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">
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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 "3.0.3">
15 <!entity p-status "stable">
16 <!entity % p-authors-formal "INCLUDE"> <!-- include additional text, etc -->
17 <!entity % p-not-stable "IGNORE">
18 <!entity % p-stable "INCLUDE">
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 -->
29 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml,v $
32 This file belongs into
33 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
35 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 1.123.2.38 2004/01/30 16:47:51 oes Exp $
37 Copyright (C) 2001- 2003 Privoxy Developers <developers@privoxy.org>
40 ========================================================================
41 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
42 anything in this, or other Privoxy documentation.
43 ========================================================================
50 <title>Privoxy &p-version; User Manual</title>
54 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
55 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
56 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001 - 2004 by
57 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
61 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 1.123.2.38 2004/01/30 16:47:51 oes Exp $</pubdate>
65 Note: the following should generate a separate page, and a live link to it,
66 all nicely done. But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave
67 commented unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the
68 copyright/license declarations will be in their own sgml.
81 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
82 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
83 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
89 The <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> gives users information on how to
90 install, configure and use <ulink
91 url="http://www.privoxy.org/"><application>Privoxy</application></ulink>.
94 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
96 <!-- end privoxy.sgml -->
99 You can find the latest version of the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> at <ulink
100 url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>.
101 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> on how to
102 contact the developers.
106 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
112 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
113 <sect1 label="1" id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
115 This documentation is included with the current &p-status; version of
116 <application>Privoxy</application>, v.&p-version;<![%p-not-stable;[,
117 and is mostly complete at this point. The most up to date reference for the
118 time being is still the comments in the source files and in the individual
119 configuration files. Development of version 3.0 is currently nearing
120 completion, and includes many significant changes and enhancements over
121 earlier versions. The target release date for
122 stable v3.0 is <quote>soon</quote> ;-)]]>.
125 <!-- include only in non-stable versions -->
128 Since this is a &p-status; version, not all new features are well tested. This
129 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with
130 CVS sources). And there <emphasis>may be</emphasis> bugs, though hopefully
135 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
136 <sect2 id="features"><title>Features</title>
138 In addition to <application>Internet Junkbuster's</application> traditional
139 features of ad and banner blocking and cookie management,
140 <application>Privoxy</application> provides new features<![%p-not-stable;[,
141 some of them currently under development]]>:
143 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml boilerplate here: -->
145 <!-- end boilerplate -->
150 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
153 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
154 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
157 <application>Privoxy</application> is available both in convenient pre-compiled
158 packages for a wide range of operating systems, and as raw source code.
159 For most users, we recommend using the packages, which can be downloaded from our
160 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Project
165 Note: If you have a previous <application>Junkbuster</application> or
166 <application>Privoxy</application> installation on your system, you
167 will need to remove it. On some platforms, this may be done for you as part
168 of their installation procedure. (See below for your platform). In any case
169 <emphasis>be sure to backup your old configuration if it is valuable to
170 you.</emphasis> See the <link linkend="upgradersnote">note to
171 upgraders</link> section below.
174 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
175 <sect2 id="installation-packages"><title>Binary Packages</title>
177 How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
180 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
181 <sect3 id="installation-pack-rpm"><title>Red Hat, SuSE and Conectiva RPMs</title>
184 RPMs can be installed with <literal>rpm -Uvh privoxy-&p-version;-1.rpm</literal>,
185 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location
186 of configuration files.
190 Note that on Red Hat, <application>Privoxy</application> will
191 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be automatically started on system boot. You will
192 need to enable that using <command>chkconfig</command>,
193 <command>ntsysv</command>, or similar methods. Note that SuSE will
194 automatically start Privoxy in the boot process.
198 If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM:
199 <literal>rpm --rebuild privoxy-&p-version;-1.src.rpm</literal>. This
200 will use your locally installed libraries and RPM version.
204 Also note that if you have a <application>Junkbuster</application> RPM installed
205 on your system, you need to remove it first, because the packages conflict.
206 Otherwise, RPM will try to remove <application>Junkbuster</application>
207 automatically, before installing <application>Privoxy</application>.
211 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
212 <sect3 id="installation-deb"><title>Debian</title>
214 DEBs can be installed with <literal>apt-get install privoxy</literal>,
215 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location of
220 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
221 <sect3 id="installation-pack-win"><title>Windows</title>
224 Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through
225 the installation process. You will find the configuration files
226 in the same directory as you installed Privoxy in. We do not
227 use the registry of Windows.
