</term>
6465 <screen>+set-image-blocker{pattern}</screen>
6467 Redirect to the BSD daemon:
6469 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}</screen>
6471 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
6473 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}</screen>
6480 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6481 <sect3 id="summary">
6482 <title>Summary</title>
6484 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
6485 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
6486 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
6487 content, and other criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard
6488 and fast rules for all sites. See the <link
6489 linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link> for a brief example on troubleshooting
6495 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6496 <sect2 id="aliases">
6497 <title>Aliases</title>
6499 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
6500 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other actions.
6501 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
6502 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab,
6504 <quote>{</quote> and <quote>}</quote>, but we <emphasis>strongly
6505 recommend</emphasis> that you only use <quote>a</quote> to <quote>z</quote>,
6506 <quote>0</quote> to <quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and <quote>-</quote>.
6507 Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start with a
6508 <quote>+</quote> or <quote>-</quote> sign, since they are merely textually
6512 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they <emphasis>must be
6513 defined in a special section at the top of the file!</emphasis>
6514 And there can only be one such section per actions file. Each actions file may
6515 have its own alias section, and the aliases defined in it are only visible
6519 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
6520 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
6521 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called
6522 <quote>shop</quote>, you can later change your policy on shops in
6523 <emphasis>one</emphasis> place, and your changes will take effect everywhere
6524 in the actions file where the <quote>shop</quote> alias is used. Calling aliases
6525 by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
6528 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though:
6529 <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in web-based action file
6530 editor honors aliases when reading the actions files, but it expands
6531 them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are of course preserved,
6532 but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
6537 Now let's define some aliases...
6541 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
6543 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
6544 # must be at the top of the actions file!
6548 # These aliases just save typing later:
6549 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
6551 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
6552 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
6553 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked image.} +handle-as-image
6554 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
6556 # These aliases define combinations of actions
6557 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
6559 fragile = -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer</link> -<link linkend="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link>
6561 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link>
6563 # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
6565 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
6566 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies
6570 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
6571 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
6572 up for the <quote>/</quote> pattern):
6576 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
6577 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
6580 .office.microsoft.com
6581 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
6582 # Gmail is really mail.google.com, not gmail.com
6586 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
6590 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
6593 # These shops require pop-ups:
6595 {-filter{all-popups} -filter{unsolicited-popups}}
6601 Aliases like <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote> are typically used for
6602 <quote>problem</quote> sites that require more than one action to be disabled
6603 in order to function properly.
6609 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6610 <sect2 id="act-examples">
6611 <title>Actions Files Tutorial</title>
6613 The above chapters have shown <link linkend="actions-file">which actions files
6614 there are and how they are organized</link>, how actions are <link
6615 linkend="actions">specified</link> and <link linkend="actions-apply">applied
6616 to URLs</link>, how <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> work, and how to
6617 define and use <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link>. Now, let's look at an
6618 example <filename>match-all.action</filename>, <filename>default.action</filename>
6619 and <filename>user.action</filename> file and see how all these pieces come together:
6622 <sect3 id="match-all">
6623 <title>match-all.action</title>
6625 Remember <emphasis>all actions are disabled when matching starts</emphasis>,
6626 so we have to explicitly enable the ones we want.
6630 While the <filename>match-all.action</filename> file only contains a
6631 single section, it is probably the most important one. It has only one
6632 pattern, <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, but this pattern
6633 <link linkend="af-patterns">matches all URLs</link>. Therefore, the set of
6634 actions used in this <quote>default</quote> section <emphasis>will
6635 be applied to all requests as a start</emphasis>. It can be partly or
6636 wholly overridden by other actions files like <filename>default.action</filename>
6637 and <filename>user.action</filename>, but it will still be largely responsible
6638 for your overall browsing experience.
6642 Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
6643 no need to disable any actions here. (Remember: a <quote>+</quote>
6644 preceding the action name enables the action, a <quote>-</quote> disables!).
6645 Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
6646 multiple lines with line continuation.
6651 +<link linkend="CHANGE-X-FORWARDED-FOR">change-x-forwarded-for{block}</link> \
6652 +<link linkend="HIDE-FROM-HEADER">hide-from-header{block}</link> \
6653 +<link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER">set-image-blocker{pattern}</link> \
6659 The default behavior is now set.
6663 <sect3 id="default-action">
6664 <title>default.action</title>
6667 If you aren't a developer, there's no need for you to edit the
6668 <filename>default.action</filename> file. It is maintained by
6669 the &my-app; developers and if you disagree with some of the
6670 sections, you should overrule them in your <filename>user.action</filename>.
6674 Understanding the <filename>default.action</filename> file can
6675 help you with your <filename>user.action</filename>, though.
6679 The first section in this file is a special section for internal use
6680 that prevents older &my-app; versions from reading the file:
6684 ##########################################################################
6685 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
6686 ##########################################################################
6688 for-privoxy-version=3.0.11</screen>
6691 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
6692 section from the above <link linkend="aliases">chapter on aliases</link>,
6693 that also explains why and how aliases are used:
6697 ##########################################################################
6699 ##########################################################################
6702 # These aliases just save typing later:
6703 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
6705 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
6706 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
6707 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked image.} +handle-as-image
6708 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
6710 # These aliases define combinations of actions
6711 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
6713 fragile = -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer</link>
6714 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link></screen>
6717 The first of our specialized sections is concerned with <quote>fragile</quote>
6718 sites, i.e. sites that require minimum interference, because they are either
6719 very complex or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that
6720 make them unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will use
6721 our pre-defined <literal>fragile</literal> alias instead of stating the list
6722 of actions explicitly:
6726 ##########################################################################
6727 # Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
6728 ##########################################################################
6730 # "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
6733 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
6734 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
6735 mail.google.com</screen>
6738 Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically
6739 require cookies to log in, and pop-up windows for shopping
6740 carts or item details. Again, we'll use a pre-defined alias:
6748 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
6750 .scan.co.uk</screen>
6753 The <literal><link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link></literal>
6754 action, which may have been enabled in <filename>match-all.action</filename>,
6755 breaks some sites. So disable it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
6759 { -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> }
6763 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
6764 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
6765 .nytimes.com</screen>
6768 It is important that <application>Privoxy</application> knows which
6769 URLs belong to images, so that <emphasis>if</emphasis> they are to
6770 be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
6771 Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it
6772 would destroy the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it
6773 would feed the advertisers information about you. We can mark any
6774 URL as an image with the <literal><link
6775 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action,
6776 and marking all URLs that end in a known image file extension is a
6781 ##########################################################################
6783 ##########################################################################
6785 # Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
6786 # blocked further down this file:
6788 { +<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> }
6789 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$</screen>
6792 And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to
6793 generate the banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the
6794 request is for an image. Hence we block them <emphasis>and</emphasis>
6795 mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
6796 <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above. (We could of
6797 course just as well use <literal>+<link linkend="block">block</link>
6798 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> here.)
6799 Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
6800 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
6801 action. Since all URLs have matched the default section with its
6802 <literal>+<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link>{pattern}</literal>
6803 action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:
6807 # Known ad generators:
6812 .ad.*.doubleclick.net
6813 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6814 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6819 One of the most important jobs of <application>Privoxy</application>
6820 is to block banners. Many of these can be <quote>blocked</quote>
6821 by the <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{banners-by-size}</literal>
6822 action, which we enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner
6823 images from the pages while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request
6824 them anymore, and hence they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally
6825 doesn't catch all banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we
6826 need a comprehensive list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the
6827 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action to them.
6830 First comes many generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
6831 matching typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes
6832 a list of individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here
6833 to keep the example short:
6837 ##########################################################################
6838 # Block these fine banners:
6839 ##########################################################################
6840 { <link linkend="BLOCK">+block{Banner ads.}</link> }
6848 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
6849 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
6851 # Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
6853 .hitbox.com</screen>
6856 It's quite remarkable how many advertisers actually call their banner
6857 servers ads.<replaceable>company</replaceable>.com, or call the directory
6858 in which the banners are stored literally <quote>banners</quote>. So the above
6859 generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
6862 But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want
6863 to block. The pattern <literal>.*ads.</literal> e.g. catches
6864 <quote>nasty-<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.nasty-corp.com</quote> as intended,
6865 but also <quote>downlo<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.sourcefroge.net</quote> or
6866 <quote><emphasis>ads</emphasis>l.some-provider.net.</quote> So here come some
6867 well-known exceptions to the <literal>+<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6871 Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
6872 <quote>downloads.sourcefroge.net</quote>: Initially, all actions are deactivated,
6873 so it wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the
6874 URL, but just deactivates the <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6875 action once again. Then it matches <literal>.*ads.</literal>, an exception to the
6876 general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
6877 <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link></literal> applies. And now, it'll match
6878 <literal>.*loads.</literal>, where <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">-block</link></literal>
6879 applies, so (unless it matches <emphasis>again</emphasis> further down) it ends up
6880 with no <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal> action applying.
6884 ##########################################################################
6885 # Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
6886 ##########################################################################
6890 { -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
6891 adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
6892 adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
6893 adobe. # (has nothing to do with ads either)
6894 ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
6895 .edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
6896 .*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
6904 www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
6905 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv</screen>
6908 Filtering source code can have nasty side effects,
6909 so make an exception for our friends at sourceforge.net,
6910 and all paths with <quote>cvs</quote> in them. Note that
6911 <literal>-<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link></literal>
6912 disables <emphasis>all</emphasis> filters in one fell swoop!
