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 buildsource SYSTEM "buildsource.sgml">
8 <!entity contacting SYSTEM "contacting.sgml">
9 <!entity history SYSTEM "history.sgml">
10 <!entity copyright SYSTEM "copyright.sgml">
11 <!entity license SYSTEM "license.sgml">
12 <!entity p-authors SYSTEM "p-authors.sgml">
13 <!entity config SYSTEM "p-config.sgml">
14 <!entity p-version "3.0.14">
15 <!entity p-status "BETA">
16 <!entity % p-authors-formal "INCLUDE"> <!-- include additional text, etc -->
17 <!entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE">
18 <!entity % p-stable "IGNORE">
19 <!entity % p-text "IGNORE"> <!-- define we are not a text only doc -->
20 <!entity % p-doc "INCLUDE"> <!-- and we are a formal doc -->
21 <!entity % p-readme "IGNORE">
22 <!entity % user-man "IGNORE">
23 <!entity % config-file "IGNORE">
24 <!entity % p-supp-userman "IGNORE"> <!-- Omit some from supported.sgml -->
25 <!entity my-copy "©"> <!-- kludge for docbook2man -->
26 <!entity % draft "IGNORE"> <!-- WIP stuff -->
27 <!entity % seealso-extra "INCLUDE"> <!-- extra stuff from seealso.sgml -->
28 <!entity my-app "<application>Privoxy</application>">
31 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml,v $
34 This file belongs into
35 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
37 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.110 2009/07/18 16:25:17 fabiankeil Exp $
39 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Privoxy Developers http://www.privoxy.org/
42 ========================================================================
43 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
44 anything in this, or other Privoxy documentation.
45 ========================================================================
52 <title>Privoxy &p-version; User Manual</title>
56 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
57 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
58 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001-2009 by
59 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
63 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.110 2009/07/18 16:25:17 fabiankeil Exp $</pubdate>
67 Note: the following should generate a separate page, and a live link to it,
68 all nicely done. But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave
69 commented unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the
70 copyright/license declarations will be in their own sgml.
83 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
84 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
85 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
91 The <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> gives users information on how to
92 install, configure and use <ulink
93 url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy</ulink>.
96 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
98 <!-- end privoxy.sgml -->
101 You can find the latest version of the <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> at <ulink
102 url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>.
103 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> on how to
104 contact the developers.
108 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
114 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
115 <sect1 label="1" id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
117 This documentation is included with the current &p-status; version of
118 <application>Privoxy</application>, v.&p-version;<![%p-not-stable;[,
119 and is mostly complete at this point. The most up to date reference for the
120 time being is still the comments in the source files and in the individual
121 configuration files. Development of a new version is currently nearing
122 completion, and includes significant changes and enhancements over
123 earlier versions.]]>.
126 <!-- include only in non-stable versions -->
129 Since this is a &p-status; version, not all new features are well tested. This
130 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with
131 CVS sources). And there <emphasis>may be</emphasis> bugs, though hopefully
136 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
137 <sect2 id="features"><title>Features</title>
139 In addition to the core
140 features of ad blocking and
141 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookie</ulink> management,
142 <application>Privoxy</application> provides many supplemental
143 features<![%p-not-stable;[, some of them currently under development]]>,
144 that give the end-user more control, more privacy and more freedom:
146 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml boilerplate here: -->
148 <!-- end boilerplate -->
153 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
156 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
157 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
160 <application>Privoxy</application> is available both in convenient pre-compiled
161 packages for a wide range of operating systems, and as raw source code.
162 For most users, we recommend using the packages, which can be downloaded from our
163 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Project
169 On some platforms, the installer may remove previously installed versions, if
170 found. (See below for your platform). In any case <emphasis>be sure to backup
171 your old configuration if it is valuable to you.</emphasis> See the <link
172 linkend="upgradersnote">note to upgraders</link> section below.
175 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
176 <sect2 id="installation-packages"><title>Binary Packages</title>
178 How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
181 <!-- XXX: The installation sections should be sorted -->
183 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
184 <sect3 id="installation-pack-rpm"><title>Red Hat and Fedora RPMs</title>
187 RPMs can be installed with <literal>rpm -Uvh privoxy-&p-version;-1.rpm</literal>,
188 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location
189 of configuration files.
193 Note that on Red Hat, <application>Privoxy</application> will
194 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be automatically started on system boot. You will
195 need to enable that using <command>chkconfig</command>,
196 <command>ntsysv</command>, or similar methods.
200 If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM:
201 <literal>rpm --rebuild privoxy-&p-version;-1.src.rpm</literal>. This
202 will use your locally installed libraries and RPM version.
206 Also note that if you have a <application>Junkbuster</application> RPM installed
207 on your system, you need to remove it first, because the packages conflict.
208 Otherwise, RPM will try to remove <application>Junkbuster</application>
209 automatically if found, before installing <application>Privoxy</application>.
213 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
214 <sect3 id="installation-deb"><title>Debian and Ubuntu</title>
216 DEBs can be installed with <literal>apt-get install privoxy</literal>,
217 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location of
222 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
223 <sect3 id="installation-pack-win"><title>Windows</title>
226 Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through
227 the installation process. You will find the configuration files
228 in the same directory as you installed <application>Privoxy</application> in.
231 Version 3.0.5 beta introduced full <application>Windows</application> service
232 functionality. On Windows only, the <application>Privoxy</application>
233 program has two new command line arguments to install and uninstall
234 <application>Privoxy</application> as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>.
238 <term>Arguments:</term>
241 <replaceable class="parameter">--install</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
244 <replaceable class="parameter">--uninstall</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
250 After invoking <application>Privoxy</application> with
251 <command>--install</command>, you will need to bring up the
252 <application>Windows</application> service console to assign the user you
253 want <application>Privoxy</application> to run under, and whether or not you
254 want it to run whenever the system starts. You can start the
255 <application>Windows</application> services console with the following
256 command: <command>services.msc</command>. If you do not take the manual step
257 of modifying <application>Privoxy's</application> service settings, it will
258 not start. Note too that you will need to give Privoxy a user account that
259 actually exists, or it will not be permitted to
260 write to its log and configuration files.
265 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
266 <sect3 id="installation-pack-bintgz"><title>Solaris <!--, NetBSD, HP-UX--></title>
269 Create a new directory, <literal>cd</literal> to it, then unzip and
270 untar the archive. For the most part, you'll have to figure out where
271 things go. <!-- FIXME, more info needed? -->
275 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
276 <sect3 id="installation-os2"><title>OS/2</title>
279 First, make sure that no previous installations of
280 <application>Junkbuster</application> and / or
281 <application>Privoxy</application> are left on your
282 system. Check that no <application>Junkbuster</application>
283 or <application>Privoxy</application> objects are in
289 Then, just double-click the WarpIN self-installing archive, which will
290 guide you through the installation process. A shadow of the
291 <application>Privoxy</application> executable will be placed in your
292 startup folder so it will start automatically whenever OS/2 starts.
296 The directory you choose to install <application>Privoxy</application>
297 into will contain all of the configuration files.
301 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
302 <sect3 id="installation-mac"><title>Mac OS X</title>
304 Unzip the downloaded file (you can either double-click on the zip file
305 icon from the Finder, or from the desktop if you downloaded it there).
306 Then, double-click on the package installer icon and follow the
307 installation process.
310 The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful
311 installation (in addition to every time your computer starts up). To
312 prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your
313 computer starts up, remove or rename the folder named
314 <literal>/Library/StartupItems/Privoxy</literal>.
317 To manually start or stop the privoxy service, use the Privoxy Utility
318 for Mac OS X. This application controls the privoxy service (e.g.
319 starting and stopping the service as well as uninstalling the software).
323 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
324 <sect3 id="installation-amiga"><title>AmigaOS</title>
326 Copy and then unpack the <filename>lha</filename> archive to a suitable location.
327 All necessary files will be installed into <application>Privoxy</application>
328 directory, including all configuration and log files. To uninstall, just
329 remove this directory.
333 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
334 <sect3 id="installation-tbz"><title>FreeBSD</title>
337 Privoxy is part of FreeBSD's Ports Collection, you can build and install
338 it with <literal>cd /usr/ports/www/privoxy; make install clean</literal>.
341 If you don't use the ports, you can fetch and install
342 the package with <literal>pkg_add -r privoxy</literal>.
345 The port skeleton and the package can also be downloaded from the
346 <ulink url="https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">File Release
347 Page</ulink>, but there's no reason to use them unless you're interested in the
348 beta releases which are only available there.
352 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
353 <sect3 id="installattion-gentoo"><title>Gentoo</title>
355 Gentoo source packages (Ebuilds) for <application>Privoxy</application> are
356 contained in the Gentoo Portage Tree (they are not on the download page,
357 but there is a Gentoo section, where you can see when a new
358 <application>Privoxy</application> Version is added to the Portage Tree).
361 Before installing <application>Privoxy</application> under Gentoo just do
362 first <literal>emerge --sync</literal> to get the latest changes from the
363 Portage tree. With <literal>emerge privoxy</literal> you install the latest
367 Configuration files are in <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename>, the
368 documentation is in <filename>/usr/share/doc/privoxy-&p-version;</filename>
369 and the Log directory is in <filename>/var/log/privoxy</filename>.
375 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
376 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Building from Source</title>
379 The most convenient way to obtain the <application>Privoxy</application> sources
380 is to download the source tarball from our
381 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&package_id=10571">project download
386 If you like to live on the bleeding edge and are not afraid of using
387 possibly unstable development versions, you can check out the up-to-the-minute
388 version directly from <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=11118">the
389 CVS repository</ulink>.
391 deprecated...out of business.
392 or simply download <ulink
393 url="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/ijbswa-cvsroot.tar.bz2">the nightly CVS
398 <!-- include buildsource.sgml boilerplate: -->
400 <!-- end boilerplate -->
403 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
404 <sect2 id="installation-keepupdated"><title>Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date</title>
406 As user feedback comes in and development continues, we will make updated versions
407 of both the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link> (as a <ulink
408 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&release_id=103670">separate
409 package</ulink>) and the software itself (including the actions file) available for
414 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
415 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
416 url="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-announce/">subscribe
417 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
421 In order not to lose your personal changes and adjustments when updating
422 to the latest <literal>default.action</literal> file we <emphasis>strongly
423 recommend</emphasis> that you use <literal>user.action</literal> and
424 <literal>user.filter</literal> for your local
425 customizations of <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
426 linkend="actions-file">Chapter on actions files</link> for details.
434 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
436 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
437 <sect1 id="whatsnew">
438 <title>What's New in this Release</title>
440 <application>Privoxy 3.0.14 Beta</application> is a bugfix-release
441 for the previous beta which introduced IPv6 support, improved keep-alive
442 support and a bunch of minor improvements. The changes since 3.0.12:
449 Added IPv6 support. Thanks to Petr Pisar who not only provided
450 the initial patch but also helped a lot with the integration.
455 Added client-side keep-alive support.
460 The connection sharing code is only used if the connection-sharing
466 The latency is taken into account when evaluating whether or not to
467 reuse a connection. This should significantly reduce the number of
468 connections problems several users reported.
473 The max-client-connections option has been added to restrict
474 the number of client connections below a value enforced by
475 the operating system.
480 If the server doesn't specify how long the connection stays alive,
481 Privoxy errs on the safe side of caution and assumes it's only a second.
486 Setting keep-alive-timeout to 0 disables keep-alive support. Previously
487 Privoxy would claim to allow persistence but not reuse the connection.
492 Pipelined requests are less likely to be mistaken for the request
493 body of the previous request. Note that Privoxy still has no real
494 pipeline support and will either serialize pipelined requests or
495 drop them in which case the client has to resent them.
500 Fixed a crash on some Windows versions when header randomization
501 is enabled and the date couldn't be parsed.
506 Privoxy's keep-alive timeout for the current connection is reduced
507 to the one specified in the client's Keep-Alive header.
512 For HTTP/1.1 requests, Privoxy implies keep-alive support by not
513 setting any Connection header instead of using 'Connection: keep-alive'.
518 If the socket isn't reusable, Privoxy doesn't temporarily waste
519 a socket slot to remember the connection.
524 If keep-alive support is disabled but compiled in, the client's
525 Keep-Alive header is removed.
530 Fixed a bug on mingw32 where downloading large files failed if
531 keep-alive support was enabled.
536 Fixed a bug that (at least theoretically) could cause log
537 timestamps to be occasionally off by about a second.
542 The configure script respects the $PATH variable when searching
548 Compressed content with extra fields couldn't be decompressed
549 and would get passed to the client unfiltered. This problem
550 has only be detected through statical analysis with clang as
551 nobody seems to be using extra fields anyway.
556 If the server resets the Connection after sending only the headers
557 Privoxy forwards what it got to the client. Previously Privoxy
558 would deliver an error message instead.
563 Error messages in case of connection timeouts use the right
569 If spawning a child to handle a request fails, the client
570 gets an error message and Privoxy continues to listen for
571 new requests right away.
576 The error messages in case of server-connection timeouts or
577 prematurely closed server connections are now template-based.
582 If zlib support isn't compiled in, Privoxy no longer tries to
583 filter compressed content unless explicitly asked to do so.
588 In case of connections that are denied based on ACL directives,
589 the memory used for the client IP is no longer leaked.
594 Fixed another small memory leak if the client request times out
595 while waiting for client headers other than the request line.
600 The client socket is kept open until the server socket has
601 been marked as unused. This should increase the chances that
602 the still-open connection will be reused for the client's next
603 request to the same destination. Note that this only matters
604 if connection-sharing is enabled.
609 A TODO list has been added to the source tarballs to give potential
610 volunteers a better idea of what the current goals are. Donations
611 are still welcome too: http://www.privoxy.org/faq/general.html#DONATE
618 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
620 <sect2 id="upgradersnote">
621 <title>Note to Upgraders</title>
624 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier
625 versions of <application>Privoxy</application>:
633 The recommended way to upgrade &my-app; is to backup your old
634 configuration files, install the new ones, verify that &my-app;
635 is working correctly and finally merge back your changes using
636 <application>diff</application> and maybe <application>patch</application>.
639 There are a number of new features in each &my-app; release and
640 most of them have to be explicitly enabled in the configuration
641 files. Old configuration files obviously don't do that and due
642 to syntax changes using old configuration files with a new
643 &my-app; isn't always possible anyway.
648 Note that some installers remove earlier versions completely,
649 including configuration files, therefore you should really save
650 any important configuration files!
655 On the other hand, other installers don't overwrite existing configuration
656 files, thinking you will want to do that yourself.
661 <filename>standard.action</filename> has been merged into
662 the <filename>default.action</filename> file.
667 In the default configuration only fatal errors are logged now.
668 You can change that in the <link linkend="DEBUG">debug section</link>
669 of the configuration file. You may also want to enable more verbose
670 logging until you verified that the new &my-app; version is working
677 Three other config file settings are now off by default:
678 <link linkend="enable-remote-toggle">enable-remote-toggle</link>,
679 <link linkend="enable-remote-http-toggle">enable-remote-http-toggle</link>,
680 and <link linkend="enable-edit-actions">enable-edit-actions</link>.
681 If you use or want these, you will need to explicitly enable them, and
682 be aware of the security issues involved.
689 What constitutes a <quote>default</quote> configuration has changed,
690 and you may want to review which actions are <quote>on</quote> by
691 default. This is primarily a matter of emphasis, but some features
692 you may have been used to, may now be <quote>off</quote> by default.
693 There are also a number of new actions and filters you may want to
694 consider, most of which are not fully incorporated into the default
695 settings as yet (see above).
702 The default actions setting is now <literal>Cautious</literal>. Previous
703 releases had a default setting of <literal>Medium</literal>. Experienced
704 users may want to adjust this, as it is fairly conservative by &my-app;
705 standards and past practices. See <ulink
706 url="http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default">
707 http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default</ulink>. New users
708 should try the default settings for a while before turning up the volume.
714 The default setting has filtering turned <emphasis>off</emphasis>, which
715 subsequently means that compression is <emphasis>on</emphasis>. Remember
716 that filtering does not work on compressed pages, so if you use, or want to
717 use, filtering, you will need to force compression off. Example:
721 { +<link linkend="filter">filter</link>{google} +<link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link> }
725 Or if you use a number of filters, or filter many sites, you may just want
726 to turn off compression for all sites in
727 <filename>default.action</filename> (or
728 <filename>user.action</filename>).
735 Also, <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> is
736 off by default now. If you've liked this feature in the past, you may want
737 to turn it back on in <filename>user.action</filename> now.
744 Some installers may not automatically start
745 <application>Privoxy</application> after installation.
756 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
757 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using Privoxy</title>
763 Install <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
764 linkend="installation">Installation Section</link> below for platform specific
771 Advanced users and those who want to offer <application>Privoxy</application>
772 service to more than just their local machine should check the <link
773 linkend="config">main config file</link>, especially the <link
774 linkend="access-control">security-relevant</link> options. These are
781 Start <application>Privoxy</application>, if the installation program has
782 not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
783 <link linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link>.
789 Set your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application> as HTTP and
790 HTTPS (SSL) <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>
791 by setting the proxy configuration for address of
792 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> and port <literal>8118</literal>.
793 <emphasis>DO NOT</emphasis> activate proxying for <literal>FTP</literal> or
794 any protocols besides HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) unless you intend to prevent your
795 browser from using these protocols.
801 Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad images.
802 If using <application>Privoxy</application> to manage
803 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
804 you should remove any currently stored cookies too.
810 A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for
811 most. There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
812 configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little
813 to no initial configuration is required in most cases, you may want
815 <ulink url="config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">web-based action editor</ulink> though.
816 Be sure to read the warnings first.
819 See the <link linkend="configuration">Configuration section</link> for more
820 configuration options, and how to customize your installation.
821 You might also want to look at the <link
822 linkend="quickstart-ad-blocking">next section</link> for a quick
823 introduction to how <application>Privoxy</application> blocks ads and
830 If you experience ads that slip through, innocent images that are
831 blocked, or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune
832 <application>Privoxy's</application> behavior, take a look at the <link
833 linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>. As a quick start, you might
834 find the <link linkend="act-examples">richly commented examples</link>
835 helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files through the <ulink
836 url="http://config.privoxy.org">web-based user interface</ulink>. The
837 Appendix <quote><link linkend="actionsanat">Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an
838 Action</link></quote> has hints on how to understand and debug actions that
839 <quote>misbehave</quote>.
844 Did anyone test these lately?
848 For easy access to &my-app;'s most important controls, drag the provided
849 <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklets</link> into your browser's
857 Please see the section <link linkend="contact">Contacting the
858 Developers</link> on how to report bugs, problems with websites or to get
865 Now enjoy surfing with enhanced control, comfort and privacy!
873 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
875 <sect2 id="quickstart-ad-blocking">
876 <title>Quickstart to Ad Blocking</title>
878 NOTE: This section is deliberately redundant for those that don't
879 want to read the whole thing (which is getting lengthy).
882 Ad blocking is but one of <application>Privoxy's</application>
883 array of features. Many of these features are for the technically minded advanced
884 user. But, ad and banner blocking is surely common ground for everybody.
887 This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so
888 you can get up to speed quickly without having to read the more extensive
889 information provided below, though this is highly recommended.
892 First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the
893 more aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block
894 things that were not intended. And the more likely that some things
895 may not work as intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want
896 extreme ad free browsing, be prepared to deal with more
897 <quote>problem</quote> sites, and to spend more time adjusting the
898 configuration to solve these unintended consequences. In short, there is
899 not an easy way to eliminate <emphasis>all</emphasis> ads. Either take
900 the easy way and settle for <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads blocked with the
901 default configuration, or jump in and tweak it for your personal surfing
902 habits and preferences.
905 Secondly, a brief explanation of <application>Privoxy's </application>
906 <quote>actions</quote>. <quote>Actions</quote> in this context, are
907 the directives we use to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to perform
908 some task relating to HTTP transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell
909 <application>Privoxy</application> to take some <quote>action</quote>. Each
910 action has a unique name and function. While there are many potential
911 <application>actions</application> in <application>Privoxy's</application>
912 arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking. <link
913 linkend="actions">Actions</link>, and <link linkend="actions-file">action
914 configuration files</link>, are explained in depth below.
917 Actions are specified in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
918 followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
919 can actually be URL type <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> that use
920 wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs. The
921 actions, together with the URL patterns are called a section.
924 When you connect to a website, the full URL will either match one or more
925 of the sections as defined in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
926 or not. If so, then <application>Privoxy</application> will perform the
927 respective actions. If not, then nothing special happens. Furthermore, web
928 pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web browser will
929 use to load additional components of the page, as it parses the
930 original page's HTML content. An ad image for instance, is just an URL
931 embedded in the page somewhere. The image itself may be on the same server,
932 or a server somewhere else on the Internet. Complex web pages will have many
933 such embedded URLs. &my-app; can deal with each URL individually, so, for
934 instance, the main page text is not touched, but images from such-and-such
939 The most important actions for basic ad blocking are: <literal><link
940 linkend="block">block</link></literal>, <literal><link
941 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
943 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal>,and
944 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>:
952 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> - this is perhaps
953 the single most used action, and is particularly important for ad blocking.
954 This action stops any contact between your browser and any URL patterns
955 that match this action's configuration. It can be used for blocking ads,
956 but also anything that is determined to be unwanted. By itself, it simply
957 stops any communication with the remote server and sends
958 <application>Privoxy</application>'s own built-in BLOCKED page instead to
959 let you now what has happened (with some exceptions, see below).
965 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> -
966 tells <application>Privoxy</application> to treat this URL as an image.
967 <application>Privoxy</application>'s default configuration already does this
968 for all common image types (e.g. GIF), but there are many situations where this
969 is not so easy to determine. So we'll force it in these cases. This is particularly
970 important for ad blocking, since only if we know that it's an image of
971 some kind, can we replace it with an image of our choosing, instead of the
972 <application>Privoxy</application> BLOCKED page (which would only result in
973 a <quote>broken image</quote> icon). There are some limitations to this
974 though. For instance, you can't just brute-force an image substitution for
975 an entire HTML page in most situations.
981 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> -
982 sends an empty document instead of <application>Privoxy's</application>
983 normal BLOCKED HTML page. This is useful for file types that are neither
984 HTML nor images, such as blocking JavaScript files.
991 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> - tells
992 <application>Privoxy</application> what to display in place of an ad image that
993 has hit a block rule. For this to come into play, the URL must match a
994 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action somewhere in the
995 configuration, <emphasis>and</emphasis>, it must also match an
996 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action.
999 The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
1003 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad
1004 replacement is obvious. This is the default.
1009 <emphasis>blank</emphasis> - A very small empty GIF image is displayed.
1010 This is the so-called <quote>invisible</quote> configuration option.
1015 <emphasis>http://<URL></emphasis> - A redirect to any image anywhere
1016 of the user's choosing (advanced usage).
1025 Advanced users will eventually want to explore &my-app;
1026 <literal><link linkend="filter">filters</link></literal> as well. Filters
1027 are very different from <literal><link
1028 linkend="block">blocks</link></literal>.
1029 A <quote>block</quote> blocks a site, page, or unwanted contented. Filters
1030 are a way of filtering or modifying what is actually on the page. An example
1031 filter usage: a text replacement of <quote>no-no</quote> for
1032 <quote>nasty-word</quote>. That is a very simple example. This process can be
1033 used for ad blocking, but it is more in the realm of advanced usage and has
1034 some pitfalls to be wary off.
1038 The quickest way to adjust any of these settings is with your browser through
1039 the special <application>Privoxy</application> editor at <ulink
1040 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1041 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>). This
1042 is an internal page, and does not require Internet access.
1046 Note that as of <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.7 beta the
1047 action editor is disabled by default. Check the
1048 <ulink url="config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions
1049 section in the configuration file</ulink> to learn why and in which
1050 cases it's safe to enable again.
