1 <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN"[
2 <!entity % dummy "IGNORE">
3 <!entity supported SYSTEM "supported.sgml">
4 <!entity newfeatures SYSTEM "newfeatures.sgml">
5 <!entity p-intro SYSTEM "privoxy.sgml">
6 <!entity seealso SYSTEM "seealso.sgml">
7 <!entity contacting SYSTEM "contacting.sgml">
8 <!entity history SYSTEM "history.sgml">
9 <!entity copyright SYSTEM "copyright.sgml">
10 <!entity license SYSTEM "license.sgml">
11 <!entity p-version "3.0.11">
12 <!entity p-status "stable">
13 <!entity % p-not-stable "IGNORE">
14 <!entity % p-stable "INCLUDE">
15 <!entity % p-text "IGNORE"> <!-- define we are not a text only doc -->
16 <!entity % p-doc "INCLUDE"> <!-- and we are a formal doc -->
17 <!entity % p-supp-userman "INCLUDE"> <!-- Include all from supported.sgml -->
18 <!entity my-copy "©"> <!-- kludge for docbook2man -->
19 <!entity % p-newstuff "INCLUDE"> <!-- exclude stuff from devel versions -->
20 <!entity % seealso-extra "INCLUDE"> <!-- extra stuff from seealso.sgml -->
21 <!entity my-app "<application>Privoxy</application>">
24 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/faq.sgml,v $
27 This file belongs into
28 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
30 $Id: faq.sgml,v 2.59 2009/03/28 15:33:41 fabiankeil Exp $
32 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Privoxy Developers http://www.privoxy.org/
35 Based partially on the Internet Junkbuster FAQ originally written by and
36 Copyright (C) 1997 Anonymous Coders and Junkbusters Corporation.
37 http://www.junkbusters.com/
39 <Qandaset defaultlabel='qanda'>
54 ========================================================================
55 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
58 Please we keep the info in this file as version independent as possible
59 so we only have to maintain one FAQ. Where significant changes are
60 made to Privoxy configuration, please note the change in such a way that
61 it makes sense to both users of older and newer versions.
62 ========================================================================
68 <article id="index" class="faq">
70 <title>Privoxy Frequently Asked Questions</title>
74 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
75 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
76 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001-2009 by
77 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
81 <pubdate>$Id: faq.sgml,v 2.59 2009/03/28 15:33:41 fabiankeil Exp $</pubdate>
85 Note: this should generate a separate page, and a live link to it.
86 But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave commented
87 unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the copyright
88 statement will be in copyright.smgl.
92 <legalnotice id="legalnotice">
94 text goes here ........
104 <orgname>By: Privoxy Developers</orgname>
113 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
114 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
115 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
120 This FAQ gives quick answers to frequently asked questions about
121 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy</ulink>.
122 It is not a substitute for the
123 <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html"><citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle></ulink>.
125 This works, at least in some situtations:
126 Test: <ulink url="privoxy-user-manual.pdf"><citetitle>User Manual</citetitle></ulink>.
130 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
131 <para>What is Privoxy?</para> &p-intro;
132 <!-- end boilerplate -->
135 Please note that this document is a work in progress. This copy represents
136 the state at the release of version &p-version;.
137 You can find the latest version of the document at <ulink
138 url="http://www.privoxy.org/faq/">http://www.privoxy.org/faq/</ulink>.
139 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> if you want to
140 contact the developers.
144 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
150 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
152 <sect1 id="general"><title>General Information</title>
153 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="who-uses"><title>Who should give &my-app; a try?</title>
155 Anyone who is interested in security, privacy, or in
156 finer-grained control over their web and Internet experience.
160 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="bestchoice"><title>Is Privoxy the best choice for
163 &my-app; is certainly a good choice, especially for those who want more
164 control and security. Those with the willingness to read the documentation
165 and the ability to fine-tune their installation will benefit the most.
168 One of <application>Privoxy's</application>
169 strengths is that it is highly configurable giving you the ability to
170 completely personalize your installation. Being familiar with, or at least
171 having an interest in learning about <ulink
172 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Http">HTTP</ulink> and other networking
173 protocols, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html">HTML</ulink>, and
174 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
175 Expressions</quote></ulink>
176 will be a big plus and will help you get the most out of &my-app;.
177 A new installation just includes a very basic configuration. The user
178 should take this as a starting point only, and enhance it as he or she
179 sees fit. In fact, the user is encouraged, and expected to, fine-tune the
183 Much of <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration can be done
184 with a <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser">Web browser</ulink>.
185 But there are areas where configuration is done using a
186 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_editors">text editor</ulink>
187 to edit configuration files. Also note that the web-based action editor
188 doesn't use authentication and should only be enabled in environments
189 where all clients with access to &my-app; listening port can be trusted.
193 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="proxymoron"><title>What is a <quote>proxy</quote>? How does
194 Privoxy work? </title>
196 A <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">web proxy</ulink>
197 is a service, based on a software such as &my-app;, that clients
198 (i.e. browsers) can use instead of connecting to web servers directly.
199 The clients then ask the proxy to request objects (web pages, images, movies etc)
200 on their behalf and to forward the data to the clients.
201 It is a <quote>go-between</quote>. For details, see
202 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">Wikipedia's proxy definition</ulink>.
205 There are many reasons to use web proxies, such as security (firewalling),
206 efficiency (caching) and others, and there are any number of proxies
207 to accommodate those needs.
210 &my-app; is a proxy that is primarily focused on
211 privacy enhancement, ad and junk elimination and freeing the user from
212 restrictions placed on his activities. Sitting between your browser(s) and the Internet,
213 it is in a perfect position to filter outbound personal information that your
214 browser is leaking, as well as inbound junk. It uses a variety of techniques to do
215 this, all of which are under your complete control via the various configuration
216 files and options. Being a proxy also makes it easier to share
217 configurations among multiple browsers and/or users.
221 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="otherstuff">
222 <title>Does Privoxy do anything more than ad blocking?</title>
224 Yes, ad blocking is but one possible use. There are many, many ways &my-app;
225 can be used to sanitize and customize web browsing.
229 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newjb"><title>What is this new version of
230 <quote><citetitle>Junkbuster</citetitle></quote>?</title>
232 <!-- Include history.sgml -->
239 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
240 <title id="whyprivoxy">Why <quote>Privoxy</quote>? Why change the name from
241 Junkbuster at all?</title>
243 Though outdated, <ulink url="http://junkbusters.com/">Junkbusters Corporation</ulink>
244 continues to offer their original version of the <application>Internet
245 Junkbuster</application>, so publishing our
246 <application> Junkbuster</application>-derived software under the same name
250 There are also potential legal complications from our use of the
251 <application>Junkbuster</application> name, which is a registered trademark of
252 <ulink url="http://junkbusters.com/">Junkbusters Corporation</ulink>.
253 There are, however, no objections from Junkbusters Corporation to the
254 <application>Privoxy</application> project itself, and they, in fact, still
255 share our ideals and goals.
258 The developers also believed that there are so many improvements over the original
259 code, that it was time to make a clean break from the past and make
260 a name in their own right.
263 <application>Privoxy</application> is the
264 <quote><emphasis>Privacy Enhancing Proxy</emphasis></quote>. Also, its content
265 modification and junk suppression gives <emphasis>you</emphasis>, the user, more
266 control, more freedom, and allows you to browse your personal and
267 <quote><emphasis>private</emphasis> edition</quote> of the web.
271 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="differs"><title>How does Privoxy differ
272 from the old Junkbuster?</title>
274 <application>Privoxy</application> picks up where
275 <application>Junkbuster</application> left off.
276 The new <application>Privoxy</application> still blocks ads and banners,
278 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>, and still
279 helps protect your privacy. But, most of these features have been enhanced,
280 and many new ones have been added, all in the same vein.
283 <application>Privoxy</application>'s new features include:
286 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml: -->
292 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whatsanad">
293 <title id="knows">How does Privoxy know what is
294 an ad, and what is not?</title>
296 <application>Privoxy</application>'s approach to blocking ads is twofold:
299 First, there are certain patterns in the <emphasis>locations</emphasis> (URLs)
300 of banner images. This applies to both the path (you wouldn't guess how many
301 web sites serve their banners from a directory called <quote>banners</quote>!)
302 and the host (blocking the big banner hosting services like doublecklick.net
303 already helps a lot). <application>Privoxy</application> takes advantage of this
304 fact by using <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#AF-PATTERNS">URL
305 patterns</ulink> to sort out and block the requests for things that sound
306 like they would be ads or banners.
309 Second, banners tend to come in certain <emphasis>sizes</emphasis>. But you
310 can't tell the size of an image by its URL without downloading it, and if you
311 do, it's too late to save bandwidth. Therefore, <application>Privoxy</application>
312 also inspects the HTML sources of web pages while they are loaded, and replaces
313 references to images with standard banner sizes by dummy references, so that
314 your browser doesn't request them anymore in the first place.
317 Both of this involves a certain amount of guesswork and is, of course, freely
318 and readily configurable.
322 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
323 <title id="mistakes">Can Privoxy make mistakes?
324 This does not sound very scientific.</title>
326 Actually, it's a black art ;-) And yes, it is always possible to have a broad
327 rule accidentally block or change something by mistake. You will almost surely
328 run into such situations at some point. It is tricky writing rules to
329 cover every conceivable possibility, and not occasionally get false positives.
333 But this should not be a big concern since the
334 <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is very flexible, and
335 includes tools to help identify these types of situations so they can be
336 addressed as needed, allowing you to customize your installation.
337 (<link linkend="badsite">See the Troubleshooting section below</link>.)
342 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
343 <title id="configornot">Will I have to configure Privoxy
344 before I can use it?</title>
346 That depends on your expectations.
347 The default installation should give you a good starting
348 point, and block <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads and unwanted content,
349 but many of the more advanced features are off by default, and require
350 you to activate them.
353 You do have to set up your browser to use
354 <application>Privoxy</application> (see the <link
355 linkend="firststep">Installation section below</link>).
358 And you will certainly run into situations where there are false positives,
359 or ads not being blocked that you may not want to see. In these cases, you
360 would certainly benefit by customizing <application>Privoxy's</application>
361 configuration to more closely match your individual situation. And we
362 encourage you to do this. This is where the real power of
363 <application>Privoxy</application> lies!
368 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="lan">
369 <title>Can Privoxy run as a server on a network?</title>
371 Yes, &my-app; runs as a server already, and can easily be configured to
372 <quote>serve</quote> more than one client. See <link linkend="lanconfig">
373 How can I set up Privoxy to act as a proxy for my LAN</link> below.
377 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="browsers2"><title>My browser does the same things as
378 Privoxy. Why should I use Privoxy at all?</title>
380 Modern browsers do indeed have <emphasis>some</emphasis> of the same
381 functionality as <application>Privoxy</application>. Maybe this is
382 adequate for you. But <application>Privoxy</application> is very
383 versatile and powerful, and can probably do a number of things
384 your browser just can't.
387 In addition, a proxy is good choice if you use multiple browsers, or
388 have a LAN with multiple computers since &my-app; can run as a server
389 application. This way all the configuration is in one place, and you don't
390 have to maintain a similar configuration for possibly many browsers or
394 Note, however, that it's recommended to leverage both your browser's
395 and <application>Privoxy's</application> privacy enhancing features
396 at the same time. While your browser probably lacks some features
397 &my-app; offers, it should also be able to do some things more
398 reliable, for example restricting and suppressing JavaScript.
402 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whytrust"><title>Why should I trust Privoxy?</title>
404 The most important reason is because you have access to
405 <emphasis>everything</emphasis>, and you can control everything. You can
406 check every line of every configuration file yourself. You can check every
407 last bit of source code should you desire. And even if you can't read code,
408 there should be some comfort in knowing that <!-- thousands of -->other people can,
409 and do read it. You can build the software from scratch, if you want,
410 so that you know the executable is clean, and that it is
411 <emphasis>yours</emphasis>. In fact, we encourage this level of scrutiny. It
412 is one reason we use &my-app; ourselves.
416 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="license"><title>Is there is a license or fee? What about a
417 warranty? Registration?</title>
419 <application>Privoxy</application> is free software and licensed under the <ulink
420 url="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html">GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2</ulink>.
421 It is free to use, copy, modify or distribute as you wish under the terms of this
422 license. Please see the <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> section for more
423 information on the license and copyright. Or the <filename>LICENSE</filename> file
424 that should be included.
427 There is <emphasis>no warranty</emphasis> of any kind, expressed, implied or otherwise.
428 That is something that would cost real money ;-) There is no registration either.
433 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="spyware">
434 <title>Can Privoxy remove spyware? Adware? Viruses?</title>
436 No, at least not reliably enough to trust it. &my-app; is not designed to be
437 a malware removal tool and the default configuration doesn't even try to
438 filter out any malware.
441 &my-app; could help prevent contact from (known) sites that use such
442 tactics with appropriate configuration rules, and thus could conceivably
443 prevent contamination from such sites. However, keeping such a configuration
444 up to date would require a lot of time and effort that would be better spend
445 on keeping your software itself up to date so it doesn't have known
451 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="otherads">
452 <title>Can I use Privoxy with other ad-blocking software?</title>
454 &my-app; should work fine with other proxies and other software in general.
457 But it is probably not necessary to use &my-app; in conjunction with other
458 ad-blocking products, and this could conceivably cause undesirable results.
459 It might be better to choose one software or the other and work a little to
460 tweak its configuration to your liking.
463 Note that this is an advice specific to ad blocking.
467 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="help-the-developers"><title id="jointeam">I would like to help you, what can I do?</title>
469 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="participate"><title id="jointeam-work">Would you like to participate?</title>
471 Well, we <emphasis>always</emphasis> need help. There is something for
472 everybody who wants to help us. We welcome new developers, packagers,
473 testers, documentation writers or really anyone with a desire to help in
474 any way. You <emphasis>DO NOT</emphasis> need to be a
475 <quote>programmer</quote>. There are many other tasks available. In fact,
476 the programmers often can't spend as much time programming because of some
477 of the other, more mundane things that need to be done, like checking the
478 Tracker feedback sections or responding to user questions on the mailing
482 So first thing, subscribe to the <ulink
483 url="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-users">Privoxy Users</ulink>
484 or the <ulink url="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-developers">Privoxy
485 Developers</ulink> mailing list, join the discussion, help out other users, provide general
486 feedback or report problems you noticed.
489 If you intend to help out with the trackers, you also might want to <ulink
490 url="https://sourceforge.net/account/register.php">get an account on SourceForge.net</ulink>
491 so we don't confuse you with the other name-less users.