6916 # Don't filter code!
6918 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6923 .sourceforge.net</screen>
6926 The actual <filename>default.action</filename> is of course much more
6927 comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
6932 <sect3 id="user-action"><title>user.action</title>
6935 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies,
6936 which would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now,
6937 you might want to be more specific and have customized rules that
6938 are more suitable to your personal habits and preferences. These would
6939 be for narrowly defined situations like your ISP or your bank, and should
6940 be placed in <filename>user.action</filename>, which is parsed after all other
6941 actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any previously
6942 defined actions. <filename>user.action</filename> is also a
6943 <emphasis>safe</emphasis> place for your personal settings, since
6944 <filename>default.action</filename> is actively maintained by the
6945 <application>Privoxy</application> developers and you'll probably want
6946 to install updated versions from time to time.
6950 So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
6951 <filename>user.action</filename>:
6955 <!-- brief sample user.action here -->
6958 # My user.action file. <fred@example.com></screen>
6961 As <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link> are local to the actions
6962 file that they are defined in, you can't use the ones from
6963 <filename>default.action</filename>, unless you repeat them here:
6967 # Aliases are local to the file they are defined in.
6968 # (Re-)define aliases for this file:
6972 # These aliases just save typing later, and the alias names should
6973 # be self explanatory.
6975 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
6976 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6977 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
6978 allow-popups = -filter{all-popups}
6979 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked as image.} +handle-as-image
6980 -block-as-image = -block
6982 # These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
6983 # certain types of sites:
6985 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referrer
6986 shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
6988 # Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
6990 allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}
6992 # Alias for specific file types that are text, but might have conflicting
6993 # MIME types. We want the browser to force these to be text documents.
6994 handle-as-text = -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> +-<link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{text/plain}</link> +-<link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-CONTENT-DISPOSITION">hide-content-disposition</link></screen>
6997 Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and
6998 you don't want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like
6999 to allow persistent cookies for these sites. The
7000 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal> alias defined above does exactly
7001 that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
7002 processing of cookies to make them only temporary.
7006 { allow-all-cookies }
7014 Your bank is allergic to some filter, but you don't know which, so you disable them all:
7018 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
7019 .your-home-banking-site.com
7023 Some file types you may not want to filter for various reasons:
7027 # Technical documentation is likely to contain strings that might
7028 # erroneously get altered by the JavaScript-oriented filters:
7033 # And this stupid host sends streaming video with a wrong MIME type,
7034 # so that Privoxy thinks it is getting HTML and starts filtering:
7036 stupid-server.example.com/</screen>
7039 Example of a simple <link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> action. Say you've
7040 seen an ad on your favourite page on example.com that you want to get rid of.
7041 You have right-clicked the image, selected <quote>copy image location</quote>
7042 and pasted the URL below while removing the leading http://, into a
7043 <literal>{ +block{} }</literal> section. Note that <literal>{ +handle-as-image
7044 }</literal> need not be specified, since all URLs ending in
7045 <literal>.gif</literal> will be tagged as images by the general rules as set
7046 in default.action anyway:
7050 { +<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link>{Nasty ads.} }
7051 www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor\.gif
7052 another.example.net/more/junk/here/
7056 The URLs of dynamically generated banners, especially from large banner
7057 farms, often don't use the well-known image file name extensions, which
7058 makes it impossible for <application>Privoxy</application> to guess
7059 the file type just by looking at the URL.
7060 You can use the <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above for
7062 Note that objects which match this rule but then turn out NOT to be an
7063 image are typically rendered as a <quote>broken image</quote> icon by the
7064 browser. Use cautiously.
7076 Now you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine,
7077 but you were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you
7078 were again too lazy to give <link linkend="contact">feedback</link>, so
7079 you just used the <literal>fragile</literal> alias on the site, and
7080 -- <emphasis>whoa!</emphasis> -- it worked. The <literal>fragile</literal>
7081 aliases disables those actions that are most likely to break a site. Also,
7082 good for testing purposes to see if it is <application>Privoxy</application>
7083 that is causing the problem or not. We later find other regular sites
7084 that misbehave, and add those to our personalized list of troublemakers:
7095 You like the <quote>fun</quote> text replacements in <filename>default.filter</filename>,
7096 but it is disabled in the distributed actions file.
7097 So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
7098 update-safe config, once and for all:
7102 { +<link linkend="filter-fun">filter{fun}</link> }
7107 Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions
7108 to the filters in <filename>default.action</filename> for things that
7109 really shouldn't be filtered, like code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since
7110 <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word, these exceptions
7111 won't be valid for the <quote>fun</quote> filtering specified here.
7115 You might also worry about how your favourite free websites are
7116 funded, and find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements
7117 to survive. So you might want to specifically allow banners for those
7118 sites that you feel provide value to you:
7129 Note that <literal>allow-ads</literal> has been aliased to
7130 <literal>-<link linkend="block">block</link></literal>,
7131 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-size">filter{banners-by-size}</link></literal>, and
7132 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-link">filter{banners-by-link}</link></literal> above.
7136 Invoke another alias here to force an over-ride of the MIME type <literal>
7137 application/x-sh</literal> which typically would open a download type
7138 dialog. In my case, I want to look at the shell script, and then I can save
7139 it should I choose to.
7148 <filename>user.action</filename> is generally the best place to define
7149 exceptions and additions to the default policies of
7150 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some actions are safe to have their
7151 default policies set here though. So let's set a default policy to have a
7152 <quote>blank</quote> image as opposed to the checkerboard pattern for
7153 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> sites. <quote>/</quote> of course matches all URL
7158 { +<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker{blank}</link> }
7159 / # ALL sites</screen>
7164 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7168 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7170 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
7172 <sect1 id="filter-file">
7173 <title>Filter Files</title>
7176 On-the-fly text substitutions need
7177 to be defined in a <quote>filter file</quote>. Once defined, they
7178 can then be invoked as an <quote>action</quote>.
7182 &my-app; supports four different pcrs-based filter actions:
7183 <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> to
7184 rewrite the content that is send to the client,
7185 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header-filter</link></literal>
7186 to rewrite headers that are send by the client,
7187 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header-filter</link></literal>
7188 to rewrite headers that are send by the server, and
7189 <literal><link linkend="client-body-filter">client-body-filter</link></literal>
7190 to rewrite client request body.
7194 &my-app; also supports three tagger actions:
7195 <literal><link linkend="client-header-tagger">client-header-tagger</link></literal>,
7196 <literal><link linkend="client-body-tagger">client-body-tagger</link></literal>
7198 <literal><link linkend="server-header-tagger">server-header-tagger</link></literal>.
7199 Taggers and filters use the same syntax in the filter files, the difference
7200 is that taggers don't modify the text they are filtering, but use a rewritten
7201 version of the filtered text as tag. The tags can then be used to change the
7202 applying actions through sections with <link linkend="tag-pattern">tag-patterns</link>.
7206 Finally &my-app; supports the
7207 <literal><link linkend="external-filter">external-filter</link></literal> action
7208 to enable <literal><link linkend="external-filter-syntax">external filters</link></literal>
7209 written in proper programming languages.
7214 Multiple filter files can be defined through the <literal> <link
7215 linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal> config directive. The filters
7216 as supplied by the developers are located in
7217 <filename>default.filter</filename>. It is recommended that any locally
7218 defined or modified filters go in a separately defined file such as
7219 <filename>user.filter</filename>.
7223 Common tasks for content filters are to eliminate common annoyances in
7224 HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows,
7225 exit consoles, crippled windows without navigation tools, the
7226 infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to suppress images with certain
7227 width and height attributes (standard banner sizes or web-bugs),
7228 or just to have fun.
7232 Enabled content filters are applied to any content whose
7233 <quote>Content Type</quote> header is recognised as a sign
7234 of text-based content, with the exception of <literal>text/plain</literal>.
7235 Use the <link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> action
7236 to also filter other content.
7240 Substitutions are made at the source level, so if you want to <quote>roll
7241 your own</quote> filters, you should first be familiar with HTML syntax,
7242 and, of course, regular expressions.
7246 Just like the <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, the
7247 filter file is organized in sections, which are called <emphasis>filters</emphasis>
7248 here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with one of the
7249 <emphasis>keywords</emphasis> <literal>FILTER:</literal>,
7250 <literal>CLIENT-HEADER-FILTER:</literal>, <literal>SERVER-HEADER-FILTER:</literal> or
7251 <literal>CLIENT-BODY-FILTER:</literal>
7252 followed by the filter's <emphasis>name</emphasis>, and a short (one line)
7253 <emphasis>description</emphasis> of what it does. Below that line
7254 come the <emphasis>jobs</emphasis>, i.e. lines that define the actual
7255 text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
7256 should describe what the filter <emphasis>eliminates</emphasis>. The
7257 comment is used in the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
7258 user interface</ulink>.
7262 Once a filter called <replaceable>name</replaceable> has been defined
7263 in the filter file, it can be invoked by using an action of the form
7264 +<literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>name</replaceable>}</literal>
7265 in any <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>.