1054 If you decided to enable the action editor, select the appropriate
1055 <quote>actions</quote> file, and click
1056 <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>. It is best to put personal or
1057 local preferences in <filename>user.action</filename> since this is not
1058 meant to be overwritten during upgrades, and will over-ride the settings in
1059 other files. Here you can insert new <quote>actions</quote>, and URLs for ad
1060 blocking or other purposes, and make other adjustments to the configuration.
1061 <application>Privoxy</application> will detect these changes automatically.
1065 A quick and simple step by step example:
1073 Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select
1074 <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote> from the
1082 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1087 Find <filename>user.action</filename> in the top section, and click
1088 on <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>:
1091 <!-- image of editor and actions files selections -->
1093 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Actions Files in Use</title>
1096 <imagedata fileref="files-in-use.jpg" format="jpg">
1099 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Actions Files in Use ]</phrase>
1108 You should have a section with only
1109 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> listed under
1110 <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1111 If not, click a <quote><guibutton>Insert new section below</guibutton></quote>
1112 button, and in the new section that just appeared, click the
1113 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button right under the word <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1114 This will bring up a list of all actions. Find
1115 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> near the top, and click
1116 in the <quote>Enabled</quote> column, then <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote>
1117 just below the list.
1122 Now, in the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> actions section,
1123 click the <quote><guibutton>Add</guibutton></quote> button, and paste the URL the
1124 browser got from <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote>.
1125 Remove the <literal>http://</literal> at the beginning of the URL. Then, click
1126 <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote> (or
1127 <quote><guibutton>OK</guibutton></quote> if in a pop-up window).
1132 Now go back to the original page, and press <keycap>SHIFT-Reload</keycap>
1133 (or flush all browser caches). The image should be gone now.
1141 This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
1142 wildcard pattern match to include potentially similar images from the same
1143 site. For a more extensive explanation of <quote>patterns</quote>, and
1144 the entire actions concept, see <link linkend="actions-file">the Actions
1149 For advanced users who want to hand edit their config files, you might want
1150 to now go to the <link linkend="act-examples">Actions Files Tutorial</link>.
1151 The ideas explained therein also apply to the web-based editor.
1154 There are also various
1155 <link linkend="filter">filters</link> that can be used for ad blocking
1156 (filters are a special subset of actions). These
1157 fall into the <quote>advanced</quote> usage category, and are explained in
1158 depth in later sections.
1165 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1168 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1169 <sect1 id="startup">
1170 <title>Starting Privoxy</title>
1172 Before launching <application>Privoxy</application> for the first time, you
1173 will want to configure your browser(s) to use
1174 <application>Privoxy</application> as a HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)
1175 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>. The default is
1176 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions
1177 used port 8000). This is the one configuration step <emphasis>that must be done
1181 Please note that <application>Privoxy</application> can only proxy HTTP and
1182 HTTPS traffic. It will not work with FTP or other protocols.
1185 <!-- image of Mozilla Proxy configuration -->
1187 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1188 Mozilla/Netscape HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) Settings</title>
1191 <imagedata fileref="proxy_setup.jpg" format="jpg">
1194 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Mozilla Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1202 With <application>Firefox</application>, this is typically set under:
1206 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Network</guibutton> -><guibutton>Connection</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Settings</guibutton>
1211 Or optionally on some platforms:
1215 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>General</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connection Settings</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Manual Proxy Configuration</guibutton>
1221 With <application>Netscape</application> (and
1222 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under:
1227 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
1228 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
1229 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Proxies</guibutton> -> <guibutton>HTTP Proxy</guibutton>
1234 For <application>Internet Explorer v.5-7</application>:
1238 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Internet Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connections</guibutton> -> <guibutton>LAN Settings</guibutton>
1242 Then, check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info
1243 (Address: 127.0.0.1, Port: 8118). Include HTTPS (SSL), if you want HTTPS
1244 proxy support too (sometimes labeled <quote>Secure</quote>). Make sure any
1245 checkboxes like <quote>Use the same proxy server for all protocols</quote> is
1246 <emphasis>UNCHECKED</emphasis>. You want only HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)!
1249 <!-- image of IE Proxy configuration -->
1251 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1252 Internet Explorer HTTP and HTTPS (Secure) Settings</title>
1255 <imagedata fileref="proxy2.jpg" format="jpg">
1258 <phrase>[ Screenshot of IE Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1266 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
1267 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. Remove
1268 any <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
1269 if you want <application>Privoxy</application> to manage that. You are now
1270 ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
1271 <application>Privoxy</application>!
1275 <application>Privoxy</application> itself is typically started by specifying the
1276 main configuration file to be used on the command line. If no configuration
1277 file is specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application>
1278 will look for a file named <filename>config</filename> in the current
1279 directory. Except on Win32 where it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>.
1282 <sect2 id="start-redhat">
1283 <title>Red Hat and Fedora</title>
1285 A default Red Hat installation may not start &my-app; upon boot. It will use
1286 the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1291 # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
1299 # service privoxy start
1304 <sect2 id="start-debian">
1305 <title>Debian</title>
1307 We use a script. Note that Debian typically starts &my-app; upon booting per
1308 default. It will use the file
1309 <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1314 # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1319 <sect2 id="start-windows">
1320 <title>Windows</title>
1322 Click on the &my-app; Icon to start <application>Privoxy</application>. If no configuration file is
1323 specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application> will look
1324 for a file named <filename>config.txt</filename>. Note that Windows will
1325 automatically start &my-app; when the system starts if you chose that option
1329 <application>Privoxy</application> can run with full Windows service functionality.
1330 On Windows only, the &my-app; program has two new command line arguments
1331 to install and uninstall &my-app; as a service. See the
1332 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Windows Installation
1333 instructions</link> for details.
1337 <sect2 id="start-unices">
1338 <title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others</title>
1340 Example Unix startup command:
1344 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
1349 <sect2 id="start-os2">
1352 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
1353 start automatically when the system restarts. You can start it manually by
1354 double-clicking on the <application>Privoxy</application> icon in the
1355 <application>Privoxy</application> folder.
1359 <sect2 id="start-macosx">
1360 <title>Mac OS X</title>
1362 After downloading the privoxy software, unzip the downloaded file by
1363 double-clicking on the zip file icon. Then, double-click on the
1364 installer package icon and follow the installation process.
1367 The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful
1368 installation. In addition, the privoxy service will automatically
1369 start every time your computer starts up.
1372 To prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your
1373 computer starts up, remove or rename the folder named
1374 /Library/StartupItems/Privoxy.
1377 A simple application named Privoxy Utility has been created which
1378 enables administrators to easily start and stop the privoxy service.
1381 In addition, the Privoxy Utility presents a simple way for
1382 administrators to edit the various privoxy config files. A method
1383 to uninstall the software is also available.
1386 An administrator username and password must be supplied in order for
1387 the Privoxy Utility to perform any of the tasks.
1392 <sect2 id="start-amigaos">
1393 <title>AmigaOS</title>
1395 Start <application>Privoxy</application> (with RUN <>NIL:) in your
1396 <filename>startnet</filename> script (AmiTCP), in
1397 <filename>s:user-startup</filename> (RoadShow), as startup program in your
1398 startup script (Genesis), or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx).
1399 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically quit when you quit your
1400 TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack may display that
1401 <application>Privoxy</application> is still running).
1405 <sect2 id="start-gentoo">
1406 <title>Gentoo</title>
1408 A script is again used. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config
1409 </filename> as its main configuration file.
1413 /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1417 Note that <application>Privoxy</application> is not automatically started at
1418 boot time by default. You can change this with the <literal>rc-update</literal>
1423 rc-update add privoxy default
1431 See the section <link linkend="cmdoptions">Command line options</link> for
1435 must find a better place for this paragraph
1438 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
1439 point. Most of the per site configuration is done in the
1440 <ulink url="actions-file.html"><quote>actions</quote></ulink> files. These are
1441 where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking, and other
1442 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. There are several
1443 such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.
1447 You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites for which you may prefer
1448 persistent cookies, and add these to your actions configuration as needed. By
1449 default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser
1450 session (aka <quote>session cookies</quote>), unless you add them to the
1451 configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will need
1452 to edit <filename>user.action</filename> (or through the web based interface)
1453 and disable this feature. If you use more than one browser, it would make
1454 more sense to let <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which
1455 case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
1459 Another feature where you will probably want to define exceptions for trusted
1460 sites is the popup-killing (through <ulink
1461 url="actions-file.html#FILTER-POPUPS"><quote>+filter{popups}</quote></ulink>),
1462 because your favorite shopping, banking, or leisure site may need
1463 popups (explained below).
1467 <application>Privoxy</application> does not support all of the optional HTTP/1.1
1468 features yet. In the unlikely event that you experience inexplicable problems
1469 with browsers that use HTTP/1.1 per default
1470 (like <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.), you might
1471 try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look under <literal>Edit ->
1472 Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
1473 Alternatively, set the <quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote> config option in
1474 <filename>default.action</filename> which will downgrade your browser's HTTP
1475 requests from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0 before processing them.
1479 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
1480 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
1481 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
1482 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote>
1483 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
1484 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1485 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1486 and then follow the link to <quote>View & Change the Current Configuration</quote>.
1487 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
1491 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
1492 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
1493 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
1494 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
1495 to a given URL. In addition to the actions file
1496 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
1497 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> (toggled) from this page.
1501 If you encounter problems, try loading the page without
1502 <application>Privoxy</application>. If that helps, enter the URL where
1503 you have the problems into <ulink url="http://p.p/show-url-info">the browser
1504 based rule tracing utility</ulink>. See which rules apply and why, and
1505 then try turning them off for that site one after the other, until the problem
1506 is gone. When you have found the culprit, you might want to turn the rest on
1511 If the above paragraph sounds gibberish to you, you might want to <link
1512 linkend="actions-file">read more about the actions concept</link>
1513 or even dive deep into the <link linkend="actionsanat">Appendix
1518 If you can't get rid of the problem at all, think you've found a bug in
1519 Privoxy, want to propose a new feature or smarter rules, please see the
1520 section <link linkend="contact"><quote>Contacting the
1521 Developers</quote></link> below.
1526 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1527 <sect2 id="cmdoptions">
1528 <title>Command Line Options</title>
1530 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
1531 command-line options:
1539 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
1542 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
1547 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
1550 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
1555 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
1558 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
1559 leader, and don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
1564 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
1567 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
1568 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failure to create or delete the
1569 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
1570 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
1575 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
1578 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
1579 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
1580 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
1585 <emphasis>--chroot</emphasis>
1588 Before changing to the user ID given in the <emphasis>--user</emphasis> option,
1589 chroot to that user's home directory, i.e. make the kernel pretend to the &my-app;
1590 process that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
1591 the impact of possible vulnerabilities in &my-app; to the files contained in that hierarchy.
1597 <emphasis>--pre-chroot-nslookup hostname</emphasis>
1600 Specifies a hostname to look up before doing a chroot. On some systems, initializing the
1601 resolver library involves reading config files from /etc and/or loading additional shared
1602 libraries from /lib. On these systems, doing a hostname lookup before the chroot reduces
1603 the number of files that must be copied into the chroot tree.
1606 For fastest startup speed, a good value is a hostname that is not in /etc/hosts but that
1607 your local name server (listed in /etc/resolv.conf) can resolve without recursion
1608 (that is, without having to ask any other name servers). The hostname need not exist,
1609 but if it doesn't, an error message (which can be ignored) will be output.
1615 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
1618 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
1619 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
1620 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
1621 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
1622 full path to avoid confusion. If no config file is found,
1623 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
1631 On <application>MS Windows</application> only there are two additional
1632 command-line options to allow <application>Privoxy</application> to install and
1633 run as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>. See the
1634 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Window Installation section</link>
1642 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1645 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1646 <sect1 id="configuration"><title>Privoxy Configuration</title>
1648 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is stored
1649 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
1650 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
1651 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
1655 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1658 <title>Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser</title>
1660 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface can be reached through the special
1661 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1662 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1663 which is a built-in page and works without Internet access.
1664 You will see the following section:
1668 <!-- Needs to be put in a table and colorized -->
1671 <bridgehead renderas="sect2"> Privoxy Menu</bridgehead>
1675 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View & change the current configuration</ulink>
1678 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">View the source code version numbers</ulink>
1681 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">View the request headers.</ulink>
1684 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">Look up which actions apply to a URL and why</ulink>
1687 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">Toggle Privoxy on or off</ulink>
1690 ▪ <ulink
1691 url="http://www.privoxy.org/&p-version;/user-manual/">Documentation</ulink>
1699 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
1700 <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, which is where the ad, banner,
1701 cookie, and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
1702 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
1703 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
1704 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
1708 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
1709 have problems with your current actions and filters. You can in fact use
1710 it as a test to see whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
1711 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
1712 to run as a proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e.
1713 <application>Privoxy</application> acts like a normal forwarding proxy. There
1714 is even a toggle <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklet</link> offered, so
1715 that you can toggle <application>Privoxy</application> with one click from
1720 Note that several of the features described above are disabled by default
1721 in <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.7 beta and later.
1723 <ulink url="config.html">configuration file</ulink> to learn why
1724 and in which cases it's safe to enable them again.
1729 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1734 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1736 <sect2 id="confoverview">
1737 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
1739 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
1740 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
1741 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
1742 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. <![%p-not-stable;[ The name
1743 and number of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
1744 subject to change as development progresses.]]>
1748 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though
1749 some settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the
1750 principle configuration files are:
1758 The <link linkend="config">main configuration file</link> is named <filename>config</filename>
1759 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
1760 on Windows. This is a required file.
1766 <filename>match-all.action</filename> is used to define which <quote>actions</quote>
1767 relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups, content modification, cookie handling
1768 etc should be applied by default. It should be the first actions file loaded.
1771 <filename>default.action</filename> defines many exceptions (both positive and negative)
1772 from the default set of actions that's configured in <filename>match-all.action</filename>.
1773 It should be the second actions file loaded and shouldn't be edited by the user.
1776 Multiple actions files may be defined in <filename>config</filename>. These
1777 are processed in the order they are defined. Local customizations and locally
1778 preferred exceptions to the default policies as defined in
1779 <filename>match-all.action</filename> (which you will most probably want
1780 to define sooner or later) are best applied in <filename>user.action</filename>,
1781 where you can preserve them across upgrades. The file isn't installed by all
1782 installers, but you can easily create it yourself with a text editor.
1785 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from
1787 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1789 url="http://p.p/show-status">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>) for the
1790 various actions files.
1796 <quote>Filter files</quote> (the <link linkend="filter-file">filter
1797 file</link>) can be used to re-write the raw page content, including
1798 viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript, and whatever else
1799 lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only pre-defined here;
1800 whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
1801 <filename>default.filter</filename> includes various filters made
1802 available for use by the developers. Some are much more intrusive than
1803 others, and all should be used with caution. You may define additional
1804 filter files in <filename>config</filename> as you can with
1805 actions files. We suggest <filename>user.filter</filename> for any
1806 locally defined filters or customizations.
1814 The syntax of the configuration and filter files may change between different
1815 Privoxy versions, unfortunately some enhancements cost backwards compatibility.
1816 <!-- Add link to documentation-->
1820 All files use the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a
1821 comment (the rest of the line will be ignored) and understand line continuation
1822 through placing a backslash ("<literal>\</literal>") as the very last character
1823 in a line. If the <literal>#</literal> is preceded by a backslash, it looses
1824 its special function. Placing a <literal>#</literal> in front of an otherwise
1825 valid configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
1826 out" that line. Blank lines are ignored.
1830 The actions files and filter files
1831 can use Perl style <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> for
1832 maximum flexibility.
1836 After making any changes, there is no need to restart
1837 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
1838 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> detects such changes
1839 automatically. Note, however, that it may take one or two additional
1840 requests for the change to take effect. When changing the listening address
1841 of <application>Privoxy</application>, these <quote>wake up</quote> requests
1842 must obviously be sent to the <emphasis>old</emphasis> listening address.
1847 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
1848 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
1849 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
1850 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
1856 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1859 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1861 <!-- **************************************************** -->
1862 <!-- Include config.sgml here -->
1863 <!-- This is where the entire config file is detailed. -->
1865 <!-- end include -->
1868 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1872 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1874 <sect1 id="actions-file"><title>Actions Files</title>
1878 XXX: similar descriptions are in the Configuration Files sections.
1879 We should only describe them at one place.
1882 The actions files are used to define what <emphasis>actions</emphasis>
1883 <application>Privoxy</application> takes for which URLs, and thus determines
1884 how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
1885 transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof).
1886 There are a number of such actions, with a wide range of functionality.
1887 Each action does something a little different.
1888 These actions give us a veritable arsenal of tools with which to exert
1889 our control, preferences and independence. Actions can be combined so that
1890 their effects are aggregated when applied against a given set of URLs.
1894 are three action files included with <application>Privoxy</application> with
1901 <filename>match-all.action</filename> - is used to define which
1902 <quote>actions</quote> relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups,
1903 content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default.
1904 It should be the first actions file loaded
1909 <filename>default.action</filename> - defines many exceptions (both
1910 positive and negative) from the default set of actions that's configured
1911 in <filename>match-all.action</filename>. It is a set of rules that should
1912 work reasonably well as-is for most users. This file is only supposed to
1913 be edited by the developers. It should be the second actions file loaded.
1918 <filename>user.action</filename> - is intended to be for local site
1919 preferences and exceptions. As an example, if your ISP or your bank
1920 has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
1921 thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
1926 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Cautious</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Medium</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Advanced</guibutton>
1929 These have increasing levels of aggressiveness <emphasis>and have no
1930 influence on your browsing unless you select them explicitly in the
1931 editor</emphasis>. A default installation should be pre-set to
1932 <literal>Cautious</literal>. New users should try this for a while before
1933 adjusting the settings to more aggressive levels. The more aggressive
1934 the settings, then the more likelihood there is of problems such as sites
1935 not working as they should.
1938 The <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button allows you to turn each
1939 action on/off individually for fine-tuning. The <guibutton>Cautious</guibutton>
1940 button changes the actions list to low/safe settings which will activate
1941 ad blocking and a minimal set of &my-app;'s features, and subsequently
1942 there will be less of a chance for accidental problems. The
1943 <guibutton>Medium</guibutton> button sets the list to a medium level of
1944 other features and a low level set of privacy features. The
1945 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> button sets the list to a high level of
1946 ad blocking and medium level of privacy. See the chart below. The latter
1947 three buttons over-ride any changes via with the
1948 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button. More fine-tuning can be done in the
1949 lower sections of this internal page.
1952 While the actions file editor allows to enable these settings in all
1953 actions files, they are only supposed to be enabled in the first one
1954 to make sure you don't unintentionally overrule earlier rules.
1957 The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
1958 <filename>default.action</filename> are:
1961 <table frame=all><title>Default Configurations</title>
1962 <tgroup cols=4 align=left colsep=1 rowsep=1>
1963 <colspec colname=c1>
1964 <colspec colname=c2>
1965 <colspec colname=c3>
1966 <colspec colname=c4>
1969 <entry>Feature</entry>
1970 <entry>Cautious</entry>
1971 <entry>Medium</entry>
1972 <entry>Advanced</entry>
1977 <!-- <entry>f1</entry> -->
1978 <!-- <entry>f2</entry> -->
1979 <!-- <entry>f3</entry> -->
1980 <!-- <entry>f4</entry> -->
1986 <entry>Ad-blocking Aggressiveness</entry>
1987 <entry>medium</entry>
1993 <entry>Ad-filtering by size</entry>
2000 <entry>Ad-filtering by link</entry>
2006 <entry>Pop-up killing</entry>
2007 <entry>blocks only</entry>
2008 <entry>blocks only</entry>
2009 <entry>blocks only</entry>
2013 <entry>Privacy Features</entry>
2015 <entry>medium</entry>
2016 <entry>medium/high</entry>
2020 <entry>Cookie handling</entry>
2022 <entry>session-only</entry>
2027 <entry>Referer forging</entry>
2034 <entry>GIF de-animation</entry>
2041 <entry>Fast redirects</entry>
2048 <entry>HTML taming</entry>
2055 <entry>JavaScript taming</entry>
2062 <entry>Web-bug killing</entry>
2069 <entry>Image tag reordering</entry>
2085 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
2086 file, and are processed in the order they are defined (e.g.
2087 <filename>default.action</filename> is typically processed before
2088 <filename>user.action</filename>). The content of these can all be viewed and
2090 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2091 The over-riding principle when applying actions, is that the last action that
2092 matches a given URL wins. The broadest, most general rules go first
2093 (defined in <filename>default.action</filename>),
2094 followed by any exceptions (typically also in
2095 <filename>default.action</filename>), which are then followed lastly by any
2096 local preferences (typically in <emphasis>user</emphasis><filename>.action</filename>).
2097 Generally, <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word.
2101 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use
2102 <quote>aliases</quote> in an actions file, you have to place the (optional)
2103 <link linkend="aliases">alias section</link> at the top of that file.
2104 Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally to all
2105 sites and pages (be <emphasis>very careful</emphasis> with using such a
2106 universal set in <filename>user.action</filename> or any other actions file after
2107 <filename>default.action</filename>, because it will override the result
2108 from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
2109 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard
2110 <filename>user.action</filename> as an appendix to <filename>default.action</filename>,
2111 with the advantage that it is a separate file, which makes preserving your
2112 personal settings across <application>Privoxy</application> upgrades easier.
2116 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
2117 just some obnoxious URL whose content you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
2118 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
2119 written to disk), content can be modified, some JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
2120 fooled, and much more. See below for a <link linkend="actions">complete list
2124 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2126 <title>Finding the Right Mix</title>
2128 Note that some <link linkend="actions">actions</link>, like cookie suppression
2129 or script disabling, may render some sites unusable that rely on these
2130 techniques to work properly. Finding the right mix of actions is not always easy and
2131 certainly a matter of personal taste. And, things can always change, requiring
2132 refinements in the configuration. In general, it can be said that the more
2133 <quote>aggressive</quote> your default settings (in the top section of the
2134 actions file) are, the more exceptions for <quote>trusted</quote> sites you
2135 will have to make later. If, for example, you want to crunch all cookies per
2136 default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for sites that you
2137 regularly use and that require cookies for actually useful purposes, like maybe
2138 your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
2142 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
2143 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
2144 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
2145 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again :).
2149 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2151 <title>How to Edit</title>
2153 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by
2154 using our browser-based editor, which can be reached from <ulink
2155 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2156 Note: the config file option <link
2157 linkend="enable-edit-actions">enable-edit-actions</link> must be enabled for
2158 this to work. The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single
2159 feature on a per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults
2160 like <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> or
2161 <quote>Advanced</quote>. Warning: the <quote>Advanced</quote> setting is more
2162 aggressive, and will be more likely to cause problems for some sites.
2163 Experienced users only!
2167 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
2168 the actions files with your favorite text editor. Look at
2169 <filename>default.action</filename> which is richly commented with many
2175 <sect2 id="actions-apply">
2176 <title>How Actions are Applied to Requests</title>
2178 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections,
2179 like the <quote><link linkend="aliases">alias</link></quote> sections which will
2180 be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on regular sections: They have a
2181 heading line (often split up to multiple lines for readability) which consist
2182 of a list of actions, separated by whitespace and enclosed in curly braces.
2183 Below that, there is a list of URL and tag patterns, each on a separate line.
2187 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
2188 compared to all URL patterns in each <quote>action file</quote>.
2189 Every time it matches, the list of applicable actions for the request is
2190 incrementally updated, using the heading of the section in which the
2191 pattern is located. The same is done again for tags and tag patterns later on.
2195 If multiple applying sections set the same action differently,
2196 the last match wins. If not, the effects are aggregated.
2197 E.g. a URL might match a regular section with a heading line of <literal>{
2198 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link> }</literal>,
2199 then later another one with just <literal>{
2200 +<link linkend="block">block</link> }</literal>, resulting
2201 in <emphasis>both</emphasis> actions to apply. And there may well be
2202 cases where you will want to combine actions together. Such a section then
2208 { +<literal>handle-as-image</literal> +<literal>block{Banner ads.}</literal> }
2209 # Block these as if they were images. Send no block page.