231 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
232 <sect3 id="installation-pack-bintgz"><title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX</title>
235 Create a new directory, <literal>cd</literal> to it, then unzip and
236 untar the archive. For the most part, you'll have to figure out where
237 things go. <!-- FIXME, more info needed? -->
241 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
242 <sect3 id="installation-os2"><title>OS/2</title>
245 First, make sure that no previous installations of
246 <application>Junkbuster</application> and / or
247 <application>Privoxy</application> are left on your
248 system. Check that no <application>Junkbuster</application>
249 or <application>Privoxy</application> objects are in
255 Then, just double-click the WarpIN self-installing archive, which will
256 guide you through the installation process. A shadow of the
257 <application>Privoxy</application> executable will be placed in your
258 startup folder so it will start automatically whenever OS/2 starts.
262 The directory you choose to install <application>Privoxy</application>
263 into will contain all of the configuration files.
267 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
268 <sect3 id="installation-mac"><title>Mac OSX</title>
270 Unzip the downloaded file (you can either double-click on the file
271 from the finder, or from the desktop if you downloaded it there).
272 Then, double-click on the package installer icon named
273 <literal>Privoxy.pkg</literal>
274 and follow the installation process.
275 <application>Privoxy</application> will be installed in the folder
276 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal>.
277 It will start automatically whenever you start up. To prevent it from
278 starting automatically, remove or rename the folder
279 <literal>/Library/StartupItems/Privoxy</literal>.
282 To start Privoxy by hand, double-click on
283 <literal>StartPrivoxy.command</literal> in the
284 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal> folder.
285 Or, type this command in the Terminal:
289 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
293 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
297 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
298 <sect3 id="installation-amiga"><title>AmigaOS</title>
300 Copy and then unpack the <filename>lha</filename> archive to a suitable location.
301 All necessary files will be installed into <application>Privoxy</application>
302 directory, including all configuration and log files. To uninstall, just
303 remove this directory.
307 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
308 <sect3 id="installattion-gentoo"><title>Gentoo</title>
310 Gentoo source packages (Ebuilds) for <application>Privoxy</application> are
311 contained in the Gentoo Portage Tree (they are not on the download page,
312 but there is a Gentoo section, where you can see when a new
313 <application>Privoxy</application> Version is added to the Portage Tree).
316 Before installing <application>Privoxy</application> under Gentoo just do
317 first <literal>emerge rsync</literal> to get the latest changes from the
318 Portage tree. With <literal>emerge privoxy</literal> you install the latest
322 Configuration files are in <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename>, the
323 documentation is in <filename>/usr/share/doc/privoxy-&p-version;</filename>
324 and the Log directory is in <filename>/var/log/privoxy</filename>.
330 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
331 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Building from Source</title>
334 The most convenient way to obtain the <application>Privoxy</application> sources
335 is to download the source tarball from our <ulink url="http://sf.net/projects/ijbswa/">project
340 If you like to live on the bleeding edge and are not afraid of using
341 possibly unstable development versions, you can check out the up-to-the-minute
342 version directly from <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=11118">the
343 CVS repository</ulink> or simply download <ulink
344 url="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/ijbswa-cvsroot.tar.bz2">the nightly CVS
348 <!-- include buildsource.sgml boilerplate: -->
350 <!-- end boilerplate -->
353 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
354 <sect2 id="installation-keepupdated"><title>Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date</title>
356 As user feedback comes in and development continues, we will make updated versions
357 of both the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link> (as a <ulink
358 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&release_id=103670">separate
359 package</ulink>) and the software itself (including the actions file) available for
364 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
365 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
366 url="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-announce/">subscribe
367 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
371 In order not to loose your personal changes and adjustments when updating
372 to the latest <literal>default.action</literal> file we <emphasis>strongly
373 recommend</emphasis> that you use <literal>user.action</literal> for your
374 customization of <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
375 linkend="actions-file">Chapter on actions files</link> for details.
383 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
385 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
386 <sect1 id="upgradersnote">
387 <title>Note to Upgraders</title>
389 There are very significant changes from earlier
390 <application>Junkbuster</application> versions to the current
391 <application>Privoxy</application>. The number, names, syntax, and
392 purposes of configuration files have substantially changed.
393 <application>Junkbuster 2.0.x</application> configuration
394 files will not migrate, <application>Junkbuster 2.9.x</application>
395 and <application>Privoxy</application> configurations will need to be
396 ported. The functionalities of the old <filename>blockfile</filename>,
397 <filename>cookiefile</filename> and <filename>imagelist</filename>
398 are now combined into the <link linkend="actions-file"><quote>actions
399 files</quote></link>.