494 We also have a <ulink
495 url="../developer-manual/index.html">Developer's Manual</ulink>.
496 While it is partly out of date, it's still worth reading.
500 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="donate"><title>Would you like to donate?</title>
502 <application>Privoxy</application> is developed by unpaid volunteers
503 and thus our current running costs are pretty low. Nevertheless, we
504 have plans that will cost money in the future. We would like to get
505 this money through donations made by our users.
509 <application>Privoxy</application> has therefore become an associated
510 project of <ulink url="http://www.spi-inc.org/about-spi/about-spi">Software
511 in the Public Interest (SPI)</ulink>, which allows us to receive tax-deductible
512 donations in most western countries.
516 We intend to use the donations to pay for our domain after transfering
517 it to SPI. Our goal is to make sure there's no single point of failure
518 and the bill gets paid and the site keeps running even if a some of
519 the currently active developers were to suddenly disappear for a while.
523 We would also like to spend some money on more reliable hosting,
524 on hardware to help make sure <application>Privoxy</application>
525 keeps running on platforms the developers currently can't test on,
526 and on technical books to educate our developers about said platforms
527 or to improve their knowledge in general.
531 If you enjoy our software and feel like helping out with a donation,
532 please have a look at
533 <ulink url="http://www.spi-inc.org/donations">SPI's donation page</ulink>
534 to see what the options are.
543 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
545 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
547 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whichbrowsers">
548 <title>Which browsers are supported by Privoxy?</title>
550 Any browser that can be configured to use a proxy, which
551 should be virtually all browsers, including
552 <application>Firefox</application>, <application>Internet
553 Explorer</application>, <application>Opera</application>, and
554 <application>Safari</application> among others.
555 Direct browser support is not an absolute requirement since
556 <application>Privoxy</application> runs as a separate application and talks
557 to the browser in the standardized HTTP protocol, just like a web server
562 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whichos">
563 <title>Which operating systems are supported?</title>
565 Include supported.sgml here:
570 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="email-client">
571 <title>Can I use Privoxy with my email client?</title>
573 As long as there is some way to set a HTTP proxy for the client, then yes,
574 any application can be used, whether it is strictly speaking a
575 <quote>browser</quote> or not. Though this may not be the best approach for
576 dealing with some of the common abuses of HTML in email. See <link
577 linkend="outlook">How can I configure <application>Privoxy</application>
578 with <application>Outlook</application>?</link> below for more on
582 Be aware that HTML email presents a number of unique security and privacy
583 related issues, that can require advanced skills to overcome. The developers
584 recommend using email clients that can be configured to convert HTML to plain
585 text for these reasons.
589 <!-- Nobody is going to still be doing this!
590 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newinstall"><title>Can I install
591 Privoxy over Junkbuster?</title>
593 We recommend you un-install <application>Junkbuster</application>
594 first to minimize conflicts and confusion. You may want to
595 save your old configuration files for future reference. The configuration
596 files and syntax have substantially changed, so you will need to manually
597 port your old patterns. See the <ulink url="../user-manual/upgradersnote.html">note
598 to upgraders</ulink> and <ulink url="../user-manual/installation.html">installation
599 chapter</ulink> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User Manual</ulink>
603 Note: Some installers may automatically un-install
604 <application>Junkbuster</application>, if present!
610 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="firststep">
611 <title>I just installed Privoxy. Is there anything
612 special I have to do now?</title>
615 All browsers should be told to use <application>Privoxy</application>
616 as a proxy by specifying the correct proxy address and port number
617 in the appropriate configuration area for the browser. It's possible
618 to combine &my-app; with a packet filter to intercept HTTP requests
619 even if the client isn't explicitly configured to use &my-app;,
620 but where possible, configuring the client is recommended. See
621 <ulink url="../user-manual/startup.html">the User Manual for more
622 details</ulink>. You should also flush your browser's memory and disk
623 cache to get rid of any cached junk items, and remove any stored
624 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>.
630 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="localhost"><title>What is the proxy address of Privoxy?</title>
632 If you set up the <application>Privoxy</application> to run on
633 the computer you browse from (rather than your ISP's server or some
634 networked computer on a LAN), the proxy will be on <literal>127.0.0.1</literal>
635 (sometimes referred to as <quote>localhost</quote>,
636 which is the special name used by every computer on the Internet to refer
637 to itself) and the port will be 8118 (unless you used the <ulink
638 url="../user-manual/config.html#LISTEN-ADDRESS">listen-address</ulink>
639 config option to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to run on
643 When configuring your browser's proxy settings you typically enter
644 the word <quote>localhost</quote> or the IP address <quote>127.0.0.1</quote>
645 in the boxes next to <quote>HTTP</quote> and <quote>Secure</quote> (HTTPS) and
646 then the number <quote>8118</quote> for <quote>port</quote>.
647 This tells your browser to send all web requests to <application>Privoxy</application>
648 instead of directly to the Internet.
651 <application>Privoxy</application> can also be used to proxy for
652 a Local Area Network. In this case, your would enter either the IP
653 address of the LAN host where <application>Privoxy</application>
654 is running, or the equivalent hostname, e.g. <literal>192.168.1.1</literal>.
655 Port assignment would be same as above. Note that
656 <application>Privoxy</application> doesn't listen on any LAN interfaces by
660 <application>Privoxy</application> does not currently handle
661 any other protocols such as FTP, SMTP, IM, IRC, ICQ, etc.
665 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="nothing">
666 <title>I just installed Privoxy, and nothing is happening.
667 All the ads are there. What's wrong?</title>
670 Did you configure your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application>
671 as a proxy? It does not sound like it. See above. You might also try flushing
672 the browser's caches to force a full re-reading of pages. You can verify
673 that <application>Privoxy</application> is running, and your browser
674 is correctly configured by entering the special URL:
675 <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>.
676 <!-- Use http://p.p/ instead of http://config.privoxy.org/ here because
677 of potential redirect caching problem (see next Q). -->
678 This should take you to a page titled <quote>This is Privoxy..</quote> with
679 access to <application>Privoxy's</application> internal configuration.
680 If you see this, then you are good to go. If you receive a page saying
681 <quote>Privoxy is not running</quote>, then the browser is not set up to use
682 your <application>Privoxy</application> installation.
683 If you receive anything else (probably nothing at all), it could either
684 be that the browser is not set up correctly, or that
685 <application>Privoxy</application> is not running at all. Check the <ulink
686 url="../user-manual/config.html#LOGFILE">log file</ulink>. For instructions
687 on starting <application>Privoxy</application> and browser configuration,
688 see the <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/startup.html">chapter
689 on starting <application>Privoxy</application></ulink> in the
690 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">User Manual</ulink>.
695 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="notused">
696 <title>I get a <quote>Privoxy is not being used</quote> dummy page although
697 Privoxy is running and being used.</title>
700 First, make sure that Privoxy is <emphasis>really</emphasis> running and
701 being used by visiting <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>. You
702 should see the <application>Privoxy</application> main page. If not, see
703 the <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/startup.html">chapter
704 on starting <application>Privoxy</application></ulink> in the
705 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">User Manual</ulink>.
709 Now if <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> works for you, but
710 other parts of <application>Privoxy</application>'s web interface show
711 the dummy page, your browser has cached a redirection it encountered before
712 <application>Privoxy</application> was being used. You need to clear your
713 browser's cache. Note that shift-reloading the dummy page won't help, since
714 that'll only refresh the dummy page, not the redirection that lead you there.
718 The procedure for clearing the cache varies from browser to browser. For
719 example, <application>Mozilla/Netscape</application> users would click
720 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -->
721 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Cache</guibutton> and
722 then click both <quote><guibutton>Clear Memory Cache</guibutton></quote>
723 and <quote><guibutton>Clear Disk Cache</guibutton></quote>.
724 In some <application>Firefox</application> versions it's
725 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Options</guibutton> -->
726 <guibutton>Privacy</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Cache</guibutton> and
727 then click <quote><guibutton>Clear Cache Now</guibutton></quote>.
728 <!-- In my Firefox versions it's the Netscape way. fk 2007-11-19-->
735 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
737 <sect1 id="configuration"><title>Configuration</title>
738 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
739 <title id="actionsfile">What exactly is an <quote>actions</quote> file?</title>
742 &my-app; utilizes the concept of <quote>
743 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACTIONS">actions</ulink></quote>
744 that are used to manipulate and control web page data.
745 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">Actions files</ulink>
746 are where these <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACTIONS">actions</ulink>
747 that <application>Privoxy</application> could take while processing a certain
748 request, are configured. Typically, you would define a set of default actions
749 that apply globally to all URLs, then add exceptions to these defaults where needed.
750 There is a wide array of actions available that give the user a high degree
751 of control and flexibility on how to process each and every web page.
755 Actions can be defined on a <ulink
756 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#AF-PATTERNS">URL pattern</ulink> basis, i.e.
757 for single URLs, whole web sites, groups or parts thereof etc. Actions can also be
758 grouped together and then applied to requests matching one or more patterns.
759 There are many possible actions that might apply to any given site. As an example,
760 if you are blocking <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>
761 as one of your default actions, but need to accept cookies from a given site,
762 you would need to define an exception for this site in one of your actions
763 files, preferably in <filename>user.action</filename>.
768 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="actionss">
769 <title>The <quote>actions</quote> concept confuses me. Please list
770 some of these <quote>actions</quote>.</title>
772 For a comprehensive discussion of the actions concept, please refer
773 to the <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">actions file
774 chapter</ulink> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User
775 Manual</ulink>. It includes a <ulink
776 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACTIONS">list of all actions</ulink>
777 and an <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACT-EXAMPLES">actions
778 file tutorial</ulink> to get you started.
783 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
784 <title id="actconfig">How are actions files configured? What is the easiest
785 way to do this?</title>
788 Actions files are just text files in a special syntax and can be edited
789 with a text editor. But probably the easiest way is to access
790 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface with your web browser
791 at <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
792 (Shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>) and then select
793 <quote><ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View &
794 change the current configuration</ulink></quote> from the menu. Note
795 that this feature must be explicitly enabled in the main config file
797 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions</ulink>).
802 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
803 <title>There are several different <quote>actions</quote> files. What are
804 the differences?</title>
807 are being included by the developers, to be used for
808 different purposes: These are
809 <filename>default.action</filename>, the <quote>main</quote> actions file
810 which is actively maintained by the <application>Privoxy</application>
811 developers and typically sets the default policies, <filename>user.action</filename>,
812 where users are encouraged to make their private customizations.
813 Please see <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">the actions chapter</ulink>
814 in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User Manual</ulink> for a more
815 detailed explanation.
819 Earlier versions included three different versions of the
820 <filename>default.action</filename> file. The new scheme allows for
821 greater flexibility of local configuration, and for browser based
822 selection of pre-defined <quote>aggressiveness</quote> levels.
827 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="getupdates"><title>Where can I get updated Actions Files?</title>
829 Based on your feedback and the continuing development, updates of
830 <filename>default.action</filename> will be
831 made available from time to time on the <ulink
832 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">files section</ulink> of
833 our <ulink url="http://sf.net/projects/ijbswa/">project page</ulink>.
837 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
838 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
839 url="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-announce/">subscribe
840 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
845 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newconfig"><title>Can I use my old config files?</title>
847 The syntax and purpose of configuration files has remained roughly the
848 same throughout the 3.x series, but backwards compatibility is not guaranteed.
849 Also each release contains updated, <quote>improved</quote> versions and it is
850 therefore strongly recommended to install the newer configuration files
851 and merge back your modifications.
855 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="difficult">
856 <title>Why is the configuration so complicated?</title>
858 <quote>Complicated</quote> is in the eye of the beholder. Those that are
859 familiar with some of the underlying concepts, such as regular expression
860 syntax, take to it like a fish takes to water. Also, software that tries
861 hard to be <quote>user friendly</quote>, often lacks sophistication and
862 flexibility. There is always that trade-off there between power vs.
863 easy-of-use. Furthermore, anyone is welcome to contribute ideas and
864 implementations to enhance &my-app;.
868 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="yahoo"><title>How can I make my Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail account work?</title>
870 The default configuration shouldn't impact the usability of any of these services.
871 It may, however, make all <ulink
872 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>
873 temporary, so that your browser will forget your
874 login credentials in between browser sessions. If you would like not to have to log
875 in manually each time you access those websites, simply turn off all cookie handling
876 for them in the <filename>user.action</filename> file. An example for yahoo might
880 <screen># Allow all cookies for Yahoo login:
882 { -<ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</ulink> -<ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</ulink> -<ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</ulink> }
883 .login.yahoo.com</screen>
886 These kinds of sites are often quite complex and heavy with
887 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript">Javascript</ulink> and
888 thus <quote>fragile</quote>. So if <emphasis>still</emphasis> a problem,
890 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ALIASES">alias</ulink> just for such
894 <screen># Gmail is a _fragile_ site:
896 { <literal>fragile</literal> }
898 mail.google.com</screen>
901 Be sure to flush your browser's caches whenever making these kinds of
902 changes, just to make sure the changes <quote>take</quote>.
905 Make sure the domain, host and path are appropriate as well. Your browser can
906 tell you where you are specifically and you should use that information for
907 your configuration settings. Note that above it is not referenced as
908 <literal>gmail.com</literal>, which is a valid domain name.
913 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="configfiles"> <title>What's the difference between the
914 <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> and <quote>Advanced</quote> defaults?</title>
916 Configuring <application>Privoxy</application> is not entirely trivial. To
917 help you get started, we provide you with three different default action
918 <quote>profiles</quote> in the web based actions file editor at <ulink
919 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
920 See the <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html"><citetitle>User
921 Manual</citetitle></ulink> for a list of actions, and how the default
926 Where the defaults are likely to break some sites, exceptions for
927 known popular <quote>problem</quote> sites are included, but in
928 general, the more aggressive your default settings are, the more exceptions
929 you will have to make later. New users are best to start off in
930 <quote>Cautious</quote> setting. This is safest and will have the fewest
931 problems. See the <ulink
932 url="../user-manual/index.html"><citetitle>User Manual</citetitle></ulink>
933 for a more detailed discussion.
937 It should be noted that the <quote>Advanced</quote> profile (formerly known
938 as the <quote>Adventuresome</quote> profile) is more
939 aggressive, and will make use of some of
940 <application>Privoxy's</application> advanced features. Use at your own risk!
945 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="browseconfig"> <title>Why can I change the configuration
946 with a browser? Does that not raise security issues?</title>
948 It may seem strange that regular users can edit the config files with their
949 browsers, although the whole <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> hierarchy
950 belongs to the user <quote>privoxy</quote>, with only 644 permissions.