7269 Filter definitions start with a header line that contains the filter
7270 type, the filter name and the filter description.
7271 A content filter header line for a filter called <quote>foo</quote> could look
7275 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"</screen>
7278 Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that
7279 define what text replacements the filter executes. They are specified
7280 in a syntax that imitates <ulink url="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</ulink>'s
7281 <literal>s///</literal> operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you
7282 will find this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the
7283 PCRS documentation for the subtle differences to Perl behaviour.
7287 Most notably, the non-standard option letter <literal>U</literal> is supported,
7288 which turns the default to ungreedy matching (add <literal>?</literal> to
7289 quantifiers to turn them greedy again).
7293 The non-standard option letter <literal>D</literal> (dynamic) allows
7294 to use the variables $host, $origin (the IP address the request came from),
7295 $path, $url and $listen-address (the address on which Privoxy accepted the
7296 client request. Example: 127.0.0.1:8118).
7297 They will be replaced with the value they refer to before the filter
7302 Note that '$' is a bad choice for a delimiter in a dynamic filter as you
7303 might end up with unintended variables if you use a variable name
7304 directly after the delimiter. Variables will be resolved without
7305 escaping anything, therefore you also have to be careful not to chose
7306 delimiters that appear in the replacement text. For example '<' should
7307 be save, while '?' will sooner or later cause conflicts with $url.
7311 The non-standard option letter <literal>T</literal> (trivial) prevents
7312 parsing for backreferences in the substitute. Use it if you want to include
7313 text like '$&' in your substitute without quoting.
7318 <ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
7319 Expressions</quote></ulink>, you might want to take a look at
7320 the <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>, and
7321 see the <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl
7323 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlop.html">the
7324 <literal>s///</literal> operator's syntax</ulink> and <ulink
7325 url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl-style regular
7326 expressions</ulink> in general.
7327 The below examples might also help to get you started.
7331 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
7333 <sect2 id="filter-file-tut"><title>Filter File Tutorial</title>
7335 Now, let's complete our <quote>foo</quote> content filter. We have already defined
7336 the heading, but the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace
7337 <quote>foo</quote> with <quote>bar</quote>, there is only one (trivial) job
7341 <screen>s/foo/bar/</screen>
7344 But wait! Didn't the comment say that <emphasis>all</emphasis> occurrences
7345 of <quote>foo</quote> should be replaced? Our current job will only take
7346 care of the first <quote>foo</quote> on each page. For global substitution,
7347 we'll need to add the <literal>g</literal> option:
7350 <screen>s/foo/bar/g</screen>
7353 Our complete filter now looks like this:
7356 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
7357 s/foo/bar/g</screen>
7360 Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see
7361 a filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
7362 abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
7367 FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
7369 # Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
7371 s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg</screen>
7374 Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses
7375 <literal>|</literal> as the delimiter instead of <literal>/</literal>, because
7376 the pattern contains a forward slash, which would otherwise have to be escaped
7377 by a backslash (<literal>\</literal>).
7381 Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <literal><script.*</literal>
7382 enclosed in parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and <literal>*</literal>
7383 means: <quote>Match an arbitrary number of the element left of myself</quote>, this
7384 matches <quote><script</quote>, followed by <emphasis>any</emphasis> text, i.e.
7385 it matches the whole page, from the start of the first <script> tag.
7389 That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: <literal>document\.referrer</literal>
7390 matches only the exact string <quote>document.referrer</quote>. The dot needed to
7391 be <emphasis>escaped</emphasis>, i.e. preceded by a backslash, to take away its
7392 special meaning as a joker, and make it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is:
7393 Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including,
7394 the text <quote>document.referrer</quote>, if <emphasis>both</emphasis> are present
7395 in the page (and appear in that order).
7399 But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in parentheses,
7400 is <literal>.*</script></literal>. You already know what <literal>.*</literal>
7401 means, so the whole pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script>
7402 tag in a page to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text
7403 <quote>document.referrer</quote> appears somewhere in between.
7407 This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the parentheses:
7408 The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed in parentheses, will be
7409 remembered and be available through the variables <literal>$1, $2, ...</literal> in
7410 the substitute. The <literal>U</literal> option switches to ungreedy matching, which means
7411 that the first <literal>.*</literal> in the pattern will only <quote>eat up</quote> all
7412 text in between <quote><script</quote> and the <emphasis>first</emphasis> occurrence
7413 of <quote>document.referrer</quote>, and that the second <literal>.*</literal> will
7414 only span the text up to the <emphasis>first</emphasis> <quote></script></quote>
7415 tag. Furthermore, the <literal>s</literal> option says that the match may span
7416 multiple lines in the page, and the <literal>g</literal> option again means that the
7417 substitution is global.
7421 So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
7422 <quote>document.referrer</quote>. Remember the parts of the script from
7423 (and including) the start tag up to (and excluding) the string
7424 <quote>document.referrer</quote> as <literal>$1</literal>, and the part following
7425 that string, up to and including the closing tag, as <literal>$2</literal>.
7429 Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
7430 lets look at the substitute: <literal>$1"Not Your Business!"$2</literal> is
7431 easy to read: The text remembered as <literal>$1</literal>, followed by
7432 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> (<emphasis>including</emphasis>
7433 the quotation marks!), followed by the text remembered as <literal>$2</literal>.
7434 This produces an exact copy of the original string, with the middle part
7435 (the <quote>document.referrer</quote>) replaced by <literal>"Not Your
7436 Business!"</literal>.
7440 The whole job now reads: Replace <quote>document.referrer</quote> by
7441 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> wherever it appears inside a
7442 <script> tag. Note that this job won't break JavaScript syntax,
7443 since both the original and the replacement are syntactically valid
7444 string objects. The script just won't have access to the referrer
7445 information anymore.
7449 We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but
7450 this time only point out the constructs of special interest:
7454 # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
7456 s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig</screen>
7459 <literal>\s</literal> stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline,
7460 carriage return, form feed), so that <literal>\s*</literal> means: <quote>zero
7461 or more whitespace</quote>. The <literal>?</literal> in <literal>.*?</literal>
7462 makes this matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the <literal>U</literal>
7463 option is not set). The <literal>['"]</literal> construct means: <quote>a single
7464 <emphasis>or</emphasis> a double quote</quote>. Finally, <literal>\1</literal> is
7465 a back-reference to the first parenthesis just like <literal>$1</literal> above,
7466 with the difference that in the <emphasis>pattern</emphasis>, a backslash indicates
7467 a back-reference, whereas in the <emphasis>substitute</emphasis>, it's the dollar.
7471 So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
7472 strings to the <quote>window.status</quote> object with a dummy assignment
7473 (using a variable name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with
7474 real variables in scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless
7475 descriptions are displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when
7476 you move your mouse over links.
7480 # Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
7482 s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU</screen>
7486 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">OnUnload
7487 event binding</ulink> in the HTML DOM was a <emphasis>CRIME</emphasis>.
7488 When I close a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta.
7489 This job replaces the <quote>onunload</quote> attribute in
7490 <quote><body></quote> tags with the dummy word <literal>never</literal>.
7491 Note that the <literal>i</literal> option makes the pattern matching
7492 case-insensitive. Also note that ungreedy matching alone doesn't always guarantee
7493 a minimal match: In the first parenthesis, we had to use <literal>[^>]*</literal>
7494 instead of <literal>.*</literal> to prevent the match from exceeding the
7495 <body> tag if it doesn't contain <quote>OnUnload</quote>, but the page's
7500 The last example is from the fun department:
7504 FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
7506 # Spice the daily news:
7508 s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig</screen>
7511 Note the <literal>(?!\.com)</literal> part (a so-called negative lookahead)
7512 in the job's pattern, which means: Don't match, if the string
7513 <quote>.com</quote> appears directly following <quote>microsoft</quote>
7514 in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being trashed, while
7515 still replacing the word everywhere else.
7519 # Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
7521 s* industry[ -]leading \
7523 | customer[ -]focused \
7524 | market[ -]driven \
7525 | award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
7526 | high[ -]performance \
7527 | solutions[ -]based \
7531 *<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
7535 The <literal>x</literal> option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for
7536 e.g. the liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
7544 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
7546 <sect2 id="predefined-filters"><title>The Pre-defined Filters</title>
7550 Note each filter is also listed in the +filter action section above. Please
7551 keep these listings in sync.
7556 The distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file contains a selection of
7557 pre-defined filters for your convenience:
7562 <term><emphasis>js-annoyances</emphasis></term>
7565 The purpose of this filter is to get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.
7571 replaces JavaScript references to the browser's referrer information
7572 with the string "Not Your Business!". This compliments the <literal><link
7573 linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal> action on the content level.
7578 removes the bindings to the DOM's
7579 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">unload
7580 event</ulink> which we feel has no right to exist and is responsible for most <quote>exit consoles</quote>, i.e.
7581 nasty windows that pop up when you close another one.
7586 removes code that causes new windows to be opened with undesired properties, such as being
7587 full-screen, non-resizeable, without location, status or menu bar etc.
7592 Use with caution. This is an aggressive filter, and can break sites that
7593 rely heavily on JavaScript.
7599 <term><emphasis>js-events</emphasis></term>
7602 This is a very radical measure. It removes virtually all JavaScript event bindings, which
7603 means that scripts can not react to user actions such as mouse movements or clicks, window
7604 resizing etc, anymore. Use with caution!