400 <filename>default.action</filename>, is the main actions file. Local
401 exceptions should best be put into <filename>user.action</filename>.
404 A <link linkend="filter-file"><quote>filter file</quote></link> (typically
405 <filename>default.filter</filename>) is new as of <application>Privoxy
406 2.9.x</application>, and provides some of the new sophistication (explained
407 below). <filename>config</filename> is much the same as before.
410 If upgrading from a 2.0.x version, you will have to use the new config
411 files, and possibly adapt any personal rules from your older files.
412 When porting personal rules over from the old <filename>blockfile</filename>
413 to the new actions files, please note that even the pattern syntax has
414 changed. If upgrading from 2.9.x development versions, it is still
415 recommended to use the new configuration files.
418 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading:
426 The default listening port is now 8118 due to a conflict with another
432 Some installers may remove earlier versions completely. Save any
433 important configuration files!
438 <application>Privoxy</application> is controllable with a web browser
439 at the special URL: <ulink
440 url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
441 (Shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>). Many
442 aspects of configuration can be done here, including temporarily disabling
443 <application>Privoxy</application>.
448 The primary configuration files for cookie management, ad and banner
449 blocking, and many other aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
450 configuration are the <link linkend="actions-file">actions
451 files</link>. It is strongly recommended to become familiar with the new
452 actions concept below, before modifying these files. Locally defined rules
453 should go into <filename>user.action</filename>.
458 <!-- I think it is best to keep this somewhat vague, in case -->
459 <!-- the situation changes under our feet. -->
460 Some installers may not automatically start
461 <application>Privoxy</application> after installation.
469 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
470 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using <application>Privoxy</application></title>
476 If upgrading, from versions before 2.9.16, please back up any configuration
477 files. See the <link linkend="upgradersnote">Note to Upgraders</link> Section.
483 Install <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
484 linkend="installation">Installation Section</link> below for platform specific
491 Advanced users and those who want to offer <application>Privoxy</application>
492 service to more than just their local machine should check the <link
493 linkend="config">main config file</link>, especially the <link
494 linkend="access-control">security-relevant</link> options. These are
501 Start <application>Privoxy</application>, if the installation program has
502 not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
503 <link linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link>.
509 Set your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application> as HTTP and
510 HTTPS (SSL) proxy by setting the proxy configuration for address of
511 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> and port <literal>8118</literal>.
512 (<application>Junkbuster</application> and earlier versions of
513 <application>Privoxy</application> used port 8000.) See the section <link
514 linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link> below
515 for more details on this.
521 Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad images.
522 If using <application>Privoxy</application> to manage cookies, you should
523 remove any currently stored cookies too.
529 A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for
530 most. There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
531 configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little
532 to no initial configuration is required in most cases.
535 See the <link linkend="configuration">Configuration section</link> for more
536 configuration options, and how to customize your installation.
537 <![%draft;[ You might also want to look at the <link
538 linkend="quickstart-ad-blocking">next section</link> for a quick
539 introduction to how <application>Privoxy</application> blocks ads and
546 If you experience ads that slipped through, innocent images that are
547 blocked, or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune
548 <application>Privoxy's</application> behaviour, take a look at the <link
549 linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>. As a quick start, you might
550 find the <link linkend="act-examples">richly commented examples</link>
551 helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files through the <ulink
552 url="http://config.privoxy.org">web-based user interface</ulink>. The
553 Appendix <quote><link linkend="actionsanat">Anatomy of an
554 Action</link></quote> has hints how to debug actions that
555 <quote>misbehave</quote>.
561 For easy access to Privoxy's most important controls, drag the provided
562 <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklets</link> into your browser's
569 Please see the section <link linkend="contact">Contacting the
570 Developers</link> on how to report bugs or problems with websites or to get
577 Now enjoy surfing with enhanced comfort and privacy!
585 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
587 <sect2 id="quickstart-ad-blocking">
588 <title>Quickstart to Ad Blocking</title>
590 NOTE: This section is deliberately redundant for those that don't
591 want to read the whole thing (which is getting lengthy).
594 Ad blocking is but one of <application>Privoxy's</application>
595 array of features. Many of these features are for the technically minded advanced
596 user. But, ad and banner blocking is surely common ground for everybody.
599 This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so
600 you can get up to speed quickly without having to read the more extensive
601 information provided below, though this is highly recommended.