953 When you use the browser-based editor, <application>Privoxy</application>
954 itself is writing to the config files. Because
955 <application>Privoxy</application> is running as the user <quote>privoxy</quote>,
956 it can update its own config files.
959 If you run <application>Privoxy</application> for multiple untrusted users (e.g. in
960 a LAN) or aren't entirely in control of your own browser, you will probably want
961 to make sure that the the web-based editor and remote toggle features are
962 <quote>off</quote> by setting <quote><literal><ulink
963 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions</ulink>
964 0</literal></quote> and <quote><literal><ulink
965 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-REMOTE-TOGGLE">enable-remote-toggle</ulink>
966 0</literal></quote> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html">main configuration file</ulink>.
969 As of &my-app; 3.0.7 these options are disabled by default.
974 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
975 <title id="filterfile">What is the <filename>default.filter</filename> file? What is a <quote>filter</quote>?</title>
977 The <ulink url="../user-manual/filter-file.html"><filename>default.filter</filename></ulink>
978 file is where <emphasis>filters</emphasis> as supplied by the developers are defined.
979 Filters are a special subset of actions that can be used to modify or
980 remove web page content or headers on the fly. Content filters can
981 be applied to <emphasis>anything</emphasis> in the page source,
982 header filters can be applied to either server or client headers.
983 Regular expressions are used to accomplish this.
986 There are a number of pre-defined filters to deal with common annoyances. The
987 filters are only defined here, to invoke them, you need to use the
989 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER"><literal>filter</literal>
990 action</ulink> in one of the actions files. Content filtering is automatically
991 disabled for inappropriate MIME types, but if you now better than Privoxy
992 what should or should not be filtered you can filter any content you like.
996 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be confused with <ulink
997 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK"><literal>blocks</literal></ulink>, which
998 is a completely different action, and is more typically used to block ads and
1003 If you are familiar with regular expressions, and HTML, you can look at
1004 the provided <filename>default.filter</filename> with a text editor and define
1005 your own filters. This is potentially a very powerful feature, but
1006 requires some expertise in both regular expressions and HTML/HTTP.
1007 <![%p-newstuff;[ You should
1008 place any modifications to the default filters, or any new ones you create
1009 in a separate file, such as <filename>user.filter</filename>, so they won't
1010 be overwritten during upgrades.
1011 The ability to define multiple filter files
1012 in <filename>config</filename> is a new feature as of v. 3.0.5.]]>
1016 There is no GUI editor option for this part of the configuration,
1017 but you can disable/enable the various pre-defined filters of the included
1018 <filename>default.filter</filename> file with the <ulink
1019 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">web-based actions file editor</ulink>.
1020 Note that the custom actions editor must be explicitly enabled in
1021 the main config file (see <ulink
1022 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions</ulink>).
1026 If you intend to develop your own filters, you might want to have a look at
1028 url="http://www.fabiankeil.de/sourcecode/pft/">Privoxy-Filter-Test</ulink>.
1033 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="lanconfig">
1034 <title>How can I set up Privoxy to act as a proxy for my
1037 By default, <application>Privoxy</application> only responds to requests
1038 from <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> (localhost). To have it act as a server for
1039 a network, this needs to be changed in the <ulink
1040 url="../user-manual/config.html">main configuration file</ulink>. Look for
1042 url="../user-manual/config.html#LISTEN-ADDRESS">listen-address</ulink></literal>
1043 option, which may be commented out with a <quote>#</quote> symbol. Make sure
1044 it is uncommented, and assign it the address of the LAN gateway interface,
1045 and port number to use. Assuming your LAN address is 192.168.1.1 and you
1046 wish to run <application>Privoxy</application> on port 8118, this line
1052 listen-address 192.168.1.1:8118</screen>
1056 Save the file, and restart <application>Privoxy</application>. Configure
1057 all browsers on the network then to use this address and port number.
1061 Alternately, you can have <application>Privoxy</application> listen on
1062 all available interfaces:
1067 listen-address :8118</screen>
1071 And then use <application>Privoxy's</application>
1073 url="../user-manual/config.html#PERMIT-ACCESS">permit-access</ulink>
1074 feature to limit connections. A firewall in this situation is recommended
1079 The above steps should be the same for any TCP network, regardless of
1084 If you run <application>Privoxy</application> on a LAN with untrusted users,
1085 we recommend that you double-check the <ulink
1086 url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCESS-CONTROL">access control and security</ulink>
1093 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1094 <title id="noseeum">Instead of ads, now I get a checkerboard pattern. I don't want to see anything.</title>
1096 The replacement for blocked images can be controlled with the <ulink
1097 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><literal>set-image-blocker</literal>
1098 action</ulink>. You have the choice of a checkerboard pattern, a transparent 1x1 GIF
1099 image (aka <quote>blank</quote>), or a redirect to a custom image of your choice.
1100 Note that this choice only has effect for images which are blocked as images, i.e.
1101 whose URLs match both a <literal><ulink
1102 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</ulink></literal>
1103 <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><ulink
1104 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">block</ulink></literal> action.
1107 If you want to see nothing, then change the <ulink
1108 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><literal>set-image-blocker</literal>
1109 action</ulink> to <quote>blank</quote>. This can be done by editing the
1110 <filename>user.action</filename> file, or through the <ulink
1111 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">web-based actions file editor</ulink>.
1116 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1117 <title id="whyseeum">Why would anybody want to see a checkerboard pattern?</title>
1119 Remember that <link linkend="whatsanad">telling which image is an ad and which
1120 isn't</link>, is an educated guess. While we hope that the standard configuration
1121 is rather smart, it will make occasional mistakes. The checkerboard image is visually
1122 decent, and it shows you where images have been blocked, which can be very
1123 helpful in case some navigation aid or otherwise innocent image was
1124 erroneously blocked. It is recommended for new users so they can
1125 <quote>see</quote> what is happening. Some people might also enjoy seeing how
1126 many banners they <emphasis>don't</emphasis> have to see.
1131 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1132 <title id="blockedbytext">I see some images being replaced with text
1133 instead of the checkerboard image. Why and how do I get rid of this?</title>
1135 This happens when the banners are not embedded in the HTML code of the
1136 page itself, but in separate HTML (sub)documents that are loaded into (i)frames
1137 or (i)layers, and these external HTML documents are blocked. Being non-images
1138 they get replaced by a substitute HTML page rather than a substitute image,
1139 which wouldn't work out technically, since the browser expects and accepts
1140 only HTML when it has requested an HTML document.
1143 The substitute page adapts to the available space and shows itself as a
1144 miniature two-liner if loaded into small frames, or full-blown with a
1145 large red "BLOCKED" banner if space allows.
1148 If you prefer the banners to be blocked by images, you must see to it that
1149 the HTML documents in which they are embedded are not blocked. Clicking
1150 the <quote>See why</quote> link offered in the substitute page will show
1151 you which rule blocked the page. After changing the rule and un-blocking
1152 the HTML documents, the browser will try to load the actual banner images
1153 and the usual image blocking will (hopefully!) kick in.
1158 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="srvany">
1159 <title>Can Privoxy run as a service
1160 on Win2K/NT/XP?</title>
1163 Yes. Version 3.0.5 introduces full <application>Windows</application> service
1164 functionality. See <ulink url="../user-manual/installation.html#installation-pack-win">
1165 the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle></ulink> for details on how to install and configure
1166 <application>Privoxy</application> as a service.
1169 Earlier ]]>3.x versions could run as a system service using <command>srvany.exe</command>.
1170 See the discussion at <ulink
1171 url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=361118&aid=485617&group_id=11118">http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=361118&aid=485617&group_id=11118</ulink>,
1172 for details, and a sample configuration.
1177 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="otherproxy">
1178 <title>How can I make Privoxy work with other
1179 proxies like Squid or Tor?</title>
1181 This can be done and is often useful to combine the benefits of
1182 <application>Privoxy</application> with those of a another proxy.
1184 url="../user-manual/config.html#FORWARDING">forwarding chapter</ulink>
1185 in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User Manual</ulink> which
1186 describes how to do this, and the <link linkend="TOR">
1187 How do I use Privoxy together with
1188 Tor</link> section below.
1192 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="port-80">
1193 <title>Can I just set Privoxy to use port 80
1194 and thus avoid individual browser configuration?</title>
1197 No, its more complicated than that. This only works with special kinds
1198 of proxies known as <quote>intercepting</quote> proxies (see below).
1203 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="transparent">
1204 <title>Can Privoxy run as a <quote>transparent
1205 </quote> proxy?</title>
1207 The whole idea of Privoxy is to modify client requests
1208 and server responses in all sorts of ways and therefore
1209 it's not a transparent proxy as described in
1210 <ulink url="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616">RFC 2616</ulink>.
1213 However, some people say <quote>transparent proxy</quote> when they
1214 mean <quote>intercepting proxy</quote>. If you are one of them,
1215 please read the <ulink url="#intercepting">next entry</ulink>.
1220 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="intercepting">
1221 <title>Can Privoxy run as a <quote>intercepting</quote> proxy?</title>
1223 <application>Privoxy</application> can't intercept traffic itself,
1224 but it can handle requests that where intercepted and redirected
1225 with a packet filter (like <application>PF</application> or
1226 <application>iptables</application>), as long as the <literal>Host</literal>
1230 As the <literal>Host</literal> header is required by HTTP/1.1 and as most
1231 web sites rely on it anyway, this limitation shouldn't be a problem.
1234 Please refer to your packet filter's documentation to learn how to
1235 intercept and redirect traffic into <application>Privoxy</application>.
1236 Afterward you just have to configure <application>Privoxy</application> to
1237 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCEPT-INTERCEPTED-REQUESTS">accept
1238 intercepted requests</ulink>.
1243 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="outlook">
1244 <title>How can I configure Privoxy for use with Outlook?</title>
1246 Versions of <application>Outlook</application> prior to Office 2007, use
1247 <application>Internet Explorer</application> components to both render HTML,
1248 and fetch any HTTP requests that may be embedded in an HTML email. So however
1249 you have <application>Privoxy</application> configured to work with IE, this
1250 configuration should automatically be shared, at least with older version of
1254 Starting with Office 2007, Microsoft is instead using the MS-Word rendering
1255 engine with Outlook. It is unknown whether this can be configured to use a
1257 <!-- FIXME HB 2009-02-15 -->
1261 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="outlook-more">
1262 <title>How can I have separate rules just for HTML mail?</title>
1264 The short answer is, you can't. <application>Privoxy</application> has no way
1265 of knowing which particular application makes a request, so there is no way to
1266 distinguish between web pages and HTML mail.
1267 <application>Privoxy</application> just blindly proxies all requests. In the
1268 case of <application>Outlook Express</application> (see above), OE uses
1269 IE anyway, and there is no way for <application>Privoxy</application> to ever
1270 be able to distinguish between them (nor could any other proxy type application for
1274 For a good discussion of some of the issues involved (including privacy and
1275 security issues), see
1276 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=211118&aid=629518&group_id=11118">http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=211118&aid=629518&group_id=11118</ulink>.
1280 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="sneaky-cookies">
1281 <title>I sometimes notice cookies sneaking through. How?</title>
1284 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">Cookies</ulink> can be
1285 set in several ways. The classic method is via the
1286 <literal>Set-Cookie</literal> HTTP header. This is straightforward, and an
1287 easy one to manipulate, such as the &my-app; concept of
1288 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</ulink>.
1289 There is also the possibility of using
1290 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript">Javascript</ulink> to
1291 set cookies (&my-app; calls these <literal>content-cookies</literal>). This
1292 is trickier because the syntax can vary widely, and thus requires a certain
1293 amount of guesswork. It is not realistic to catch all of these short of
1294 disabling Javascript, which would break many sites. And lastly, if the
1295 cookies are embedded in a HTTPS/SSL secure session via Javascript, they are beyond
1296 <application>Privoxy's</application> reach.
1299 All in all, &my-app; can help manage cookies in general, can help minimize
1300 the loss of privacy posed by cookies, but can't realistically stop all
1305 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="evil-cookies">
1306 <title>Are all cookies bad? Why?</title>
1308 No, in fact there are many beneficial uses of
1310 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>. Cookies are just a
1311 method that browsers can use to store data between pages, or between browser
1312 sessions. Sometimes there is a good reason for this, and the user's life is a
1313 bit easier as a result. But there is a long history of some websites taking
1314 advantage of this layer of trust, and using the data they glean from you and
1315 your browsing habits for their own purposes, and maybe to your potential
1316 detriment. Such sites are using you and storing their data on your system.
1317 That is why the privacy conscious watch from whom those cookies come, and why
1318 they really <emphasis>need</emphasis> to be there.
1322 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">Wikipedia cookie
1323 definition</ulink> for more.
1327 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="allow-cookies">
1328 <title>How can I allow permanent cookies for my trusted sites?</title>
1331 There are several actions that relate to cookies. The default behavior is to
1332 allow only <quote>session cookies</quote>, which means the cookies only last
1333 for the current browser session. This eliminates most kinds of abuse related
1334 to cookies. But there may be cases where you want cookies to last.
1337 To disable all cookie actions, so that cookies are allowed unrestricted,
1338 both in and out, for <literal>example.com</literal>:
1342 { -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies -session-cookies-only -filter{content-cookies} }
1343 .example.com</screen>
1346 Place the above in <filename>user.action</filename>. Note that some of these may
1347 be off by default anyway, so this might be redundant, but there is no harm
1348 being explicit in what you want to happen. <filename>user.action</filename>
1349 includes an alias for this situation, called
1350 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal>.
1354 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="multiples">
1355 <title>Can I have separate configurations for different users?</title>
1357 Each instance of <application>Privoxy</application> has its own
1358 configuration, including such attributes as the TCP port that it listens on.
1359 What you can do is run multiple instances of <application>Privoxy</application>, each with
1361 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#LISTEN-ADDRESS">listen-address</ulink>
1362 configuration setting, and configuration path, and then
1363 each of these can have their own configurations. Think of it as per-port
1367 Simple enough for a few users, but for large installations, consider having
1368 groups of users that might share like configurations.
1372 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whitelists">
1373 <title>Can I set-up Privoxy as a whitelist of
1374 <quote>good</quote> sites?</title>
1376 Sure. There are a couple of things you can do for simple white-listing.
1377 Here's one real easy one:
1380 ############################################################
1382 ############################################################
1383 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">+block</ulink> }
1384 / # Block *all* URLs
1386 ############################################################
1388 ############################################################
1389 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">-block</ulink> }
1392 games.example.com</screen>
1394 This allows access to only those three sites by first blocking all URLs, and
1395 then subsequently allowing three specific exceptions.