2211 media.example.com/.*banners
2212 .example.com/images/ads/</screen>
2216 You can trace this process for URL patterns and any given URL by visiting <ulink
2217 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>.
2221 Examples and more detail on this is provided in the Appendix, <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">
2222 Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</link> section.
2226 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2227 <sect2 id="af-patterns">
2228 <title>Patterns</title>
2230 As mentioned, <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>patterns</quote>
2231 to determine what <emphasis>actions</emphasis> might apply to which sites and
2232 pages your browser attempts to access. These <quote>patterns</quote> use wild
2233 card type <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> matching to achieve a high degree of
2234 flexibility. This allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match
2235 against many similar patterns.
2239 Generally, an URL pattern has the form
2240 <literal><domain><port>/<path></literal>, where the
2241 <literal><domain></literal>, the <literal><port></literal>
2242 and the <literal><path></literal> are optional. (This is why the special
2243 <literal>/</literal> pattern matches all URLs). Note that the protocol
2244 portion of the URL pattern (e.g. <literal>http://</literal>) should
2245 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be included in the pattern. This is assumed already!
2248 The pattern matching syntax is different for the domain and path parts of
2249 the URL. The domain part uses a simple globbing type matching technique,
2250 while the path part uses more flexible
2251 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2252 Expressions</quote></ulink> (POSIX 1003.2).
2255 The port part of a pattern is a decimal port number preceded by a colon
2256 (<literal>:</literal>). If the domain part contains a numerical IPv6 address,
2257 it has to be put into angle brackets
2258 (<literal><</literal>, <literal>></literal>).
2263 <term><literal>www.example.com/</literal></term>
2266 is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2267 regardless of which document on that server is requested. So ALL pages in
2268 this domain would be covered by the scope of this action. Note that a
2269 simple <literal>example.com</literal> is different and would NOT match.
2274 <term><literal>www.example.com</literal></term>
2277 means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing <literal>/</literal> may
2283 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html</literal></term>
2286 matches all the documents on <literal>www.example.com</literal>
2287 whose name starts with <literal>/index.html</literal>.
2292 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html$</literal></term>
2295 matches only the single document <literal>/index.html</literal>
2296 on <literal>www.example.com</literal>.
2301 <term><literal>/index.html$</literal></term>
2304 matches the document <literal>/index.html</literal>, regardless of the domain,
2305 i.e. on <emphasis>any</emphasis> web server anywhere.
2310 <term><literal>:8000/</literal></term>
2313 Matches any URL pointing to TCP port 8000.
2318 <term><literal><2001:db8::1>/</literal></term>
2321 Matches any URL with the host address <literal>2001:db8::1</literal>.
2322 (Note that the real URL uses plain brackets, not angle brackets.)
2327 <term><literal>index.html</literal></term>
2330 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
2331 there is no top-level domain called <literal>.html</literal>. So its
2339 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2340 <sect3><title>The Domain Pattern</title>
2343 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
2344 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
2350 <term><literal>.example.com</literal></term>
2353 matches any domain with first-level domain <literal>com</literal>
2354 and second-level domain <literal>example</literal>.
2355 For example <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2356 <literal>example.com</literal> and <literal>foo.bar.baz.example.com</literal>.
2357 Note that it wouldn't match if the second-level domain was <literal>another-example</literal>.
2362 <term><literal>www.</literal></term>
2365 matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
2366 <literal>www.</literal> (It also matches the domain
2367 <literal>www</literal> but most of the time that doesn't matter.)
2372 <term><literal>.example.</literal></term>
2375 matches any domain that <emphasis>CONTAINS</emphasis> <literal>.example.</literal>.
2376 And, by the way, also included would be any files or documents that exist
2377 within that domain since no path limitations are specified. (Correctly
2378 speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains <literal>example</literal> as
2379 a domain.) This might be <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2380 <literal>news.example.de</literal>, or
2381 <literal>www.example.net/cgi/testing.pl</literal> for instance. All these
2389 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
2390 themselves. These work similarly to shell globbing type wild-cards:
2391 <quote>*</quote> represents zero or more arbitrary characters (this is
2393 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2394 Expression</quote></ulink> based syntax of <quote>.*</quote>),
2395 <quote>?</quote> represents any single character (this is equivalent to the
2396 regular expression syntax of a simple <quote>.</quote>), and you can define
2397 <quote>character classes</quote> in square brackets which is similar to
2398 the same regular expression technique. All of this can be freely mixed:
2403 <term><literal>ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2406 matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
2407 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>
2412 <term><literal>*ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2415 matches all of the above, and then some.
2420 <term><literal>.?pix.com</literal></term>
2423 matches <literal>www.ipix.com</literal>,
2424 <literal>pictures.epix.com</literal>, <literal>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</literal> etc.
2429 <term><literal>www[1-9a-ez].example.c*</literal></term>
2432 matches <literal>www1.example.com</literal>,
2433 <literal>www4.example.cc</literal>, <literal>wwwd.example.cy</literal>,
2434 <literal>wwwz.example.com</literal> etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
2435 <literal>wwww.example.com</literal>.
2442 While flexible, this is not the sophistication of full regular expression based syntax.
2447 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2450 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2451 <sect3><title>The Path Pattern</title>
2454 <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>modern</quote> POSIX 1003.2
2455 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2456 Expressions</quote></ulink> for matching the path portion (after the slash),
2457 and is thus more flexible.
2461 There is an <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link> with a brief quick-start into regular
2462 expressions, you also might want to have a look at your operating system's documentation
2463 on regular expressions (try <literal>man re_format</literal>).
2467 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the <quote>/</quote>,
2468 i.e. it matches as if it would start with a <quote>^</quote> (regular expression speak
2469 for the beginning of a line).
2473 Please also note that matching in the path is <emphasis>CASE INSENSITIVE</emphasis>
2474 by default, but you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
2475 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch: <literal>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</literal> will match
2476 only documents whose path starts with <literal>PaTtErN</literal> in
2477 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
2482 <term><literal>.example.com/.*</literal></term>
2485 Is equivalent to just <quote>.example.com</quote>, since any documents
2486 within that domain are matched with or without the <quote>.*</quote>
2487 regular expression. This is redundant
2492 <term><literal>.example.com/.*/index.html$</literal></term>
2495 Will match any page in the domain of <quote>example.com</quote> that is
2496 named <quote>index.html</quote>, and that is part of some path. For
2497 example, it matches <quote>www.example.com/testing/index.html</quote> but
2498 NOT <quote>www.example.com/index.html</quote> because the regular
2499 expression called for at least two <quote>/'s</quote>, thus the path
2500 requirement. It also would match
2501 <quote>www.example.com/testing/index_html</quote>, because of the
2502 special meta-character <quote>.</quote>.
2507 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)?index\.html$</literal></term>
2510 This regular expression is conditional so it will match any page
2511 named <quote>index.html</quote> regardless of path which in this case can
2512 have one or more <quote>/'s</quote>. And this one must contain exactly
2513 <quote>.html</quote> (but does not have to end with that!).
2518 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)</literal></term>
2521 This regular expression will match any path of <quote>example.com</quote>
2522 that contains any of the words <quote>ads</quote>, <quote>banner</quote>,
2523 <quote>banners</quote> (because of the <quote>?</quote>) or <quote>junk</quote>.
2524 The path does not have to end in these words, just contain them.
2529 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)/.*\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$</literal></term>
2532 This is very much the same as above, except now it must end in either
2533 <quote>.jpg</quote>, <quote>.jpeg</quote>, <quote>.gif</quote> or <quote>.png</quote>. So this
2534 one is limited to common image formats.
2541 There are many, many good examples to be found in <filename>default.action</filename>,
2542 and more tutorials below in <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>.
2547 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2550 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2551 <sect3 id="tag-pattern"><title>The Tag Pattern</title>
2554 Tag patterns are used to change the applying actions based on the
2555 request's tags. Tags can be created with either the
2556 <link linkend="CLIENT-HEADER-TAGGER">client-header-tagger</link>
2557 or the <link linkend="SERVER-HEADER-TAGGER">server-header-tagger</link> action.
2561 Tag patterns have to start with <quote>TAG:</quote>, so &my-app;
2562 can tell them apart from URL patterns. Everything after the colon
2563 including white space, is interpreted as a regular expression with
2564 path pattern syntax, except that tag patterns aren't left-anchored
2565 automatically (&my-app; doesn't silently add a <quote>^</quote>,
2566 you have to do it yourself if you need it).
2570 To match all requests that are tagged with <quote>foo</quote>
2571 your pattern line should be <quote>TAG:^foo$</quote>,
2572 <quote>TAG:foo</quote> would work as well, but it would also
2573 match requests whose tags contain <quote>foo</quote> somewhere.
2574 <quote>TAG: foo</quote> wouldn't work as it requires white space.
2578 Sections can contain URL and tag patterns at the same time,
2579 but tag patterns are checked after the URL patterns and thus
2580 always overrule them, even if they are located before the URL patterns.
2584 Once a new tag is added, Privoxy checks right away if it's matched by one
2585 of the tag patterns and updates the action settings accordingly. As a result
2586 tags can be used to activate other tagger actions, as long as these other
2587 taggers look for headers that haven't already be parsed.
2591 For example you could tag client requests which use the
2592 <literal>POST</literal> method,
2593 then use this tag to activate another tagger that adds a tag if cookies
2594 are sent, and then use a block action based on the cookie tag. This allows
2595 the outcome of one action, to be input into a subsequent action. However if
2596 you'd reverse the position of the described taggers, and activated the
2597 method tagger based on the cookie tagger, no method tags would be created.
2598 The method tagger would look for the request line, but at the time
2599 the cookie tag is created, the request line has already been parsed.
2603 While this is a limitation you should be aware of, this kind of
2604 indirection is seldom needed anyway and even the example doesn't
2605 make too much sense.
2612 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2615 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2617 <sect2 id="actions">
2618 <title>Actions</title>
2620 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
2621 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a
2622 <quote>+</quote>, and turned off if preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. So a
2623 <literal>+action</literal> means <quote>do that action</quote>, e.g.
2624 <literal>+block</literal> means <quote>please block URLs that match the
2625 following patterns</quote>, and <literal>-block</literal> means <quote>don't
2626 block URLs that match the following patterns, even if <literal>+block</literal>
2627 previously applied.</quote>
2632 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
2633 separated by whitespace, like in
2634 <literal>{+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}}</literal>,
2635 followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which they apply.
2636 Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up a section
2637 of the actions file.
2641 Actions fall into three categories:
2648 Boolean, i.e the action can only be <quote>enabled</quote> or
2649 <quote>disabled</quote>. Syntax:
2653 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # enable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
2654 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable></screen>
2657 Example: <literal>+handle-as-image</literal>
2664 Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of action.
2669 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and set parameter to <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>,
2670 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
2671 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action. The parameter can be omitted</screen>
2674 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized action,
2675 the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are simply ignored.
2678 Example: <literal>+hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070602 Firefox/2.0.0.4}</literal>
2684 Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions,
2685 but they behave differently: If the action applies multiple times to the
2686 same URL, but with different parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> the parameters
2687 from <emphasis>all</emphasis> matches are remembered. This is used for actions
2688 that can be executed for the same request repeatedly, like adding multiple
2689 headers, or filtering through multiple filters. Syntax:
2693 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and add <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> to the list of parameters
2694 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # remove the parameter <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> from the list of parameters
2695 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
2696 <replaceable class="parameter">-name</replaceable> # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list</screen>
2699 Examples: <literal>+add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text}</literal> and
2700 <literal>+filter{html-annoyances}</literal>
2708 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no <quote>actions</quote> are
2709 taken. So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
2710 normal, non-blocking, non-filtering proxy. You must specifically enable the
2711 privacy and blocking features you need (although the provided default actions
2712 files will give a good starting point).
2716 Later defined action sections always over-ride earlier ones of the same type.
2717 So exceptions to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
2718 in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files such
2719 as <filename>user.action</filename>). For multi-valued actions, the actions
2720 are applied in the order they are specified. Actions files are processed in
2721 the order they are defined in <filename>config</filename> (the default
2722 installation has three actions files). It also quite possible for any given
2723 URL to match more than one <quote>pattern</quote> (because of wildcards and
2724 regular expressions), and thus to trigger more than one set of actions! Last
2728 <!-- start actions listing -->
2730 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> actions are:
2734 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2735 <!-- Please note the below defined actions use id's that are -->
2736 <!-- probably linked from other places, so please don't change. -->
2738 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2741 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2743 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="add-header">
2744 <title>add-header</title>
2748 <term>Typical use:</term>
2750 <para>Confuse log analysis, custom applications</para>
2755 <term>Effect:</term>
2758 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
2765 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2767 <para>Multi-value.</para>
2772 <term>Parameter:</term>
2775 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not checked.
2776 It is recommended that you use the <quote><literal>X-</literal></quote> prefix
2786 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
2787 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
2788 <quote>HTTP headers</quote> are, you definitely don't need to worry about this
2795 <term>Example usage:</term>
2798 <screen>+add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}</screen>
2806 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2807 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="block">
2808 <title>block</title>
2812 <term>Typical use:</term>
2814 <para>Block ads or other unwanted content</para>
2819 <term>Effect:</term>
2822 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the
2823 requests are trapped by &my-app; and the requested URL is never retrieved,
2824 but is answered locally with a substitute page or image, as determined by
2826 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2828 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>, and
2830 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> actions.
2838 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2840 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2845 <term>Parameter:</term>
2847 <para>A block reason that should be given to the user.</para>
2855 <application>Privoxy</application> sends a special <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page
2856 for requests to blocked pages. This page contains the block reason given as
2857 parameter, a link to find out why the block action applies, and a click-through
2858 to the blocked content (the latter only if the force feature is available and
2862 A very important exception occurs if <emphasis>both</emphasis>
2863 <literal>block</literal> and <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2864 apply to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
2865 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
2866 (see below) also applies, the type of image will be determined by its parameter,
2867 if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is sent.
2870 It is important to understand this process, in order
2871 to understand how <application>Privoxy</application> deals with
2872 ads and other unwanted content. Blocking is a core feature, and one
2873 upon which various other features depend.
2876 The <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
2877 action can perform a very similar task, by <quote>blocking</quote>
2878 banner images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
2879 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
2880 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse the two.
2886 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2889 <screen>{+block{No nasty stuff for you.}}
2890 # Block and replace with "blocked" page
2891 .nasty-stuff.example.com
2893 {+block{Doubleclick banners.} +handle-as-image}
2894 # Block and replace with image
2898 {+block{Layered ads.} +handle-as-empty-document}
2899 # Block and then ignore
2900 adserver.example.net/.*\.js$</screen>
2910 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2911 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="change-x-forwarded-for">
2912 <title>change-x-forwarded-for</title>
2916 <term>Typical use:</term>
2918 <para>Improve privacy by not forwarding the source of the request in the HTTP headers.</para>
2923 <term>Effect:</term>
2926 Deletes the <quote>X-Forwarded-For:</quote> HTTP header from the client request,
2934 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2936 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2941 <term>Parameter:</term>
2945 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header.</para>
2949 <quote>add</quote> to create the header (or append
2950 the client's IP address to an already existing one).
2961 It is safe and recommended to use <literal>block</literal>.
2964 Forwarding the source address of the request may make
2965 sense in some multi-user setups but is also a privacy risk.
2970 <term>Example usage:</term>
2973 <screen>+change-x-forwarded-for{block}</screen>
2980 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2981 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-header-filter">
2982 <title>client-header-filter</title>
2986 <term>Typical use:</term>
2989 Rewrite or remove single client headers.
2995 <term>Effect:</term>
2998 All client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
2999 the specified regular expression based substitutions.
3006 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3008 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3013 <term>Parameter:</term>
3016 The name of a client-header filter, as defined in one of the
3017 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
3026 Client-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
3027 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
3028 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
3029 You can do that by using tags though.
3032 Client-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
3033 and use their output as input.
3036 If the request URL gets changed, &my-app; will detect that and use the new
3037 one. This can be used to rewrite the request destination behind the client's
3038 back, for example to specify a Tor exit relay for certain requests.
3041 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
3042 to learn which client-header filters are available by default, and how to
3050 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3054 # Hide Tor exit notation in Host and Referer Headers
3055 {+client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}}
3066 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3067 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-header-tagger">
3068 <title>client-header-tagger</title>
3072 <term>Typical use:</term>
3075 Block requests based on their headers.
3081 <term>Effect:</term>
3084 Client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
3085 the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
3093 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3095 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3100 <term>Parameter:</term>
3103 The name of a client-header tagger, as defined in one of the
3104 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
3113 Client-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
3114 and as the header isn't modified, each tagger <quote>sees</quote>
3118 Client-header taggers are the first actions that are executed
3119 and their tags can be used to control every other action.
3125 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3129 # Tag every request with the User-Agent header
3130 {+client-header-tagger{user-agent}}
3133 # Tagging itself doesn't change the action
3134 # settings, sections with TAG patterns do:
3136 # If it's a download agent, use a different forwarding proxy,
3137 # show the real User-Agent and make sure resume works.
3138 {+forward-override{forward-socks5 10.0.0.2:2222 .} \
3139 -hide-if-modified-since \
3140 -overwrite-last-modified \
3145 TAG:^User-Agent: NetBSD-ftp/
3146 TAG:^User-Agent: Novell ZYPP Installer
3147 TAG:^User-Agent: RPM APT-HTTP/
3148 TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/
3149 TAG:^User-Agent: Ubuntu APT-HTTP/
3150 TAG:^User-Agent: MPlayer/
3160 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3161 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="content-type-overwrite">
3162 <title>content-type-overwrite</title>
3166 <term>Typical use:</term>
3168 <para>Stop useless download menus from popping up, or change the browser's rendering mode</para>
3173 <term>Effect:</term>
3176 Replaces the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header.
3183 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3185 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3190 <term>Parameter:</term>
3202 The <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header is used by the
3203 browser to decide what to do with the document. The value of this
3204 header can cause the browser to open a download menu instead of
3205 displaying the document by itself, even if the document's format is
3206 supported by the browser.
3209 The declared content type can also affect which rendering mode
3210 the browser chooses. If XHTML is delivered as <quote>text/html</quote>,
3211 many browsers treat it as yet another broken HTML document.
3212 If it is send as <quote>application/xml</quote>, browsers with
3213 XHTML support will only display it, if the syntax is correct.
3216 If you see a web site that proudly uses XHTML buttons, but sets
3217 <quote>Content-Type: text/html</quote>, you can use &my-app;
3218 to overwrite it with <quote>application/xml</quote> and validate
3219 the web master's claim inside your XHTML-supporting browser.
3220 If the syntax is incorrect, the browser will complain loudly.
3223 You can also go the opposite direction: if your browser prints
3224 error messages instead of rendering a document falsely declared
3225 as XHTML, you can overwrite the content type with
3226 <quote>text/html</quote> and have it rendered as broken HTML document.
3229 By default <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal> only replaces
3230 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> headers that look like some kind of text.
3231 If you want to overwrite it unconditionally, you have to combine it with
3232 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>.
3233 This limitation exists for a reason, think twice before circumventing it.
3236 Most of the time it's easier to replace this action with a custom
3237 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
3238 It allows you to activate it for every document of a certain site and it will still
3239 only replace the content types you aimed at.
3242 Of course you can apply <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal>
3243 to a whole site and then make URL based exceptions, but it's a lot
3244 more work to get the same precision.
3250 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
3253 <screen># Check if www.example.net/ really uses valid XHTML
3254 { +content-type-overwrite{application/xml} }
3257 # but leave the content type unmodified if the URL looks like a style sheet
3258 {-content-type-overwrite}
3259 www.example.net/.*\.css$
3260 www.example.net/.*style
3269 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3270 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-client-header">
3274 <title>crunch-client-header</title>
3278 <term>Typical use:</term>
3280 <para>Remove a client header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3285 <term>Effect:</term>
3288 Deletes every header sent by the client that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3295 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3297 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3302 <term>Parameter:</term>
3314 This action allows you to block client headers for which no dedicated
3315 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists.
3316 <application>Privoxy</application> will remove every client header that
3317 contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3320 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3321 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3322 they contain the same string.
3325 <literal>crunch-client-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3326 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3327 parts of them, you should use a
3328 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header filter</link></literal>.
3332 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3339 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3342 <screen># Block the non-existent "Privacy-Violation:" client header
3343 { +crunch-client-header{Privacy-Violation:} }
3353 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3354 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-if-none-match">
3355 <title>crunch-if-none-match</title>
3361 <term>Typical use:</term>
3363 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
3368 <term>Effect:</term>
3371 Deletes the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header.
3378 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3380 <para>Boolean.</para>
3385 <term>Parameter:</term>
3397 Removing the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header
3398 is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
3399 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote> which
3400 would cause the browser to use a cached copy of the page.
3403 It is also useful to make sure the header isn't used as a cookie
3404 replacement (unlikely but possible).
3407 Blocking the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> header shouldn't cause any
3408 caching problems, as long as the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> header
3409 isn't blocked or missing as well.
3412 It is recommended to use this action together with
3413 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
3415 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>.
3421 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3424 <screen># Let the browser revalidate cached documents but don't
3425 # allow the server to use the revalidation headers for user tracking.
3426 {+hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
3427 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
3428 +crunch-if-none-match}
3437 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3438 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-incoming-cookies">
3439 <title>crunch-incoming-cookies</title>
3443 <term>Typical use:</term>
3446 Prevent the web server from setting HTTP cookies on your system
3452 <term>Effect:</term>
3455 Deletes any <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from server replies.
3462 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3464 <para>Boolean.</para>
3469 <term>Parameter:</term>
3481 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> HTTP cookies. For
3482 <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> HTTP cookies, use
3483 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>.
3484 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable HTTP cookies completely.
3487 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3488 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3489 since it would prevent the session cookies from being set. See also
3490 <literal><link linkend="filter-content-cookies">filter-content-cookies</link></literal>.
3496 <term>Example usage:</term>
3499 <screen>+crunch-incoming-cookies</screen>
3507 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3508 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-server-header">
3509 <title>crunch-server-header</title>
3515 <term>Typical use:</term>
3517 <para>Remove a server header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3522 <term>Effect:</term>
3525 Deletes every header sent by the server that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3532 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3534 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3539 <term>Parameter:</term>
3551 This action allows you to block server headers for which no dedicated
3552 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists. <application>Privoxy</application>
3553 will remove every server header that contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3556 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3557 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3558 they contain the same string.
3561 <literal>crunch-server-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3562 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3563 parts of them, you should use a custom
3564 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
3568 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3575 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3578 <screen># Crunch server headers that try to prevent caching
3579 { +crunch-server-header{no-cache} }
3588 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3589 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-outgoing-cookies">
3590 <title>crunch-outgoing-cookies</title>
3594 <term>Typical use:</term>
3597 Prevent the web server from reading any HTTP cookies from your system
3603 <term>Effect:</term>
3606 Deletes any <quote>Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from client requests.
3613 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3615 <para>Boolean.</para>
3620 <term>Parameter:</term>
3632 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> HTTP cookies. For
3633 <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> HTTP cookies, use
3634 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>.
3635 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable HTTP cookies completely.
3638 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3639 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3640 since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
3646 <term>Example usage:</term>
3649 <screen>+crunch-outgoing-cookies</screen>
3658 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3659 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="deanimate-gifs">
3660 <title>deanimate-gifs</title>
3664 <term>Typical use:</term>
3666 <para>Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.</para>
3671 <term>Effect:</term>
3674 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
3681 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3683 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3688 <term>Parameter:</term>
3691 <quote>last</quote> or <quote>first</quote>
3700 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
3701 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
3702 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last
3703 frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
3704 most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
3705 last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
3708 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
3709 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
3716 <term>Example usage:</term>
3719 <screen>+deanimate-gifs{last}</screen>
3726 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3727 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="downgrade-http-version">
3728 <title>downgrade-http-version</title>
3732 <term>Typical use:</term>
3734 <para>Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1</para>
3739 <term>Effect:</term>
3742 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
3749 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3751 <para>Boolean.</para>
3756 <term>Parameter:</term>
3768 This is a left-over from the time when <application>Privoxy</application>
3769 didn't support important HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the
3770 unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server
3771 out there. Not all HTTP/1.1 features and requirements are supported yet,
3772 so there is a chance you might need this action.