604 First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the
605 more aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block
606 things that were not intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want
607 extreme ad free browsing, be prepared to deal with more
608 <quote>problem</quote> sites, and to spend more time adjusting the
609 configuration to solve these unintended consequences. In short, there is
610 not an easy way to eliminate <emphasis>all</emphasis> ads. Either take
611 the easy way and settle for <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads blocked with the
612 default configuration, or jump in and tweak it for your personal surfing
613 habits and preferences.
616 Secondly, a brief explanation of <application>Privoxy's </application>
617 <quote>actions</quote>. <quote>Actions</quote> in this context, are
618 the directives we use to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to perform
619 some task relating to HTTP transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell
620 <application>Privoxy</application> to take some <quote>action</quote>. Each
621 action has a unique name and function. While there are many potential
622 <application>actions</application> in <application>Privoxy's</application>
623 arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking. <link
624 linkend="actions">Actions</link>, and <link linkend="actions-file">action
625 configuration files</link>, are explained in depth below.
628 Actions are specified in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
629 followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
630 can actually be URL type <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> that use
631 wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs. The
632 actions, together with the URL patterns are called a section.
635 When you connect to a website, the full URL will either match one or more
636 of the sections as defined in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
637 or not. If so, then <application>Privoxy</application> will perform the
638 respective actions. If not, then nothing special happens. Furthermore, web
639 pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web browser will
640 use to load additional components of the page, as it parses the
641 original page's HTML content. An ad image for instance, is just an URL
642 embedded in the page somewhere. The image itself may be on the same server,
643 or a server somewhere else on the Internet. Complex web pages will have many
648 The actions we need to know about for ad blocking are: <literal><link
649 linkend="block">block</link></literal>, <literal><link
650 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>, and
651 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>:
659 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> - this action stops
660 any contact between your browser and any URL patterns that match this
661 action's configuration. It can be used for blocking ads, but also anything
662 that is determined to be unwanted. By itself, it simply stops any
663 communication with the remote server and sends <application>Privoxy</application>'s
664 own built-in BLOCKED page instead to let you now what has happened.
670 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> -
671 tells <application>Privoxy</application> to treat this URL as an image.
672 <application>Privoxy</application>'s default configuration already does this
673 for all common image types (e.g. GIF), but there are many situations where this
674 is not so easy to determine. So we'll force it in these cases. This is particularly
675 important for ad blocking, since only if we know that it's an image of
676 some kind, can we replace it with an image of our choosing, instead of the
677 <application>Privoxy</application> BLOCKED page (which would only result in
678 a <quote>broken image</quote> icon). There are some limitations to this
679 though. For instance, you can't just brute-force an image substitution for
680 an entire HTML page in most situations.
687 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> - tells
688 <application>Privoxy</application> what to display in place of an ad image that
689 has hit a block rule. For this to come into play, the URL must match a
690 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action somewhere in the
691 configuration, <emphasis>and</emphasis>, it must also match an
692 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action.
695 The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
699 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad
700 replacement is obvious. This is the default.
705 <emphasis>blank</emphasis> - A very small empty GIF image is displayed.
706 This is the so-called <quote>invisible</quote> configuration option.
711 <emphasis>http://<URL></emphasis> - A redirect to any image anywhere
712 of the user's choosing (advanced usage).
721 The quickest way to adjust any of these settings is with your browser through
722 the special <application>Privoxy</application> editor at <ulink
723 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
724 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>). This
725 is an internal page, and does not require Internet access. Select the
726 appropriate <quote>actions</quote> file, and click
727 <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>. It is best to put personal or
728 local preferences in <filename>user.action</filename> since this is not
729 meant to be overwritten during upgrades, and will over-ride the settings in
730 other files. Here you can insert new <quote>actions</quote>, and URLs for ad
731 blocking or other purposes, and make other adjustments to the configuration.
732 <application>Privoxy</application> will detect these changes automatically.
736 A quick and simple step by step example:
744 Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select
745 <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote> from the
753 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
758 Find <filename>user.action</filename> in the top section, and click
759 on <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>:
762 <!-- image of editor and actions files selections -->
764 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Actions Files in Use</title>
767 <imagedata fileref="../images/files-in-use.jpg" format="jpg">
770 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Actions Files in Use ]</phrase>
779 You should have a section with only
780 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> listed under
781 <quote>Actions:</quote>.
782 If not, click a <quote><guibutton>Insert new section below</guibutton></quote>
783 button, and in the new section that just appeared, click the
784 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button right under the word <quote>Actions:</quote>.
785 This will bring up a list of all actions. Find
786 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> near the top, and click
787 in the <quote>Enabled</quote> column, then <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote>
793 Now, in the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> actions section,
794 click the <quote><guibutton>Add</guibutton></quote> button, and paste the URL the
795 browser got from <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote>.