1398 Another approach is <application>Privoxy's</application>
1399 <literal>trustfile</literal> concept, which incorporates the notion of
1400 <quote>trusted referrers</quote>. See the <ulink
1401 url="../user-manual/config.html#TRUSTFILE">Trust documentation</ulink>
1405 These are fairly simple approaches and are not completely foolproof. There
1406 are various other configuration options that should be disabled (described
1407 elsewhere here and in <ulink url="../user-manual/">the User Manual</ulink>)
1408 so that users can't modify their own configuration and easily circumvent the
1413 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="no-adblock">
1414 <title>How can I turn off ad-blocking?</title>
1416 Ad blocking is achieved through a complex application of various &my-app;
1417 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">actions</ulink>. These
1418 actions are deployed against simple images, banners, flash animations,
1419 text pages, JavaScript, pop-ups and pop-unders, etc., so its not as simple as
1420 just turning one or two actions off. The various actions that make up
1421 &my-app; ad blocking are hard-coded into the default configuration files. It
1422 has been assumed that everyone using &my-app; is interested in this
1426 If you want to do without this, there are several approaches you can take:
1427 You can manually undo the many block rules in
1428 <filename>default.action</filename>. Or even easier, just create your own
1429 <filename>default.action</filename> file from scratch without the many ad
1430 blocking rules, and corresponding exceptions. Or lastly, if you are not
1431 concerned about the additional blocks that are done for privacy reasons, you
1432 can very easily over-ride <emphasis>all</emphasis> blocking with the
1433 following very simple rule in your <filename>user.action</filename>:
1437 # Unblock everybody, everywhere
1438 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">-block</ulink> }
1439 / # UN-Block *all* URLs</screen>
1442 Or even a more comprehensive reversing of various ad related actions:
1446 # Unblock everybody, everywhere, and turn off appropriate filtering, etc
1447 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">-block</ulink> \
1448 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE">-filter{banners-by-size}</ulink> \
1449 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER-BANNERS-BY-LINK">-filter{banners-by-link}</ulink> \
1450 <literal>allow-popups</literal> \
1452 / # UN-Block *all* URLs and allow ads</screen>
1455 This last <quote>action</quote> in this compound statement,
1456 <literal>allow-popups</literal>, is an <ulink
1457 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ALIASES">alias</ulink> that disables
1458 various pop-up blocking features.
1462 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="templates">
1463 <title>How can I have custom template pages, like the
1464 <emphasis>BLOCKED</emphasis> page?</title>
1466 &my-app; <quote>templates</quote> are specialized text files utilized by
1467 &my-app; for various purposes and can easily be modified using any text
1468 editor. All the template pages are installed in a sub-directory appropriately
1469 named: <filename>templates</filename>. Knowing something about HTML syntax
1470 will of course be helpful.
1473 Be forewarned that the default templates are subject to being overwritten
1474 during upgrades. You can, however, create completely new templates,
1475 place them in another directory and specify the alternate path in the main
1476 <filename>config</filename>. For details, have a look at the <ulink
1477 url="../user-manual/config.html#templdir">templdir</ulink> option.
1481 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="blockall">
1482 <title>How can I remove the <quote>Go There Anyway</quote> link from
1483 the <emphasis>BLOCKED</emphasis> page?</title>
1485 There is more than one way to do it (although Perl is not involved).
1488 Editing the BLOCKED template page (see above) may dissuade some users, but
1489 this method is easily circumvented. Where you need this level of control, you
1490 might want to build &my-app; from source, and disable various features that are
1491 available as compile-time options. You should
1492 <command>configure</command> the sources as follows:
1496 ./configure --disable-toggle --disable-editor --disable-force</screen>
1499 This will create an executable with hard-coded security features so that
1500 &my-app; does not allow easy bypassing of blocked sites, or changing the
1501 current configuration via any connected user's web browser.
1504 Finally, all of these features can also be toggled on/off via options in
1505 <application>Privoxy's</application> main <ulink
1506 url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCESS-CONTROL">config</ulink> file which
1507 means you don't have to recompile anything.
1513 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1516 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1518 <sect1 id="misc"><title>Miscellaneous</title>
1520 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1521 <title id="slowsme">How much does Privoxy slow my browsing down? This
1522 has to add extra time to browsing.</title>
1524 How much of an impact depends on many things, including the CPU of the host
1525 system, how aggressive the configuration is, which specific actions are being triggered,
1526 the size of the page, the bandwidth of the connection, etc.
1529 Overall, it should not slow you down any in real terms, and may actually help
1530 speed things up since ads, banners and other junk are not typically being
1531 retrieved and displayed. The actual processing time required by
1532 <application>Privoxy</application> itself for each page, is relatively small
1533 in the overall scheme of things, and happens very quickly. This is typically
1534 more than offset by time saved not downloading and rendering ad images and
1535 other junk content (if ad blocking is being used).
1539 <quote>Filtering</quote> content via the <literal><ulink
1540 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER">filter</ulink></literal> or
1542 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</ulink></literal>
1543 actions may cause a perceived slowdown, since the entire document
1544 needs to be buffered before displaying. And on very large documents,
1545 filtering may have some measurable impact. How much depends on the page size,
1546 the actual definition of the filter(s), etc. See below. Most other actions
1547 have little to no impact on speed.
1550 Also, when filtering is enabled but zlib support isn't available, compression
1551 is often disabled (see <ulink
1552 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</ulink>).
1553 This can have an impact on speed as well, although it's probably smaller than
1554 you might think. Again, the page size, etc. will determine how much of an impact.
1560 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="loadingtimes"><title>I notice considerable
1561 delays in page requests. What's wrong?</title>
1563 If you use any <literal><ulink
1564 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER">filter</ulink></literal> action,
1565 such as filtering banners by size, web-bugs etc, or the <literal><ulink
1566 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</ulink></literal>
1567 action, the entire document must be loaded into memory in order for the filtering
1568 mechanism to work, and nothing is sent to the browser during this time.
1571 The loading time typically does not really change much in real numbers, but
1572 the feeling is different, because most browsers are able to start rendering
1573 incomplete content, giving the user a feeling of "it works". This effect is
1574 more noticeable on slower dialup connections. Extremely large documents
1575 may have some impact on the time to load the page where there is filtering
1576 being done. But overall, the difference should be very minimal. If there is a
1577 big impact, then probably some other situation is contributing (like
1578 anti-virus software).
1581 Filtering is automatically disabled for inappropriate MIME types. But note
1582 that if the web server mis-reports the MIME type, then content that should
1583 not be filtered, could be. <application>Privoxy</application> only knows how
1584 to differentiate filterable content because of the MIME type as reported by
1585 the server, or because of some configuration setting that enables/disables
1590 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="configurl"><title>What are "http://config.privoxy.org/" and
1591 "http://p.p/"?</title>
1593 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink> is the
1594 address of <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in user interface, and
1595 <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> is a shortcut for it.
1598 Since <application>Privoxy</application> sits between your web browser and the Internet,
1599 it can simply intercept requests for these addresses and answer them with its built-in
1600 <quote>web server</quote>.
1603 This also makes for a good test for your browser configuration: If entering the
1604 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1605 takes you to a page saying <quote>This is Privoxy ...</quote>, everything is OK.
1606 If you get a page saying <quote>Privoxy is not working</quote> instead, then
1607 your browser didn't use <application>Privoxy</application> for the request,
1608 hence it could not be intercepted, and you have accessed the <emphasis>real</emphasis>
1609 web site at config.privoxy.org.
1615 out of date 09/02/06 HB
1616 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="blocklist"><title>Do you still maintain the blocklists?</title>
1618 No. The patterns for blocking now reside (among other things) in the <ulink
1619 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">actions files</ulink>, which are
1620 actively maintained instead. See next question ...
1624 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newads"><title>How can I submit new ads, or report
1627 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> for
1628 various ways to interact with the developers.
1633 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newads2"><title>If I do submit missed ads, will
1634 they be included in future updates?</title>
1636 Whether such submissions are eventually included in the
1637 <filename>default.action</filename> configuration file depends on how
1638 significant the issue is. We of course want to address any potential
1639 problem with major, high-profile sites such as <citetitle>Google</citetitle>,
1640 <citetitle>Yahoo</citetitle>, etc. Any site with global or regional reach,
1641 has a good chance of being a candidate. But at the other end of the spectrum
1642 are any number of smaller, low-profile sites such as for local clubs or
1643 schools. Since their reach and impact are much less, they are best handled by
1644 inclusion in the user's <filename>user.action</filename>, and thus would be
1645 unlikely to be included.
1651 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="noonecares"><title>Why doesn't anyone answer my support
1654 Rest assured that it has been read and considered. Why it is not answered,
1655 could be for various reasons, including no one has a good answer for it, no
1656 one has had time to yet investigate it thoroughly, it has been reported
1657 numerous times already, or because not enough information was provided to help
1658 us help you. Your efforts are not wasted, and we do appreciate them.
1664 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="ip"><title>How can I hide my IP address?</title>
1666 If you run both the browser and &my-app; locally, you cannot hide your IP
1667 address with <application>Privoxy</application> or ultimately any other
1668 software alone. The server needs to know your IP address so that it knows
1669 where to send the responses back.
1672 There are many publicly usable "anonymous" proxies out there, which
1673 provide a further level of indirection between you and the web server.
1676 However, these proxies are called "anonymous" because you don't need
1677 to authenticate, not because they would offer any real anonymity.
1678 Most of them will log your IP address and make it available to the
1679 authorities in case you violate the law of the country they run in. In fact
1680 you can't even rule out that some of them only exist to *collect* information
1681 on (those suspicious) people with a more than average preference for privacy.
1684 If you want to hide your IP address from most adversaries,
1685 you should consider chaining <application>Privoxy</application>
1686 with <ulink url="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</ulink>.
1687 The configuration details can be found in
1688 <ulink url="#TOR">How do I use <application>Privoxy</application> together
1689 with <application>Tor</application> section</ulink>
1694 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1695 <title id="anonforsure">Can Privoxy guarantee I am anonymous?</title>
1697 No. Your chances of remaining anonymous are improved, but unless you
1698 <ulink url="#TOR">chain <application>Privoxy</application> with <application>Tor</application></ulink>
1699 or a similar proxy and know what you're doing when it comes to configuring
1700 the rest of your system, you should assume that everything you do
1701 on the Web can be traced back to you.
1704 <application>Privoxy</application> can remove various information about you,
1705 and allows <emphasis>you</emphasis> more freedom to decide which sites
1706 you can trust, and what details you want to reveal. But it neither
1707 hides your IP address, nor can it guarantee that the rest of the system
1708 behaves correctly. There are several possibilities how a web sites can find
1709 out who you are, even if you are using a strict <application>Privoxy</application>
1710 configuration and chained it with <application>Tor</application>.
1713 Most of <application>Privoxy's</application> privacy-enhancing features can be easily subverted
1714 by an insecure browser configuration, therefore you should use a browser that can
1715 be configured to only execute code from trusted sites, and be careful which sites you trust.
1716 For example there is no point in having <application>Privoxy</application>
1717 modify the User-Agent header, if websites can get all the information they want
1718 through JavaScript, ActiveX, Flash, Java etc.
1721 A few browsers disclose the user's email address in certain situations, such
1722 as when transferring a file by FTP. <application>Privoxy</application>
1723 does not filter FTP. If you need this feature, or are concerned about the
1724 mail handler of your browser disclosing your email address, you might
1725 consider products such as <application>NSClean</application>.
1728 Browsers available only as binaries could use non-standard headers to give
1729 out any information they can have access to: see the manufacturer's license
1730 agreement. It's impossible to anticipate and prevent every breach of privacy
1731 that might occur. The professionally paranoid prefer browsers available as
1732 source code, because anticipating their behavior is easier. Trust the source,
1738 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1739 <title id="proxytest">A test site says I am not using a Proxy.</title>
1741 Good! Actually, they are probably testing for some other kinds of proxies.
1742 Hiding yourself completely would require additional steps.
1746 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="tor"><title>How do I use Privoxy
1747 together with Tor?</title>
1749 Before you configure <application>Privoxy</application> to use
1750 <ulink url="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</ulink>,
1751 please follow the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> chapters
1752 <ulink url="../user-manual/installation.html">2. Installation</ulink> and
1753 <ulink url="../user-manual/startup.html">5. Startup</ulink> to make sure
1754 <application>Privoxy</application> itself is setup correctly.
1757 If it is, refer to <ulink url="https://www.torproject.org/documentation.html">Tor's
1758 extensive documentation</ulink> to learn how to install <application>Tor</application>,
1759 and make sure <application>Tor</application>'s logfile says that
1760 <quote>Tor has successfully opened a circuit</quote> and it
1761 <quote>looks like client functionality is working</quote>.
1764 If either <application>Tor</application> or <application>Privoxy</application>
1765 isn't working, their combination most likely will neither. Testing them on their
1766 own will also help you to direct problem reports to the right audience.
1767 If <application>Privoxy</application> isn't working, don't bother the
1768 <application>Tor</application> developers. If <application>Tor</application>
1769 isn't working, don't send bug reports to the <application>Privoxy</application> Team.
1772 If you verified that <application>Privoxy</application> and <application>Tor</application>
1773 are working, it is time to connect them. As far as <application>Privoxy</application>
1774 is concerned, <application>Tor</application> is just another proxy that can be reached
1775 by socks4 or socks4a. Most likely you are interested in <application>Tor</application>
1776 to increase your anonymity level, therefore you should use socks4a, to make sure DNS requests are
1777 done through <application>Tor</application> and thus invisible to your local network.
1782 Since <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.5, its
1783 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html">main configuration file</ulink>
1784 is already prepared for <application>Tor</application>, if you are using a
1785 default <application>Tor</application> configuration and run it on the same
1786 system as &my-app;, you just have to edit the
1787 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#FORWARDING">forwarding section</ulink>
1788 and uncomment the line:
1792 # forward-socks5 / 127.0.0.1:9050 .
1796 This is enough to reach the Internet, but additionally you might want to
1797 uncomment the following forward rules, to make sure your local network is still
1798 reachable through Privoxy:
1802 # forward 192.168.*.*/ .
1803 # forward 10.*.*.*/ .
1804 # forward 127.*.*.*/ .
1808 Unencrypted connections to systems in these address ranges will
1809 be as (un)secure as the local network is, but the alternative is
1810 that your browser can't reach the network at all. Then again,
1811 that may actually be desired and if you don't know for sure
1812 that your browser has to be able to reach the local network,
1813 there's no reason to allow it.