7607 We <emphasis>strongly discourage</emphasis> using this filter as a default since it breaks
7608 many legitimate scripts. It is meant for use only on extra-nasty sites (should you really
7615 <term><emphasis>html-annoyances</emphasis></term>
7618 This filter will undo many common instances of HTML based abuse.
7621 The <literal>BLINK</literal> and <literal>MARQUEE</literal> tags
7622 are neutralized (yeah baby!), and browser windows will be created as
7623 resizeable (as of course they should be!), and will have location,
7624 scroll and menu bars -- even if specified otherwise.
7630 <term><emphasis>content-cookies</emphasis></term>
7633 Most cookies are set in the HTTP dialog, where they can be intercepted
7635 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>
7636 and <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>
7637 actions. But web sites increasingly make use of HTML meta tags and JavaScript
7638 to sneak cookies to the browser on the content level.
7641 This filter disables most HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets
7642 cookies. It cannot detect all clever uses of these types of code, so it
7643 should not be relied on as an absolute fix. Use it wherever you would also
7644 use the cookie crunch actions.
7650 <term><emphasis>refresh-tags</emphasis></term>
7653 Disable any refresh tags if the interval is greater than nine seconds (so
7654 that redirections done via refresh tags are not destroyed). This is useful
7655 for dial-on-demand setups, or for those who find this HTML feature
7662 <term><emphasis>unsolicited-popups</emphasis></term>
7665 This filter attempts to prevent only <quote>unsolicited</quote> pop-up
7666 windows from opening, yet still allow pop-up windows that the user
7667 has explicitly chosen to open. It was added in version 3.0.1,
7668 as an improvement over earlier such filters.
7671 Technical note: The filter works by redefining the window.open JavaScript
7672 function to a dummy function, <literal>PrivoxyWindowOpen()</literal>,
7673 during the loading and rendering phase of each HTML page access, and
7674 restoring the function afterward.
7677 This is recommended only for browsers that cannot perform this function
7678 reliably themselves. And be aware that some sites require such windows
7679 in order to function normally. Use with caution.
7685 <term><emphasis>all-popups</emphasis></term>
7688 Attempt to prevent <emphasis>all</emphasis> pop-up windows from opening.
7689 Note this should be used with even more discretion than the above, since
7690 it is more likely to break some sites that require pop-ups for normal
7691 usage. Use with caution.
7697 <term><emphasis>img-reorder</emphasis></term>
7700 This is a helper filter that has no value if used alone. It makes the
7701 <literal>banners-by-size</literal> and <literal>banners-by-link</literal>
7702 (see below) filters more effective and should be enabled together with them.
7708 <term><emphasis>banners-by-size</emphasis></term>
7711 This filter removes image tags purely based on what size they are. Fortunately
7712 for us, many ads and banner images tend to conform to certain standardized
7713 sizes, which makes this filter quite effective for ad stripping purposes.
7716 Occasionally this filter will cause false positives on images that are not ads,
7717 but just happen to be of one of the standard banner sizes.
7720 Recommended only for those who require extreme ad blocking. The default
7721 block rules should catch 95+% of all ads <emphasis>without</emphasis> this filter enabled.
7727 <term><emphasis>banners-by-link</emphasis></term>
7730 This filter attempts to kill any banners if their URLs seem to point
7731 to known or suspected click trackers. It is currently not of much value
7732 and is not recommended for use by default.
7738 <term><emphasis>webbugs</emphasis></term>
7741 Webbugs are small, invisible images (technically 1X1 GIF images), that
7742 are used to track users across websites, and collect information on them.
7743 As an HTML page is loaded by the browser, an embedded image tag causes the
7744 browser to contact a third-party site, disclosing the tracking information
7745 through the requested URL and/or cookies for that third-party domain, without
7746 the user ever becoming aware of the interaction with the third-party site.
7747 HTML-ized spam also uses a similar technique to verify email addresses.
7750 This filter removes the HTML code that loads such <quote>webbugs</quote>.
7756 <term><emphasis>tiny-textforms</emphasis></term>
7759 A rather special-purpose filter that can be used to enlarge textareas (those
7760 multi-line text boxes in web forms) and turn off hard word wrap in them.
7761 It was written for the sourceforge.net tracker system where such boxes are
7762 a nuisance, but it can be handy on other sites, too.
7765 It is not recommended to use this filter as a default.
7771 <term><emphasis>jumping-windows</emphasis></term>
7774 Many consider windows that move, or resize themselves to be abusive. This filter
7775 neutralizes the related JavaScript code. Note that some sites might not display
7776 or behave as intended when using this filter. Use with caution.
7782 <term><emphasis>frameset-borders</emphasis></term>
7785 Some web designers seem to assume that everyone in the world will view their
7786 web sites using the same browser brand and version, screen resolution etc,
7787 because only that assumption could explain why they'd use static frame sizes,
7788 yet prevent their frames from being resized by the user, should they be too
7789 small to show their whole content.
7792 This filter removes the related HTML code. It should only be applied to sites
7799 <term><emphasis>demoronizer</emphasis></term>
7802 Many Microsoft products that generate HTML use non-standard extensions (read:
7803 violations) of the ISO 8859-1 aka Latin-1 character set. This can cause those
7804 HTML documents to display with errors on standard-compliant platforms.
7807 This filter translates the MS-only characters into Latin-1 equivalents.
7808 It is not necessary when using MS products, and will cause corruption of
7809 all documents that use 8-bit character sets other than Latin-1. It's mostly
7810 worthwhile for Europeans on non-MS platforms, if weird garbage characters
7811 sometimes appear on some pages, or user agents that don't correct for this on
7814 My version of Mozilla (ancient) shows little square boxes for quote
7815 characters, and apostrophes on moronized pages. So many pages have this, I
7816 can read them fine now. HB 08/27/06
7823 <term><emphasis>shockwave-flash</emphasis></term>
7826 A filter for shockwave haters. As the name suggests, this filter strips code
7827 out of web pages that is used to embed shockwave flash objects.
7835 <term><emphasis>quicktime-kioskmode</emphasis></term>
7838 Change HTML code that embeds Quicktime objects so that kioskmode, which
7839 prevents saving, is disabled.
7845 <term><emphasis>fun</emphasis></term>
7848 Text replacements for subversive browsing fun. Make fun of your favorite
7849 Monopolist or play buzzword bingo.
7855 <term><emphasis>crude-parental</emphasis></term>
7858 A demonstration-only filter that shows how <application>Privoxy</application>
7859 can be used to delete web content on a keyword basis.
7865 <term><emphasis>ie-exploits</emphasis></term>
7868 An experimental collection of text replacements to disable malicious HTML and JavaScript
7869 code that exploits known security holes in Internet Explorer.
7872 Presently, it only protects against Nimda and a cross-site scripting bug, and
7873 would need active maintenance to provide more substantial protection.
7879 <term><emphasis>site-specifics</emphasis></term>
7882 Some web sites have very specific problems, the cure for which doesn't apply
7883 anywhere else, or could even cause damage on other sites.
7886 This is a collection of such site-specific cures which should only be applied
7887 to the sites they were intended for, which is what the supplied
7888 <filename>default.action</filename> file does. Users shouldn't need to change
7889 anything regarding this filter.
7895 <term><emphasis>google</emphasis></term>
7898 A CSS based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation
7899 and the toolbar advertisement.
7905 <term><emphasis>yahoo</emphasis></term>
7908 Another CSS based block, this time for Yahoo text ads. And removes
7909 a width limitation as well.
7915 <term><emphasis>msn</emphasis></term>
7918 Another CSS based block, this time for MSN text ads. And removes
7919 tracking URLs, as well as a width limitation.
7925 <term><emphasis>blogspot</emphasis></term>
7928 Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this one!
7931 This filter also intentionally removes some navigation stuff and sets the
7932 page width to 100%. As a result, some rounded <quote>corners</quote> would
7933 appear to early or not at all and as fixing this would require a browser
7934 that understands background-size (CSS3), they are removed instead.
7940 <term><emphasis>xml-to-html</emphasis></term>
7943 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from xml to html.
7949 <term><emphasis>html-to-xml</emphasis></term>
7952 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from html to xml.
7958 <term><emphasis>no-ping</emphasis></term>
7961 Removes the non-standard <literal>ping</literal> attribute from
7962 anchor and area HTML tags.
7968 <term><emphasis>hide-tor-exit-notation</emphasis></term>
7971 Client-header filter to remove the <command>Tor</command> exit node notation
7972 found in Host and Referer headers.
7975 If &my-app; and <command>Tor</command> are chained and &my-app;
7976 is configured to use socks4a, one can use <quote>http://www.example.org.foobar.exit/</quote>
7977 to access the host <quote>www.example.org</quote> through the
7978 <command>Tor</command> exit node <quote>foobar</quote>.
7981 As the HTTP client isn't aware of this notation, it treats the
7982 whole string <quote>www.example.org.foobar.exit</quote> as host and uses it
7983 for the <quote>Host</quote> and <quote>Referer</quote> headers. From the
7984 server's point of view the resulting headers are invalid and can cause problems.