3778 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3781 <screen>{+downgrade-http-version}
3782 problem-host.example.com</screen>
3790 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3791 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="fast-redirects">
3792 <title>fast-redirects</title>
3796 <term>Typical use:</term>
3798 <para>Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links.</para>
3803 <term>Effect:</term>
3806 Detects redirection URLs and redirects the browser without contacting
3807 the redirection server first.
3814 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3816 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3821 <term>Parameter:</term>
3826 <quote>simple-check</quote> to just search for the string <quote>http://</quote>
3827 to detect redirection URLs.
3832 <quote>check-decoded-url</quote> to decode URLs (if necessary) before searching
3833 for redirection URLs.
3844 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
3845 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
3846 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
3847 resulting from this scheme typically look like:
3848 <quote>http://www.example.org/click-tracker.cgi?target=http%3a//www.example.net/</quote>.
3851 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
3852 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
3853 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
3854 to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
3855 browser asks the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
3859 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
3860 If it is enabled by default, you will have to create some exceptions to
3861 this action. It can lead to failures in several ways:
3864 Not every URLs with other URLs as parameters is evil.
3865 Some sites offer a real service that requires this information to work.
3866 For example a validation service needs to know, which document to validate.
3867 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> assumes that every URL parameter that
3868 looks like another URL is a redirection target, and will always redirect to
3869 the last one. Most of the time the assumption is correct, but if it isn't,
3870 the user gets redirected anyway.
3873 Another failure occurs if the URL contains other parameters after the URL parameter.
3875 <quote>http://www.example.org/?redirect=http%3a//www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3876 contains the redirection URL <quote>http://www.example.net/</quote>,
3877 followed by another parameter. <literal>fast-redirects</literal> doesn't know that
3878 and will cause a redirect to <quote>http://www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3879 Depending on the target server configuration, the parameter will be silently ignored
3880 or lead to a <quote>page not found</quote> error. You can prevent this problem by
3881 first using the <literal><link linkend="redirect">redirect</link></literal> action
3882 to remove the last part of the URL, but it requires a little effort.
3885 To detect a redirection URL, <literal>fast-redirects</literal> only
3886 looks for the string <quote>http://</quote>, either in plain text
3887 (invalid but often used) or encoded as <quote>http%3a//</quote>.
3888 Some sites use their own URL encoding scheme, encrypt the address
3889 of the target server or replace it with a database id. In theses cases
3890 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> is fooled and the request reaches the
3891 redirection server where it probably gets logged.
3897 <term>Example usage:</term>
3901 { +fast-redirects{simple-check} }
3904 { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
3905 another.example.com/testing</screen>
3914 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3915 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter">
3916 <title>filter</title>
3920 <term>Typical use:</term>
3922 <para>Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
3923 do fun text replacements, add personalized effects, etc.</para>
3928 <term>Effect:</term>
3931 All instances of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which
3932 this action applies, can be filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular
3933 expression based substitutions. (Note: as of version 3.0.3 plain text documents
3934 are exempted from filtering, because web servers often use the
3935 <literal>text/plain</literal> MIME type for all files whose type they don't know.)
3942 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3944 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3949 <term>Parameter:</term>
3952 The name of a content filter, as defined in the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>.
3953 Filters can be defined in one or more files as defined by the
3954 <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
3955 option in the <link linkend="config">config file</link>.
3956 <filename>default.filter</filename> is the collection of filters
3957 supplied by the developers. Locally defined filters should go
3958 in their own file, such as <filename>user.filter</filename>.
3961 When used in its negative form,
3962 and without parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> filtering is completely disabled.
3971 For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
3972 in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below for
3976 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
3977 slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
3978 passed the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way
3979 since the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more
3980 noticeable on slower connections.
3983 <quote>Rolling your own</quote>
3984 filters requires a knowledge of
3985 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
3986 Expressions</quote></ulink> and
3987 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html"><quote>HTML</quote></ulink>.
3988 This is very powerful feature, and potentially very intrusive.
3989 Filters should be used with caution, and where an equivalent
3990 <quote>action</quote> is not available.
3993 The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
3994 <literal><link linkend="buffer-limit">buffer-limit</link></literal>
3995 option in the main <link linkend="config">config file</link>. The
3996 default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the buffered
3997 data, and all pending data, is passed through unfiltered.
4000 Inappropriate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
4001 (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data
4002 (from HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate
4003 the integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might
4004 be necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering
4005 by defining appropriate <literal>-filter</literal> exceptions.
4008 Compressed content can't be filtered either, unless &my-app;
4009 is compiled with zlib support (requires at least &my-app; 3.0.7),
4010 in which case &my-app; will decompress the content before filtering
4014 If you use a &my-app; version without zlib support, but want filtering to work on
4015 as much documents as possible, even those that would normally be sent compressed,
4016 you must use the <literal><link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link></literal>
4017 action in conjunction with <literal>filter</literal>.
4020 Content filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
4021 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
4022 action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism
4023 works quite differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners
4024 based on their size (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat
4028 <link linkend="contact">Feedback</link> with suggestions for new or
4029 improved filters is particularly welcome!
4032 The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
4033 predefined filter. There are <link linkend="predefined-filters">more
4034 verbose explanations</link> of what these filters do in the <link
4035 linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>.
4041 <term>Example usage (with filters from the distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file).
4042 See <link linkend="PREDEFINED-FILTERS">the Predefined Filters section</link> for
4043 more explanation on each:</term>
4046 <anchor id="filter-js-annoyances">
4047 <screen>+filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.</screen>
4050 <anchor id="filter-js-events">
4051 <screen>+filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings and timers (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites).</screen>
4054 <anchor id="filter-html-annoyances">
4055 <screen>+filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse.</screen>
4058 <anchor id="filter-content-cookies">
4059 <screen>+filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content.</screen>
4062 <anchor id="filter-refresh-tags">
4063 <screen>+filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups).</screen>
4066 <anchor id="filter-unsolicited-popups">
4067 <screen>+filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
4070 <anchor id="filter-all-popups">
4071 <screen>+filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
4074 <anchor id="filter-img-reorder">
4075 <screen>+filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective.</screen>
4078 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-size">
4079 <screen>+filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size.</screen>
4082 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-link">
4083 <screen>+filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers.</screen>
4086 <anchor id="filter-webbugs">
4087 <screen>+filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking).</screen>
4090 <anchor id="filter-tiny-textforms">
4091 <screen>+filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap.</screen>
4094 <anchor id="filter-jumping-windows">
4095 <screen>+filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves.</screen>
4098 <anchor id="filter-frameset-borders">
4099 <screen>+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizable.</screen>
4102 <anchor id="filter-demoronizer">
4103 <screen>+filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets.</screen>
4106 <anchor id="filter-shockwave-flash">
4107 <screen>+filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects.</screen>
4110 <anchor id="filter-quicktime-kioskmode">
4111 <screen>+filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies saveable.</screen>
4114 <anchor id="filter-fun">
4115 <screen>+filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!</screen>
4118 <anchor id="filter-crude-parental">
4119 <screen>+filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering. Note that this filter doesn't work reliably.</screen>
4122 <anchor id="filter-ie-exploits">
4123 <screen>+filter{ie-exploits} # Disable some known Internet Explorer bug exploits.</screen>
4126 <anchor id="filter-site-specifics">
4127 <screen>+filter{site-specifics} # Cure for site-specific problems. Don't apply generally!</screen>
4130 <anchor id="filter-no-ping">
4131 <screen>+filter{no-ping} # Removes non-standard ping attributes in <a> and <area> tags.</screen>
4134 <anchor id="filter-google">
4135 <screen>+filter{google} # CSS-based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation and the toolbar advertisement.</screen>
4138 <anchor id="filter-yahoo">
4139 <screen>+filter{yahoo} # CSS-based block for Yahoo text ads. Also removes a width limitation.</screen>
4142 <anchor id="filter-msn">
4143 <screen>+filter{msn} # CSS-based block for MSN text ads. Also removes tracking URLs and a width limitation.</screen>
4146 <anchor id="filter-blogspot">
4147 <screen>+filter{blogspot} # Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this.</screen>
4155 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4156 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="force-text-mode">
4157 <title>force-text-mode</title>
4163 <term>Typical use:</term>
4165 <para>Force <application>Privoxy</application> to treat a document as if it was in some kind of <emphasis>text</emphasis> format. </para>
4170 <term>Effect:</term>
4173 Declares a document as text, even if the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> isn't detected as such.
4180 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4182 <para>Boolean.</para>
4187 <term>Parameter:</term>
4199 As explained <literal><link linkend="filter">above</link></literal>,
4200 <application>Privoxy</application> tries to only filter files that are
4201 in some kind of text format. The same restrictions apply to
4202 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite</link></literal>.
4203 <literal>force-text-mode</literal> declares a document as text,
4204 without looking at the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> first.
4208 Think twice before activating this action. Filtering binary data
4209 with regular expressions can cause file damage.
4216 <term>Example usage:</term>
4229 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4230 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="forward-override">
4231 <title>forward-override</title>
4237 <term>Typical use:</term>
4239 <para>Change the forwarding settings based on User-Agent or request origin</para>
4244 <term>Effect:</term>
4247 Overrules the forward directives in the configuration file.
4254 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4256 <para>Multi-value.</para>
4261 <term>Parameter:</term>
4265 <para><quote>forward .</quote> to use a direct connection without any additional proxies.</para>
4269 <quote>forward 127.0.0.1:8123</quote> to use the HTTP proxy listening at 127.0.0.1 port 8123.
4274 <quote>forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 .</quote> to use the socks4a proxy listening at
4275 127.0.0.1 port 9050. Replace <quote>forward-socks4a</quote> with <quote>forward-socks4</quote>
4276 to use a socks4 connection (with local DNS resolution) instead, use <quote>forward-socks5</quote>
4277 for socks5 connections (with remote DNS resolution).
4282 <quote>forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 proxy.example.org:8000</quote> to use the socks4a proxy
4283 listening at 127.0.0.1 port 9050 to reach the HTTP proxy listening at proxy.example.org port 8000.
4284 Replace <quote>forward-socks4a</quote> with <quote>forward-socks4</quote> to use a socks4 connection
4285 (with local DNS resolution) instead, use <quote>forward-socks5</quote>
4286 for socks5 connections (with remote DNS resolution).
4297 This action takes parameters similar to the
4298 <link linkend="forwarding">forward</link> directives in the configuration
4299 file, but without the URL pattern. It can be used as replacement, but normally it's only
4300 used in cases where matching based on the request URL isn't sufficient.
4304 Please read the description for the <link linkend="forwarding">forward</link> directives before
4305 using this action. Forwarding to the wrong people will reduce your privacy and increase the
4306 chances of man-in-the-middle attacks.
4309 If the ports are missing or invalid, default values will be used. This might change
4310 in the future and you shouldn't rely on it. Otherwise incorrect syntax causes Privoxy
4314 Use the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">show-url-info CGI page</ulink>
4315 to verify that your forward settings do what you thought the do.
4322 <term>Example usage:</term>
4326 # Always use direct connections for requests previously tagged as
4327 # <quote>User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2.0</quote> and make sure
4328 # resuming downloads continues to work.
4329 # This way you can continue to use Tor for your normal browsing,
4330 # without overloading the Tor network with your FreeBSD ports updates
4331 # or downloads of bigger files like ISOs.
4332 # Note that HTTP headers are easy to fake and therefore their
4333 # values are as (un)trustworthy as your clients and users.
4334 {+forward-override{forward .} \
4335 -hide-if-modified-since \
4336 -overwrite-last-modified \
4338 TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2\.0$
4347 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4348 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-empty-document">
4349 <title>handle-as-empty-document</title>
4355 <term>Typical use:</term>
4357 <para>Mark URLs that should be replaced by empty documents <emphasis>if they get blocked</emphasis></para>
4362 <term>Effect:</term>
4365 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs.
4366 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
4367 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote>
4368 page, or an empty document will be sent to the client as a substitute for the blocked content.
4369 The <emphasis>empty</emphasis> document isn't literally empty, but actually contains a single space.
4376 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4378 <para>Boolean.</para>
4383 <term>Parameter:</term>
4395 Some browsers complain about syntax errors if JavaScript documents
4396 are blocked with <application>Privoxy's</application>
4397 default HTML page; this option can be used to silence them.
4398 And of course this action can also be used to eliminate the &my-app;
4399 BLOCKED message in frames.
4402 The content type for the empty document can be specified with
4403 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{}</link></literal>,
4404 but usually this isn't necessary.
4410 <term>Example usage:</term>
4413 <screen># Block all documents on example.org that end with ".js",
4414 # but send an empty document instead of the usual HTML message.
4415 {+block{Blocked JavaScript} +handle-as-empty-document}
4425 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4426 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-image">
4427 <title>handle-as-image</title>
4431 <term>Typical use:</term>
4433 <para>Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images <emphasis>if they do get blocked</emphasis>, rather than HTML pages)</para>
4438 <term>Effect:</term>
4441 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
4442 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
4443 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
4444 page, or a replacement image (as determined by the <literal><link
4445 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> action) will be sent to the
4446 client as a substitute for the blocked content.
4453 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4455 <para>Boolean.</para>
4460 <term>Parameter:</term>
4472 The below generic example section is actually part of <filename>default.action</filename>.
4473 It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
4477 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
4478 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
4479 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
4482 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (in-line) ad
4483 frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
4484 Forcing <literal>handle-as-image</literal> in this situation will not replace the
4485 ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
4491 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
4494 <screen># Generic image extensions:
4497 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
4499 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
4500 # blocked as images:
4502 {+block{Nasty banners.} +handle-as-image}
4503 nasty-banner-server.example.com/junk.cgi\?output=trash
4512 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4513 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-accept-language">
4514 <title>hide-accept-language</title>
4520 <term>Typical use:</term>
4522 <para>Pretend to use different language settings.</para>
4527 <term>Effect:</term>
4530 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> HTTP header in client requests.
4537 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4539 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4544 <term>Parameter:</term>
4547 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4556 Faking the browser's language settings can be useful to make a
4557 foreign User-Agent set with
4558 <literal><link linkend="hide-user-agent">hide-user-agent</link></literal>
4562 However some sites with content in different languages check the
4563 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> to decide which one to take by default.
4564 Sometimes it isn't possible to later switch to another language without
4565 changing the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header first.
4568 Therefore it's a good idea to either only change the
4569 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header to languages you understand,
4570 or to languages that aren't wide spread.
4573 Before setting the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header
4574 to a rare language, you should consider that it helps to
4575 make your requests unique and thus easier to trace.
4576 If you don't plan to change this header frequently,
4577 you should stick to a common language.
4583 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4586 <screen># Pretend to use Canadian language settings.
4587 {+hide-accept-language{en-ca} \
4588 +hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenBSD i386; en-CA; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060628 Firefox/1.5.0.4} \
4598 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4599 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-content-disposition">
4600 <title>hide-content-disposition</title>
4606 <term>Typical use:</term>
4608 <para>Prevent download menus for content you prefer to view inside the browser.</para>
4613 <term>Effect:</term>
4616 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header set by some servers.
4623 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4625 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4630 <term>Parameter:</term>
4633 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4642 Some servers set the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header for
4643 documents they assume you want to save locally before viewing them.
4644 The <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header contains the file name
4645 the browser is supposed to use by default.
4648 In most browsers that understand this header, it makes it impossible to
4649 <emphasis>just view</emphasis> the document, without downloading it first,
4650 even if it's just a simple text file or an image.
4653 Removing the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header helps
4654 to prevent this annoyance, but some browsers additionally check the
4655 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> header, before they decide if they can
4656 display a document without saving it first. In these cases, you have
4657 to change this header as well, before the browser stops displaying
4661 It is also possible to change the server's file name suggestion
4662 to another one, but in most cases it isn't worth the time to set
4666 This action will probably be removed in the future,
4667 use server-header filters instead.
4673 <term>Example usage:</term>
4676 <screen># Disarm the download link in Sourceforge's patch tracker
4678 +content-type-overwrite{text/plain}\
4679 +hide-content-disposition{block} }
4680 .sourceforge.net/tracker/download\.php</screen>
4688 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4689 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-if-modified-since">
4690 <title>hide-if-modified-since</title>
4696 <term>Typical use:</term>
4698 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
4703 <term>Effect:</term>
4706 Deletes the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> HTTP client header or modifies its value.
4713 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4715 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4720 <term>Parameter:</term>
4723 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or a user defined value that specifies a range of hours.
4732 Removing this header is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
4733 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the
4734 browser to use a cached copy of the page.
4737 Instead of removing the header, <literal>hide-if-modified-since</literal> can
4738 also add or subtract a random amount of time to/from the header's value.
4739 You specify a range of minutes where the random factor should be chosen from and
4740 <application>Privoxy</application> does the rest. A negative value means
4741 subtracting, a positive value adding.
4744 Randomizing the value of the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> makes
4745 it less likely that the server can use the time as a cookie replacement,
4746 but you will run into caching problems if the random range is too high.
4749 It is a good idea to only use a small negative value and let
4750 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>
4751 handle the greater changes.
4754 It is also recommended to use this action together with
4755 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>,
4756 otherwise it's more or less pointless.
4762 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4765 <screen># Let the browser revalidate but make tracking based on the time less likely.
4766 {+hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
4767 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
4768 +crunch-if-none-match}
4777 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4778 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-from-header">
4779 <title>hide-from-header</title>
4783 <term>Typical use:</term>
4785 <para>Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address</para>
4790 <term>Effect:</term>
4793 Deletes any existing <quote>From:</quote> HTTP header, or replaces it with the
4801 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4803 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4808 <term>Parameter:</term>
4811 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4820 The keyword <quote>block</quote> will completely remove the header
4821 (not to be confused with the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
4825 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
4826 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
4827 is actually used by a real person.
4830 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send
4831 <quote>From:</quote> headers anymore.
4837 <term>Example usage:</term>
4840 <screen>+hide-from-header{block}</screen> or
4841 <screen>+hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}</screen>
4849 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4850 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-referrer">
4851 <title>hide-referrer</title>
4852 <anchor id="hide-referer">
4855 <term>Typical use:</term>
4857 <para>Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site</para>
4862 <term>Effect:</term>
4865 Deletes the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) HTTP header from the client request,
4866 or replaces it with a forged one.
4873 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4875 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4880 <term>Parameter:</term>
4884 <para><quote>conditional-block</quote> to delete the header completely if the host has changed.</para>
4887 <para><quote>conditional-forge</quote> to forge the header if the host has changed.</para>
4890 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header unconditionally.</para>
4893 <para><quote>forge</quote> to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are talking to.</para>
4896 <para>Any other string to set a user defined referrer.</para>
4906 <literal>conditional-block</literal> is the only parameter,
4907 that isn't easily detected in the server's log file. If it blocks the
4908 referrer, the request will look like the visitor used a bookmark or
4909 typed in the address directly.
4912 Leaving the referrer unmodified for requests on the same host
4913 allows the server owner to see the visitor's <quote>click path</quote>,
4914 but in most cases she could also get that information by comparing
4915 other parts of the log file: for example the User-Agent if it isn't
4916 a very common one, or the user's IP address if it doesn't change between
4920 Always blocking the referrer, or using a custom one, can lead to
4921 failures on servers that check the referrer before they answer any
4922 requests, in an attempt to prevent their content from being
4923 embedded or linked to elsewhere.
4926 Both <literal>conditional-block</literal> and <literal>forge</literal>
4927 will work with referrer checks, as long as content and valid referring page
4928 are on the same host. Most of the time that's the case.
4931 <literal>hide-referer</literal> is an alternate spelling of
4932 <literal>hide-referrer</literal> and the two can be can be freely
4933 substituted with each other. (<quote>referrer</quote> is the
4934 correct English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it
4935 requires it to be spelled as <quote>referer</quote>.)
4941 <term>Example usage:</term>
4944 <screen>+hide-referrer{forge}</screen> or
4945 <screen>+hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}</screen>
4953 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4954 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-user-agent">
4955 <title>hide-user-agent</title>
4959 <term>Typical use:</term>
4961 <para>Try to conceal your type of browser and client operating system</para>
4966 <term>Effect:</term>
4969 Replaces the value of the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> HTTP header
4970 in client requests with the specified value.
4977 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4979 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4984 <term>Parameter:</term>
4987 Any user-defined string.
4997 This can lead to problems on web sites that depend on looking at this header in
4998 order to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
4999 way, is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> the right thing to do: good web sites
5000 work browser-independently).
5004 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
5005 browsers will access the same <application>Privoxy</application> is
5006 <emphasis>not recommended</emphasis>. In single-user, single-browser
5007 setups, you might use it to delete your OS version information from
5008 the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known bugs for your
5009 OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to access
5010 sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
5011 reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not
5012 let <application>Mozilla</application> enter, yet forging to a
5013 <application>Netscape 6.1</application> user-agent works just fine.
5014 (Must be just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
5017 More information on known user-agent strings can be found at
5018 <ulink url="http://www.user-agents.org/">http://www.user-agents.org/</ulink>
5020 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent</ulink>.
5026 <term>Example usage:</term>
5029 <screen>+hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}</screen>
5037 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5038 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="limit-connect">
5039 <title>limit-connect</title>
5043 <term>Typical use:</term>
5045 <para>Prevent abuse of <application>Privoxy</application> as a TCP proxy relay or disable SSL for untrusted sites</para>
5050 <term>Effect:</term>
5053 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
5060 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5062 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5067 <term>Parameter:</term>
5070 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
5071 defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
5080 By default, i.e. if no <literal>limit-connect</literal> action applies,
5081 <application>Privoxy</application> allows HTTP CONNECT requests to all
5082 ports. Use <literal>limit-connect</literal> if fine-grained control
5083 is desired for some or all destinations.
5086 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
5087 (<quote>https://</quote> URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
5088 the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
5089 short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
5090 This means CONNECT-enabled proxies can be used as TCP relays very easily.
5093 <application>Privoxy</application> relays HTTPS traffic without seeing
5094 the decoded content. Websites can leverage this limitation to circumvent &my-app;'s
5095 filters. By specifying an invalid port range you can disable HTTPS entirely.
5101 <term>Example usages:</term>
5103 <!-- I had trouble getting the spacing to look right in my browser -->
5104 <!-- I probably have the wrong font setup, bollocks. -->
5105 <!-- Apparently the emphasis tag uses a proportional font no matter what -->
5107 <screen>+limit-connect{443} # Port 443 is OK.
5108 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
5109 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
5110 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK
5111 +limit-connect{,} # No HTTPS/SSL traffic is allowed</screen>
5118 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5119 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="prevent-compression">
5120 <title>prevent-compression</title>
5124 <term>Typical use:</term>
5127 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
5128 passed through <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>s.
5134 <term>Effect:</term>
5137 Removes the Accept-Encoding header which can be used to ask for compressed transfer.
5144 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5146 <para>Boolean.</para>
5151 <term>Parameter:</term>
5163 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
5164 is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But the <literal><link
5165 linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> and
5166 <literal><link linkend="deanimate-gifs">deanimate-gifs</link></literal>
5167 actions need access to the uncompressed data.
5170 When compiled with zlib support (available since &my-app; 3.0.7), content that should be
5171 filtered is decompressed on-the-fly and you don't have to worry about this action.
5172 If you are using an older &my-app; version, or one that hasn't been compiled with zlib
5173 support, this action can be used to convince the server to send the content uncompressed.
5176 Most text-based instances compress very well, the size is seldom decreased by less than 50%,
5177 for markup-heavy instances like news feeds saving more than 90% of the original size isn't
5181 Not using compression will therefore slow down the transfer, and you should only
5182 enable this action if you really need it. As of &my-app; 3.0.7 it's disabled in all
5183 predefined action settings.