1816 If you want your browser to be able to reach servers in your local
1817 network by using their names, you will need additional exceptions
1818 that look like this:
1822 # forward localhost/ .
1826 Save the modified configuration file and open
1827 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status/</ulink>
1828 in your browser, confirm that <application>Privoxy</application> has reloaded its configuration
1829 and that there are no other forward lines, unless you know that you need them. If everything looks good,
1831 <ulink url="https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#IsMyConnectionPrivate">Tor
1832 Faq 4.2</ulink> to learn how to verify that you are really using <application>Tor</application>.
1835 Afterward, please take the time to at least skim through the rest
1836 of <application>Tor's</application> documentation. Make sure you understand
1837 what <application>Tor</application> does, why it is no replacement for
1838 application level security, and why you probably don't want to
1839 use it for unencrypted logins.
1843 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1844 <title id="sitebreak">Might some things break because header information or
1845 content is being altered?</title>
1848 Definitely. It is common for sites to use browser type, browser version,
1849 HTTP header content, and various other techniques in order to dynamically
1850 decide what to display and how to display it. What you see, and what I see,
1851 might be very different. There are many, many ways that this can be handled,
1852 so having hard and fast rules, is tricky.
1856 The <quote>User-Agent</quote> is sometimes used in this way to identify
1857 the browser, and adjust content accordingly.
1861 Also, different browsers use different encodings of non-English
1862 characters, certain web servers convert pages on-the-fly according to the
1863 User Agent header. Giving a <quote>User Agent</quote> with the wrong
1864 operating system or browser manufacturer causes some sites in these languages
1865 to be garbled; Surfers to Eastern European sites should change it to
1866 something closer. And then some page access counters work by looking at the
1867 <quote>Referer</quote> header; they may fail or break if unavailable. The
1868 weather maps of Intellicast have been blocked by their server when no
1869 <quote>Referer</quote> or cookie is provided, is another example. (But you
1870 can forge both headers without giving information away). There are
1871 many other ways things can go wrong when trying to fool a web server. The
1872 results of which could inadvertently cause pages to load incorrectly,
1873 partially, or even not at all. And there may be no obvious clues as to just
1874 what went wrong, or why. Nowhere will there be a message that says
1875 <quote><emphasis>Turn off <literal>fast-redirects</literal> or else!</emphasis>
1880 Similar thoughts apply to modifying JavaScript, and, to a lesser degree,
1885 If you have problems with a site, you will have to adjust your configuration
1886 accordingly. Cookies are probably the most likely adjustment that may
1887 be required, but by no means the only one.
1893 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1894 <title id="caching">Can Privoxy act as a <quote>caching</quote> proxy to
1895 speed up web browsing?</title>
1897 No, it does not have this ability at all. You want something like
1898 <ulink url="http://www.squid-cache.org/">Squid</ulink> or
1899 <ulink url="http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/polipo/">Polipo</ulink> for this.
1900 And, yes, before you ask, <application>Privoxy</application> can co-exist
1901 with other kinds of proxies like <application>Squid</application>.
1902 See the <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#FORWARDING">forwarding
1903 chapter</ulink> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">user
1904 manual</ulink> for details.
1908 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1909 <title id="firewall">What about as a firewall? Can Privoxy protect me?</title>
1911 Not in the way you mean, or in the way some firewall vendors claim they can.
1912 <application>Privoxy</application> can help protect your privacy, but can't
1913 protect your system from intrusion attempts. It is, of course, perfectly possible
1914 to use <emphasis>both</emphasis>.
1918 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1919 <title id="wasted">I have large empty spaces / a checkerboard pattern now where
1920 ads used to be. Why?</title>
1922 It is technically possible to eliminate banners and ads in a way that frees
1923 their allocated page space. This could easily be done by blocking with
1924 <application>Privoxy's</application> filters,
1925 and eliminating the <emphasis>entire</emphasis> image references from the
1929 But, this would consume considerably more CPU resources (IOW, slow things
1930 down), would likely destroy the layout of some web pages which rely on the
1931 banners utilizing a certain amount of page space, and might fail in other
1932 cases, where the screen space is reserved (e.g. by HTML tables for instance).
1933 Also, making ads and banners disappear without any trace complicates
1934 troubleshooting, and would sooner or later be problematic.
1937 The better alternative is to instead let them stay, and block the resulting
1938 requests for the banners themselves as is now the case. This leaves either
1939 empty space, or the familiar checkerboard pattern.
1942 So the developers won't support this in the default configuration, but you
1943 can of course define appropriate filters yourself to achieve this.
1947 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1948 <title id="ssl">How can Privoxy filter Secure (HTTPS) URLs?</title>
1950 Since secure HTTP connections are encrypted SSL sessions between your browser
1951 and the secure site, and are meant to be reliably <emphasis>secure</emphasis>,
1952 there is little that <application>Privoxy</application> can do but hand the raw
1953 gibberish data though from one end to the other unprocessed.
1956 The only exception to this is blocking by host patterns, as the client needs
1957 to tell <application>Privoxy</application> the name of the remote server,
1958 so that <application>Privoxy</application> can establish the connection.
1959 If that name matches a host-only pattern, the connection will be blocked.
1962 As far as ad blocking is concerned, this is less of a restriction than it may
1963 seem, since ad sources are often identifiable by the host name, and often
1964 the banners to be placed in an encrypted page come unencrypted nonetheless
1965 for efficiency reasons, which exposes them to the full power of
1966 <application>Privoxy</application>'s ad blocking.
1969 <quote>Content cookies</quote> (those that are embedded in the actual HTML or
1970 JS page content, see <literal><ulink
1971 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</ulink></literal>),
1972 in an SSL transaction will be impossible to block under these conditions.
1973 Fortunately, this does not seem to be a very common scenario since most
1974 cookies come by traditional means.
1979 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1980 <title id="secure">Privoxy runs as a <quote>server</quote>. How
1981 secure is it? Do I need to take any special precautions?</title>
1983 On Unix-like systems, <application>Privoxy</application> can run as a non-privileged
1984 user, which is how we recommend it be run. Also, by default
1985 <application>Privoxy</application> listens to requests from <quote>localhost</quote>
1989 The server aspect of <application>Privoxy</application> is not itself directly
1990 exposed to the Internet in this configuration. If you want to have
1991 <application>Privoxy</application> serve as a LAN proxy, this will have to
1992 be opened up to allow for LAN requests. In this case, we'd recommend
1993 you specify only the LAN gateway address, e.g. 192.168.1.1, in the main
1994 <application>Privoxy</application> configuration file and check all <ulink
1995 url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCESS-CONTROL">access control and security
1996 options</ulink>. All LAN hosts can then use this as their proxy address
1997 in the browser proxy configuration, but <application>Privoxy</application>
1998 will not listen on any external interfaces. ACLs can be defined in addition,
1999 and using a firewall is always good too. Better safe than sorry.
2004 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="turnoff">
2005 <title>Can I temporarily disable Privoxy?</title>
2007 &my-app; doesn't have a transparent proxy mode,
2008 but you can toggle off blocking and content filtering.
2011 The easiest way to do that is to point your browser
2012 to the remote toggle URL: <ulink
2013 url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>.
2016 See the <ulink url="../user-manual/appendix.html#BOOKMARKLETS">Bookmarklets section</ulink>
2017 of the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> for an easy way to access this
2018 feature. Note that this is a feature that may need to be enabled in the main
2019 <filename>config</filename> file.
2024 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="reallyoff">
2025 <title>When <quote>disabled</quote> is Privoxy totally
2026 out of the picture?</title>
2028 No, this just means all optional filtering and actions are disabled.
2029 <application>Privoxy</application> is still acting as a proxy, but just
2030 doing less of the things that <application>Privoxy</application> would
2031 normally be expected to do. It is still a <quote>middle-man</quote> in
2032 the interaction between your browser and web sites. See below to bypass
2037 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="turnoff2">
2038 <title>How can I tell Privoxy to totally ignore certain sites?</title>
2040 Bypassing a proxy, or proxying based on arbitrary criteria, is purely a browser
2041 configuration issue, not a &my-app; issue. Modern browsers typically do have
2042 settings for not proxying certain sites. Check your browser's help files.
2047 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="crunch">
2048 <title>My logs show Privoxy <quote>crunches</quote>
2049 ads, but also its own internal CGI pages. What is a <quote>crunch</quote>?</title>
2051 A <quote>crunch</quote> simply means <application>Privoxy</application> intercepted
2052 <emphasis>something</emphasis>, nothing more. Often this is indeed ads or
2053 banners, but <application>Privoxy</application> uses the same mechanism for
2054 trapping requests for its own internal pages. For instance, a request for
2055 <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration page at: <ulink
2056 url="http://config.privoxy.org">http://config.privoxy.org</ulink>, is
2057 intercepted (i.e. it does not go out to the 'net), and the familiar CGI
2058 configuration is returned to the browser, and the log consequently will show
2059 a <quote>crunch</quote>.
2062 Since version 3.0.7, Privoxy will also log the crunch reason.
2063 If you are using an older version you might want to upgrade.
2067 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="downloads">
2068 <title>Can Privoxy effect files that I download
2069 from a webserver? FTP server?</title>
2071 From the webserver's perspective, there is no difference between
2072 viewing a document (i.e. a page), and downloading a file. The same is true of
2073 <application>Privoxy</application>. If there is a match for a <literal><ulink
2074 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">block</ulink></literal> pattern,
2075 it will still be blocked, and of course this is obvious.
2078 Filtering is potentially more of a concern since the results are not always
2079 so obvious, and the effects of filtering are there whether the file is simply
2080 viewed, or downloaded. And potentially whether the content is some obnoxious
2081 advertisement, or Mr. Jimmy's latest/greatest source code jewel. Of course,
2082 one of these presumably is <quote>bad</quote> content that we don't want, and
2083 the other is <quote>good</quote> content that we do want.
2084 <application>Privoxy</application> is blind to the differences, and can only
2085 distinguish <quote>good from bad</quote> by the configuration parameters
2086 <emphasis>we</emphasis> give it.
2089 <application>Privoxy</application> knows the differences in files according
2090 to the <quote>Content Type</quote> as reported by the webserver. If this is
2091 reported accurately (e.g. <quote>application/zip</quote> for a zip archive),
2092 then <application>Privoxy</application> knows to ignore these where
2093 appropriate. <application>Privoxy</application> potentially can filter HTML
2094 as well as plain text documents, subject to configuration parameters of
2095 course. Also, documents that are of an unknown type (generally assumed to be
2096 <quote>text/plain</quote>) can be filtered, as will those that might be
2097 incorrectly reported by the webserver. If such a file is a downloaded file
2098 that is intended to be saved to disk, then any content that might have been
2099 altered by filtering, will be saved too, for these (probably rare) cases.
2102 Note that versions later than 3.0.2 do NOT filter document types reported as
2103 <quote>text/plain</quote>. Prior to this, <application>Privoxy</application>
2104 did filter this document type.
2107 In short, filtering is <quote>ON</quote> if a) the content type as reported
2108 by the webserver is appropriate <emphasis>and</emphasis> b) the configuration
2109 allows it (or at least does not disallow it). That's it. There is no magic
2110 cookie anywhere to say this is <quote>good</quote> and this is
2111 <quote>bad</quote>. It's the configuration that lets it all happen or not.
2114 If you download text files, you probably do not want these to be filtered,
2115 particularly if the content is source code, or other critical content. Source
2116 code sometimes might be mistaken for Javascript (i.e. the kind that might
2117 open a pop-up window). It is recommended to turn off filtering for download
2118 sites (particularly if the content may be plain text files and you are using
2119 version 3.0.2 or earlier) in your <filename>user.action</filename> file. And
2120 also, for any site or page where making <emphasis>any</emphasis> changes at
2121 all to the content is to be avoided.
2124 <application>Privoxy</application> does not do FTP at all, only HTTP
2125 and HTTPS (SSL) protocols.
2129 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="downloads2">
2130 <title>I just downloaded a Perl script, and Privoxy
2131 altered it! Yikes, what is wrong!</title>
2137 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="hostsfile">
2138 <title>Should I continue to use a <quote>HOSTS</quote> file for ad-blocking?</title>
2140 One time-tested technique to defeat common ads is to trick the local DNS
2141 system by giving a phony IP address for the ad generator in the local
2142 <filename>HOSTS</filename> file, typically using <literal>127.0.0.1</literal>, aka
2143 <literal>localhost</literal>. This effectively blocks the ad.
2146 There is no reason to use this technique in conjunction with
2147 <application>Privoxy</application>. <application>Privoxy</application>
2148 does essentially the same thing, much more elegantly and with much more
2149 flexibility. A large <filename>HOSTS</filename> file, in fact, not only
2150 duplicates effort, but may get in the way and seriously slow down your system.
2151 It is recommended to remove such entries from your <filename>HOSTS</filename> file. If you think
2152 your hosts list is neglected by <application>Privoxy's </application>
2153 configuration, consider adding your list to your <filename>user.action</filename> file:
2160 ads.galore.example.com
2161 etc.example.com</screen>
2165 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="seealso">
2166 <title>Where can I find more information about Privoxy
2167 and related issues?</title>
2168 <!-- Include seealso.sgml boilerplate: -->
2170 <!-- end boilerplate -->
2175 <ulink url="../user-manual/seealso.html">user-manual</ulink> for
2181 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="microsuck">
2182 <title>I've noticed that Privoxy changes <quote>Microsoft</quote> to
2183 <quote>MicroSuck</quote>! Why are you manipulating my browsing?</title>
2186 We're not. The text substitutions that you are seeing are disabled
2187 in the default configuration as shipped. You have either manually
2188 activated the <quote><literal>fun</literal></quote> filter which
2189 is clearly labeled <quote>Text replacements for subversive browsing
2190 fun!</quote> or you are using an older Privoxy version and have implicitly
2191 activated it by choosing the <quote>Advanced</quote> profile in the
2192 web-based editor. Please upgrade.
2196 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="valid">
2197 <title>Does Privoxy produce <quote>valid</quote> HTML (or XHTML)?</title>
2200 Privoxy generates HTML in both its own <quote>templates</quote>, and possibly
2201 whenever there are text substitutions via a &my-app; filter. While this
2202 should always conform to the HTML 4.01 specifications, it has not been
2203 validated against this or any other standard.
2211 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2213 <sect1 id="trouble">
2214 <title>Troubleshooting</title>
2216 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
2217 <title id="refused">I cannot connect to any websites. Or, I am getting
2218 <quote>connection refused</quote> message with every web page. Why?</title>
2220 There are several possibilities:
2225 <application>Privoxy</application> is not running. Solution: verify
2226 that &my-app; is installed correctly, has not crashed, and is indeed running.