7987 An invalid <quote>Referer</quote> header can trigger <quote>hot-linking</quote>
7988 protections, an invalid <quote>Host</quote> header will make it impossible for
7989 the server to find the right vhost (several domains hosted on the same IP address).
7992 This client-header filter removes the <quote>foo.exit</quote> part in those headers
7993 to prevent the mentioned problems. Note that it only modifies
7994 the HTTP headers, it doesn't make it impossible for the server
7995 to detect your <command>Tor</command> exit node based on the IP address
7996 the request is coming from.
8003 <term><emphasis> </emphasis></term>
8016 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
8017 <sect2 id="external-filter-syntax"><title>External filter syntax</title>
8019 External filters are scripts or programs that can modify the content in
8020 case common <literal><link linkend="filter">filters</link></literal>
8021 aren't powerful enough.
8024 External filters can be written in any language the platform &my-app; runs
8028 They are controlled with the
8029 <literal><link linkend="external-filter">external-filter</link></literal> action
8030 and have to be defined in the <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
8034 The header looks like any other filter, but instead of pcrs jobs, external
8035 filters contain a single job which can be a program or a shell script (which
8036 may call other scripts or programs).
8039 External filters read the content from STDIN and write the rewritten
8041 The environment variables PRIVOXY_URL, PRIVOXY_PATH, PRIVOXY_HOST,
8042 PRIVOXY_ORIGIN, PRIVOXY_LISTEN_ADDRESS can be used to get some details
8043 about the client request.
8046 &my-app; will temporary store the content to filter in the
8047 <literal><link linkend="temporary-directory">temporary-directory</link></literal>.
8051 EXTERNAL-FILTER: cat Pointless example filter that doesn't actually modify the content
8054 # Incorrect reimplementation of the filter above in POSIX shell.
8056 # Note that it's a single job that spans multiple lines, the line
8057 # breaks are not passed to the shell, thus the semicolons are required.
8059 # If the script isn't trivial, it is recommended to put it into an external file.
8061 # In general, writing external filters entirely in POSIX shell is not
8062 # considered a good idea.
8063 EXTERNAL-FILTER: cat2 Pointless example filter that despite its name may actually modify the content
8069 EXTERNAL-FILTER: rotate-image Rotate an image by 180 degree. Test filter with limited value.
8070 /usr/local/bin/convert - -rotate 180 -
8072 EXTERNAL-FILTER: citation-needed Adds a "[citation needed]" tag to an image. The coordinates may need adjustment.
8073 /usr/local/bin/convert - -pointsize 16 -fill white -annotate +17+418 "[citation needed]" -
8078 Currently external filters are executed with &my-app;'s privileges!
8079 Only use external filters you understand and trust.
8083 External filters are experimental and the syntax may change in the future.
8089 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
8093 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8095 <sect1 id="templates">
8096 <title>Privoxy's Template Files</title>
8098 All <application>Privoxy</application> built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the
8099 <ulink url="http://show-the-404-error.page"><quote>404 - No Such Domain</quote>
8100 error page</ulink>, the <ulink
8101 url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
8103 and all pages of its <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
8104 user interface</ulink>, are generated from <emphasis>templates</emphasis>.
8105 (<application>Privoxy</application> must be running for the above links to work as
8110 These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the <link linkend="confdir">configuration
8111 directory</link> called <filename>templates</filename>. On Unixish platforms,
8113 <ulink url="file:///etc/privoxy/templates/"><filename>/etc/privoxy/templates/</filename></ulink>.
8117 The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called symbols
8118 or exports), which <application>Privoxy</application> fills at run time. It
8119 is possible to edit the templates with a normal text editor, should you want
8120 to customize them. (<emphasis>Not recommended for the casual
8121 user</emphasis>). Should you create your own custom templates, you should use
8122 the <filename>config</filename> setting <link linkend="templdir">templdir</link>
8123 to specify an alternate location, so your templates do not get overwritten
8127 Note that just like in configuration files, lines starting
8128 with <literal>#</literal> are ignored when the templates are filled in.
8132 The place-holders are of the form <literal>@name@</literal>, and you will
8133 find a list of available symbols, which vary from template to template,
8134 in the comments at the start of each file. Note that these comments are not
8135 always accurate, and that it's probably best to look at the existing HTML
8136 code to find out which symbols are supported and what they are filled in with.
8140 A special application of this substitution mechanism is to make whole
8141 blocks of HTML code disappear when a specific symbol is set. We use this
8142 for many purposes, one of them being to include the beta warning in all
8143 our user interface (CGI) pages when <application>Privoxy</application>
8144 is in an alpha or beta development stage:
8148 <!-- @if-unstable-start -->
8150 ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
8152 <!-- if-unstable-end@ --></screen>
8155 If the "unstable" symbol is set, everything in between and including
8156 <literal>@if-unstable-start</literal> and <literal>if-unstable-end@</literal>
8157 will disappear, leaving nothing but an empty comment:
8160 <screen><!-- --></screen>
8163 There's also an if-then-else construct and an <literal>#include</literal>
8164 mechanism, but you'll sure find out if you are inclined to edit the
8169 All templates refer to a style located at
8170 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet"><literal>http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet</literal></ulink>.
8171 This is, of course, locally served by <application>Privoxy</application>
8172 and the source for it can be found and edited in the
8173 <filename>cgi-style.css</filename> template.
8178 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
8181 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8183 <sect1 id="howto"><title>HOWTOs</title>
8185 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
8186 <sect2 id="h2-https-inspection"><title>HTTPS-Inspection HOWTO</title>
8187 <sect3 id="h2-hi-tls"><title>How TLS Certificates for websites work
8190 The website owner generates a (private) TLS key and a Certificate
8191 Signing Request (CSR).
8194 The CSR is then sent to a Certification Authority (CA), which
8195 verifies that the owner is the actual owner of the website. This can
8196 be done by proving that the owner has technical write access to the
8197 site or the site's DNS, or by verifying the identity of the
8198 organization running the site using telephone and public databases.
8201 If the verification is successful, the CA signs the CSR and creates a
8202 certificate that certifies that the private TLS key actually belongs
8203 to the website name and/or organization that owns the domain.
8206 This TLS certificate is then added to the web server configuration,
8207 and when a browser accesses the website, it verifies that the TLS
8208 certificate presented to the browser is valid for that domain.
8211 To do this, each browser has the certificates of multiple CAs in its
8212 trust store. Only if the certificate of the CA, that signed the web
8213 server is in the trust store, the browser will accept the
8214 certificate, otherwise the browser will complain about a broken
8218 If this check passes, the browser sends a random number encrypted
8219 with the server's public key to the server, and both compute a shared
8220 secret using the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm. Now server
8221 and browser can communicate, but no one else can break that
8222 communication because it's encrypted between them.
8226 <sect3 id="h2-hi-works"><title>How HTTPS inspection works</title>
8228 When we try to inspect HTTPS traffic, we have to break the TLS
8229 encryption between browser and web server without being the browser
8230 or the web server. This is exactly what TLS tries to avoid, as it's
8231 a man-in-the-middle-attack.
8234 To do this, Privoxy uses it's own (private) CA (let's call it
8235 "Privoxy CA"), which has to be added to the trust store of every
8236 single browser that should be used with Privoxy and HTTPS inspection.
8239 Now Privoxy breaks the connection between browser and webserver by
8240 acting as a browser/client when talking to the webserver (including
8241 checking the webserver's TLS certificate against it's own trust
8242 store). Now Privoxy can read and modify the traffic from the
8246 On the other hand, Privoxy itself encrypts the traffic it sends to
8247 the browser using an on the fly self-created TLS server certificate
8248 that is signed by Privoxy CA.
8252 <sect3 id="h2-hi-invalid-cert"><title>What happens, if the original
8253 certificate is invalid?</title>
8255 If Privoxy detects, that a TLS certificate is not valid, because the
8256 certificate is expired, doesn't match the hostname, is self signed or
8257 similar, Privoxy blocks the requests and returns an error message
8258 explaining the problem to avoid that the user/browser communicates
8259 over an insecure communication channel.
8262 To check this behavior, simply go to
8263 <ulink url="https://badssl.com/">https://badssl.com/</ulink>
8267 <sect3 id="h2-hi-prerequisites"><title>HTTPS inspection prerequisites
8270 HTTPS inspection in Privoxy can only be used, if Privoxy is built
8271 with FEATURE_HTTPS_INSPECTION. You can check if this feature
8273 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
8274 in the "Conditional #defines" section.
8277 If the feature is not enabled, you may need to
8278 <link linkend="installation-source">build Privoxy from source</link>
8279 to enable it. You can use either
8280 <ulink url="https://www.trustedfirmware.org/projects/mbed-tls/">MbedTLS</ulink>
8281 or <ulink url="https://www.openssl.org/">OpenSSL</ulink>. It's up to
8282 you, which one to use, they both behave the same for HTTPS inspection.
8285 After installing the development libraries for either OpenSSL or
8286 MbedTLS, you can run <command>./configure</command> with
8287 either the <command>--with-openssl</command> or
8288 <command>--with-mbedtls</command> option.
8291 Check the output of <command>./configure</command>, it must contain
8292 one of these the following two lines, otherwise HTTPS inspection will
8296 configure: Detected OpenSSL. Enabling https inspection.
8297 configure: Detected mbedTLS. Enabling https inspection.