796 Remove the <literal>http://</literal> at the beginning of the URL. Then, click
797 <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote> (or
798 <quote><guibutton>OK</guibutton></quote> if in a pop-up window).
803 Now go back to the original page, and press <keycap>SHIFT-Reload</keycap>
804 (or flush all browser caches). The image should be gone now.
812 This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
813 wildcard pattern match to include potentially similar images from the same
814 site. For a more extensive explanation of <quote>patterns</quote>, and
815 the entire actions concept, see <link linkend="actions-file">the Actions
820 For advanced users who want to hand edit their config files, you might want
821 to now go to the <link linkend="act-examples">Actions Files Tutorial</link>.
822 The ideas explained therein also apply to the web-based editor.
829 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
832 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
834 <title>Starting <application>Privoxy</application></title>
836 Before launching <application>Privoxy</application> for the first time, you
837 will want to configure your browser(s) to use
838 <application>Privoxy</application> as a HTTP and HTTPS proxy. The default is
839 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions
840 used port 8000). This is the one configuration step that must be done!
843 Please note that <application>Privoxy</application> can only proxy HTTP and
844 HTTPS traffic. It will not work with FTP or other protocols.
847 <!-- image of Mozilla Proxy configuration -->
849 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration (Mozilla)</title>
852 <imagedata fileref="../images/proxy_setup.jpg" format="jpg">
855 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Mozilla Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
862 With <application>Netscape</application> (and
863 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under:
867 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
868 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
869 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton>
871 <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton>
873 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton>
875 <guibutton>Proxies</guibutton>
877 <guibutton>HTTP Proxy</guibutton>
881 For <application>Internet Explorer</application>:
885 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
886 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
887 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton>
889 <guibutton>Internet Properties</guibutton>
891 <guibutton>Connections</guibutton>
893 <guibutton>LAN Settings</guibutton>
897 Then, check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info
898 (Address: 127.0.0.1, Port: 8118). Include HTTPS (SSL), if you want HTTPS
903 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
904 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. You
905 are now ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
906 <application>Privoxy</application>!
910 <application>Privoxy</application> is typically started by specifying the
911 main configuration file to be used on the command line. If no configuration
912 file is specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application>
913 will look for a file named <filename>config</filename> in the current
914 directory. Except on Win32 where it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>.
917 <sect2 id="start-redhat">
918 <title>Red Hat and Conectiva</title>
920 We use a script. Note that Red Hat does not start Privoxy upon booting per
921 default. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as
922 its main configuration file.
926 # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
931 <sect2 id="start-debian">
932 <title>Debian</title>
934 We use a script. Note that Debian starts Privoxy upon booting per
935 default. It will use the file
936 <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
941 # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
946 <sect2 id="start-suse">
949 We use a script. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename>
950 as its main configuration file. Note that SuSE starts Privoxy upon booting
960 <sect2 id="start-windows">
961 <title>Windows</title>
963 Click on the Privoxy Icon to start Privoxy. If no configuration file is
964 specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application> will look
965 for a file named <filename>config.txt</filename>. Note that Windows will
966 automatically start Privoxy upon booting you PC.
970 <sect2 id="start-unices">
971 <title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others</title>
973 Example Unix startup command:
977 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
982 <sect2 id="start-os2">
985 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
986 start automatically when the system restarts. You can start it manually by
987 double-clicking on the <application>Privoxy</application> icon in the
988 <application>Privoxy</application> folder.
992 <sect2 id="start-macosx">
993 <title>Mac OSX</title>
995 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
996 start automatically when the system restarts. To start Privoxy by hand,
997 double-click on the <literal>StartPrivoxy.command</literal> icon in the
998 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal> folder. Or, type this command
1003 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
1007 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
1012 <sect2 id="start-amigaos">
1013 <title>AmigaOS</title>
1015 Start <application>Privoxy</application> (with RUN <>NIL:) in your
1016 <filename>startnet</filename> script (AmiTCP), in
1017 <filename>s:user-startup</filename> (RoadShow), as startup program in your
1018 startup script (Genesis), or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx).
1019 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically quit when you quit your
1020 TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack may display that
1021 <application>Privoxy</application> is still running).
1025 <sect2 id="start-gentoo">
1026 <title>Gentoo</title>
1028 A script is again used. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config
1029 </filename> as its main configuration file.