2227 Turn on <application>Privoxy's</application> logging, and look at the logs to see what they say.
2229 <listitem><para>Or your browser is configured for a different port than what
2230 <application>Privoxy</application> is using. Solution: verify that &my-app;
2231 and your browser are set to the same port (<literal>listen-address</literal>).
2233 <listitem><para>Or if using a forwarding rule, you have a configuration problem or a
2234 problem with a host in the forwarding chain. Solution: temporarily alter your
2235 configuration and take the forwarders out of the equation.
2238 Or you have a firewall that is interfering and blocking you. Solution:
2239 try disabling or removing the firewall as a simple test.
2246 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2247 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="error503">
2248 <title>Why am I getting a 503 Error (WSAECONNREFUSED) on every page?</title>
2250 More than likely this is a problem with your TCP/IP networking. ZoneAlarm has
2251 been reported to cause this symptom -- even if not running! The solution is
2252 to either fight the ZA configuration, or uninstall ZoneAlarm, and then find
2253 something better behaved in its place. Other personal firewall type products
2254 may cause similar type problems if not configured correctly.
2258 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
2259 <title id="flushit">I just added a new rule, but the steenkin ad is
2260 still getting through. How?</title>
2262 If the ad had been displayed before you added its URL, it will probably be
2263 held in the browser's cache for some time, so it will be displayed without
2264 the need for any request to the server, and <application>Privoxy</application>
2265 will not be involved. Flush the browser's caches, and then try again.
2269 If this doesn't help, you probably have an error in the rule you
2270 applied. Try pasting the full URL of the offending ad into <ulink
2271 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
2272 and see if it really matches your new rule. Blocking ads is like blocking
2273 spam: a lot of tinkering is required to stay ahead of the game. And
2274 remember you need to block the URL of the ad in question, which may be
2275 entirely different from the site URL itself. Most ads are hosted on different
2276 servers than the main site itself. If you right-click on the ad, you should
2277 be able to get all the relevant information you need. Alternately, you can
2278 find the correct URL by looking at <application>Privoxy's</application> logs
2279 (you may need to enable logging in the main config file if its disabled).
2282 Below is a slightly modified real-life log snippet that originates with one
2283 requested URL: <literal>www.example.com</literal> (name of site was changed
2284 for this example, the number of requests is real). You can see in this the
2285 complexity of what goes into making up this one <quote>page</quote>. There
2286 are eight different domains involved here, with thirty two separate URLs
2287 requested in all, making up all manner of images, Shockwave Flash,
2288 JavaScript, CSS stylesheets, scripts, and other related content. Some of this
2289 content is obviously <quote>good</quote> or <quote>bad</quote>, but not all.
2290 Many of the more questionable looking requests, are going to outside domains
2291 that seem to be identifying themselves with suspicious looking names, making
2292 our job a little easier. &my-app; has <quote>crunched</quote> (meaning caught
2293 and BLOCKED) quite a few items in this example, but perhaps missed a few as well.
2298 Request: www.example.com/
2299 Request: www.example.com/favicon.ico
2300 Request: img.example.com/main.css
2301 Request: img.example.com/sr.js
2302 Request: example.betamarker.com/example.html
2303 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/bestsellers/skyscraper.php?likref=BSellers
2304 Request: img.example.com/pb.png
2305 Request: www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js crunch! (Blocked)
2306 Request: www.advertising-department.com/ats/switch.ps.php?26856 crunch! (Blocked)
2307 Request: img.example.com/p.gif
2308 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/assign.php?l=example&mode=behind crunch! (Blocked)
2309 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/scripts/popup.php?hid=5c3cf&tmpl=PBa.tmpl crunch! (Blocked)
2310 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/assign.php?l=example crunch! (Blocked)
2311 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/best_sellers.css
2312 Request: www.adtrak.net/adx.js crunch! (Blocked)
2313 Request: img.example.com/hbg.gif
2314 Request: img.example.com/example.jpg
2315 Request: img.example.com/mt.png
2316 Request: img.example.com/mm.png
2317 Request: img.example.com/mb.png
2318 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/scripts/popup.php?hid=a71b91fa5&tmpl=Ua.tmp crunch! (Blocked)
2319 Request: www.example.com/tracker.js
2320 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/lsi_head.gif
2321 Request: www.adtrak.net/adjs.php?n=020548130&what=zone:61 crunch! (Blocked)
2322 Request: www.adtrak.net/adjs.php?n=463594413&what=zone:58&source=Ua crunch! (Blocked)
2323 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/bottomani.swf
2324 Request: mmm.elitemediagroup.net/install.php?allowpop=no&popupmincook=0&allowsp2=1 crunch! (Blocked)
2325 Request: www.example.com/tracker.js?screen=1400x1050&win=962x693
2326 Request: www.adtrak.net/adlog.php?bannerid=1309&clientid=439&zoneid=61 crunch! (Blocked)
2327 Request: 66.70.21.80/scripts/click.php?hid=5c3cf599a9efd0320d26&si
2328 Request: 66.70.21.80/img/pixel.gif
2329 Request: www.adtrak.net/adlog.php?bannerid=1309&clientid=439&zoneid=58&source=Ua&block=86400 crunch! (Blocked)
2330 Request: 66.70.21.80/scripts/click.php?hid=a71b9f6504b0c5681fa5&si=Ua
2335 Despite 12 out of 32 requests being blocked, the page looked, and seemed to
2336 behave perfectly <quote>normal</quote> (minus some ads, of course).
2341 <sect2 id="badsite" renderas="sect3">
2342 <title >One of my favorite sites does not work with Privoxy.
2343 What can I do?</title>
2346 First verify that it is indeed a <application>Privoxy</application> problem,
2347 by toggling off <application>Privoxy</application> through <ulink
2348 url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
2349 (the toggle feature may need to be enabled in the main
2350 <filename>config</filename>),
2351 and then shift-reloading the problem page (i.e. holding down the shift key
2352 while clicking reload. Alternatively, flush your browser's disk and memory
2357 If the problem went away, we know we have a configuration related problem.
2359 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
2360 and paste the full URL of the page in question into the prompt. See which
2361 actions are being applied to the URL, and which matches in which actions
2362 files are responsible for that. It might be helpful also to look at your logs
2363 for this site too, to see what else might be happening (note: logging may need
2364 to be enabled in the main config file). Many sites are
2365 complex and require a number of related pages to help present their content.
2366 Look at what else might be used by the page in question, and what of that
2367 might be <emphasis>required</emphasis>.
2368 Now, armed with this information, go to
2370 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
2371 and select the appropriate actions files for editing. </para>
2373 You can now either look for a section which disables the actions that
2374 you suspect to cause the problem and add a pattern for your site there,
2375 or make up a completely new section for your site. In any case, the recommended
2376 way is to disable only the prime suspect, reload the problem page, and only
2377 if the problem persists, disable more and more actions until you have
2378 identified the culprit. You may or may not want to turn the other actions
2379 on again. Remember to flush your browser's caches in between any such changes!
2382 Alternately, if you are comfortable with a text editor, you can accomplish
2383 the same thing by editing the appropriate actions file. Probably the easiest
2384 way to deal with such problems when editing by hand is to add your
2385 site to a <literal>{ fragile }</literal> section in <filename>user.action</filename>,
2386 which is an alias that turns off most <quote>dangerous</quote>
2387 actions, but is also likely to turn off more actions then needed, and thus lower
2388 your privacy and protection more than necessary,
2391 Troubleshooting actions is discussed in more detail in the <ulink
2392 url="../user-manual/appendix.html#ACTIONSANAT">User Manual appendix,
2393 Troubleshooting: the Anatomy of an Action</ulink>.
2394 There is also an <ulink
2395 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACT-EXAMPLES">actions tutorial</ulink>
2396 with general configuration information and examples.
2399 As a last resort, you can always see if your browser has a setting that will
2400 bypass the proxy setting for selective sites. Modern browsers can do this.
2406 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2407 <sect2 id="dun" renderas="sect3">
2408 <title>After installing Privoxy, I have to log in
2409 every time I start IE. What gives?</title>
2412 This is a quirk that effects the installation of
2413 <application>Privoxy</application>, in conjunction with Internet Explorer and
2414 Internet Connection Sharing on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The symptoms may
2415 appear to be corrupted or invalid DUN settings, or passwords.
2419 When setting up an NT based Windows system with
2420 <application>Privoxy</application> you may find that things do not seem to be
2421 doing what you expect. When you set your system up you will probably have set
2422 up Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) with Dial up Networking (DUN) when
2423 logged in with administrator privileges. You will probably have made this DUN
2424 connection available to other accounts that you may have set-up on your
2425 system. E.g. Mum or Dad sets up the system and makes accounts suitably
2426 configured for the kids.
2430 When setting up <application>Privoxy</application> in this environment you
2431 will have to alter the proxy set-up of Internet Explorer (IE) for the
2432 specific DUN connection on which you wish to use
2433 <application>Privoxy</application>. When you do this the ICS DUN set-up
2434 becomes user specific. In this instance you will see no difference if you
2435 change the DUN connection under the account used to set-up the connection.
2436 However when you do this from another user you will notice that the DUN
2437 connection changes to make available to "Me only". You will also find that
2438 you have to store the password under each different user!
2442 The reason for this is that each user's set-up for IE is user specific. Each
2443 set-up DUN connection and each LAN connection in IE store the settings for
2444 each user individually. As such this enforces individual configurations
2445 rather than common ones. Hence the first time you use a DUN connection after
2446 re-booting your system it may not perform as you expect, and prompt you for
2447 the password. Just set and save the password again and all should be OK.
2451 [Thanks to Ray Griffith for this submission.]
2456 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2457 <sect2 id="ftp" renderas="sect3">
2458 <title>I cannot connect to any FTP sites. Privoxy
2459 is blocking me.</title>
2461 <application>Privoxy</application> cannot act as a proxy for FTP traffic,
2462 so do not configure your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application>
2463 as an FTP proxy. The same is true for <emphasis>any protocol other than HTTP
2464 or HTTPS (SSL)</emphasis>.
2467 Most browsers understand FTP as well as HTTP. If you connect to a site, with
2468 a URL like <literal>ftp://ftp.example.com</literal>, your browser is making
2469 an FTP connection, and not a HTTP connection. So while your browser may
2470 speak FTP, <application>Privoxy</application> does not, and cannot proxy
2474 To complicate matters, some systems may have a generic <quote>proxy</quote>
2475 setting, which will enable various protocols, including
2476 <emphasis>both</emphasis> HTTP and FTP proxying! So it is possible to
2477 accidentally enable FTP proxying in these cases. And of course, if this
2478 happens, <application>Privoxy</application> will indeed cause problems since
2479 it does not know FTP. <![%p-newstuff;[Newer version will give a sane error
2480 message if a FTP connection is attempted.]]> Just disable the FTP setting
2481 and all will be well again.
2484 Will <application>Privoxy</application> ever proxy FTP traffic? Unlikely.
2485 There just is not much reason, and the work to make this happen is more than
2490 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2491 <sect2 id="macosxie" renderas="sect3">
2492 <title>In Mac OS X, I can't configure Microsoft Internet Explorer to use
2493 Privoxy as the HTTP proxy.</title>
2495 Microsoft Internet Explorer (in versions like 5.1) respects system-wide
2496 network settings. In order to change the HTTP proxy, open System
2497 Preferences, and click on the Network icon. In the settings pane that
2498 comes up, click on the Proxies tab. Ensure the "Web Proxy (HTTP)" checkbox
2499 is checked and enter <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> in the entry field.
2500 Enter <literal>8118</literal> in the Port field. The next time you start
2501 IE, it should reflect these values.
2505 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2506 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="macosxuninstall">
2507 <title>In Mac OS X, I dragged the Privoxy folder to the trash in order to
2508 uninstall it. Now the finder tells me I don't have sufficient privileges to
2509 empty the trash.</title>
2511 Note: This ONLY applies to privoxy 3.0.6 and earlier.
2514 Just dragging the <application>Privoxy</application> folder to the trash is
2515 not enough to delete it. <application>Privoxy</application> supplies an
2516 <application>uninstall.command</application> file that takes care of
2517 these details. Open the trash, drag the <application>uninstall.command</application>
2518 file out of the trash and double-click on it. You will be prompted for
2519 confirmation and the administration password.
2522 The trash may still appear full after this command; emptying the trash
2523 from the desktop should make it appear empty again.
2528 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2529 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="macosximages">
2530 <title>In Mac OS X Panther (10.3), images often fail to load and/or I
2531 experience random delays in page loading. I'm using
2532 <literal>localhost</literal> as my browser's proxy setting.</title>
2534 We believe this is due to an IPv6-related bug in Mac OS X, but don't fully
2535 understand the issue yet. In any case, changing the proxy setting to
2536 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> instead of <literal>localhost</literal>
2537 works around the problem.
2541 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2542 <!-- XXX: Is this still relevant now that we have gzip support? -->
2543 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="blankpage">
2544 <title>I get a completely blank page at one site. <quote>View Source</quote>
2545 shows only: <markup><![CDATA[<html><body></body></html>]]></markup>. Without
2546 Privoxy the page loads fine.</title>
2548 Chances are that the site suffers from a bug in
2549 <ulink url="http://www.php.net/"><application>PHP</application></ulink>,
2550 which results in empty pages being sent if the client explicitly requests
2551 an uncompressed page, like <application>Privoxy</application> does.
2552 This bug has been fixed in PHP 4.2.3.
2555 To find out if this is in fact the source of the problem, try adding
2556 the site to a <literal>-prevent-compression</literal> section in
2557 <filename>user.action</filename>:
2560 # Make exceptions for ill-behaved sites:
2562 {-prevent-compression}
2563 .example.com</screen>
2565 If that works, you may also want to report the problem to the
2566 site's webmasters, telling them to use zlib.output_compression
2567 instead of ob_gzhandler in their PHP applications (workaround)
2568 or upgrade to PHP 4.2.3 or later (fix).
2572 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="nohostname">
2573 <title>My logs show many <quote>Unable to get my own hostname</quote> lines.
2576 <application>Privoxy</application> tries to get the hostname of the system
2577 its running on from the IP address of the system interface it is bound to
2578 (from the <filename>config</filename> file
2579 <emphasis>listen-address</emphasis> setting). If the system cannot supply
2580 this information, <application>Privoxy</application> logs this condition.
2583 Typically, this would be considered a minor system configuration error. It is
2584 not a fatal error to <application>Privoxy</application> however, but may
2585 result in a much slower response from <application>Privoxy</application> on
2586 some platforms due to DNS timeouts.