5186 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
5187 documents correctly. Broken PHP applications tend to send an empty document body,
5188 some IIS versions only send the beginning of the content. If you enable
5189 <literal>prevent-compression</literal> per default, you might want to add
5190 exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
5196 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
5200 # Selectively turn off compression, and enable a filter
5202 { +filter{tiny-textforms} +prevent-compression }
5203 # Match only these sites
5208 # Or instead, we could set a universal default:
5210 { +prevent-compression }
5213 # Then maybe make exceptions for broken sites:
5215 { -prevent-compression }
5216 .compusa.com/</screen>
5225 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5226 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="overwrite-last-modified">
5227 <title>overwrite-last-modified</title>
5233 <term>Typical use:</term>
5235 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
5240 <term>Effect:</term>
5243 Deletes the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> HTTP server header or modifies its value.
5250 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5252 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5257 <term>Parameter:</term>
5260 One of the keywords: <quote>block</quote>, <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote>
5261 and <quote>randomize</quote>
5270 Removing the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header is useful for filter
5271 testing, where you want to force a real reload instead of getting status
5272 code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the browser to reuse the old
5273 version of the page.
5276 The <quote>randomize</quote> option overwrites the value of the
5277 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with a randomly chosen time
5278 between the original value and the current time. In theory the server
5279 could send each document with a different <quote>Last-Modified:</quote>
5280 header to track visits without using cookies. <quote>Randomize</quote>
5281 makes it impossible and the browser can still revalidate cached documents.
5284 <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote> overwrites the value of the
5285 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with the current time. You could use
5286 this option together with
5287 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
5288 to further customize your random range.
5291 The preferred parameter here is <quote>randomize</quote>. It is safe
5292 to use, as long as the time settings are more or less correct.
5293 If the server sets the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header to the time
5294 of the request, the random range becomes zero and the value stays the same.
5295 Therefore you should later randomize it a second time with
5296 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>,
5300 It is also recommended to use this action together with
5301 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>.
5307 <term>Example usage:</term>
5310 <screen># Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
5311 { +hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
5312 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
5313 +crunch-if-none-match}
5322 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5323 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="redirect">
5324 <title>redirect</title>
5330 <term>Typical use:</term>
5333 Redirect requests to other sites.
5339 <term>Effect:</term>
5342 Convinces the browser that the requested document has been moved
5343 to another location and the browser should get it from there.
5350 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5352 <para>Parameterized</para>
5357 <term>Parameter:</term>
5360 An absolute URL or a single pcrs command.
5369 Requests to which this action applies are answered with a
5370 HTTP redirect to URLs of your choosing. The new URL is
5371 either provided as parameter, or derived by applying a
5372 single pcrs command to the original URL.
5375 This action will be ignored if you use it together with
5376 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>.
5377 It can be combined with
5378 <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects{check-decoded-url}</link></literal>
5379 to redirect to a decoded version of a rewritten URL.
5382 Use this action carefully, make sure not to create redirection loops
5383 and be aware that using your own redirects might make it
5384 possible to fingerprint your requests.
5387 In case of problems with your redirects, or simply to watch
5388 them working, enable <link linkend="DEBUG">debug 128</link>.
5394 <term>Example usages:</term>
5397 <screen># Replace example.com's style sheet with another one
5398 { +redirect{http://localhost/css-replacements/example.com.css} }
5399 example.com/stylesheet\.css
5401 # Create a short, easy to remember nickname for a favorite site
5402 # (relies on the browser accept and forward invalid URLs to &my-app;)
5403 { +redirect{http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html} }
5406 # Always use the expanded view for Undeadly.org articles
5407 # (Note the $ at the end of the URL pattern to make sure
5408 # the request for the rewritten URL isn't redirected as well)
5409 {+redirect{s@$@&mode=expanded@}}
5410 undeadly.org/cgi\?action=article&sid=\d*$
5412 # Redirect Google search requests to MSN
5413 {+redirect{s@^http://[^/]*/search\?q=([^&]*).*@http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=$1@}}
5416 # Redirect MSN search requests to Yahoo
5417 {+redirect{s@^http://[^/]*/results\.aspx\?q=([^&]*).*@http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=$1@}}
5418 search.msn.com//results\.aspx\?q=
5420 # Redirect remote requests for this manual
5421 # to the local version delivered by Privoxy
5422 {+redirect{s@^http://www@http://config@}}
5423 www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</screen>
5432 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5433 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="server-header-filter">
5434 <title>server-header-filter</title>
5438 <term>Typical use:</term>
5441 Rewrite or remove single server headers.
5447 <term>Effect:</term>
5450 All server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly
5451 through the specified regular expression based substitutions.
5458 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
5460 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5465 <term>Parameter:</term>
5468 The name of a server-header filter, as defined in one of the
5469 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
5478 Server-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
5479 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
5480 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
5481 You can do that by using tags though.
5484 Server-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
5485 and use their output as input.
5488 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
5489 to learn which server-header filters are available by default, and how to
5496 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5500 {+server-header-filter{html-to-xml}}
5501 example.org/xml-instance-that-is-delivered-as-html
5503 {+server-header-filter{xml-to-html}}
5504 example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
5514 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5515 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="server-header-tagger">
5516 <title>server-header-tagger</title>
5520 <term>Typical use:</term>
5523 Enable or disable filters based on the Content-Type header.
5529 <term>Effect:</term>
5532 Server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
5533 the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
5541 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
5543 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5548 <term>Parameter:</term>
5551 The name of a server-header tagger, as defined in one of the
5552 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
5561 Server-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
5562 and as the header isn't modified, each tagger <quote>sees</quote>
5566 Server-header taggers are executed before all other header actions
5567 that modify server headers. Their tags can be used to control
5568 all of the other server-header actions, the content filters
5569 and the crunch actions (<link linkend="redirect">redirect</link>
5570 and <link linkend="block">block</link>).
5573 Obviously crunching based on tags created by server-header taggers
5574 doesn't prevent the request from showing up in the server's log file.
5581 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5585 # Tag every request with the content type declared by the server
5586 {+server-header-tagger{content-type}}
5597 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5598 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="session-cookies-only">
5599 <title>session-cookies-only</title>
5603 <term>Typical use:</term>
5606 Allow only temporary <quote>session</quote> cookies (for the current
5607 browser session <emphasis>only</emphasis>).
5613 <term>Effect:</term>
5616 Deletes the <quote>expires</quote> field from <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote>
5617 server headers. Most browsers will not store such cookies permanently and
5618 forget them in between sessions.
5625 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5627 <para>Boolean.</para>
5632 <term>Parameter:</term>
5644 This is less strict than <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> /
5645 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal> and allows you to browse
5646 websites that insist or rely on setting cookies, without compromising your privacy too badly.
5649 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed by
5650 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal> and will forget about them between sessions.
5651 This makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
5652 that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
5653 sites, and is the recommended setting.
5656 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>
5657 together with <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> or
5658 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>. If you do, cookies
5659 will be plainly killed.
5662 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an <quote>expires</quote>
5663 field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out to be sure.
5666 This setting also has no effect on cookies that may have been stored
5667 previously by the browser before starting <application>Privoxy</application>.
5668 These would have to be removed manually.
5671 <application>Privoxy</application> also uses
5672 the <link linkend="filter-content-cookies">content-cookies filter</link>
5673 to block some types of cookies. Content cookies are not effected by
5674 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>.
5680 <term>Example usage:</term>
5683 <screen>+session-cookies-only</screen>
5691 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5692 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="set-image-blocker">
5693 <title>set-image-blocker</title>
5697 <term>Typical use:</term>
5699 <para>Choose the replacement for blocked images</para>
5704 <term>Effect:</term>
5707 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If <emphasis>both</emphasis>
5708 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><link
5709 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> <emphasis>also</emphasis>
5710 apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an image,
5711 <emphasis>then</emphasis> the parameter of this action decides what will be
5712 sent as a replacement.
5719 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5721 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5726 <term>Parameter:</term>
5731 <quote>pattern</quote> to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is visually
5732 decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners were busted.
5737 <quote>blank</quote> to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners disappear
5738 completely, but makes it hard to detect where <application>Privoxy</application> has blocked
5739 images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if <application>Privoxy</application>
5740 has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
5745 <quote><replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable></quote> to
5746 send a redirect to <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>. You can redirect
5747 to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem via <quote>file:///</quote> URL.
5748 (But note that not all browsers support redirecting to a local file system).
5751 A good application of redirects is to use special <application>Privoxy</application>-built-in
5752 URLs, which send the built-in images, as <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>.
5753 This has the same visual effect as specifying <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote> in
5754 the first place, but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of requesting
5755 it over and over again.
5766 The URLs for the built-in images are <quote>http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=<replaceable
5767 class="parameter">type</replaceable></quote>, where <replaceable class="parameter">type</replaceable> is
5768 either <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote>.
5771 There is a third (advanced) type, called <quote>auto</quote>. It is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> to be
5772 used in <literal>set-image-blocker</literal>, but meant for use from <link linkend="filter-file">filters</link>.
5773 Auto will select the type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an image.
5779 <term>Example usage:</term>
5785 <screen>+set-image-blocker{pattern}</screen>
5788 Redirect to the BSD daemon:
5791 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}</screen>
5794 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
5797 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}</screen>
5805 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5807 <title>Summary</title>
5809 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
5810 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
5811 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
5812 content, and other criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard
5813 and fast rules for all sites. See the <link
5814 linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link> for a brief example on troubleshooting
5820 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5821 <sect2 id="aliases">
5822 <title>Aliases</title>
5824 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
5825 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other actions.
5826 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
5827 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab,
5829 <quote>{</quote> and <quote>}</quote>, but we <emphasis>strongly
5830 recommend</emphasis> that you only use <quote>a</quote> to <quote>z</quote>,
5831 <quote>0</quote> to <quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and <quote>-</quote>.
5832 Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start with a
5833 <quote>+</quote> or <quote>-</quote> sign, since they are merely textually
5837 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they <emphasis>must be
5838 defined in a special section at the top of the file!</emphasis>
5839 And there can only be one such section per actions file. Each actions file may
5840 have its own alias section, and the aliases defined in it are only visible
5844 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
5845 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
5846 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called
5847 <quote>shop</quote>, you can later change your policy on shops in
5848 <emphasis>one</emphasis> place, and your changes will take effect everywhere
5849 in the actions file where the <quote>shop</quote> alias is used. Calling aliases
5850 by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
5853 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though:
5854 <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in web-based action file
5855 editor honors aliases when reading the actions files, but it expands
5856 them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are of course preserved,
5857 but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
5862 Now let's define some aliases...
5867 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
5869 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
5870 # must be at the top of the actions file!
5874 # These aliases just save typing later:
5875 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5877 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5878 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5879 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked image.} +handle-as-image
5880 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
5882 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5883 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5885 fragile = -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer</link> -<link linkend="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link>
5887 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link>
5889 # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
5891 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
5892 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies</screen>
5896 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
5897 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
5898 up for the <quote>/</quote> pattern):
5903 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
5904 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
5907 .office.microsoft.com
5908 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
5909 # Gmail is really mail.google.com, not gmail.com
5913 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
5917 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
5920 # These shops require pop-ups:
5922 {-filter{all-popups} -filter{unsolicited-popups}}
5924 .overclockers.co.uk</screen>
5928 Aliases like <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote> are typically used for
5929 <quote>problem</quote> sites that require more than one action to be disabled
5930 in order to function properly.
5936 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5937 <sect2 id="act-examples">
5938 <title>Actions Files Tutorial</title>
5940 The above chapters have shown <link linkend="actions-file">which actions files
5941 there are and how they are organized</link>, how actions are <link
5942 linkend="actions">specified</link> and <link linkend="actions-apply">applied
5943 to URLs</link>, how <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> work, and how to
5944 define and use <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link>. Now, let's look at an
5945 example <filename>match-all.action</filename>, <filename>default.action</filename>
5946 and <filename>user.action</filename> file and see how all these pieces come together:
5950 <title>match-all.action</title>
5952 Remember <emphasis>all actions are disabled when matching starts</emphasis>,
5953 so we have to explicitly enable the ones we want.
5957 While the <filename>match-all.action</filename> file only contains a
5958 single section, it is probably the most important one. It has only one
5959 pattern, <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, but this pattern
5960 <link linkend="af-patterns">matches all URLs</link>. Therefore, the set of
5961 actions used in this <quote>default</quote> section <emphasis>will
5962 be applied to all requests as a start</emphasis>. It can be partly or
5963 wholly overridden by other actions files like <filename>default.action</filename>
5964 and <filename>user.action</filename>, but it will still be largely responsible
5965 for your overall browsing experience.
5969 Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
5970 no need to disable any actions here. (Remember: a <quote>+</quote>
5971 preceding the action name enables the action, a <quote>-</quote> disables!).
5972 Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
5973 multiple lines with line continuation.
5979 +<link linkend="CHANGE-X-FORWARDED-FOR">change-x-forwarded-for{block}</link> \
5980 +<link linkend="HIDE-FROM-HEADER">hide-from-header{block}</link> \
5981 +<link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER">set-image-blocker{pattern}</link> \
5988 The default behavior is now set.
5993 <title>default.action</title>
5996 If you aren't a developer, there's no need for you to edit the
5997 <filename>default.action</filename> file. It is maintained by
5998 the &my-app; developers and if you disagree with some of the
5999 sections, you should overrule them in your <filename>user.action</filename>.
6003 Understanding the <filename>default.action</filename> file can
6004 help you with your <filename>user.action</filename>, though.
6008 The first section in this file is a special section for internal use
6009 that prevents older &my-app; versions from reading the file:
6014 ##########################################################################
6015 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
6016 ##########################################################################
6018 for-privoxy-version=3.0.11</screen>
6022 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
6023 section from the above <link linkend="aliases">chapter on aliases</link>,
6024 that also explains why and how aliases are used:
6029 ##########################################################################
6031 ##########################################################################
6034 # These aliases just save typing later:
6035 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
6037 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
6038 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
6039 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked image.} +handle-as-image
6040 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
6042 # These aliases define combinations of actions
6043 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
6045 fragile = -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer</link>
6046 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link></screen>
6050 The first of our specialized sections is concerned with <quote>fragile</quote>
6051 sites, i.e. sites that require minimum interference, because they are either
6052 very complex or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that
6053 make them unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will simply use
6054 our pre-defined <literal>fragile</literal> alias instead of stating the list
6055 of actions explicitly:
6060 ##########################################################################
6061 # Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
6062 ##########################################################################
6064 # "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
6067 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
6068 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
6069 mail.google.com</screen>
6073 Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically
6074 require cookies to log in, and pop-up windows for shopping
6075 carts or item details. Again, we'll use a pre-defined alias:
6084 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
6086 .scan.co.uk</screen>
6090 The <literal><link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link></literal>
6091 action, which may have been enabled in <filename>match-all.action</filename>,
6092 breaks some sites. So disable it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
6097 { -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> }
6101 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
6102 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
6103 .nytimes.com</screen>
6107 It is important that <application>Privoxy</application> knows which
6108 URLs belong to images, so that <emphasis>if</emphasis> they are to
6109 be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
6110 Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it
6111 would destroy the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it
6112 would feed the advertisers information about you. We can mark any
6113 URL as an image with the <literal><link
6114 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action,
6115 and marking all URLs that end in a known image file extension is a
6121 ##########################################################################
6123 ##########################################################################
6125 # Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
6126 # blocked further down this file:
6128 { +<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> }
6129 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$</screen>
6133 And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to
6134 generate the banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the
6135 request is for an image. Hence we block them <emphasis>and</emphasis>
6136 mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
6137 <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above. (We could of
6138 course just as well use <literal>+<link linkend="block">block</link>
6139 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> here.)
6140 Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
6141 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
6142 action. Since all URLs have matched the default section with its
6143 <literal>+<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link>{pattern}</literal>
6144 action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:
6149 # Known ad generators:
6154 .ad.*.doubleclick.net
6155 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6156 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6162 One of the most important jobs of <application>Privoxy</application>
6163 is to block banners. Many of these can be <quote>blocked</quote>
6164 by the <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{banners-by-size}</literal>
6165 action, which we enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner
6166 images from the pages while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request
6167 them anymore, and hence they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally
6168 doesn't catch all banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we
6169 need a comprehensive list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the
6170 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action to them.
6173 First comes many generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
6174 matching typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes
6175 a list of individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here
6176 to keep the example short:
6181 ##########################################################################
6182 # Block these fine banners:
6183 ##########################################################################
6184 { <link linkend="BLOCK">+block{Banner ads.}</link> }
6192 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
6193 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
6195 # Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
6197 .hitbox.com</screen>
6201 It's quite remarkable how many advertisers actually call their banner
6202 servers ads.<replaceable>company</replaceable>.com, or call the directory
6203 in which the banners are stored simply <quote>banners</quote>. So the above
6204 generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
6207 But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want
6208 to block. The pattern <literal>.*ads.</literal> e.g. catches
6209 <quote>nasty-<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.nasty-corp.com</quote> as intended,
6210 but also <quote>downlo<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.sourcefroge.net</quote> or
6211 <quote><emphasis>ads</emphasis>l.some-provider.net.</quote> So here come some
6212 well-known exceptions to the <literal>+<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6216 Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
6217 <quote>downloads.sourcefroge.net</quote>: Initially, all actions are deactivated,
6218 so it wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the
6219 URL, but just deactivates the <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6220 action once again. Then it matches <literal>.*ads.</literal>, an exception to the
6221 general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
6222 <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link></literal> applies. And now, it'll match
6223 <literal>.*loads.</literal>, where <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">-block</link></literal>
6224 applies, so (unless it matches <emphasis>again</emphasis> further down) it ends up
6225 with no <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal> action applying.
6230 ##########################################################################
6231 # Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
6232 ##########################################################################
6236 { -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
6237 adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
6238 adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
6239 adobe. # (has nothing to do with ads either)
6240 ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
6241 .edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
6242 .*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
6250 www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
6251 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv</screen>
6255 Filtering source code can have nasty side effects,
6256 so make an exception for our friends at sourceforge.net,
6257 and all paths with <quote>cvs</quote> in them. Note that
6258 <literal>-<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link></literal>
6259 disables <emphasis>all</emphasis> filters in one fell swoop!
6264 # Don't filter code!
6266 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6271 .sourceforge.net</screen>
6275 The actual <filename>default.action</filename> is of course much more
6276 comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
6281 <sect3><title>user.action</title>
6284 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies,
6285 which would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now,
6286 you might want to be more specific and have customized rules that
6287 are more suitable to your personal habits and preferences. These would
6288 be for narrowly defined situations like your ISP or your bank, and should
6289 be placed in <filename>user.action</filename>, which is parsed after all other
6290 actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any previously
6291 defined actions. <filename>user.action</filename> is also a
6292 <emphasis>safe</emphasis> place for your personal settings, since
6293 <filename>default.action</filename> is actively maintained by the
6294 <application>Privoxy</application> developers and you'll probably want
6295 to install updated versions from time to time.
6299 So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
6300 <filename>user.action</filename>:
6304 <!-- brief sample user.action here -->
6308 # My user.action file. <fred@example.com></screen>
6312 As <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link> are local to the actions
6313 file that they are defined in, you can't use the ones from
6314 <filename>default.action</filename>, unless you repeat them here:
6319 # Aliases are local to the file they are defined in.
6320 # (Re-)define aliases for this file:
6324 # These aliases just save typing later, and the alias names should
6325 # be self explanatory.
6327 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
6328 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6329 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
6330 allow-popups = -filter{all-popups}
6331 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked as image.} +handle-as-image
6332 -block-as-image = -block
6334 # These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
6335 # certain types of sites:
6337 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referrer
6338 shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
6340 # Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
6342 allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}
6344 # Alias for specific file types that are text, but might have conflicting
6345 # MIME types. We want the browser to force these to be text documents.
6346 handle-as-text = -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> +-<link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{text/plain}</link> +-<link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-CONTENT-DISPOSITION">hide-content-disposition</link></screen>
6351 Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and
6352 you don't want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like
6353 to allow persistent cookies for these sites. The
6354 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal> alias defined above does exactly
6355 that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
6356 processing of cookies to make them only temporary.
6361 { allow-all-cookies }
6365 .redhat.com</screen>
6369 Your bank is allergic to some filter, but you don't know which, so you disable them all:
6374 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6375 .your-home-banking-site.com</screen>
6379 Some file types you may not want to filter for various reasons:
6384 # Technical documentation is likely to contain strings that might
6385 # erroneously get altered by the JavaScript-oriented filters:
6390 # And this stupid host sends streaming video with a wrong MIME type,
6391 # so that Privoxy thinks it is getting HTML and starts filtering:
6393 stupid-server.example.com/</screen>
6397 Example of a simple <link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> action. Say you've
6398 seen an ad on your favourite page on example.com that you want to get rid of.
6399 You have right-clicked the image, selected <quote>copy image location</quote>
6400 and pasted the URL below while removing the leading http://, into a
6401 <literal>{ +block{} }</literal> section. Note that <literal>{ +handle-as-image
6402 }</literal> need not be specified, since all URLs ending in
6403 <literal>.gif</literal> will be tagged as images by the general rules as set
6404 in default.action anyway:
6409 { +<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link>{Nasty ads.} }
6410 www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor\.gif
6411 another.example.net/more/junk/here/</screen>
6415 The URLs of dynamically generated banners, especially from large banner
6416 farms, often don't use the well-known image file name extensions, which
6417 makes it impossible for <application>Privoxy</application> to guess
6418 the file type just by looking at the URL.
6419 You can use the <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above for
6421 Note that objects which match this rule but then turn out NOT to be an
6422 image are typically rendered as a <quote>broken image</quote> icon by the
6423 browser. Use cautiously.
6432 ar.atwola.com/</screen>
6436 Now you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine,
6437 but you were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you
6438 were again too lazy to give <link linkend="contact">feedback</link>, so
6439 you just used the <literal>fragile</literal> alias on the site, and
6440 -- <emphasis>whoa!</emphasis> -- it worked. The <literal>fragile</literal>
6441 aliases disables those actions that are most likely to break a site. Also,
6442 good for testing purposes to see if it is <application>Privoxy</application>
6443 that is causing the problem or not. We later find other regular sites
6444 that misbehave, and add those to our personalized list of troublemakers:
6452 .mybank.com</screen>
6456 You like the <quote>fun</quote> text replacements in <filename>default.filter</filename>,
6457 but it is disabled in the distributed actions file.
6458 So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
6459 update-safe config, once and for all:
6464 { +<link linkend="filter-fun">filter{fun}</link> }
6465 / # For ALL sites!</screen>
6469 Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions
6470 to the filters in <filename>default.action</filename> for things that
6471 really shouldn't be filtered, like code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since
6472 <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word, these exceptions
6473 won't be valid for the <quote>fun</quote> filtering specified here.
6477 You might also worry about how your favourite free websites are
6478 funded, and find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements
6479 to survive. So you might want to specifically allow banners for those
6480 sites that you feel provide value to you:
6492 Note that <literal>allow-ads</literal> has been aliased to
6493 <literal>-<link linkend="block">block</link></literal>,
6494 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-size">filter{banners-by-size}</link></literal>, and
6495 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-link">filter{banners-by-link}</link></literal> above.
6499 Invoke another alias here to force an over-ride of the MIME type <literal>
6500 application/x-sh</literal> which typically would open a download type
6501 dialog. In my case, I want to look at the shell script, and then I can save
6502 it should I choose to.
6512 <filename>user.action</filename> is generally the best place to define
6513 exceptions and additions to the default policies of
6514 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some actions are safe to have their
6515 default policies set here though. So let's set a default policy to have a
6516 <quote>blank</quote> image as opposed to the checkerboard pattern for
6517 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> sites. <quote>/</quote> of course matches all URL
6523 { +<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker{blank}</link> }
6524 / # ALL sites</screen>
6530 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6534 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6536 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6538 <sect1 id="filter-file">
6539 <title>Filter Files</title>
6542 On-the-fly text substitutions need
6543 to be defined in a <quote>filter file</quote>. Once defined, they
6544 can then be invoked as an <quote>action</quote>.