8300 If you do not find any of these lines, the output of
8301 <command>./configure</command> will tell you what went wrong.
8304 You should then proceed with the
8305 <link linkend="installation-source">source install</link>.
8306 Finally, check the FEATURE_HTTPS_INSPECTION status in
8307 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
8312 <sect3 id="h2-hi-config"><title>Configuring HTTPS inspection in Privoxy
8315 First, you need to create the private key and certificate for the
8316 "Privoxy CA". This can be done using openssl with the following
8319 openssl req -new -x509 -extensions v3_ca -keyout privoxy.pem -out privoxy.crt -days 3650
8323 Here we have defined a CA validity of 10 years (3650 days). You
8324 should decide for yourself what is a good validity. A shorter
8325 validity makes your system more secure (it doesn't hurt that long if
8326 the key gets lost to an attacker), but if the certificate expires
8327 before you have replaced it with a new one in Privoxy and in all
8328 browsers, the communication will fail.
8331 During the key generation you will be asked for a "pass phrase".
8332 This pass phrase will appear in the Privoxy config CGI, so don't
8336 Then you will be asked for Country Name, State/Province, Locality,
8337 Orginzation Name, Common Name, and Email Address. You should add
8338 some useful data here, because these entries are shown by the browser
8339 as "Issuer Name" when you inspect a certificate from an
8340 https-inspection site. Especially the "Common Name" will be shown as
8341 the name of your CA, so it's good if you (and other users of your
8342 Privoxy instance) are able to identify this CA.
8345 Copy the private key (<filename>privoxy.pem</filename>) and the CA
8346 certificate (<filename>privoxy.crt</filename>) into
8347 the <link linkend="ca-directory">ca-directory</link> (defined
8348 in <link linkend="config">config</link>).
8351 Make sure that the private key (<filename>privoxy.pem</filename> in
8352 the above example) is only accessible to the user running Privoxy
8353 (usually named "privoxy"):
8356 chmod 600 privoxy.pem
8357 chown privoxy privoxy.pem
8360 Now adjust your Privoxy <link linkend="config">configuration</link>:
8363 <link linkend="ca-directory">ca-directory</link> /etc/privoxy/CA # read-only
8364 <link linkend="ca-cert-file">ca-cert-file</link> privoxy.crt # in ca-directory
8365 <link linkend="ca-key-file">ca-key-file</link> privoxy.pem # in ca-directory
8366 <link linkend="ca-password">ca-password</link> passphrasefromabove
8367 <link linkend="certificate-directory">certificate-directory</link> /var/lib/privoxy/certs
8368 <link linkend="trusted-cas-file">trusted-cas-file</link> /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
8371 <link linkend="certificate-directory">certificate-directory</link>
8372 contains the (on the fly) created webserver keys and certificates.
8373 It should only be readable by the privoxy user only:
8376 chown privoxy /var/lib/privoxy/certs
8377 chmod 700 /var/lib/privoxy/certs.
8380 <link linkend="trusted-cas-file">trusted-cas-file</link> is the trust
8381 store containing the certificates of all CAs that should be accepted.
8382 Each browser comes with it's own trust store. Most Unix systems also
8383 ship with a truststore. Debian ships it's truststore
8384 in <filename>/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt</filename>, which is
8385 installed by the ca-certificates package and can be updated using
8386 update-ca-certificates(8). Alternatively, such a file (extracted
8387 from Mozilla) can be downloaded
8388 from <ulink url="https://curl.se/docs/caextract.html">https://curl.se/docs/caextract.html</ulink>.
8392 <sect3 id="h2-hi-browser"><title>Browser configuration</title>
8394 As written above, each browser you use must now trust the newly
8395 created Privoxy CA certificate (<filename>privoxy.crt</filename>).
8398 In Firefox you can do this by opening the preferences "Edit" ->
8399 "Settings" -> "Privacy & Security" or by typing
8400 <ulink url="about:preferences#privacy">about:preferences#privacy</ulink>
8401 in the URL. Then go down to the "Certificates" section and click on
8402 "View Certificates". Click on the "Authorities" tab and "Import..."
8403 your <filename>privoxy.crt</filename>. In the "CA certificate trust
8404 settings" select "This certificate can identify websites".
8407 In Chrome based browsers, go to the settings and select "Privacy and
8409 (<ulink url="chrome://settings/privacy">chrome://settings/privacy</ulink>).
8410 Click on "Security" and on the opened sub-page on "Manage
8411 certificates". Now go to the "Authorities" tab and
8412 import <filename>privoxy.crt</filename> and configure that you trust
8413 the certificate for website identification.
8417 <sect3 id="h2-hi-enable"><title>Enabeling HTTPS inspection</title>
8419 Currently no pages use HTTPS inspection, you need to enable this for
8420 some (or all) domains first
8421 using <link linkend="user-action">user.action</link> (either by editing
8422 the file by hand or via the CGI (this requires
8423 <link linkend="enable-edit-actions">enable-edit-actions</link>
8424 to be enabled in config) at
8425 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
8426 (click on user.action Edit button).
8429 Here you can enable HTTPS inspection for individual sites:
8432 {+<link linkend="https-inspection">https-inspection</link>}
8434 clienttest.ssllabs.com
8437 You can add more individual sites or wildcards (one per line).
8440 Alternatively, you can use a client-tag to dynamically enable/disable
8441 this feature via the browser, as described in the next chapter.
8447 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
8448 <sect2 id="h2-client-tags"><title>Client Tags HOWTO</title>
8450 Client-Tags are a mechanism to dynamically/temporarily enable/disable
8451 features in Privoxy per browser.
8454 In our example, we use this for the following two use cases:
8456 <listitem><para>Enable TOR anonymous proxy</para></listitem>
8457 <listitem><para>Enable https-inspection</para></listitem>
8461 To use this feature, you must first define a tag name and a tag
8462 description for each client-tag in <link linkend="config">config</link>,
8466 <link linkend="client-specific-tag">client-specific-tag</link> tor Use Tor anonymous proxy
8467 <link linkend="client-specific-tag">client-specific-tag</link> https-inspection Enable https-inspection
8470 Now you can open <ulink
8471 url="http://config.privoxy.org/client-tags">http://config.privoxy.org/client-tags</ulink>
8472 or <ulink url="http://p.p/client-tags">http://p.p/client-tags</ulink>
8473 and can enable/disable the tag there (you may want to add a bookmark
8474 for this in your browser for quick access, but it's also available as
8475 a link at <ulink url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink>).
8478 It's also possible to temporarily enable a tag, which by default
8479 means 3 minutes (=180 seconds) (and can be changed via the
8480 <link linkend="client-tag-lifetime">client-tag-lifetime</link> option
8481 in <link linkend="config">config</link>).
8484 But before this has any effect, you have to use the client tag in
8485 your <link linkend="user-action">user.action</link> like this:
8488 {+<link linkend="forward-override">forward-override</link>{<link linkend="socks">forward-socks5t</link> 127.0.0.1:9050 .} }
8489 <link linkend="client-tag-pattern">CLIENT-TAG</link>:^tor$
8492 This means, that if the "tor" client tag is enabled, all traffic is
8493 forwarded by Privoxy through socks5t to a locally installed tor proxy
8494 listening on port 9050.
8497 Similarly, you can specify to use the https-inspection client tag to
8498 enable https-inspection:
8501 {+<link linkend="https-inspection">https-inspection</link>}
8502 <link linkend="client-tag-pattern">CLIENT-TAG</link>:^https-inspection$
8505 The tag will be set for all requests coming from clients that have
8506 requested it to be set. Note that "clients" are distinguished by IP
8507 address, if the IP address changes, the tag must be requested again.
8513 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
8516 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8518 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
8521 <!-- Include contacting.sgml boilerplate: -->
8523 <!-- end boilerplate -->
8527 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
8530 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8531 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Privoxy Copyright, License and History</title>
8533 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
8535 <!-- end copyright -->
8538 <application>Privoxy</application> is free software; you can
8539 redistribute and/or modify its source code under the terms
8540 of the <citetitle>GNU General Public License</citetitle>
8541 as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2
8542 of the license, or (at your option) any later version.
8546 The same is true for <application>Privoxy</application> binaries
8547 unless they are linked with a
8548 <ulink url="https://www.trustedfirmware.org/projects/mbed-tls/">mbed TLS</ulink> version
8549 that is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license in which
8550 case you can redistribute and/or modify the <application>Privoxy</application>
8551 binaries under the terms of the <citetitle>GNU General Public License</citetitle>
8552 as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3
8553 of the license, or (at your option) any later version.
8557 Both licenses are included in the next section.
8560 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8561 <sect2 id="license"><title>License</title>
8563 <sect3 id="gplv2"><title>GNU General Public License version 2</title>
8564 <literallayout class="Monospaced"><![ RCDATA [ &GPLv2; ]]></literallayout>
8567 <sect3 id="gplv3"><title>GNU General Public License version 3</title>
8568 <literallayout class="Monospaced"><![ RCDATA [ &GPLv3; ]]></literallayout>
8571 <sect3 id="third-party-licenses"><title>Third-party licenses and copyrights</title>
8573 Privoxy depends on a couple of third-party libraries which have seperate licenses.
8574 Please refer to the third-party websites for up-to-date license and copyright
8578 Privoxy depends on <ulink url="https://pcre.org/">pcre</ulink>.
8581 When compiled with FEATURE_BROTLI (optional), Privoxy depends on
8582 <ulink url="https://www.brotli.org/">brotli</ulink>.