2589 This can be caused by a problem with the local <filename>hosts</filename>
2590 file. If this file has been changed from the original, try reverting it to
2591 see if that helps. Make sure whatever name(s) are used for the local system,
2592 that they resolve both ways.
2595 You should also be able to work around the problem with the
2596 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#HOSTNAME">hostname option</ulink>.
2600 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="inuse">
2601 <title>When I try to launch Privoxy, I get an
2602 error message <quote>port 8118 is already in use</quote> (or similar wording).
2605 Port 8118 is <application>Privoxy's</application> default TCP
2606 <quote>listening</quote> port. Typically this message would mean that there
2607 is already one instance of <application>Privoxy</application> running, and
2608 your system is actually trying to start a second
2609 <application>Privoxy</application> on the same port, which will not work.
2610 (You can have multiple instances but they must be assigned different ports.)
2611 How and why this might happen varies from platform to platform, but you need
2612 to check your installation and start-up procedures.
2616 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="demoronizer">
2618 Pages with UTF-8 fonts are garbled.
2621 This is caused by the <quote>demoronizer</quote> filter. You should either
2622 upgrade <application>Privoxy</application>, or at least upgrade to the most
2623 recent <filename>default.action</filename> file available from <ulink
2624 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">SourceForge</ulink>.
2625 Or you can simply disable the demoronizer filter.
2629 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="demoronizer2">
2631 Why are binary files (such as images) corrupted when Privoxy
2635 This may also be caused by the <quote>demoronizer</quote> filter,
2636 in conjunction with a web server that is misreporting the content type. Binary
2637 files are exempted from <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering
2638 (unless the web server by mistake says the file is something else). Either
2639 upgrade <application>Privoxy</application>, or go to the most recent
2640 <filename>default.action</filename> file available from <ulink
2641 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">SourceForge</ulink>.
2645 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="demoronizer3">
2647 What is the <quote>demoronizer</quote> and why is it there?
2650 The original demoronizer was a Perl script that cleaned up HTML pages which
2651 were created with certain Microsoft products. MS has used proprietary extensions
2652 to standardized font encodings (ISO 8859-1), which has caused problems for pages
2653 that are viewed with non-Microsoft products (and are expecting to see a
2654 standard set of fonts). The demoronizer corrected these errors so the pages
2655 displayed correctly. <application>Privoxy</application> borrowed from this
2656 script, introducing a filter based on the original demoronizer, which in turn could
2657 correct these errors on the fly.
2660 But this is only needed in some situations, and will cause serious problems in some
2664 If you are using Microsoft products, you do not need it. If you need to view
2665 pages with UTF-8 characters (such as Cyrillic or Chinese), then it will
2666 cause corruption of the fonts, and thus <emphasis>should not be on</emphasis>.
2669 On the other hand, if you use non-Microsoft products, and you occasionally
2670 notice weird characters on pages, you might want to try it.
2674 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="windowopen">
2676 Why do I keep seeing <quote>PrivoxyWindowOpen()</quote> in raw source code?
2679 <application>Privoxy</application> is attempting to disable malicious
2680 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript">Javascript</ulink>
2681 in this case, with the <literal>unsolicited-popups</literal>
2682 filter. <application>Privoxy</application> cannot tell very well
2683 <quote>good</quote> code snippets from <quote>bad</quote> code snippets.
2686 If you see this in HTML source, and the page displays without problems, then
2687 this is good, and likely some pop-up window was disabled. If you see this
2688 where it is causing a problem, such as a downloaded program source code file,
2689 then you should set an exception for this site or page such that the
2690 integrity of the page stays in tact by disabling all filtering.
2694 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="dnserrors">
2696 I am getting too many DNS errors like <quote>404 No Such Domain</quote>. Why
2697 can't Privoxy do this better?
2700 There are potentially several factors here. First of all, the DNS resolution
2701 is done by the underlying operating system -- not
2702 <application>Privoxy</application> itself. <application>Privoxy</application>
2703 merely initiates the process and hands it off, and then later reports
2704 whatever the outcome was and tries to give a coherent message if there seems
2705 to be a problem. In some cases, this might otherwise be mitigated by the
2706 browser itself which might try some work-arounds and alternate approaches (e.g
2707 adding <quote>www.</quote> to the URL).
2710 In other cases, if <application>Privoxy</application> is being chained
2711 with another proxy, this could complicate the issue, and cause undue
2712 delays and timeouts. In the case of a <quote>socks4a</quote> proxy, the socks
2713 server handles all the DNS. <application>Privoxy</application> would just be
2714 the <quote>messenger</quote> which is reporting whatever problem occurred
2715 downstream, and not the root cause of the error.
2719 In any case, versions newer than 3.0.3 include various improvements to help
2720 <application>Privoxy</application> better handle these cases.
2724 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="allcpu">
2726 At one site Privoxy just hangs, and starts taking
2727 all CPU. Why is this?
2730 This is probably a manifestation of the <quote>100% cpu</quote> problem that
2731 occurs on pages containing many (thousands upon thousands) of blank lines. The blank lines
2732 are in the raw HTML source of the page, and the browser just ignores them. But the
2733 pattern matching in <application>Privoxy's</application> page filtering
2734 mechanism is trying to match against absurdly long strings and this becomes
2735 very CPU-intensive, taking a long, long time to complete.
2738 Until a better solution comes along, disable filtering on these pages,
2739 particularly the <literal>js-annoyances</literal> and
2740 <literal>unsolicited-popups</literal> filters. If you run into this problem
2741 with a recent &my-app; version, please send a problem report.
2745 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="slowcrawl">
2746 <title>I just installed Privoxy, and all my
2747 browsing has slowed to a crawl. What gives? </title>
2749 This should not happen, and for the overwhelming number of users world-wide,
2750 it does not happen. I would suspect some inadvertent interaction of software
2751 components such as anti-virus software, spyware protectors, personal
2752 firewalls or similar components. Try disabling (or uninstalling) these one
2753 at a time and see if that helps. Either way, if you are using a
2754 recent &my-app; version, please report the problem.
2758 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="preventcomp">
2759 <title>Why do my filters work on some sites but not on others? </title>
2761 It's probably due to compression. It is a common practice for web servers to
2762 send their content <quote>compressed</quote> in order to speed things up, and
2763 then let the browser <quote>uncompress</quote> them. When compiled with zlib support
2764 &my-app; can decompress content before filtering, otherwise you may want to enable
2766 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</ulink>.
2769 As of &my-app; 3.0.9, zlib support is enabled in the default builds.
2774 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="ssl-warnings">
2775 <title>On some HTTPS sites my browser warns me about unauthenticated content,
2776 the URL bar doesn't get highlighted and the lock symbol appears to be broken.
2777 What's going on?</title>
2779 Probably the browser is requesting ads through HTTPS and &my-app;
2780 is blocking the requests. Privoxy's error messages are delivered
2781 unencrypted and while it's obvious for the browser that the HTTPS
2782 request is already blocked by the proxy, some warn about unauthenticated
2786 To work around the problem you can redirect those requests to an invalid
2787 local address instead of blocking them. While the redirects aren't
2788 encrypted either, many browsers don't care. They simply follow the
2789 redirect, fail to reach a server and display an error message instead
2793 To do that, enable logging to figure out which requests get blocked by
2794 &my-app; and add the hosts (no path patterns) to a section like this:
2799 {+redirect{http://127.0.0.1:0/} -block -limit-connect}
2805 Additionally you have to configure your browser to contact
2806 <quote>127.0.0.1:0</quote> directly (instead of through &my-app;).
2809 To add a proxy exception in <application>Mozilla Firefox</application>
2810 open the <quote>Preferences</quote>, click the <quote>Settings</quote>
2811 button located on the <quote>Network</quote> tab in the <quote>Advanced</quote>
2812 section, and add <quote>127.0.0.1:0</quote> in the <quote>No Proxy for:</quote>
2818 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="se-linux">
2819 <title>I get selinux error messages. How can I fix this?</title>
2821 Please report the problem to the creator of your selinux policies.
2824 The problem is that some selinux policy writers aren't familiar
2825 with the application they are trying to <quote>secure</quote> and
2826 thus create policies that make no sense.
2829 In <application>Privoxy's</application> case the problem usually
2830 is that the policy only allows outgoing connections for certain
2831 destination ports (e.g. 80 and 443). While this may cover the
2832 standard ports, websites occasionally use other ports as well.
2833 This isn't a security problem and therefore <application>Privoxy's</application>
2834 default configuration doesn't block these requests.
2837 If you really want to block these ports (and don't be able
2838 to load websites that don't use standard ports), you should
2839 configure Privoxy to block these ports as well, so it doesn't
2840 trigger the selinux warnings.
2845 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="gentoo-ricers">
2846 <title>I compiled &my-app; with Gentoo's portage and it appears to be very slow. Why?</title>
2848 Probably you unintentionally compiled &my-app; without threading support
2849 in which case requests have to be serialized and only one can be served
2853 Check your <quote>USE</quote> flags and make sure they include
2854 <quote>threads</quote>. If they don't, add the flag and rebuild &my-app;.
2857 If you compiled &my-app; with threading support (on POSIX-based systems),
2858 the <quote>Conditional #defines</quote> section on <ulink
2859 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
2860 will list <quote>FEATURE_PTHREAD</quote> as <quote>enabled</quote>.
2867 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2868 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests</title>
2869 <!-- Include contacting.sgml -->
2871 <!-- end contacting -->
2874 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2875 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Privoxy Copyright, License and History</title>
2877 <!-- Include copyright.sgml -->
2883 Portions of this document are <quote>borrowed</quote> from the original
2884 <application>Junkbuster</application> (tm) FAQ, and modified as
2885 appropriate for <application>Privoxy</application>.
2888 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2889 <sect2><title>License</title>
2890 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
2892 <!-- end copyright -->
2894 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2896 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2897 <sect2><title>History</title>
2898 <!-- Include history.sgml -->
2904 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2907 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2909 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See also</title>
2911 <!-- Include seealso.sgml -->
2922 Tue 09/11/01 06:38:14 PM EST: Test SGML doc by Hal Burgiss.
2924 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
2925 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
2926 Public License as published by the Free Software
2927 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
2928 your option) any later version.
2930 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
2931 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
2932 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
2933 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
2934 License for more details.
2936 The GNU General Public License should be included with
2937 this file. If not, you can view it at
2938 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
2939 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
2940 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
2943 Revision 2.59 2009/03/28 15:33:41 fabiankeil
2944 Recommend the use of forward-socks5 when forwarding to Tor.
2945 The error messages are more detailed than with forward-socks4a.
2947 Revision 2.58 2009/03/21 12:27:44 fabiankeil
2948 Turn the donation entry title into a question,
2949 also rephrase the content a bit.
2951 Revision 2.57 2009/03/19 19:07:49 fabiankeil
2952 First draft of a "Donating" entry. To be polished tomorrow.
2954 Revision 2.56 2009/02/19 17:05:05 fabiankeil
2955 Explain slowness when build with Gentoo's portage.
2957 Revision 2.55 2009/02/19 02:20:21 hal9
2958 Make some links in seealso conditional. Man page is now privoxy only links.
2960 Revision 2.54 2009/02/15 20:47:12 hal9
2963 Revision 2.53 2009/02/15 20:46:13 hal9
2964 Update Outlook HTML rendering engine comments re: Office 2007.
2966 Revision 2.52 2009/02/14 10:27:52 fabiankeil
2967 Finish last paragraph in the selinux entry which
2968 I unintentionally committed with the last commit.
2970 Revision 2.51 2009/02/12 16:08:26 fabiankeil
2971 Declare the code stable.
2973 Revision 2.50 2009/02/11 18:13:36 fabiankeil
2976 Revision 2.49 2009/02/10 16:30:20 fabiankeil
2977 Add a workaround for "unauthenticated content" warnings on HTTPS sites.
2979 Revision 2.48 2009/01/13 16:50:35 fabiankeil
2980 The standard.action file is gone.
2982 Revision 2.47 2008/11/24 18:29:39 fabiankeil
2983 Two changes suggested by Roger Dingledine:
2984 - Use https://www.torproject.org/ in section 4.7, too.
2985 - Replace the Tor wiki URL in section 4.10 with one
2986 with a more useful anchor name.
2988 Revision 2.46 2008/08/30 15:37:35 fabiankeil
2991 Revision 2.45 2008/08/16 08:51:28 fabiankeil
2992 Update version-related entities.
2994 Revision 2.44 2008/06/19 01:41:36 hal9
2995 Add short note about zlib being enabled in 3.0.9
2997 Revision 2.43 2008/06/14 13:21:25 fabiankeil
2998 Prepare for the upcoming 3.0.9 beta release.
3000 Revision 2.42 2008/06/07 13:11:15 fabiankeil
3001 - Note that the "100% cpu problem" is worth
3002 reporting if it happens with a recent release.
3003 - Mention the hostname option as a workaround for
3004 the "can't get my own hostname" issue.
3005 - The profile formerly known as "Adventuresome"
3006 is called "Advanced" now.
3007 - Some white-space fixes.
3009 Revision 2.41 2008/06/06 15:32:09 fabiankeil
3011 - Don't claim that all the old Junkbuster features remain.
3012 Some of them have been removed or replaced with better ones.
3014 Revision 2.40 2008/02/22 05:54:27 markm68k
3015 updates for mac os x
3017 Revision 2.39 2008/02/03 21:37:41 hal9
3018 Apply patch from Mark: s/OSX/OS X/
3020 Revision 2.38 2008/01/19 17:52:39 hal9
3021 Re-commit to fix various minor issues for new release.
3023 Revision 2.37 2008/01/19 15:03:05 hal9
3024 Doc sources tagged for 3.0.8 release.
3026 Revision 2.36 2008/01/17 01:49:51 hal9
3027 Change copyright notice for docs s/2007/2008/. All these will be rebuilt soon
3030 Revision 2.35 2007/11/19 17:57:59 fabiankeil
3031 A bunch of rewordings, minor updates and fixes.
3033 Revision 2.34 2007/11/19 02:38:11 hal9
3034 Minor revisions and rebuild
3036 Revision 2.33 2007/11/15 03:30:20 hal9
3037 Results of spell check.
3039 Revision 2.32 2007/11/13 03:03:42 hal9
3040 Various changes to reflect new features and revised configuration for the
3043 Revision 2.31 2007/11/05 02:34:53 hal9
3044 Various changes in preparation for the upcoming release. Much yet to be done.
3046 Revision 2.30 2007/11/04 15:16:40 hal9
3049 Revision 2.29 2007/11/04 15:12:47 hal9
3050 Various minor adjustments.
3052 Revision 2.28 2007/10/27 15:14:16 fabiankeil
3053 Change Tor links to use the new domain torproject.org.
3055 Revision 2.27 2007/10/22 19:47:05 fabiankeil
3056 - Bump version and copyright.