1033 /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1037 Note that <application>Privoxy</application> is not automatically started at
1038 boot time by default. You can change this with the <literal>rc-update</literal>
1043 rc-update add privoxy default
1051 See the section <link linkend="cmdoptions">Command line options</link> for
1055 must find a better place for this paragraph
1058 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
1059 point. Most of the per site configuration is done in the
1060 <ulink url="actions-file.html"><quote>actions</quote></ulink> files. These are
1061 where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking, and other
1062 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. There are several
1063 such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.
1067 You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites for which you may prefer
1068 persistent cookies, and add these to your actions configuration as needed. By
1069 default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser
1070 session (aka <quote>session cookies</quote>), unless you add them to the
1071 configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will need
1072 to edit <filename>user.action</filename> (or through the web based interface)
1073 and disable this feature. If you use more than one browser, it would make
1074 more sense to let <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which
1075 case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
1079 Another feature where you will probably want to define exceptions for trusted
1080 sites is the popup-killing (through the <ulink
1081 url="actions-file.html#KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></ulink> and
1083 url="actions-file.html#FILTER-POPUPS"><quote>+filter{popups}</quote></ulink>
1084 actions), because your favorite shopping, banking, or leisure site may need
1085 popups (explained below).
1089 <application>Privoxy</application> is HTTP/1.1 compliant, but not all of
1090 the optional 1.1 features are as yet supported. In the unlikely event that
1091 you experience inexplicable problems with browsers that use HTTP/1.1 per default
1092 (like <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.), you might
1093 try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look under <literal>Edit ->
1094 Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
1095 Alternatively, set the <quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote> config option in
1096 <filename>default.action</filename> which will downgrade your browser's HTTP
1097 requests from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0 before processing them.
1101 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
1102 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
1103 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
1104 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote>
1105 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
1106 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1107 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1108 and then follow the link to <quote>View & Change the Current Configuration</quote>.
1109 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
1113 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
1114 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
1115 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
1116 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
1117 to a given URL. In addition to the actions file
1118 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
1119 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> (toggled) from this page.
1123 If you encounter problems, try loading the page without
1124 <application>Privoxy</application>. If that helps, enter the URL where
1125 you have the problems into <ulink url="http://p.p/show-url-info">the browser
1126 based rule tracing utility</ulink>. See which rules apply and why, and
1127 then try turning them off for that site one after the other, until the problem
1128 is gone. When you have found the culprit, you might want to turn the rest on
1133 If the above paragraph sounds gibberish to you, you might want to <link
1134 linkend="actions-file">read more about the actions concept</link>
1135 or even dive deep into the <link linkend="actionsanat">Appendix
1140 If you can't get rid of the problem at all, think you've found a bug in
1141 Privoxy, want to propose a new feature or smarter rules, please see the
1142 section <link linkend="contact"><quote>Contacting the
1143 Developers</quote></link> below.
1148 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1149 <sect2 id="cmdoptions">
1150 <title>Command Line Options</title>
1152 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
1153 command-line options:
1161 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
1164 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
1169 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
1172 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
1177 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
1180 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
1181 leader, and don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
1186 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
1190 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
1191 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failure to create or delete the
1192 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
1193 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
1198 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
1202 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
1203 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
1204 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
1209 <emphasis>--chroot</emphasis>
1213 Before changing to the user ID given in the <emphasis>--user</emphasis> option,
1214 chroot to that user's home directory, i.e. make the kernel pretend to the Privoxy
1215 process that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
1216 the impact of possible vulnerabilities in Privoxy to the files contained in that hierarchy.
1222 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
1225 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
1226 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
1227 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
1228 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
1229 full path to avoid confusion. If no config file is found,
1230 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
1241 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1244 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1245 <sect1 id="configuration"><title><application>Privoxy</application> Configuration</title>
1247 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is stored
1248 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
1249 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
1250 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
1254 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1257 <title>Controlling <application>Privoxy</application> with Your Web Browser</title>
1259 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface can be reached through the special
1260 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1261 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1262 which is a built-in page and works without Internet access.
1263 You will see the following section:
1267 <!-- Needs to be put in a table and colorized -->
1270 <bridgehead renderas="sect2"> Privoxy Menu</bridgehead>
1274 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View & change the current configuration</ulink>
1277 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">View the source code version numbers</ulink>
1280 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">View the request headers.</ulink>
1283 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">Look up which actions apply to a URL and why</ulink>
1286 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">Toggle Privoxy on or off</ulink>
1289 ▪ <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/&p-version;/user-manual/">Documentation</ulink>
1297 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
1298 <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, which is where the ad, banner,
1299 cookie, and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
1300 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
1301 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
1302 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
1306 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
1307 have problems with your current actions and filters. You can in fact use
1308 it as a test to see whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
1309 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
1310 to run as a proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e.