6548 &my-app; supports three different filter actions:
6549 <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> to
6550 rewrite the content that is send to the client,
6551 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header-filter</link></literal>
6552 to rewrite headers that are send by the client, and
6553 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header-filter</link></literal>
6554 to rewrite headers that are send by the server.
6558 &my-app; also supports two tagger actions:
6559 <literal><link linkend="client-header-tagger">client-header-tagger</link></literal>
6561 <literal><link linkend="server-header-tagger">server-header-tagger</link></literal>.
6562 Taggers and filters use the same syntax in the filter files, the difference
6563 is that taggers don't modify the text they are filtering, but use a rewritten
6564 version of the filtered text as tag. The tags can then be used to change the
6565 applying actions through sections with <link linkend="tag-pattern">tag-patterns</link>.
6570 Multiple filter files can be defined through the <literal> <link
6571 linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal> config directive. The filters
6572 as supplied by the developers are located in
6573 <filename>default.filter</filename>. It is recommended that any locally
6574 defined or modified filters go in a separately defined file such as
6575 <filename>user.filter</filename>.
6579 Common tasks for content filters are to eliminate common annoyances in
6580 HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows,
6581 exit consoles, crippled windows without navigation tools, the
6582 infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to suppress images with certain
6583 width and height attributes (standard banner sizes or web-bugs),
6584 or just to have fun.
6588 Enabled content filters are applied to any content whose
6589 <quote>Content Type</quote> header is recognised as a sign
6590 of text-based content, with the exception of <literal>text/plain</literal>.
6591 Use the <link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> action
6592 to also filter other content.
6596 Substitutions are made at the source level, so if you want to <quote>roll
6597 your own</quote> filters, you should first be familiar with HTML syntax,
6598 and, of course, regular expressions.
6602 Just like the <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, the
6603 filter file is organized in sections, which are called <emphasis>filters</emphasis>
6604 here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with one of the
6605 <emphasis>keywords</emphasis> <literal>FILTER:</literal>,
6606 <literal>CLIENT-HEADER-FILTER:</literal> or <literal>SERVER-HEADER-FILTER:</literal>
6607 followed by the filter's <emphasis>name</emphasis>, and a short (one line)
6608 <emphasis>description</emphasis> of what it does. Below that line
6609 come the <emphasis>jobs</emphasis>, i.e. lines that define the actual
6610 text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
6611 should describe what the filter <emphasis>eliminates</emphasis>. The
6612 comment is used in the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
6613 user interface</ulink>.
6617 Once a filter called <replaceable>name</replaceable> has been defined
6618 in the filter file, it can be invoked by using an action of the form
6619 +<literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>name</replaceable>}</literal>
6620 in any <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>.
6624 Filter definitions start with a header line that contains the filter
6625 type, the filter name and the filter description.
6626 A content filter header line for a filter called <quote>foo</quote> could look
6631 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"</screen>
6635 Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that
6636 define what text replacements the filter executes. They are specified
6637 in a syntax that imitates <ulink url="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</ulink>'s
6638 <literal>s///</literal> operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you
6639 will find this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the
6640 PCRS documentation for the subtle differences to Perl behaviour. Most
6641 notably, the non-standard option letter <literal>U</literal> is supported,
6642 which turns the default to ungreedy matching.
6647 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
6648 Expressions</quote></ulink>, you might want to take a look at
6649 the <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>, and
6650 see the <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl
6652 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlop.html">the
6653 <literal>s///</literal> operator's syntax</ulink> and <ulink
6654 url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl-style regular
6655 expressions</ulink> in general.
6656 The below examples might also help to get you started.
6660 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6662 <sect2><title>Filter File Tutorial</title>
6664 Now, let's complete our <quote>foo</quote> content filter. We have already defined
6665 the heading, but the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace
6666 <quote>foo</quote> with <quote>bar</quote>, there is only one (trivial) job
6671 <screen>s/foo/bar/</screen>
6675 But wait! Didn't the comment say that <emphasis>all</emphasis> occurrences
6676 of <quote>foo</quote> should be replaced? Our current job will only take
6677 care of the first <quote>foo</quote> on each page. For global substitution,
6678 we'll need to add the <literal>g</literal> option:
6682 <screen>s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6686 Our complete filter now looks like this:
6689 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
6690 s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6694 Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see
6695 a filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
6696 abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
6702 FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
6704 # Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
6706 s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg</screen>
6710 Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses
6711 <literal>|</literal> as the delimiter instead of <literal>/</literal>, because
6712 the pattern contains a forward slash, which would otherwise have to be escaped
6713 by a backslash (<literal>\</literal>).
6717 Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <literal><script.*</literal>
6718 enclosed in parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and <literal>*</literal>
6719 means: <quote>Match an arbitrary number of the element left of myself</quote>, this
6720 matches <quote><script</quote>, followed by <emphasis>any</emphasis> text, i.e.
6721 it matches the whole page, from the start of the first <script> tag.
6725 That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: <literal>document\.referrer</literal>
6726 matches only the exact string <quote>document.referrer</quote>. The dot needed to
6727 be <emphasis>escaped</emphasis>, i.e. preceded by a backslash, to take away its
6728 special meaning as a joker, and make it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is:
6729 Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including,
6730 the text <quote>document.referrer</quote>, if <emphasis>both</emphasis> are present
6731 in the page (and appear in that order).
6735 But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in parentheses,
6736 is <literal>.*</script></literal>. You already know what <literal>.*</literal>
6737 means, so the whole pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script>
6738 tag in a page to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text
6739 <quote>document.referrer</quote> appears somewhere in between.
6743 This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the parentheses:
6744 The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed in parentheses, will be
6745 remembered and be available through the variables <literal>$1, $2, ...</literal> in
6746 the substitute. The <literal>U</literal> option switches to ungreedy matching, which means
6747 that the first <literal>.*</literal> in the pattern will only <quote>eat up</quote> all
6748 text in between <quote><script</quote> and the <emphasis>first</emphasis> occurrence
6749 of <quote>document.referrer</quote>, and that the second <literal>.*</literal> will
6750 only span the text up to the <emphasis>first</emphasis> <quote></script></quote>
6751 tag. Furthermore, the <literal>s</literal> option says that the match may span
6752 multiple lines in the page, and the <literal>g</literal> option again means that the
6753 substitution is global.
6757 So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
6758 <quote>document.referrer</quote>. Remember the parts of the script from
6759 (and including) the start tag up to (and excluding) the string
6760 <quote>document.referrer</quote> as <literal>$1</literal>, and the part following
6761 that string, up to and including the closing tag, as <literal>$2</literal>.
6765 Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
6766 lets look at the substitute: <literal>$1"Not Your Business!"$2</literal> is
6767 easy to read: The text remembered as <literal>$1</literal>, followed by
6768 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> (<emphasis>including</emphasis>
6769 the quotation marks!), followed by the text remembered as <literal>$2</literal>.
6770 This produces an exact copy of the original string, with the middle part
6771 (the <quote>document.referrer</quote>) replaced by <literal>"Not Your
6772 Business!"</literal>.
6776 The whole job now reads: Replace <quote>document.referrer</quote> by
6777 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> wherever it appears inside a
6778 <script> tag. Note that this job won't break JavaScript syntax,
6779 since both the original and the replacement are syntactically valid
6780 string objects. The script just won't have access to the referrer
6781 information anymore.
6785 We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but
6786 this time only point out the constructs of special interest:
6791 # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
6793 s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig</screen>
6797 <literal>\s</literal> stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline,
6798 carriage return, form feed), so that <literal>\s*</literal> means: <quote>zero
6799 or more whitespace</quote>. The <literal>?</literal> in <literal>.*?</literal>
6800 makes this matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the <literal>U</literal>
6801 option is not set). The <literal>['"]</literal> construct means: <quote>a single
6802 <emphasis>or</emphasis> a double quote</quote>. Finally, <literal>\1</literal> is
6803 a back-reference to the first parenthesis just like <literal>$1</literal> above,
6804 with the difference that in the <emphasis>pattern</emphasis>, a backslash indicates
6805 a back-reference, whereas in the <emphasis>substitute</emphasis>, it's the dollar.
6809 So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
6810 strings to the <quote>window.status</quote> object with a dummy assignment
6811 (using a variable name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with
6812 real variables in scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless
6813 descriptions are displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when
6814 you move your mouse over links.
6819 # Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
6821 s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU</screen>
6826 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">OnUnload
6827 event binding</ulink> in the HTML DOM was a <emphasis>CRIME</emphasis>.
6828 When I close a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta.
6829 This job replaces the <quote>onunload</quote> attribute in
6830 <quote><body></quote> tags with the dummy word <literal>never</literal>.
6831 Note that the <literal>i</literal> option makes the pattern matching
6832 case-insensitive. Also note that ungreedy matching alone doesn't always guarantee
6833 a minimal match: In the first parenthesis, we had to use <literal>[^>]*</literal>
6834 instead of <literal>.*</literal> to prevent the match from exceeding the
6835 <body> tag if it doesn't contain <quote>OnUnload</quote>, but the page's
6840 The last example is from the fun department:
6845 FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
6847 # Spice the daily news:
6849 s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig</screen>
6853 Note the <literal>(?!\.com)</literal> part (a so-called negative lookahead)
6854 in the job's pattern, which means: Don't match, if the string
6855 <quote>.com</quote> appears directly following <quote>microsoft</quote>
6856 in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being trashed, while
6857 still replacing the word everywhere else.
6862 # Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
6864 s* industry[ -]leading \
6866 | customer[ -]focused \
6867 | market[ -]driven \
6868 | award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
6869 | high[ -]performance \
6870 | solutions[ -]based \
6874 *<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
6879 The <literal>x</literal> option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for
6880 e.g. the liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
6888 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6890 <sect2 id="predefined-filters"><title>The Pre-defined Filters</title>
6894 Note each filter is also listed in the +filter action section above. Please
6895 keep these listings in sync.
6900 The distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file contains a selection of
6901 pre-defined filters for your convenience:
6906 <term><emphasis>js-annoyances</emphasis></term>
6909 The purpose of this filter is to get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.
6914 replaces JavaScript references to the browser's referrer information
6915 with the string "Not Your Business!". This compliments the <literal><link
6916 linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal> action on the content level.
6921 removes the bindings to the DOM's
6922 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">unload
6923 event</ulink> which we feel has no right to exist and is responsible for most <quote>exit consoles</quote>, i.e.
6924 nasty windows that pop up when you close another one.
6929 removes code that causes new windows to be opened with undesired properties, such as being
6930 full-screen, non-resizeable, without location, status or menu bar etc.
6936 Use with caution. This is an aggressive filter, and can break sites that
6937 rely heavily on JavaScript.
6943 <term><emphasis>js-events</emphasis></term>
6946 This is a very radical measure. It removes virtually all JavaScript event bindings, which
6947 means that scripts can not react to user actions such as mouse movements or clicks, window
6948 resizing etc, anymore. Use with caution!
6951 We <emphasis>strongly discourage</emphasis> using this filter as a default since it breaks
6952 many legitimate scripts. It is meant for use only on extra-nasty sites (should you really
6959 <term><emphasis>html-annoyances</emphasis></term>
6962 This filter will undo many common instances of HTML based abuse.
6965 The <literal>BLINK</literal> and <literal>MARQUEE</literal> tags
6966 are neutralized (yeah baby!), and browser windows will be created as
6967 resizeable (as of course they should be!), and will have location,
6968 scroll and menu bars -- even if specified otherwise.
6974 <term><emphasis>content-cookies</emphasis></term>
6977 Most cookies are set in the HTTP dialog, where they can be intercepted
6979 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>
6980 and <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>
6981 actions. But web sites increasingly make use of HTML meta tags and JavaScript
6982 to sneak cookies to the browser on the content level.
6985 This filter disables most HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets
6986 cookies. It cannot detect all clever uses of these types of code, so it
6987 should not be relied on as an absolute fix. Use it wherever you would also
6988 use the cookie crunch actions.
6994 <term><emphasis>refresh tags</emphasis></term>
6997 Disable any refresh tags if the interval is greater than nine seconds (so
6998 that redirections done via refresh tags are not destroyed). This is useful
6999 for dial-on-demand setups, or for those who find this HTML feature
7006 <term><emphasis>unsolicited-popups</emphasis></term>
7009 This filter attempts to prevent only <quote>unsolicited</quote> pop-up
7010 windows from opening, yet still allow pop-up windows that the user
7011 has explicitly chosen to open. It was added in version 3.0.1,
7012 as an improvement over earlier such filters.
7015 Technical note: The filter works by redefining the window.open JavaScript
7016 function to a dummy function, <literal>PrivoxyWindowOpen()</literal>,
7017 during the loading and rendering phase of each HTML page access, and
7018 restoring the function afterward.
7021 This is recommended only for browsers that cannot perform this function
7022 reliably themselves. And be aware that some sites require such windows
7023 in order to function normally. Use with caution.
7029 <term><emphasis>all-popups</emphasis></term>
7032 Attempt to prevent <emphasis>all</emphasis> pop-up windows from opening.
7033 Note this should be used with even more discretion than the above, since
7034 it is more likely to break some sites that require pop-ups for normal
7035 usage. Use with caution.
7041 <term><emphasis>img-reorder</emphasis></term>
7044 This is a helper filter that has no value if used alone. It makes the
7045 <literal>banners-by-size</literal> and <literal>banners-by-link</literal>
7046 (see below) filters more effective and should be enabled together with them.
7052 <term><emphasis>banners-by-size</emphasis></term>
7055 This filter removes image tags purely based on what size they are. Fortunately
7056 for us, many ads and banner images tend to conform to certain standardized
7057 sizes, which makes this filter quite effective for ad stripping purposes.
7060 Occasionally this filter will cause false positives on images that are not ads,
7061 but just happen to be of one of the standard banner sizes.
7064 Recommended only for those who require extreme ad blocking. The default
7065 block rules should catch 95+% of all ads <emphasis>without</emphasis> this filter enabled.
7071 <term><emphasis>banners-by-link</emphasis></term>
7074 This is an experimental filter that attempts to kill any banners if
7075 their URLs seem to point to known or suspected click trackers. It is currently
7076 not of much value and is not recommended for use by default.
7082 <term><emphasis>webbugs</emphasis></term>
7085 Webbugs are small, invisible images (technically 1X1 GIF images), that
7086 are used to track users across websites, and collect information on them.
7087 As an HTML page is loaded by the browser, an embedded image tag causes the
7088 browser to contact a third-party site, disclosing the tracking information
7089 through the requested URL and/or cookies for that third-party domain, without
7090 the user ever becoming aware of the interaction with the third-party site.
7091 HTML-ized spam also uses a similar technique to verify email addresses.
7094 This filter removes the HTML code that loads such <quote>webbugs</quote>.
7100 <term><emphasis>tiny-textforms</emphasis></term>
7103 A rather special-purpose filter that can be used to enlarge textareas (those
7104 multi-line text boxes in web forms) and turn off hard word wrap in them.
7105 It was written for the sourceforge.net tracker system where such boxes are
7106 a nuisance, but it can be handy on other sites, too.
7109 It is not recommended to use this filter as a default.
7115 <term><emphasis>jumping-windows</emphasis></term>
7118 Many consider windows that move, or resize themselves to be abusive. This filter
7119 neutralizes the related JavaScript code. Note that some sites might not display
7120 or behave as intended when using this filter. Use with caution.
7126 <term><emphasis>frameset-borders</emphasis></term>
7129 Some web designers seem to assume that everyone in the world will view their
7130 web sites using the same browser brand and version, screen resolution etc,
7131 because only that assumption could explain why they'd use static frame sizes,
7132 yet prevent their frames from being resized by the user, should they be too
7133 small to show their whole content.
7136 This filter removes the related HTML code. It should only be applied to sites
7143 <term><emphasis>demoronizer</emphasis></term>
7146 Many Microsoft products that generate HTML use non-standard extensions (read:
7147 violations) of the ISO 8859-1 aka Latin-1 character set. This can cause those
7148 HTML documents to display with errors on standard-compliant platforms.
7151 This filter translates the MS-only characters into Latin-1 equivalents.
7152 It is not necessary when using MS products, and will cause corruption of
7153 all documents that use 8-bit character sets other than Latin-1. It's mostly
7154 worthwhile for Europeans on non-MS platforms, if weird garbage characters
7155 sometimes appear on some pages, or user agents that don't correct for this on
7158 My version of Mozilla (ancient) shows litte square boxes for quote
7159 characters, and apostrophes on moronized pages. So many pages have this, I
7160 can read them fine now. HB 08/27/06
7167 <term><emphasis>shockwave-flash</emphasis></term>
7170 A filter for shockwave haters. As the name suggests, this filter strips code
7171 out of web pages that is used to embed shockwave flash objects.
7179 <term><emphasis>quicktime-kioskmode</emphasis></term>
7182 Change HTML code that embeds Quicktime objects so that kioskmode, which
7183 prevents saving, is disabled.
7189 <term><emphasis>fun</emphasis></term>
7192 Text replacements for subversive browsing fun. Make fun of your favorite
7193 Monopolist or play buzzword bingo.
7199 <term><emphasis>crude-parental</emphasis></term>
7202 A demonstration-only filter that shows how <application>Privoxy</application>
7203 can be used to delete web content on a keyword basis.
7209 <term><emphasis>ie-exploits</emphasis></term>
7212 An experimental collection of text replacements to disable malicious HTML and JavaScript
7213 code that exploits known security holes in Internet Explorer.
7216 Presently, it only protects against Nimda and a cross-site scripting bug, and
7217 would need active maintenance to provide more substantial protection.
7223 <term><emphasis>site-specifics</emphasis></term>
7226 Some web sites have very specific problems, the cure for which doesn't apply
7227 anywhere else, or could even cause damage on other sites.
7230 This is a collection of such site-specific cures which should only be applied
7231 to the sites they were intended for, which is what the supplied
7232 <filename>default.action</filename> file does. Users shouldn't need to change
7233 anything regarding this filter.
7239 <term><emphasis>google</emphasis></term>
7242 A CSS based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation
7243 and the toolbar advertisement.
7249 <term><emphasis>yahoo</emphasis></term>
7252 Another CSS based block, this time for Yahoo text ads. And removes
7253 a width limitation as well.
7259 <term><emphasis>msn</emphasis></term>
7262 Another CSS based block, this time for MSN text ads. And removes
7263 tracking URLs, as well as a width limitation.
7269 <term><emphasis>blogspot</emphasis></term>
7272 Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this one!
7275 This filter also intentionally removes some navigation stuff and sets the
7276 page width to 100%. As a result, some rounded <quote>corners</quote> would
7277 appear to early or not at all and as fixing this would require a browser
7278 that understands background-size (CSS3), they are removed instead.
7284 <term><emphasis>xml-to-html</emphasis></term>
7287 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from xml to html.
7293 <term><emphasis>html-to-xml</emphasis></term>
7296 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from html to xml.
7302 <term><emphasis>no-ping</emphasis></term>
7305 Removes the non-standard <literal>ping</literal> attribute from
7306 anchor and area HTML tags.
7312 <term><emphasis>hide-tor-exit-notation</emphasis></term>
7315 Client-header filter to remove the <command>Tor</command> exit node notation
7316 found in Host and Referer headers.
7319 If &my-app; and <command>Tor</command> are chained and &my-app;
7320 is configured to use socks4a, one can use <quote>http://www.example.org.foobar.exit/</quote>
7321 to access the host <quote>www.example.org</quote> through the
7322 <command>Tor</command> exit node <quote>foobar</quote>.
7325 As the HTTP client isn't aware of this notation, it treats the
7326 whole string <quote>www.example.org.foobar.exit</quote> as host and uses it
7327 for the <quote>Host</quote> and <quote>Referer</quote> headers. From the
7328 server's point of view the resulting headers are invalid and can cause problems.
7331 An invalid <quote>Referer</quote> header can trigger <quote>hot-linking</quote>
7332 protections, an invalid <quote>Host</quote> header will make it impossible for
7333 the server to find the right vhost (several domains hosted on the same IP address).
7336 This client-header filter removes the <quote>foo.exit</quote> part in those headers
7337 to prevent the mentioned problems. Note that it only modifies
7338 the HTTP headers, it doesn't make it impossible for the server
7339 to detect your <command>Tor</command> exit node based on the IP address
7340 the request is coming from.
7347 <term><emphasis> </emphasis></term>
7361 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7365 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7367 <sect1 id="templates">
7368 <title>Privoxy's Template Files</title>
7370 All <application>Privoxy</application> built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the
7371 <ulink url="http://show-the-404-error.page"><quote>404 - No Such Domain</quote>
7372 error page</ulink>, the <ulink
7373 url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
7375 and all pages of its <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
7376 user interface</ulink>, are generated from <emphasis>templates</emphasis>.
7377 (<application>Privoxy</application> must be running for the above links to work as
7382 These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the <link linkend="confdir">configuration
7383 directory</link> called <filename>templates</filename>. On Unixish platforms,
7385 <ulink url="file:///etc/privoxy/templates/"><filename>/etc/privoxy/templates/</filename></ulink>.
7389 The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called symbols
7390 or exports), which <application>Privoxy</application> fills at run time. It
7391 is possible to edit the templates with a normal text editor, should you want
7392 to customize them. (<emphasis>Not recommended for the casual
7393 user</emphasis>). Should you create your own custom templates, you should use
7394 the <filename>config</filename> setting <link linkend="templdir">templdir</link>
7395 to specify an alternate location, so your templates do not get overwritten
7399 Note that just like in configuration files, lines starting
7400 with <literal>#</literal> are ignored when the templates are filled in.
7404 The place-holders are of the form <literal>@name@</literal>, and you will
7405 find a list of available symbols, which vary from template to template,
7406 in the comments at the start of each file. Note that these comments are not
7407 always accurate, and that it's probably best to look at the existing HTML
7408 code to find out which symbols are supported and what they are filled in with.
7412 A special application of this substitution mechanism is to make whole
7413 blocks of HTML code disappear when a specific symbol is set. We use this
7414 for many purposes, one of them being to include the beta warning in all
7415 our user interface (CGI) pages when <application>Privoxy</application>
7416 is in an alpha or beta development stage:
7421 <!-- @if-unstable-start -->
7423 ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
7425 <!-- if-unstable-end@ --></screen>
7429 If the "unstable" symbol is set, everything in between and including
7430 <literal>@if-unstable-start</literal> and <literal>if-unstable-end@</literal>
7431 will disappear, leaving nothing but an empty comment:
7435 <screen><!-- --></screen>
7439 There's also an if-then-else construct and an <literal>#include</literal>
7440 mechanism, but you'll sure find out if you are inclined to edit the
7445 All templates refer to a style located at
7446 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet"><literal>http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet</literal></ulink>.
7447 This is, of course, locally served by <application>Privoxy</application>
7448 and the source for it can be found and edited in the
7449 <filename>cgi-style.css</filename> template.
7454 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7458 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7460 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
7463 <!-- Include contacting.sgml boilerplate: -->
7465 <!-- end boilerplate -->
7469 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7472 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7473 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Privoxy Copyright, License and History</title>
7475 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
7477 <!-- end copyright -->
7479 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7480 <sect2><title>License</title>
7481 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
7483 <!-- end copyright -->
7485 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7488 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7490 <sect2 id="history"><title>History</title>
7491 <!-- Include history.sgml: -->
7493 <!-- end history -->
7496 <sect2 id="authors"><title>Authors</title>
7497 <!-- Include p-authors.sgml: -->
7499 <!-- end authors -->
7504 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7507 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7508 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See Also</title>
7509 <!-- Include seealso.sgml: -->
7511 <!-- end seealso -->
7516 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7517 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
7520 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7522 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
7524 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl-style <quote>regular
7525 expressions</quote> in its <link linkend="actions-file">actions
7526 files</link> and <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>,
7527 through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> and
7530 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/">PCRS</ulink> libraries.
7532 <application>PCRS</application> libraries.