8585 When compiled with FEATURE_HTTPS_INSPECTION (optional),
8586 Privoxy depends on a TLS library. The supported libraries are
8587 <ulink url="https://www.openssl.org/">LibreSSL</ulink>,
8588 <ulink url="https://github.com/Mbed-TLS/mbedtls/tags">mbed TLS 2.28.x</ulink> and
8589 <ulink url="https://www.openssl.org/">OpenSSL</ulink>.
8592 When compiled with FEATURE_ZLIB (optional),
8593 Privoxy depends on <ulink url="https://zlib.net/">zlib</ulink>.
8598 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
8601 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8603 <sect2 id="history"><title>History</title>
8604 <!-- Include history.sgml: -->
8606 <!-- end history -->
8609 <sect2 id="authors"><title>Authors</title>
8610 <!-- Include p-authors.sgml: -->
8612 <!-- end authors -->
8617 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
8620 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8621 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See Also</title>
8622 <!-- Include seealso.sgml: -->
8624 <!-- end seealso -->
8629 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8630 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
8633 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8635 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
8637 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl-style <quote>regular
8638 expressions</quote> in its <link linkend="actions-file">actions
8639 files</link> and <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>,
8640 through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> and
8643 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/">PCRS</ulink> libraries.
8645 <application>PCRS</application> libraries.
8649 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
8650 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
8651 introduction only. A full explanation would require a <ulink
8652 url="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/">book</ulink> ;-)
8656 Regular expressions provide a language to describe patterns that can be
8657 run against strings of characters (letter, numbers, etc), to see if they
8658 match the string or not. The patterns are themselves (sometimes complex)
8659 strings of literal characters, combined with wild-cards, and other special
8660 characters, called meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have
8661 special meanings and are used to build complex patterns to be matched against.
8662 Perl Compatible Regular Expressions are an especially convenient
8663 <quote>dialect</quote> of the regular expression language.
8667 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
8668 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
8669 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
8670 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
8671 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
8672 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
8673 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
8674 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
8678 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
8679 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
8680 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
8681 and then some examples:
8686 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
8687 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
8693 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
8700 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
8707 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
8714 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
8715 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
8716 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
8717 not as a special meta-character. Example: <quote>example\.com</quote>, makes
8718 sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded to its
8719 meta-character meaning of any single character).
8725 <emphasis>[ ]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
8726 any of the enclosed characters are encountered. For instance, <quote>[0-9]</quote>
8727 matches any numeric digit (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine
8728 this with <quote>+</quote> to match any digit one of more times: <quote>[0-9]+</quote>.
8734 <emphasis>( )</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
8735 or multiple sub-expressions.
8741 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
8742 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
8743 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches. As an example:
8744 <quote>/(this|that) example/</quote> uses grouping and the bar character
8745 and would match either <quote>this example</quote> or <quote>that
8746 example</quote>, and nothing else.
8751 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
8752 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
8753 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
8754 be more illuminating:
8758 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
8759 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
8760 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
8761 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
8762 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
8763 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
8764 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
8765 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
8766 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
8767 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
8768 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
8769 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
8770 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
8771 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
8776 And now something a little more complex:
8780 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
8781 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
8782 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
8783 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
8784 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
8785 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
8786 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
8791 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
8792 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
8793 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
8794 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
8795 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
8796 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
8797 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
8798 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
8799 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
8800 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
8801 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
8802 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
8803 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
8804 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
8805 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
8806 changing our regular expression to:
8807 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
8812 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
8813 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
8814 <quote>[ ]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
8815 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
8816 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
8817 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
8818 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
8819 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
8820 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
8821 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
8822 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
8823 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
8824 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
8825 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
8826 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
8827 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
8828 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
8829 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
8830 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
8831 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
8832 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
8833 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
8834 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
8835 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
8836 in the expression anywhere).
8840 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
8841 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
8842 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
8843 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
8844 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
8849 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
8850 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html</ulink>
8854 For information on regular expression based substitutions and their applications
8855 in filters, please see the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file tutorial</link>
8860 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
8863 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8864 <sect2 id="internal-pages">
8865 <title>Privoxy's Internal Pages</title>
8868 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
8869 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
8870 trap certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
8871 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
8872 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
8873 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
8874 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
8879 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
8880 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
8881 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
8882 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
8894 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
8898 There is a shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (But it
8899 doesn't provide a fall-back to a real page, in case the request is not
8900 sent through <application>Privoxy</application>)
8906 View and toggle client tags:
8910 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/client-tags">http://config.privoxy.org/client-tags</ulink>
8917 Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
8918 editing of actions files:
8922 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
8929 Show the browser's request headers:
8933 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">http://config.privoxy.org/show-request</ulink>
8940 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
8944 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
8951 Toggle Privoxy on or off. This feature can be turned off/on in the main
8952 <filename>config</filename> file. When toggled <quote>off</quote>, <quote>Privoxy</quote>
8953 continues to run, but only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking
8958 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
8962 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
8966 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
8971 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
8981 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8983 <title>Chain of Events</title>
8985 Let's take a quick look at how some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
8986 core features are triggered, and the ensuing sequence of events when a web
8987 page is requested by your browser:
8993 First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send
8994 the request to <application>Privoxy</application>, which will in turn,
8995 relay the request to the remote web server after passing the following
9001 <application>Privoxy</application> traps any request for its own internal CGI
9002 pages (e.g <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>) and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
9007 Next, <application>Privoxy</application> checks to see if the URL
9009 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link> patterns. If
9010 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be contacted.
9011 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>
9013 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-EMPTY-DOCUMENT"><quote>+handle-as-empty-document</quote></link>
9014 are then checked, and if there is no match, an
9015 HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page is sent back to the browser. Otherwise, if
9016 it does match, an image is returned for the former, and an empty text
9017 document for the latter. The type of image would depend on the setting of
9018 <link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><quote>+set-image-blocker</quote></link>
9019 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
9024 Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the
9025 <filename>trust</filename> file, then that is done.
9030 If the URL pattern matches the <link
9031 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link> action,
9032 it is then processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
9037 Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
9038 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. <link
9039 linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT"><quote>+hide-user-agent</quote></link>,
9040 etc.), headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and
9046 Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web
9052 First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
9053 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
9054 filtered as determined by the
9055 <link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES"><quote>+crunch-incoming-cookies</quote></link>,
9056 <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>,
9057 and <link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION"><quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote></link>
9063 If any <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
9065 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
9066 action applies (and the document type fits the action), the rest of the page is
9067 read into memory (up to a configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from
9068 <filename>default.filter</filename> and any other filter files) are
9069 processed against the buffered content. Filters are applied in the order
9070 they are specified in one of the filter files. Animated GIFs, if present,
9071 are reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
9072 setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by
9073 <application>Privoxy</application> back to your browser.
9076 If neither a <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
9078 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
9079 matches, then <application>Privoxy</application> passes the raw data through
9080 to the client browser as it becomes available.
9085 As the browser receives the now (possibly filtered) page content, it
9086 reads and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page
9087 source, e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
9088 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a
9089 separate request (this is easily viewable in <application>Privoxy's</application>
9090 logs). And each such request is in turn processed just as above. Note that a
9091 complex web page will have many, many such embedded URLs. If these
9092 secondary requests are to a different server, then quite possibly a very
9093 differing set of actions is triggered.
9100 NOTE: This is somewhat of a simplistic overview of what happens with each URL
9101 request. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, we have focused on
9102 <application>Privoxy's</application> core features only.
9108 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
9109 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
9110 <title>Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</title>
9113 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies
9114 <link linkend="ACTIONS">actions</link> and <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>
9115 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so
9116 easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to
9117 <emphasis>see</emphasis> just what <application>Privoxy</application> is
9118 doing. Especially, if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing
9119 is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to look at
9120 the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
9121 <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> whose consequences are not
9126 One quick test to see if <application>Privoxy</application> is causing a problem
9127 or not, is to disable it temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting
9128 step (be sure to flush caches afterward!). Looking at the
9129 logs is a good idea too. (Note that both the toggle feature and logging are
9130 enabled via <filename>config</filename> file settings, and may need to be
9131 turned <quote>on</quote>.)
9134 Another easy troubleshooting step to try is if you have done any
9135 customization of your installation, revert back to the installed
9136 defaults and see if that helps. There are times the developers get complaints
9137 about one thing or another, and the problem is more related to a customized
9138 configuration issue.