1311 <application>Privoxy</application> acts like a normal forwarding proxy. There
1312 is even a toggle <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklet</link> offered, so
1313 that you can toggle <application>Privoxy</application> with one click from
1319 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1324 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1326 <sect2 id="confoverview">
1327 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
1329 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
1330 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
1331 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
1332 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. <![%p-not-stable;[ The name
1333 and number of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
1334 subject to change as development progresses.]]>
1338 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though
1339 some settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the
1340 principle configuration files are:
1348 The <link linkend="config">main configuration file</link> is named <filename>config</filename>
1349 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
1350 on Windows. This is a required file.
1356 <filename>default.action</filename> (the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>)
1357 is used to define which <quote>actions</quote> relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups,
1358 content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default. It also defines many
1359 exceptions (both positive and negative) from this default set of actions that enable
1360 <application>Privoxy</application> to selectively eliminate the junk, and only the junk, on
1361 as many websites as possible.
1364 Multiple actions files may be defined in <filename>config</filename>. These
1365 are processed in the order they are defined. Local customizations and locally
1366 preferred exceptions to the default policies as defined in
1367 <filename>default.action</filename> (which you will most probably want
1368 to define sooner or later) are probably best applied in
1369 <filename>user.action</filename>, where you can preserve them across
1370 upgrades. <filename>standard.action</filename> is for
1371 <application>Privoxy's</application> internal use.
1374 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from
1376 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1378 url="http://p.p/show-status">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>) for the
1379 various actions files.
1385 <filename>default.filter</filename> (the <link linkend="filter-file">filter
1386 file</link>) can be used to re-write the raw page content, including
1387 viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript, and whatever else
1388 lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only pre-defined here;
1389 whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files. Only one filter
1390 file may be defined.
1398 All files use the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a
1399 comment (the rest of the line will be ignored) and understand line continuation
1400 through placing a backslash ("<literal>\</literal>") as the very last character
1401 in a line. If the <literal>#</literal> is preceded by a backslash, it looses
1402 its special function. Placing a <literal>#</literal> in front of an otherwise
1403 valid configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
1408 The actions files and <filename>default.filter</filename>
1409 can use Perl style <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> for
1410 maximum flexibility.
1414 After making any changes, there is no need to restart
1415 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
1416 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> detects such changes
1417 automatically. Note, however, that it may take one or two additional
1418 requests for the change to take effect. When changing the listening address
1419 of <application>Privoxy</application>, these <quote>wake up</quote> requests
1420 must obviously be sent to the <emphasis>old</emphasis> listening address.
1425 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
1426 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
1427 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
1428 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
1434 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1437 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1439 <!-- **************************************************** -->
1440 <!-- Include config.sgml here -->
1441 <!-- This is where the entire config file is detailed. -->
1443 <!-- end include -->
1446 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1450 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1452 <sect1 id="actions-file"><title>Actions Files</title>
1455 The actions files are used to define what actions
1456 <application>Privoxy</application> takes for which URLs, and thus determine
1457 how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
1458 transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof). There
1459 are three such files included with <application>Privoxy</application>
1460 with differing purposes:
1467 <filename>default.action</filename> - is the primary action file
1468 that sets the initial values for all actions. It is intended to
1469 provide a base level of functionality for
1470 <application>Privoxy's</application> array of features. So it is
1471 a set of broad rules that should work reasonably well for users everywhere.
1472 This is the file that the developers are keeping updated, and <link
1473 linkend="installation-keepupdated">making available to users</link>.