7536 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
7537 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
7538 introduction only. A full explanation would require a <ulink
7539 url="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/">book</ulink> ;-)
7543 Regular expressions provide a language to describe patterns that can be
7544 run against strings of characters (letter, numbers, etc), to see if they
7545 match the string or not. The patterns are themselves (sometimes complex)
7546 strings of literal characters, combined with wild-cards, and other special
7547 characters, called meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have
7548 special meanings and are used to build complex patterns to be matched against.
7549 Perl Compatible Regular Expressions are an especially convenient
7550 <quote>dialect</quote> of the regular expression language.
7554 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
7555 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
7556 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
7557 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
7558 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
7559 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
7560 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
7561 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
7565 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
7566 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
7567 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
7568 and then some examples:
7573 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
7574 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
7576 </simplelist></para>
7580 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
7583 </simplelist></para>
7587 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
7590 </simplelist></para>
7594 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
7597 </simplelist></para>
7601 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
7602 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
7603 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
7604 not as a special meta-character. Example: <quote>example\.com</quote>, makes
7605 sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded to its
7606 meta-character meaning of any single character).
7608 </simplelist></para>
7612 <emphasis>[ ]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
7613 any of the enclosed characters are encountered. For instance, <quote>[0-9]</quote>
7614 matches any numeric digit (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine
7615 this with <quote>+</quote> to match any digit one of more times: <quote>[0-9]+</quote>.
7617 </simplelist></para>
7621 <emphasis>( )</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
7622 or multiple sub-expressions.
7624 </simplelist></para>
7628 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
7629 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
7630 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches. As an example:
7631 <quote>/(this|that) example/</quote> uses grouping and the bar character
7632 and would match either <quote>this example</quote> or <quote>that
7633 example</quote>, and nothing else.
7635 </simplelist></para>
7638 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
7639 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
7640 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
7641 be more illuminating:
7645 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
7646 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
7647 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
7648 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
7649 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
7650 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
7651 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
7652 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
7653 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
7654 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
7655 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
7656 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
7657 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
7658 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
7663 And now something a little more complex:
7667 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
7668 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
7669 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
7670 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
7671 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
7672 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
7673 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
7678 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
7679 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
7680 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
7681 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
7682 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
7683 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
7684 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
7685 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
7686 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
7687 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
7688 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
7689 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
7690 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
7691 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
7692 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
7693 changing our regular expression to:
7694 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
7699 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
7700 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
7701 <quote>[ ]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
7702 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
7703 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
7704 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
7705 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
7706 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
7707 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
7708 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
7709 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
7710 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
7711 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
7712 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
7713 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
7714 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
7715 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
7716 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
7717 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
7718 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
7719 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
7720 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
7721 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
7722 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
7723 in the expression anywhere).
7727 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
7728 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
7729 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
7730 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
7731 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
7736 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
7737 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html</ulink>
7741 For information on regular expression based substitutions and their applications
7742 in filters, please see the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file tutorial</link>
7747 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7750 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7752 <title>Privoxy's Internal Pages</title>
7755 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
7756 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
7757 trap certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
7758 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
7759 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
7760 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
7761 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
7767 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
7768 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
7769 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
7770 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
7783 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
7787 There is a shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (But it
7788 doesn't provide a fall-back to a real page, in case the request is not
7789 sent through <application>Privoxy</application>)
7795 Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
7796 editing of actions files:
7800 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
7807 Show the source code version numbers:
7811 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">http://config.privoxy.org/show-version</ulink>
7818 Show the browser's request headers:
7822 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">http://config.privoxy.org/show-request</ulink>
7829 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
7833 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
7840 Toggle Privoxy on or off. This feature can be turned off/on in the main
7841 <filename>config</filename> file. When toggled <quote>off</quote>, <quote>Privoxy</quote>
7842 continues to run, but only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking
7847 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
7851 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
7855 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
7860 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
7869 These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
7873 <sect3 id="bookmarklets">
7874 <title>Bookmarklets</title>
7876 Below are some <quote>bookmarklets</quote> to allow you to easily access a
7877 <quote>mini</quote> version of some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
7878 special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer, but should work
7879 equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which support
7880 JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not by
7881 clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
7884 To save them, right-click the link and choose <quote>Add to Favorites</quote>
7885 (IE) or <quote>Add Bookmark</quote> (Netscape). You will get a warning that
7886 the bookmark <quote>may not be safe</quote> - just click OK. Then you can run the
7887 Bookmarklet directly from your favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access,
7888 you can put them on the <quote>Links</quote> bar (IE) or the <quote>Personal
7889 Toolbar</quote> (Netscape), and run them with a single click.
7898 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=enabled','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Enable</ulink>
7905 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=disabled','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Disable</ulink>
7912 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=toggle','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Toggle Privoxy</ulink> (Toggles between enabled and disabled)
7919 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y','ijbstatus','width=250,height=2,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy- View Status</ulink>
7925 <ulink url="javascript:w=Math.floor(screen.width/2);h=Math.floor(screen.height*0.9);void(window.open('http://www.privoxy.org/actions/index.php?url='+escape(location.href),'Feedback','screenx='+w+',width='+w+',height='+h+',scrollbars=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Submit Actions File Feedback</ulink>
7931 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info?url='+escape(location.href),'Why').focus());">Privoxy - Why?</ulink>
7938 Credit: The site which gave us the general idea for these bookmarklets is
7939 <ulink url="http://www.bookmarklets.com/">www.bookmarklets.com</ulink>. They
7940 have more information about bookmarklets.
7949 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7951 <title>Chain of Events</title>
7953 Let's take a quick look at how some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
7954 core features are triggered, and the ensuing sequence of events when a web
7955 page is requested by your browser:
7962 First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send
7963 the request to <application>Privoxy</application>, which will in turn,
7964 relay the request to the remote web server after passing the following
7970 <application>Privoxy</application> traps any request for its own internal CGI
7971 pages (e.g <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>) and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
7976 Next, <application>Privoxy</application> checks to see if the URL
7978 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link> patterns. If
7979 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be contacted.
7980 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>
7982 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-EMPTY-DOCUMENT"><quote>+handle-as-empty-document</quote></link>
7983 are then checked, and if there is no match, an
7984 HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page is sent back to the browser. Otherwise, if
7985 it does match, an image is returned for the former, and an empty text
7986 document for the latter. The type of image would depend on the setting of
7987 <link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><quote>+set-image-blocker</quote></link>
7988 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
7993 Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the
7994 <filename>trust</filename> file, then that is done.
7999 If the URL pattern matches the <link
8000 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link> action,
8001 it is then processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
8006 Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
8007 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. <link
8008 linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT"><quote>+hide-user-agent</quote></link>,
8009 etc.), headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and
8015 Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web
8021 First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
8022 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
8023 filtered as determined by the
8024 <link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES"><quote>+crunch-incoming-cookies</quote></link>,
8025 <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>,
8026 and <link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION"><quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote></link>
8032 If any <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
8034 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
8035 action applies (and the document type fits the action), the rest of the page is
8036 read into memory (up to a configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from
8037 <filename>default.filter</filename> and any other filter files) are
8038 processed against the buffered content. Filters are applied in the order
8039 they are specified in one of the filter files. Animated GIFs, if present,
8040 are reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
8041 setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by
8042 <application>Privoxy</application> back to your browser.
8045 If neither a <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
8047 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
8048 matches, then <application>Privoxy</application> passes the raw data through
8049 to the client browser as it becomes available.
8054 As the browser receives the now (possibly filtered) page content, it
8055 reads and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page
8056 source, e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
8057 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a
8058 separate request (this is easily viewable in <application>Privoxy's</application>
8059 logs). And each such request is in turn processed just as above. Note that a
8060 complex web page will have many, many such embedded URLs. If these
8061 secondary requests are to a different server, then quite possibly a very
8062 differing set of actions is triggered.
8069 NOTE: This is somewhat of a simplistic overview of what happens with each URL
8070 request. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, we have focused on
8071 <application>Privoxy's</application> core features only.
8077 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8078 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
8079 <title>Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</title>
8082 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies
8083 <link linkend="ACTIONS">actions</link> and <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>
8084 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so
8085 easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to
8086 <emphasis>see</emphasis> just what <application>Privoxy</application> is
8087 doing. Especially, if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing
8088 is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to look at
8089 the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
8090 <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> whose consequences are not
8095 One quick test to see if <application>Privoxy</application> is causing a problem
8096 or not, is to disable it temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting
8097 step. See <link linkend="bookmarklets">the Bookmarklets</link> section on a quick
8098 and easy way to do this (be sure to flush caches afterward!). Looking at the
8099 logs is a good idea too. (Note that both the toggle feature and logging are
8100 enabled via <filename>config</filename> file settings, and may need to be
8101 turned <quote>on</quote>.)
8104 Another easy troubleshooting step to try is if you have done any
8105 customization of your installation, revert back to the installed
8106 defaults and see if that helps. There are times the developers get complaints
8107 about one thing or another, and the problem is more related to a customized
8108 configuration issue.
8112 <application>Privoxy</application> also provides the
8113 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
8114 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
8115 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
8119 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
8120 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
8121 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
8122 help with filtering effects (i.e. the <link
8123 linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action) from
8124 one of the filter files since this is handled very
8125 differently and not so easy to trap! It also will not tell you about any other
8126 URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are testing. For instance, images
8127 such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw page source of HTML pages. So
8128 you will only get info for the actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area
8129 -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you
8130 will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View
8131 Page Source</quote> option for this. Or right click on the ad, and grab the
8136 Let's try an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
8137 and look at it one section at a time in a sample configuration (your real
8138 configuration may vary):
8143 Matches for http://www.google.com:
8145 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8147 {+change-x-forwarded-for{block}
8148 +deanimate-gifs {last}
8149 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8150 +filter {refresh-tags}
8151 +filter {img-reorder}
8152 +filter {banners-by-size}
8154 +filter {jumping-windows}
8155 +filter {ie-exploits}
8156 +hide-from-header {block}
8157 +hide-referrer {forge}
8158 +session-cookies-only
8159 +set-image-blocker {pattern}
8162 { -session-cookies-only }
8168 In file: user.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8169 (no matches in this file)
8174 This is telling us how we have defined our
8175 <link linkend="ACTIONS"><quote>actions</quote></link>, and
8176 which ones match for our test case, <quote>google.com</quote>.
8177 Displayed is all the actions that are available to us. Remember,
8178 the <literal>+</literal> sign denotes <quote>on</quote>. <literal>-</literal>
8179 denotes <quote>off</quote>. So some are <quote>on</quote> here, but many
8180 are <quote>off</quote>. Each example we try may provide a slightly different
8181 end result, depending on our configuration directives.
8185 is for our <filename>default.action</filename> file. The large, multi-line
8186 listing, is how the actions are set to match for all URLs, i.e. our default
8187 settings. If you look at your <quote>actions</quote> file, this would be the
8188 section just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section near the top. This
8189 will apply to all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end
8190 of the listing -- <quote> / </quote>.
8194 But we have defined additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
8195 rules, and then we list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions
8196 would apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit
8197 matches for <quote>.google.com</quote>. The first is negating our previous
8198 cookie setting, which was for <link
8199 linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>
8200 (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent cookies for google, at
8201 least that is how it is in this example. The second turns
8202 <emphasis>off</emphasis> any <link
8203 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link>
8204 action, allowing this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading
8205 dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will match any hosts and
8206 sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
8207 <quote>www.google.com</quote> or <quote>mail.google.com</quote>. But it would not
8208 match <quote>www.google.de</quote>! So, apparently, we have these two actions
8209 defined as exceptions to the general rules at the top somewhere in the lower
8210 part of our <filename>default.action</filename> file, and
8211 <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced somewhere in these latter sections.
8215 Then, for our <filename>user.action</filename> file, we again have no hits.
8216 So there is nothing google-specific that we might have added to our own, local
8217 configuration. If there was, those actions would over-rule any actions from
8218 previously processed files, such as <filename>default.action</filename>.
8219 <filename>user.action</filename> typically has the last word. This is the
8220 best place to put hard and fast exceptions,
8224 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
8225 <application>Privoxy</application> is applying all its <quote>actions</quote>
8226 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
8237 +change-x-forwarded-for{block}
8238 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
8239 -content-type-overwrite
8240 -crunch-client-header
8241 -crunch-if-none-match
8242 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8243 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8244 -crunch-server-header
8245 +deanimate-gifs {last}
8246 -downgrade-http-version
8249 -filter {content-cookies}
8250 -filter {all-popups}
8251 -filter {banners-by-link}
8252 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8253 -filter {frameset-borders}
8254 -filter {demoronizer}
8255 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8256 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8258 -filter {crude-parental}
8259 -filter {site-specifics}
8260 -filter {js-annoyances}
8261 -filter {html-annoyances}
8262 +filter {refresh-tags}
8263 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8264 +filter {img-reorder}
8265 +filter {banners-by-size}
8267 +filter {jumping-windows}
8268 +filter {ie-exploits}
8275 -handle-as-empty-document
8277 -hide-accept-language
8278 -hide-content-disposition
8279 +hide-from-header {block}
8280 -hide-if-modified-since
8281 +hide-referrer {forge}
8284 -overwrite-last-modified
8285 -prevent-compression
8287 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
8288 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
8289 -session-cookies-only
8290 +set-image-blocker {pattern} </screen>
8294 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
8295 <quote>fast-redirects</quote> and <quote>session-cookies-only</quote>,
8296 which are activated specifically for this site in our configuration,
8297 and thus show in the <quote>Final Results</quote>.
8301 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
8307 { +block{Domains starts with "ad"} }
8310 { +block{Domain contains "ad"} }
8313 { +block{Doubleclick banner server} +handle-as-image }
8314 .[a-vx-z]*.doubleclick.net
8319 We'll just show the interesting part here - the explicit matches. It is
8320 matched three different times. Two <quote>+block{}</quote> sections,
8321 and a <quote>+block{} +handle-as-image</quote>,
8322 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
8323 <quote>+block-as-image</quote>. (<link
8324 linkend="ALIASES"><quote>Aliases</quote></link> are defined in
8325 the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
8330 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
8331 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
8332 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
8333 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
8334 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
8335 is done here -- as both a <link
8336 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block{}</quote></link>
8337 <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
8338 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>.
8339 The custom alias <quote><literal>+block-as-image</literal></quote> just
8340 simplifies the process and make it more readable.
8344 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
8345 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
8351 Matches for http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
8353 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8357 +change-x-forwarded-for{block}
8358 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
8359 -content-type-overwrite
8360 -crunch-client-header
8361 -crunch-if-none-match
8362 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8363 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8364 -crunch-server-header
8366 -downgrade-http-version
8367 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8369 -filter {content-cookies}
8370 -filter {all-popups}
8371 -filter {banners-by-link}
8372 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8373 -filter {frameset-borders}
8374 -filter {demoronizer}
8375 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8376 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8378 -filter {crude-parental}
8379 -filter {site-specifics}
8380 -filter {js-annoyances}
8381 -filter {html-annoyances}
8382 +filter {refresh-tags}
8383 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8384 +filter {img-reorder}
8385 +filter {banners-by-size}
8387 +filter {jumping-windows}
8388 +filter {ie-exploits}
8395 -handle-as-empty-document
8397 -hide-accept-language
8398 -hide-content-disposition
8399 +hide-from-header{block}
8400 +hide-referer{forge}
8402 -overwrite-last-modified
8403 +prevent-compression
8405 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
8406 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
8407 +session-cookies-only
8408 +set-image-blocker{blank} }
8411 { +block{Path contains "ads".} +handle-as-image }
8417 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote> in our
8418 configuration! But we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the
8419 blank page. It is actually triggering two different actions here, and
8420 the effects are aggregated so that the URL is blocked, and &my-app; is told
8421 to treat the block as if it were an image. But this is, of course, all wrong.
8422 We could now add a new action below this (or better in our own
8423 <filename>user.action</filename> file) that explicitly
8424 <emphasis>un</emphasis> blocks (
8425 <link linkend="BLOCK"><quote>{-block}</quote></link>) paths with
8426 <quote>adsl</quote> in them (remember, last match in the configuration
8427 wins). There are various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
8439 Now the page displays ;-)
8440 Remember to flush your browser's caches when making these kinds of changes to
8441 your configuration to insure that you get a freshly delivered page! Or, try
8442 using <literal>Shift+Reload</literal>.
8446 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
8453 { +block{Path starts with "ads".} +handle-as-image }
8459 That actually was very helpful and pointed us quickly to where the problem
8460 was. If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default
8461 rules in the first section of <filename>default.action</filename> is causing
8462 the problem. This would require some guesswork, and maybe a little trial and
8463 error to isolate the offending rule. One likely cause would be one of the
8464 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> actions.
8465 These tend to be harder to troubleshoot.
8466 Try adding the URL for the site to one of aliases that turn off
8467 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>:
8475 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
8483 <quote><literal>{ shop }</literal></quote> is an <quote>alias</quote> that expands to
8484 <quote><literal>{ -filter -session-cookies-only }</literal></quote>.
8485 Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
8493 # Disable ALL filter actions for sites in this section
8501 This would turn off all filtering for these sites. This is best
8502 put in <filename>user.action</filename>, for local site
8503 exceptions. Note that when a simple domain pattern is used by itself (without
8504 the subsequent path portion), all sub-pages within that domain are included
8505 automatically in the scope of the action.
8509 Images that are inexplicably being blocked, may well be hitting the
8510 <link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE"><quote>+filter{banners-by-size}</quote></link>
8512 that images of certain sizes are ad banners (works well
8513 <emphasis>most of the time</emphasis> since these tend to be standardized).
8517 <quote><literal>{ fragile }</literal></quote> is an alias that disables most
8518 actions that are the most likely to cause trouble. This can be used as a
8519 last resort for problem sites.
8525 # Handle with care: easy to break
8527 mybank.example.com</screen>
8532 <emphasis>Remember to flush caches!</emphasis> Note that the
8533 <literal>mail.google</literal> reference lacks the TLD portion (e.g.
8534 <quote>.com</quote>). This will effectively match any TLD with
8535 <literal>google</literal> in it, such as <literal>mail.google.de.</literal>,
8539 If this still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining
8540 actions one by one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
8549 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
8550 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
8551 Public License as published by the Free Software
8552 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
8553 your option) any later version.
8555 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
8556 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
8557 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
8558 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
8559 License for more details.
8561 The GNU General Public License should be included with
8562 this file. If not, you can view it at
8563 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
8564 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
8565 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301,
8568 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
8569 Revision 2.110 2009/07/18 16:25:17 fabiankeil
8570 Fix trailing whitespace.
8572 Revision 2.109 2009/07/18 16:24:39 fabiankeil
8573 Bump entities for 3.0.14 beta.
8575 Revision 2.108 2009/07/18 15:49:23 fabiankeil
8576 Add most of the changes in 3.0.14 to the "What's New" section.
8578 Revision 2.107 2009/06/12 14:30:58 fabiankeil
8579 Update entities for 3.0.13 beta.
8581 Revision 2.106 2009/06/12 11:04:13 fabiankeil
8582 Import ChangeLog for 3.0.13 beta.
8584 Revision 2.105 2009/04/17 11:32:57 fabiankeil
8585 Grammar and spelling fixes.
8587 Revision 2.104 2009/04/17 11:27:49 fabiankeil
8588 Petr Pisar's privoxy-3.0.12-ipv6-3.diff.
8590 Revision 2.103 2009/03/21 10:49:05 fabiankeil
8591 Merge updated ChangeLog.
8593 Revision 2.102 2009/03/15 19:31:36 fabiankeil
8594 Update "What's New in this Release" section.
8596 Revision 2.101 2009/02/25 19:01:56 fabiankeil
8599 Revision 2.100 2009/02/19 17:14:11 fabiankeil
8600 - Copy the release cycle description from announce.txt into
8601 the "What's New" section.
8602 - Stop referring to the ChangeLog for a "complete list of changes".
8603 The "What's New" section already contains the complete list.
8605 Revision 2.99 2009/02/19 02:20:22 hal9
8606 Make some links in seealso conditional. Man page is now privoxy only links.
8608 Revision 2.98 2009/02/16 17:10:33 fabiankeil
8609 Fix entry about shortened log messages. Noticed by Lee.
8611 Revision 2.97 2009/02/14 18:01:00 fabiankeil
8614 Revision 2.96 2009/02/14 13:14:03 fabiankeil
8617 Revision 2.95 2009/02/14 12:51:26 fabiankeil
8618 Mention match-all.action in the "Actions Files Tutorial" section.
8620 Revision 2.94 2009/02/14 11:50:31 fabiankeil
8621 Some indentation fixes.
8623 Revision 2.93 2009/02/14 10:14:42 fabiankeil
8624 Mention match-all.action in the action file descriptions.
8626 Revision 2.92 2009/02/12 16:08:26 fabiankeil
8627 Declare the code stable.
8629 Revision 2.91 2009/01/13 16:50:35 fabiankeil
8630 The standard.action file is gone.
8632 Revision 2.90 2008/09/26 16:53:09 fabiankeil
8633 Update "What's new" section.
8635 Revision 2.89 2008/09/21 15:38:56 fabiankeil
8636 Fix Portage tree sync instructions in Gentoo section.
8637 Anonymously reported at ijbswa-developers@.
8639 Revision 2.88 2008/09/21 14:42:52 fabiankeil
8640 Add documentation for change-x-forwarded-for{},
8641 remove documentation for hide-forwarded-for-headers.
8643 Revision 2.87 2008/08/30 15:37:35 fabiankeil
8646 Revision 2.86 2008/08/16 10:12:23 fabiankeil
8647 Merge two sentences and move the URL to the end of the item.
8649 Revision 2.85 2008/08/16 10:04:59 fabiankeil
8650 Some more syntax fixes. This version actually builds.
8652 Revision 2.84 2008/08/16 09:42:45 fabiankeil
8653 Turns out building docs works better if the syntax is valid.
8655 Revision 2.83 2008/08/16 09:32:02 fabiankeil
8656 Mention changes since 3.0.9 beta.
8658 Revision 2.82 2008/08/16 09:00:52 fabiankeil
8659 Fix example URL pattern (once more with feeling).
8661 Revision 2.81 2008/08/16 08:51:28 fabiankeil
8662 Update version-related entities.
8664 Revision 2.80 2008/07/18 16:54:30 fabiankeil
8665 Remove erroneous whitespace in documentation link.
8666 Reported by John Chronister in #2021611.
8668 Revision 2.79 2008/06/27 18:00:53 markm68k
8669 remove outdated startup information for mac os x
8671 Revision 2.78 2008/06/21 17:03:03 fabiankeil
8674 Revision 2.77 2008/06/14 13:45:22 fabiankeil
8675 Re-add a colon I unintentionally removed a few revisions ago.
8677 Revision 2.76 2008/06/14 13:21:28 fabiankeil
8678 Prepare for the upcoming 3.0.9 beta release.
8680 Revision 2.75 2008/06/13 16:06:48 fabiankeil
8681 Update the "What's New in this Release" section with
8682 the ChangeLog entries changelog2doc.pl could handle.
8684 Revision 2.74 2008/05/26 15:55:46 fabiankeil
8685 - Update "default profiles" table.
8686 - Add some more pcrs redirect examples and note that
8687 enabling debug 128 helps to get redirects working.
8689 Revision 2.73 2008/05/23 14:43:18 fabiankeil
8690 Remove previously out-commented block that caused syntax problems.
8692 Revision 2.72 2008/05/12 10:26:14 fabiankeil
8693 Synchronize content filter descriptions with the ones in default.filter.
8695 Revision 2.71 2008/04/10 17:37:16 fabiankeil
8696 Actually we use "modern" POSIX 1003.2 regular
8697 expressions in path patterns, not PCRE.
8699 Revision 2.70 2008/04/10 15:59:12 fabiankeil
8700 Add another section to the client-header-tagger example that shows
8701 how to actually change the action settings once the tag is created.