9142 <application>Privoxy</application> also provides the
9143 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
9144 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
9145 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
9149 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
9150 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
9151 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
9152 help with filtering effects (i.e. the <link
9153 linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action) from
9154 one of the filter files since this is handled very
9155 differently and not so easy to trap! It also will not tell you about any other
9156 URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are testing. For instance, images
9157 such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw page source of HTML pages. So
9158 you will only get info for the actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area
9159 -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you
9160 will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View
9161 Page Source</quote> option for this. Or right click on the ad, and grab the
9166 Let's try an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
9167 and look at it one section at a time in a sample configuration (your real
9168 configuration may vary):
9172 Matches for http://www.google.com:
9174 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
9176 {+change-x-forwarded-for{block}
9177 +deanimate-gifs {last}
9178 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
9179 +filter {refresh-tags}
9180 +filter {img-reorder}
9181 +filter {banners-by-size}
9183 +filter {jumping-windows}
9184 +filter {ie-exploits}
9185 +hide-from-header {block}
9186 +hide-referrer {forge}
9187 +session-cookies-only
9188 +set-image-blocker {pattern} }
9191 { -session-cookies-only }
9197 In file: user.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
9198 (no matches in this file)
9202 This is telling us how we have defined our
9203 <link linkend="ACTIONS"><quote>actions</quote></link>, and
9204 which ones match for our test case, <quote>google.com</quote>.
9205 Displayed is all the actions that are available to us. Remember,
9206 the <literal>+</literal> sign denotes <quote>on</quote>. <literal>-</literal>
9207 denotes <quote>off</quote>. So some are <quote>on</quote> here, but many
9208 are <quote>off</quote>. Each example we try may provide a slightly different
9209 end result, depending on our configuration directives.
9213 is for our <filename>default.action</filename> file. The large, multi-line
9214 listing, is how the actions are set to match for all URLs, i.e. our default
9215 settings. If you look at your <quote>actions</quote> file, this would be the
9216 section just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section near the top. This
9217 will apply to all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end
9218 of the listing -- <quote> / </quote>.
9222 But we have defined additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
9223 rules, and then we list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions
9224 would apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit
9225 matches for <quote>.google.com</quote>. The first is negating our previous
9226 cookie setting, which was for <link
9227 linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>
9228 (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent cookies for google, at
9229 least that is how it is in this example. The second turns
9230 <emphasis>off</emphasis> any <link
9231 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link>
9232 action, allowing this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading
9233 dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will match any hosts and
9234 sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
9235 <quote>www.google.com</quote> or <quote>mail.google.com</quote>. But it would not
9236 match <quote>www.google.de</quote>! So, apparently, we have these two actions
9237 defined as exceptions to the general rules at the top somewhere in the lower
9238 part of our <filename>default.action</filename> file, and
9239 <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced somewhere in these latter sections.
9243 Then, for our <filename>user.action</filename> file, we again have no hits.
9244 So there is nothing google-specific that we might have added to our own, local
9245 configuration. If there was, those actions would over-rule any actions from
9246 previously processed files, such as <filename>default.action</filename>.
9247 <filename>user.action</filename> typically has the last word. This is the
9248 best place to put hard and fast exceptions,
9252 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
9253 <application>Privoxy</application> is applying all its <quote>actions</quote>
9254 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
9262 +change-x-forwarded-for{block}
9263 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
9264 -content-type-overwrite
9265 -crunch-client-header
9266 -crunch-if-none-match
9267 -crunch-incoming-cookies
9268 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
9269 -crunch-server-header
9270 +deanimate-gifs {last}
9271 -downgrade-http-version
9274 -filter {content-cookies}
9275 -filter {all-popups}
9276 -filter {banners-by-link}
9277 -filter {tiny-textforms}
9278 -filter {frameset-borders}
9279 -filter {demoronizer}
9280 -filter {shockwave-flash}
9281 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
9283 -filter {crude-parental}
9284 -filter {site-specifics}
9285 -filter {js-annoyances}
9286 -filter {html-annoyances}
9287 +filter {refresh-tags}
9288 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
9289 +filter {img-reorder}
9290 +filter {banners-by-size}
9292 +filter {jumping-windows}
9293 +filter {ie-exploits}
9300 -handle-as-empty-document
9302 -hide-accept-language
9303 -hide-content-disposition
9304 +hide-from-header {block}
9305 -hide-if-modified-since
9306 +hide-referrer {forge}
9309 -overwrite-last-modified
9310 -prevent-compression
9312 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
9313 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
9314 -session-cookies-only
9315 +set-image-blocker {pattern}
9319 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
9320 <quote>fast-redirects</quote> and <quote>session-cookies-only</quote>,
9321 which are activated specifically for this site in our configuration,
9322 and thus show in the <quote>Final Results</quote>.
9326 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
9330 { +block{Domains starts with "ad"} }
9333 { +block{Domain contains "ad"} }
9336 { +block{Doubleclick banner server} +handle-as-image }
9337 .[a-vx-z]*.doubleclick.net
9341 We'll just show the interesting part here - the explicit matches. It is
9342 matched three different times. Two <quote>+block{}</quote> sections,
9343 and a <quote>+block{} +handle-as-image</quote>,
9344 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
9345 <quote>+block-as-image</quote>. (<link
9346 linkend="ALIASES"><quote>Aliases</quote></link> are defined in
9347 the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
9352 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
9353 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
9354 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
9355 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
9356 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
9357 is done here -- as both a <link
9358 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block{}</quote></link>
9359 <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
9360 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>.
9361 The custom alias <quote><literal>+block-as-image</literal></quote> just
9362 simplifies the process and make it more readable.
9366 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
9367 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
9371 Matches for http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
9373 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
9377 +change-x-forwarded-for{block}
9378 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
9379 -content-type-overwrite
9380 -crunch-client-header
9381 -crunch-if-none-match
9382 -crunch-incoming-cookies
9383 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
9384 -crunch-server-header
9386 -downgrade-http-version
9387 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
9389 -filter {content-cookies}
9390 -filter {all-popups}
9391 -filter {banners-by-link}
9392 -filter {tiny-textforms}
9393 -filter {frameset-borders}
9394 -filter {demoronizer}
9395 -filter {shockwave-flash}
9396 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
9398 -filter {crude-parental}
9399 -filter {site-specifics}
9400 -filter {js-annoyances}
9401 -filter {html-annoyances}
9402 +filter {refresh-tags}
9403 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
9404 +filter {img-reorder}
9405 +filter {banners-by-size}
9407 +filter {jumping-windows}
9408 +filter {ie-exploits}
9415 -handle-as-empty-document
9417 -hide-accept-language
9418 -hide-content-disposition
9419 +hide-from-header{block}
9420 +hide-referer{forge}
9422 -overwrite-last-modified
9423 +prevent-compression
9425 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
9426 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
9427 +session-cookies-only
9428 +set-image-blocker{blank} }
9431 { +block{Path contains "ads".} +handle-as-image }
9436 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote> in our
9437 configuration! But we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the
9438 blank page. It is actually triggering two different actions here, and
9439 the effects are aggregated so that the URL is blocked, and &my-app; is told
9440 to treat the block as if it were an image. But this is, of course, all wrong.
9441 We could now add a new action below this (or better in our own
9442 <filename>user.action</filename> file) that explicitly
9443 <emphasis>un</emphasis> blocks (
9444 <link linkend="BLOCK"><quote>{-block}</quote></link>) paths with
9445 <quote>adsl</quote> in them (remember, last match in the configuration
9446 wins). There are various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
9455 Now the page displays ;-)
9456 Remember to flush your browser's caches when making these kinds of changes to
9457 your configuration to insure that you get a freshly delivered page! Or, try
9458 using <literal>Shift+Reload</literal>.
9462 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
9467 { +block{Path starts with "ads".} +handle-as-image }
9472 That actually was very helpful and pointed us quickly to where the problem
9473 was. If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default
9474 rules in the first section of <filename>default.action</filename> is causing
9475 the problem. This would require some guesswork, and maybe a little trial and
9476 error to isolate the offending rule. One likely cause would be one of the
9477 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> actions.
9478 These tend to be harder to troubleshoot.
9479 Try adding the URL for the site to one of aliases that turn off
9480 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>:
9486 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
9493 <quote><literal>{ shop }</literal></quote> is an <quote>alias</quote> that expands to
9494 <quote><literal>{ -filter -session-cookies-only }</literal></quote>.
9495 Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
9500 # Disable ALL filter actions for sites in this section
9507 This would turn off all filtering for these sites. This is best
9508 put in <filename>user.action</filename>, for local site
9509 exceptions. Note that when a simple domain pattern is used by itself (without
9510 the subsequent path portion), all sub-pages within that domain are included
9511 automatically in the scope of the action.
9515 Images that are inexplicably being blocked, may well be hitting the
9516 <link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE"><quote>+filter{banners-by-size}</quote></link>
9518 that images of certain sizes are ad banners (works well
9519 <emphasis>most of the time</emphasis> since these tend to be standardized).
9523 <quote><literal>{ fragile }</literal></quote> is an alias that disables most
9524 actions that are the most likely to cause trouble. This can be used as a
9525 last resort for problem sites.
9530 # Handle with care: easy to break
9537 <emphasis>Remember to flush caches!</emphasis> Note that the
9538 <literal>mail.google</literal> reference lacks the TLD portion (e.g.
9539 <quote>.com</quote>). This will effectively match any TLD with
9540 <literal>google</literal> in it, such as <literal>mail.google.de.</literal>,
9544 If this still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining
9545 actions one by one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
9554 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
9555 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
9556 Public License as published by the Free Software
9557 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
9558 your option) any later version.
9560 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
9561 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
9562 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
9563 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
9564 License for more details.
9566 The GNU General Public License should be included with
9567 this file. If not, you can view it at
9568 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
9569 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
9570 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301,