3057 - Adjust Tor section to make it clear that forward exceptions
3058 aren't required and may not even be desired.
3059 - A bunch of other minor rewordings.
3060 - Fix markup problems Roland noticed (hopefully without adding new ones).
3062 Revision 2.26 2007/08/05 15:37:55 fabiankeil
3063 - Don't claim that thousands of people read our code.
3064 - Specify the GPL version and link to GPLv2 instead of v3.
3065 - Note that configuration syntax may change between releases.
3066 - Mention zlib support.
3067 - Answer the "transparent proxy" question properly.
3068 - Add "intercepting proxy" entry.
3070 - Rephrase some other sentences for various reasons.
3072 Revision 2.25 2007/07/18 11:00:34 hal9
3073 Add misc note about valid mark-up in Privoxy.
3075 Revision 2.24 2006/11/14 01:57:46 hal9
3076 Dump all docs prior to 3.0.6 release. Various minor changes to faq and user
3079 Revision 2.23 2006/10/21 22:19:52 hal9
3080 Two new FAQs, a rewrite or two, and some touch ups.
3082 Revision 2.22 2006/10/14 20:33:10 hal9
3083 Three new FAQ's re: templates and blocking, and various minor touch-ups/improvements.
3085 Revision 2.21 2006/10/03 14:40:51 fabiankeil
3086 Added links from the Tor faq to the
3087 configuration chapter in the User Manual.
3089 Revision 2.20 2006/09/26 10:12:37 fabiankeil
3092 Revision 2.19 2006/09/22 10:54:32 hal9
3093 Change references to 3.0.4 to 3.0.5 and minor adjustments.
3095 Revision 2.18 2006/09/22 01:27:55 hal9
3096 Final commit of probably various minor changes here and there. Unless
3097 something changes this should be ready for pending release.
3099 Revision 2.17 2006/09/17 14:56:32 hal9
3100 This includes yet several more new FAQs, some improved wording, enhanced
3101 mark-up, various hyper links to wikipedia to explain key terminology to the
3102 uninitiated, etc. This is ready for release IMO pending final tagging of cvs
3103 and Privoxy version stamping.
3105 Revision 2.16 2006/09/10 15:30:46 hal9
3108 Revision 2.15 2006/09/08 23:05:07 hal9
3109 Fix broken links. Add faq on hosts files. Move most of new windows service
3110 feature to user manual and reference in faq. Various other small changes.
3112 Revision 2.14 2006/09/05 13:25:12 david__schmidt
3113 Add Windows service invocation stuff (duplicated) in FAQ and in user manual under Windows startup. One probably ought to reference the other.
3115 Revision 2.13 2006/09/04 19:20:33 fabiankeil
3116 Adjusted anonymity related sections to match reality.
3117 Added a section about using Privoxy with Tor.
3119 Revision 2.12 2006/09/03 14:15:30 hal9
3120 Various updates, including 7 or 8 new FAQs, and updates/changes to various
3121 other ones to better reflect improvements, additions and changes for the
3122 upcoming release. This is close to final form for 3.0.4 IMHO.
3124 Revision 2.11 2006/07/18 14:48:50 david__schmidt
3125 Reorganizing the repository: swapping out what was HEAD (the old 3.1 branch)
3126 with what was really the latest development (the v_3_0_branch branch)
3128 Revision 1.61.2.41 2004/04/05 13:44:05 oes
3129 Fixed allow-all-cookies alias name; closes SR #929746
3131 Revision 1.61.2.40 2004/01/30 17:00:33 oes
3132 Added Mac OS X Panther problem
3134 Revision 1.61.2.39 2004/01/29 22:53:08 hal9
3135 Minor changes for exempting docs of text/plain. Change copyright date.
3137 Revision 1.61.2.38 2003/12/10 03:39:45 hal9
3138 Added FAQs for: demoronizer, related problems and why its included. Also,
3139 port 8118 already in use questions, and PrivoxyWindowOpen() questions. All in
3140 troubleshooting section.
3142 Revision 1.61.2.37 2003/10/17 11:01:50 oes
3143 Added Q&A for "not being used" page problem
3145 Revision 1.61.2.36 2003/06/26 23:49:20 hal9
3146 More on the filter/source code problem.
3148 Revision 1.61.2.35 2003/06/26 13:38:08 hal9
3149 Add FAQ on whether configuring Privoxy is necessary or not.
3151 Revision 1.61.2.34 2003/06/26 03:00:03 hal9
3152 Sorry, found another copyright date.
3154 Revision 1.61.2.33 2003/06/26 02:57:05 hal9
3155 Fix typo (finally!) and very minor modifications.
3157 Revision 1.61.2.32 2003/06/26 02:52:04 hal9
3160 Revision 1.61.2.31 2003/06/25 01:27:51 hal9
3161 Fix copyright, and a few nits.
3163 Revision 1.61.2.30 2003/06/25 01:13:52 hal9
3166 - FAQ on "Unable to get my own hostname"
3167 - Another one on filtering effects on text files.
3169 Revision 1.61.2.29 2003/06/15 21:32:58 hal9
3170 Add to the 4.17 (filtering effects on downloaded files).
3172 Revision 1.61.2.28 2003/03/18 19:37:21 oes
3173 s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
3175 Revision 1.61.2.27 2002/12/01 06:31:58 hal9
3176 Add faq on win32 error 503 due to ZoneAlarm.
3178 Revision 1.61.2.26 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
3179 Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
3182 Revision 1.61.2.25 2002/10/29 03:21:50 hal9
3183 Add 3 Q/A's relating to HTML in email. Other minor touchups.
3185 Revision 1.61.2.24 2002/10/15 12:50:22 oes
3186 s/Advanced/Radical/ (stupid me)
3188 Revision 1.61.2.23 2002/10/15 12:38:56 oes
3189 Added Microsuck faq; more detail for PHP problem
3191 Revision 1.61.2.22 2002/10/12 01:13:13 hal9
3192 Updates for demoronizer, more commentary on Radical profile, and update on
3193 the srvany.exe/icon fix.
3195 Revision 1.61.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
3196 s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
3198 Revision 1.61.2.20 2002/09/26 01:22:45 hal9
3199 Small additions for LAN setup, content-cookies/SSL, and FTP non-support.
3201 Revision 1.61.2.19 2002/08/25 23:31:56 hal9
3202 Fix one grammatical error. Add brief FAQ relating to tranparent proxies (ie
3203 port 80 setting). Add FAQ on effects of Privoxy on downloaded files
3204 (especially filtering).
3206 Revision 1.61.2.18 2002/08/14 16:39:37 hal9
3207 Fix wrong tag on FAQ addition.
3209 Revision 1.61.2.17 2002/08/14 00:01:18 hal9
3212 Revision 1.61.2.16 2002/08/13 00:10:38 hal9
3213 Add faq to troubleshooting re: blank page syndrome, ie {-prevent-compression}.
3215 Revision 1.61.2.15 2002/08/10 11:34:22 oes
3216 Add disclaimer about probably being out-of-date
3218 Revision 1.61.2.14 2002/08/07 02:53:43 hal9
3219 Fix some minor markup errors, and move one Mac OS X Q/A to troubleshooting section.
3221 Revision 1.61.2.13 2002/08/06 11:55:32 oes
3222 Added missing close tag
3224 Revision 1.61.2.12 2002/08/06 11:43:46 david__schmidt
3225 Updated Mac OS X uninstall FAQ... we have an uninstall script now.
3227 Revision 1.61.2.11 2002/08/06 08:54:03 oes
3228 Style police: Fixed formatting details
3230 Revision 1.61.2.10 2002/08/02 14:00:25 david__schmidt
3231 Made the Mac OS X removal commands far less dangerous
3233 Revision 1.61.2.9 2002/08/02 13:14:45 oes
3234 Added warning about sudo rm -r for Mac OS X deinstallation; moved this item to install section
3236 Revision 1.61.2.8 2002/08/02 02:01:42 david__schmidt
3237 Add FAQ item for MSIE on Mac OS X HTTP proxy confusion
3239 Revision 1.61.2.7 2002/08/02 01:46:01 david__schmidt
3240 Added FAQ item for Mac OS X uninstall woes
3242 Revision 1.61.2.6 2002/07/30 20:04:56 hal9
3243 Fix typo: 'schould'.
3245 Revision 1.61.2.5 2002/07/26 15:22:58 oes
3246 - Updated to reflect changes in standard.action
3247 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
3249 Revision 1.61.2.4 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
3250 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
3252 Revision 1.61.2.3 2002/06/09 16:36:33 hal9
3253 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
3255 Revision 1.61.2.2 2002/06/06 02:51:34 hal9
3256 Fix typo in URL http:/config.privoxy.org
3258 Revision 1.61.2.1 2002/06/05 23:10:43 hal9
3259 Add new FAQ re: DUN/IE. Change release date from May to June :)
3261 Revision 1.61 2002/05/25 12:37:25 hal9
3262 Various minor changes and edits.
3264 Revision 1.60 2002/05/22 17:17:48 oes
3265 Proofread & added more links into u-m
3267 Revision 1.59 2002/05/15 04:03:30 hal9
3268 Fix ulink -> link markup.
3270 Revision 1.58 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
3271 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
3272 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
3273 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
3275 Revision 1.57 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
3276 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
3278 Revision 1.56 2002/05/04 08:44:44 swa
3281 Revision 1.55 2002/05/04 00:41:56 hal9
3282 -Remove TOC/first page kludge in favor of proper handling via dsl file.
3284 Revision 1.54 2002/05/03 05:06:44 hal9
3285 Add brief Q/A on transparent proxies.
3287 Revision 1.53 2002/05/03 01:34:52 hal9
3288 Fix section numbering for new sections (due to TOC kludge).
3290 Revision 1.52 2002/04/29 03:08:43 hal9
3291 -Added new Q/A on new actions file set up (pointer to u-m)
3292 -Fixed a few broken links and converted old actions as a result of
3295 Revision 1.51 2002/04/26 17:24:31 swa
3296 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
3298 Revision 1.50 2002/04/26 05:25:23 hal9
3299 Mass commit to catch a few scattered fixes.
3301 Revision 1.49 2002/04/12 10:10:18 swa
3304 Revision 1.48 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
3307 Revision 1.47 2002/04/10 04:05:32 hal9
3310 Revision 1.45 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
3311 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
3313 Revision 1.44 2002/04/07 21:24:29 hal9
3314 Touch up on name change.
3316 Revision 1.43 2002/04/04 21:59:53 hal9
3317 Added NT/W2K service/icon situation.
3319 Revision 1.42 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
3320 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
3322 Revision 1.41 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
3323 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
3324 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
3325 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
3326 eventually be set by Makefile.
3327 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
3329 Revision 1.40 2002/04/03 04:22:03 hal9
3330 Fixed several typos.
3332 Revision 1.39 2002/04/03 03:53:03 hal9
3333 Revert some changes, and then make some news, to layout, and appearance.
3335 Revision 1.38 2002/04/02 03:49:10 hal9
3336 Major changes to doc structure and layout. Sections are not automatically
3337 numbered now. TOC is on page by itself.
3339 Revision 1.37 2002/04/01 16:24:07 hal9
3340 -Rework of supported Q/A.
3341 -Set up entities to include boilerplate text.
3343 Revision 1.36 2002/03/31 23:18:47 hal9
3344 More on dealing with BLOCKED.
3346 Revision 1.35 2002/03/30 04:14:19 hal9
3347 Fix privoxy.org/config links.
3349 Revision 1.34 2002/03/29 04:35:56 hal9
3352 Revision 1.33 2002/03/29 01:31:48 hal9
3353 Several new Q/A's and other touch ups.
3355 Revision 1.32 2002/03/27 00:57:03 hal9
3356 Touch ups for name change.
3358 Revision 1.31 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
3359 we have a new homepage!
3361 Revision 1.30 2002/03/25 16:39:22 hal9
3362 A few new sections. Made all links relative to user-manual.
3364 Revision 1.29 2002/03/25 05:23:57 hal9
3365 Moved section, and touch ups.
3367 Revision 1.28 2002/03/25 04:27:33 hal9
3368 New section related to name change.
3370 Revision 1.25 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
3371 we are too lazy to make a block-built
3372 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
3374 Revision 1.24 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
3375 name change related issue.
3377 Revision 1.23 2002/03/24 12:33:01 swa
3380 Revision 1.22 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
3381 name change. changed filenames.
3383 Revision 1.21 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
3386 Revision 1.20 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
3387 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
3388 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
3389 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
3390 comments and remarks to history untouched.
3392 Revision 1.19 2002/03/21 17:01:54 hal9
3395 Revision 1.18 2002/03/18 16:40:31 hal9
3398 Revision 1.17 2002/03/18 03:53:53 hal9
3401 Revision 1.16 2002/03/17 21:32:56 hal9
3402 A few more additions.
3404 Revision 1.15 2002/03/17 07:25:59 hal9
3405 Correcting some of my typos, and some additions.
3407 Revision 1.14 2002/03/17 02:39:13 hal9
3408 A little more added ...
3410 Revision 1.13 2002/03/17 00:22:20 hal9
3411 Adding new stuff, and trying to incorporate stuff from old faq.
3413 Revision 1.12 2002/03/11 20:13:21 swa
3416 Revision 1.11 2002/03/11 18:42:27 swa
3419 Revision 1.10 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
3420 correct feedback channels
3422 Revision 1.9 2002/03/10 23:34:04 swa
3423 more info on not hiding ip address
3425 Revision 1.8 2002/03/09 15:55:48 swa
3426 added default config section
3428 Revision 1.7 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
3431 Revision 1.6 2002/03/07 13:16:31 oes
3432 Committing changes by Stefan
3434 Revision 1.5 2002/03/02 15:50:04 swa
3435 2.9.11 version. more input for docs.
3437 Revision 1.4 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
3438 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
3439 will work - no other changes are needed.
3441 Revision 1.3 2001/09/23 10:13:48 swa
3442 upload process established. run make webserver and
3443 the documentation is moved to the webserver. documents
3444 are now linked correctly.
3446 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:20:17 swa
3447 merged standards into developer manual
3449 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
3450 source files for junkbuster documentation
3452 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
3453 first proposal of a structure.
3455 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
3456 docs should have an author.
3458 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
3459 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.