8703 Revision 2.69 2008/03/29 12:14:25 fabiankeil
8704 Remove send-wafer and send-vanilla-wafer actions.
8706 Revision 2.68 2008/03/28 15:13:43 fabiankeil
8707 Remove inspect-jpegs action.
8709 Revision 2.67 2008/03/27 18:31:21 fabiankeil
8710 Remove kill-popups action.
8712 Revision 2.66 2008/03/06 16:33:47 fabiankeil
8713 If limit-connect isn't used, don't limit CONNECT requests to port 443.
8715 Revision 2.65 2008/03/04 18:30:40 fabiankeil
8716 Remove the treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks action. We now
8717 use the "blocked" page for forbidden CONNECT requests by default.
8719 Revision 2.64 2008/03/01 14:10:28 fabiankeil
8720 Use new block syntax. Still needs some polishing.
8722 Revision 2.63 2008/02/22 05:50:37 markm68k
8725 Revision 2.62 2008/02/11 11:52:23 hal9
8726 Fix entity ... s/&/&
8728 Revision 2.61 2008/02/11 03:41:47 markm68k
8729 more updates for mac os x
8731 Revision 2.60 2008/02/11 03:40:25 markm68k
8732 more updates for mac os x
8734 Revision 2.59 2008/02/11 00:52:34 markm68k
8735 reflect new changes for mac os x
8737 Revision 2.58 2008/02/03 21:37:40 hal9
8738 Apply patch from Mark: s/OSX/OS X/
8740 Revision 2.57 2008/02/03 19:10:14 fabiankeil
8741 Mention forward-socks5.
8743 Revision 2.56 2008/01/31 19:11:35 fabiankeil
8744 Let the +client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation} example apply
8745 to all requests as "tainted" Referers aren't limited to exit TLDs.
8747 Revision 2.55 2008/01/19 21:26:37 hal9
8748 Add IE7 to configuration section per Gerry.
8750 Revision 2.54 2008/01/19 17:52:39 hal9
8751 Re-commit to fix various minor issues for new release.
8753 Revision 2.53 2008/01/19 15:03:05 hal9
8754 Doc sources tagged for 3.0.8 release.
8756 Revision 2.52 2008/01/17 01:49:51 hal9
8757 Change copyright notice for docs s/2007/2008/. All these will be rebuilt soon
8760 Revision 2.51 2007/12/23 16:48:24 fabiankeil
8761 Use more precise example descriptions for the mysterious domain patterns.
8763 Revision 2.50 2007/12/08 12:44:36 fabiankeil
8764 - Remove already commented out pre-3.0.7 changes.
8765 - Update the "new log defaults" paragraph.
8767 Revision 2.49 2007/12/06 18:21:55 fabiankeil
8768 Update hide-forwarded-for-headers description.
8770 Revision 2.48 2007/11/24 19:07:17 fabiankeil
8771 - Mention request rewriting.
8772 - Enable the conditional-forge paragraph.
8775 Revision 2.47 2007/11/18 14:59:47 fabiankeil
8776 A few "Note to Upgraders" updates.
8778 Revision 2.46 2007/11/17 17:24:44 fabiankeil
8779 - Use new action defaults.
8780 - Minor fixes and rewordings.
8782 Revision 2.45 2007/11/16 11:48:46 hal9
8783 Fix one typo, and add a couple of small refinements.
8785 Revision 2.44 2007/11/15 03:30:20 hal9
8786 Results of spell check.
8788 Revision 2.43 2007/11/14 18:45:39 fabiankeil
8789 - Mention some more contributors in the "New in this Release" list.
8792 Revision 2.42 2007/11/12 03:32:40 hal9
8793 Updates for "What's New" and "Notes to Upgraders". Various other changes in
8794 preparation for new release. User Manual is almost ready.
8796 Revision 2.41 2007/11/11 16:32:11 hal9
8797 This is primarily syncing What's New and Note to Upgraders sections with the many
8798 new features and changes (gleaned from memory but mostly from ChangeLog).
8800 Revision 2.40 2007/11/10 17:10:59 fabiankeil
8801 In the first third of the file, mention several times that
8802 the action editor is disabled by default in 3.0.7 beta and later.
8804 Revision 2.39 2007/11/05 02:34:49 hal9
8805 Various changes in preparation for the upcoming release. Much yet to be done.
8807 Revision 2.38 2007/09/22 16:01:42 fabiankeil
8808 Update embedded show-url-info output.
8810 Revision 2.37 2007/08/27 16:09:55 fabiankeil
8811 Fix pre-chroot-nslookup description which I failed to
8812 copy and paste properly. Reported by Stephen Gildea.
8814 Revision 2.36 2007/08/26 16:47:14 fabiankeil
8815 Add Stephen Gildea's pre-chroot-nslookup patch [#1276666],
8816 extensive comments moved to user manual.
8818 Revision 2.35 2007/08/26 14:59:49 fabiankeil
8819 Minor rewordings and fixes.
8821 Revision 2.34 2007/08/05 15:19:50 fabiankeil
8822 - Don't claim HTTP/1.1 compliance.
8823 - Use $ in some of the path pattern examples.
8824 - Use a hide-user-agent example argument without
8825 leading and trailing space.
8826 - Make it clear that the cookie actions work with
8828 - Rephrase the inspect-jpegs text to underline
8829 that it's only meant to protect against a single
8832 Revision 2.33 2007/07/27 10:57:35 hal9
8833 Add references for user-agent strings for hide-user-agenet
8835 Revision 2.32 2007/06/07 12:36:22 fabiankeil
8836 Apply Roland's 29_usermanual.dpatch to fix a bunch
8837 of syntax errors I collected over the last months.
8839 Revision 2.31 2007/06/02 14:01:37 fabiankeil
8840 Start to document forward-override{}.
8842 Revision 2.30 2007/04/25 15:10:36 fabiankeil
8843 - Describe installation for FreeBSD.
8844 - Start to document taggers and tag patterns.
8845 - Don't confuse devils and daemons.
8847 Revision 2.29 2007/04/05 11:47:51 fabiankeil
8848 Some updates regarding header filtering,
8849 handling of compressed content and redirect's
8850 support for pcrs commands.
8852 Revision 2.28 2006/12/10 23:42:48 hal9
8853 Fix various typos reported by Adam P. Thanks.
8855 Revision 2.27 2006/11/14 01:57:47 hal9
8856 Dump all docs prior to 3.0.6 release. Various minor changes to faq and user
8859 Revision 2.26 2006/10/24 11:16:44 hal9
8862 Revision 2.25 2006/10/18 10:50:33 hal9
8863 Add note that since filters are off in Cautious, compression is ON. Turn off
8864 compression to make filters work on all sites.
8866 Revision 2.24 2006/10/03 11:13:54 hal9
8867 More references to the new filters. Include html this time around.
8869 Revision 2.23 2006/10/02 22:43:53 hal9
8870 Contains new filter definitions from Fabian, and few other miscellaneous
8873 Revision 2.22 2006/09/22 01:27:55 hal9
8874 Final commit of probably various minor changes here and there. Unless
8875 something changes this should be ready for pending release.
8877 Revision 2.21 2006/09/20 03:21:36 david__schmidt
8878 Just the tiniest tweak. Wafer thin!
8880 Revision 2.20 2006/09/10 14:53:54 hal9
8881 Results of spell check. User manual has some updates to standard.actions file
8884 Revision 2.19 2006/09/08 12:19:02 fabiankeil
8885 Adjust hide-if-modified-since example values
8886 to reflect the recent changes.
8888 Revision 2.18 2006/09/08 02:38:57 hal9
8890 -Fix a number of broken links.
8891 -Migrate the new Windows service command line options, and reference as
8893 -Rebuild so that can be used with the new "user-manual" config capabilities.
8896 Revision 2.17 2006/09/05 13:25:12 david__schmidt
8897 Add Windows service invocation stuff (duplicated) in FAQ and in user manual under Windows startup. One probably ought to reference the other.
8899 Revision 2.16 2006/09/02 12:49:37 hal9
8900 Various small updates for new actions, filterfiles, etc.
8902 Revision 2.15 2006/08/30 11:15:22 hal9
8903 More work on the new actions, especially filter-*-headers, and What's New
8904 section. User Manual is close to final form for 3.0.4 release. Some tinkering
8905 and proof reading left to do.
8907 Revision 2.14 2006/08/29 10:59:36 hal9
8908 Add a "Whats New in this release" Section. Further work on multiple filter
8909 files, and assorted other minor changes.
8911 Revision 2.13 2006/08/22 11:04:59 hal9
8912 Silence warnings and errors. This should build now. New filters were only
8913 stubbed in. More to be done.
8915 Revision 2.12 2006/08/14 08:40:39 fabiankeil
8916 Documented new actions that were part of
8917 the "minor Privoxy improvements".
8919 Revision 2.11 2006/07/18 14:48:51 david__schmidt
8920 Reorganizing the repository: swapping out what was HEAD (the old 3.1 branch)
8921 with what was really the latest development (the v_3_0_branch branch)
8923 Revision 1.123.2.43 2005/05/23 09:59:10 hal9
8926 Revision 1.123.2.42 2004/12/04 14:39:57 hal9
8927 Fix two minor typos per bug SF report.
8929 Revision 1.123.2.41 2004/03/23 12:58:42 oes
8932 Revision 1.123.2.40 2004/02/27 12:48:49 hal9
8933 Add comment re: redirecting to local file system for set-image-blocker may
8934 is dependent on browser.
8936 Revision 1.123.2.39 2004/01/30 22:31:40 oes
8937 Added a hint re bookmarklets to Quickstart section
8939 Revision 1.123.2.38 2004/01/30 16:47:51 oes
8940 Some minor clarifications
8942 Revision 1.123.2.37 2004/01/29 22:36:11 hal9
8943 Updates for no longer filtering text/plain, and demoronizer default settings,
8944 and copyright notice dates.
8946 Revision 1.123.2.36 2003/12/10 02:26:26 hal9
8947 Changed the demoronizer filter description.
8949 Revision 1.123.2.35 2003/11/06 13:36:37 oes
8950 Updated link to nightly CVS tarball
8952 Revision 1.123.2.34 2003/06/26 23:50:16 hal9
8953 Add a small bit on filtering and problems re: source code being corrupted.
8955 Revision 1.123.2.33 2003/05/08 18:17:33 roro
8956 Use apt-get instead of dpkg to install Debian package, which is more
8957 solid, uses the correct and most recent Debian version automatically.
8959 Revision 1.123.2.32 2003/04/11 03:13:57 hal9
8960 Add small note about only one filterfile (as opposed to multiple actions
8963 Revision 1.123.2.31 2003/03/26 02:03:43 oes
8964 Updated hard-coded copyright dates
8966 Revision 1.123.2.30 2003/03/24 12:58:56 hal9
8967 Add new section on Predefined Filters.
8969 Revision 1.123.2.29 2003/03/20 02:45:29 hal9
8970 More problems with \-\-chroot causing markup problems :(
8972 Revision 1.123.2.28 2003/03/19 00:35:24 hal9
8973 Manual edit of revision log because 'chroot' (even inside a comment) was
8974 causing Docbook to hang here (due to double hyphen and the processor thinking
8977 Revision 1.123.2.27 2003/03/18 19:37:14 oes
8978 s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
8980 Revision 1.123.2.26 2003/03/17 16:50:53 oes
8981 Added documentation for new chroot option
8983 Revision 1.123.2.25 2003/03/15 18:36:55 oes
8984 Adapted to the new filters
8986 Revision 1.123.2.24 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
8987 Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
8990 Revision 1.123.2.23 2002/10/21 02:32:01 hal9
8991 Updates to the user.action examples section. A few new ones.
8993 Revision 1.123.2.22 2002/10/12 00:51:53 hal9
8994 Add demoronizer to filter section.
8996 Revision 1.123.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
8997 s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
8999 Revision 1.123.2.20 2002/10/10 03:49:21 hal9
9000 Add notes to session-cookies-only and Quickstart about pre-existing
9001 cookies. Also, note content-cookies work differently.
9003 Revision 1.123.2.19 2002/09/26 01:25:36 hal9
9004 More explanation on Privoxy patterns, more on content-cookies and SSL.
9006 Revision 1.123.2.18 2002/08/22 23:47:58 hal9
9007 Add 'Documentation' to Privoxy Menu shot in Configuration section to match
9010 Revision 1.123.2.17 2002/08/18 01:13:05 hal9
9011 Spell checked (only one typo this time!).
9013 Revision 1.123.2.16 2002/08/09 19:20:54 david__schmidt
9014 Update to Mac OS X startup script name
9016 Revision 1.123.2.15 2002/08/07 17:32:11 oes
9017 Converted some internal links from ulink to link for PDF creation; no content changed
9019 Revision 1.123.2.14 2002/08/06 09:16:13 oes
9020 Nits re: actions file download
9022 Revision 1.123.2.13 2002/08/02 18:23:19 g_sauthoff
9023 Just 2 small corrections to the Gentoo sections
9025 Revision 1.123.2.12 2002/08/02 18:17:21 g_sauthoff
9026 Added 2 Gentoo sections
9028 Revision 1.123.2.11 2002/07/26 15:20:31 oes
9029 - Added version info to title
9030 - Added info on new filters
9031 - Revised parts of the filter file tutorial
9032 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
9034 Revision 1.123.2.10 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
9035 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
9037 Revision 1.123.2.9 2002/07/11 03:40:28 david__schmidt
9039 Updated Mac OS X sections due to installation location change
9041 Revision 1.123.2.8 2002/06/09 16:36:32 hal9
9042 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
9044 Revision 1.123.2.7 2002/06/09 00:29:34 hal9
9045 Touch ups on filtering, in actions section and Anatomy.
9047 Revision 1.123.2.6 2002/06/06 23:11:03 hal9
9048 Fix broken link. Linkchecked all docs.
9050 Revision 1.123.2.5 2002/05/29 02:01:02 hal9
9051 This is break out of the entire config section from u-m, so it can
9052 eventually be used to generate the comments, etc in the main config file
9053 so that these are in sync with each other.
9055 Revision 1.123.2.4 2002/05/27 03:28:45 hal9
9056 Ooops missed something from David.
9058 Revision 1.123.2.3 2002/05/27 03:23:17 hal9
9059 Fix FIXMEs for OS2 and Mac OS X startup. Fix Redhat typos (should be Red Hat).
9060 That's a wrap, I think.
9062 Revision 1.123.2.2 2002/05/26 19:02:09 hal9
9063 Move Amiga stuff around to take of FIXME in start up section.
9065 Revision 1.123.2.1 2002/05/26 17:04:25 hal9
9066 -Spellcheck, very minor edits, and sync across branches
9068 Revision 1.123 2002/05/24 23:19:23 hal9
9069 Include new image (Proxy setup). More fun with guibutton.
9070 Minor corrections/clarifications here and there.
9072 Revision 1.122 2002/05/24 13:24:08 oes
9073 Added Bookmarklet for one-click pre-filled access to show-url-info
9075 Revision 1.121 2002/05/23 23:20:17 oes
9076 - Changed more (all?) references to actions to the
9077 <literal><link> style.
9078 - Small fixes in the actions chapter
9079 - Small clarifications in the quickstart to ad blocking
9080 - Removed <emphasis> from <title>s since the new doc CSS
9081 renders them red (bad in TOC).
9083 Revision 1.120 2002/05/23 19:16:43 roro
9084 Correct Debian specials (installation and startup).
9086 Revision 1.119 2002/05/22 17:17:05 oes
9089 Revision 1.118 2002/05/21 04:54:55 hal9
9090 -New Section: Quickstart to Ad Blocking
9091 -Reformat Actions Anatomy to match new CGI layout
9093 Revision 1.117 2002/05/17 13:56:16 oes
9094 - Reworked & extended Templates chapter
9095 - Small changes to Regex appendix
9096 - #included authors.sgml into (C) and hist chapter
9098 Revision 1.116 2002/05/17 03:23:46 hal9
9099 Fixing merge conflict in Quickstart section.
9101 Revision 1.115 2002/05/16 16:25:00 oes
9102 Extended the Filter File chapter & minor fixes
9104 Revision 1.114 2002/05/16 09:42:50 oes
9105 More ulink->link, added some hints to Quickstart section
9107 Revision 1.113 2002/05/15 21:07:25 oes
9108 Extended and further commented the example actions files
9110 Revision 1.112 2002/05/15 03:57:14 hal9
9111 Spell check. A few minor edits here and there for better syntax and
9114 Revision 1.111 2002/05/14 23:01:36 oes
9117 Revision 1.110 2002/05/14 19:10:45 oes
9118 Restored alphabetical order of actions
9120 Revision 1.109 2002/05/14 17:23:11 oes
9121 Renamed the prevent-*-cookies actions, extended aliases section and moved it before the example AFs
9123 Revision 1.108 2002/05/14 15:29:12 oes
9124 Completed proofreading the actions chapter
9126 Revision 1.107 2002/05/12 03:20:41 hal9
9127 Small clarifications for 127.0.0.1 vs localhost for listen-address since this
9128 apparently an important distinction for some OS's.
9130 Revision 1.106 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
9131 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
9132 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
9133 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
9135 Revision 1.105 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
9136 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
9138 Revision 1.104 2002/05/04 08:44:45 swa
9141 Revision 1.103 2002/05/04 00:40:53 hal9
9142 -Remove the TOC first page kludge. It's fixed proper now in ldp.dsl.in.
9143 -Some minor additions to Quickstart.
9145 Revision 1.102 2002/05/03 17:46:00 oes
9146 Further proofread & reactivated short build instructions
9148 Revision 1.101 2002/05/03 03:58:30 hal9
9149 Move the user-manual config directive to top of section. Add note about
9150 Privoxy needing read permissions for configs, and write for logs.
9152 Revision 1.100 2002/04/29 03:05:55 hal9
9153 Add clarification on differences of new actions files.
9155 Revision 1.99 2002/04/28 16:59:05 swa
9156 more structure in starting section
9158 Revision 1.98 2002/04/28 05:43:59 hal9
9159 This is the break up of configuration.html into multiple files. This
9160 will probably break links elsewhere :(
9162 Revision 1.97 2002/04/27 21:04:42 hal9
9163 -Rewrite of Actions File example.
9164 -Add section for user-manual directive in config.
9166 Revision 1.96 2002/04/27 05:32:00 hal9
9167 -Add short section to Filter Files to tie in with +filter action.
9168 -Start rewrite of examples in Actions Examples (not finished).
9170 Revision 1.95 2002/04/26 17:23:29 swa
9171 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
9173 Revision 1.94 2002/04/26 05:24:36 hal9
9174 -Add most of Andreas suggestions to Chain of Events section.
9175 -A few other minor corrections and touch up.
9177 Revision 1.92 2002/04/25 18:55:13 hal9
9178 More catchups on new actions files, and new actions names.
9179 Other assorted cleanups, and minor modifications.
9181 Revision 1.91 2002/04/24 02:39:31 hal9
9182 Add 'Chain of Events' section.
9184 Revision 1.90 2002/04/23 21:41:25 hal9
9185 Linuxconf is deprecated on RH, substitute chkconfig.
9187 Revision 1.89 2002/04/23 21:05:28 oes
9188 Added hint for startup on Red Hat
9190 Revision 1.88 2002/04/23 05:37:54 hal9
9191 Add AmigaOS install stuff.
9193 Revision 1.87 2002/04/23 02:53:15 david__schmidt
9194 Updated Mac OS X installation section
9195 Added a few English tweaks here an there
9197 Revision 1.86 2002/04/21 01:46:32 hal9
9198 Re-write actions section.
9200 Revision 1.85 2002/04/18 21:23:23 hal9
9201 Fix ugly typo (mine).
9203 Revision 1.84 2002/04/18 21:17:13 hal9
9204 Spell Redhat correctly (ie Red Hat). A few minor grammar corrections.
9206 Revision 1.83 2002/04/18 18:21:12 oes
9207 Added RPM install detail
9209 Revision 1.82 2002/04/18 12:04:50 oes
9212 Revision 1.81 2002/04/18 11:50:24 oes
9213 Extended Install section - needs fixing by packagers
9215 Revision 1.80 2002/04/18 10:45:19 oes
9216 Moved text to buildsource.sgml, renamed some filters, details
9218 Revision 1.79 2002/04/18 03:18:06 hal9
9219 Spellcheck, and minor touchups.
9221 Revision 1.78 2002/04/17 18:04:16 oes
9224 Revision 1.77 2002/04/17 13:51:23 oes
9225 Proofreading, part one
9227 Revision 1.76 2002/04/16 04:25:51 hal9
9228 -Added 'Note to Upgraders' and re-ordered the 'Quickstart' section.
9229 -Note about proxy may need requests to re-read config files.
9231 Revision 1.75 2002/04/12 02:08:48 david__schmidt
9232 Remove OS/2 building info... it is already in the developer-manual
9234 Revision 1.74 2002/04/11 00:54:38 hal9
9235 Add small section on submitting actions.
9237 Revision 1.73 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
9240 Revision 1.72 2002/04/10 04:06:19 hal9
9241 Added actions feedback to Bookmarklets section
9243 Revision 1.71 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
9244 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
9246 Revision 1.70 2002/04/08 20:53:56 swa
9249 Revision 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9
9250 -Add privoxy-man-page.sgml, for man page.
9251 -Add authors.sgml for AUTHORS (and p-authors.sgml)
9252 -Reworked various aspects of various docs.
9253 -Added additional comments to sub-docs.
9255 Revision 1.68 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
9256 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
9258 Revision 1.67 2002/04/04 17:27:57 swa
9259 more single file to be included at multiple points. make maintaining easier
9261 Revision 1.66 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
9262 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
9263 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
9264 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
9265 eventually be set by Makefile.
9266 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
9268 Revision 1.65 2002/04/03 19:52:07 swa
9269 enhance squid section due to user suggestion
9271 Revision 1.64 2002/04/03 03:53:43 hal9
9272 A few minor bug fixes, and touch ups. Ready for review.
9274 Revision 1.63 2002/04/01 16:24:49 hal9
9275 Define entities to include boilerplate text. See doc/source/*.
9277 Revision 1.62 2002/03/30 04:15:53 hal9
9278 - Fix privoxy.org/config links.
9279 - Paste in Bookmarklets from Toggle page.
9280 - Move Quickstart nearer top, and minor rework.
9282 Revision 1.61 2002/03/29 01:31:08 hal9
9285 Revision 1.60 2002/03/27 01:57:34 hal9
9286 Added more to Anatomy section.
9288 Revision 1.59 2002/03/27 00:54:33 hal9
9289 Touch up intro for new name.
9291 Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
9292 we have a new homepage!
9294 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
9295 A few minor catch ups with name change.
9297 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
9298 configure needs to be generated.
9300 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
9301 we are too lazy to make a block-built
9302 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
9304 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
9305 name change related issue.
9307 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
9308 name change. changed filenames.
9310 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
9313 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
9314 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
9315 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
9316 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
9317 comments and remarks to history untouched.
9319 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
9322 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
9323 New section in Appendix.
9325 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
9326 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
9328 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
9329 correct feedback channels
9331 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
9332 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
9334 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
9337 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
9338 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
9340 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
9341 Added imageblock{pattern}.
9343 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
9346 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
9347 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
9349 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
9350 provide correct feedback channels
9352 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
9353 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
9355 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
9356 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
9358 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
9359 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
9361 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
9362 Add new - - user option.
9364 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
9365 Added section on command line options.
9367 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
9368 Changed default port to 8118
9370 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
9371 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
9373 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
9374 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
9375 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
9378 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
9381 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
9382 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
9384 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
9385 Update OS/2 build section
9387 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
9388 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
9389 will work - no other changes are needed.
9391 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
9392 Added a very short section on Templates
9394 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
9395 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
9397 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
9398 Touch ups for *.action files.
9400 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
9403 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
9404 Updates for recent changes.
9406 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
9407 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
9409 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
9410 Correct 2 minor errors
9412 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
9413 *** empty log message ***
9415 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
9416 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
9418 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
9419 wrong url in documentation
9421 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
9422 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
9424 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
9427 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
9430 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
9433 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
9434 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
9436 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
9437 Some additions, and re-arranging.
9439 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
9442 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
9443 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
9445 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
9448 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
9449 source files for junkbuster documentation
9451 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
9452 first proposal of a structure.
9454 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
9455 docs should have an author.
9457 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
9458 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.