1478 <filename>user.action</filename> - is intended to be for local site
1479 preferences and exceptions. As an example, if your ISP or your bank
1480 has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
1481 thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
1486 <filename>standard.action</filename> - is used by the web based editor,
1487 to set various pre-defined sets of rules for the default actions section
1488 in <filename>default.action</filename>. These have increasing levels of
1489 aggressiveness <emphasis>and have no influence on your browsing unless
1490 you select them explicitly in the editor</emphasis>. It is not recommend
1494 The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
1495 <filename>standard.action</filename> are:
1498 <table frame=all><title>Default Configurations</title>
1499 <tgroup cols=4 align=left colsep=1 rowsep=1>
1500 <colspec colname=c1>
1501 <colspec colname=c2>
1502 <colspec colname=c3>
1503 <colspec colname=c4>
1506 <entry>Feature</entry>
1507 <entry>Cautious</entry>
1508 <entry>Medium</entry>
1509 <entry>Adventuresome</entry>
1514 <!-- <entry>f1</entry> -->
1515 <!-- <entry>f2</entry> -->
1516 <!-- <entry>f3</entry> -->
1517 <!-- <entry>f4</entry> -->
1523 <entry>Ad-blocking by URL</entry>
1530 <entry>Ad-filtering by size</entry>
1537 <entry>GIF de-animation</entry>
1544 <entry>Referer forging</entry>
1551 <entry>Cookie handling</entry>
1553 <entry>session-only</entry>
1558 <entry>Pop-up killing</entry>
1559 <entry>unsolicited</entry>
1560 <entry>unsolicited</entry>
1565 <entry>Fast redirects</entry>
1572 <entry>HTML taming</entry>
1579 <entry>JavaScript taming</entry>
1586 <entry>Web-bug killing</entry>
1593 <entry>Fun text replacements</entry>
1600 <entry>Image tag reordering</entry>
1607 <entry>Ad-filtering by link</entry>
1614 <entry>Demoronizer</entry>
1631 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
1632 file, and are processed in the order they are defined (e.g.
1633 <filename>default.action</filename> is typically process before
1634 <filename>user.action</filename>). The content of these can all be viewed and
1636 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
1640 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use
1641 <quote>aliases</quote> in an actions file, you have to place the (optional)
1642 <link linkend="aliases">alias section</link> at the top of that file.
1643 Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally to all
1644 sites and pages (be <emphasis>very careful</emphasis> with using such a
1645 universal set in <filename>user.action</filename> or any other actions file after
1646 <filename>default.action</filename>, because it will override the result
1647 from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
1648 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard
1649 <filename>user.action</filename> as an appendix to <filename>default.action</filename>,
1650 with the advantage that is a separate file, which makes preserving your
1651 personal settings across <application>Privoxy</application> upgrades easier.
1655 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
1656 just some obnoxious URL that you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
1657 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
1658 written to disk), content can be modified, JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
1659 fooled, and much more. See below for a <link linkend="actions">complete list
1663 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1665 <title>Finding the Right Mix</title>
1667 Note that some <link linkend="actions">actions</link>, like cookie suppression
1668 or script disabling, may render some sites unusable that rely on these
1669 techniques to work properly. Finding the right mix of actions is not always easy and
1670 certainly a matter of personal taste. In general, it can be said that the more
1671 <quote>aggressive</quote> your default settings (in the top section of the
1672 actions file) are, the more exceptions for <quote>trusted</quote> sites you
1673 will have to make later. If, for example, you want to crunch all cookies per
1674 default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for sites that you
1675 regularly use and that require cookies for actually useful puposes, like maybe
1676 your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
1680 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
1681 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
1682 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
1683 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again :).
1687 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1689 <title>How to Edit</title>
1691 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by
1692 using our browser-based editor, which can be reached from <ulink
1693 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
1694 The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single feature on a
1695 per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults like
1696 <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> or <quote>Adventuresome</quote>.
1697 Warning: the <quote>Adventuresome</quote> setting is not only more aggressive,
1698 but includes settings that are fun and subversive, and which some may find of
1703 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
1704 the actions files. Look at <filename>default.action</filename> which is richly
1710 <sect2 id="actions-apply">
1711 <title>How Actions are Applied to URLs</title>
1713 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections,
1714 like the <quote><link linkend="aliases">alias</link></quote> sections which will
1715 be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on regular sections: They have a
1716 heading line (often split up to multiple lines for readability) which consist
1717 of a list of actions, separated by whitespace and enclosed in curly braces.
1718 Below that, there is a list of URL patterns, each on a separate line.
1722 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
1723 compared to all patterns in each action file file. Every time it matches, the list of
1724 applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated, using the heading
1725 of the section in which the pattern is located. If multiple matches for
1726 the same URL set the same action differently, the last match wins. If not,
1727 the effects are aggregated. E.g. a URL might match a regular section with
1728 a heading line of <literal>{
1729 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link> }</literal>,
1730 then later another one with just <literal>{
1731 +<link linkend="block">block</link> }</literal>, resulting
1732 in <emphasis>both</emphasis> actions to apply.
1736 You can trace this process for any given URL by visiting <ulink
1737 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>.
1741 More detail on this is provided in the Appendix, <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">
1742 Anatomy of an Action</link>.
1746 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1747 <sect2 id="af-patterns">
1748 <title>Patterns</title>
1750 As mentioned, <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>patterns</quote>
1751 to determine what actions might apply to which sites and pages your browser
1752 attempts to access. These <quote>patterns</quote> use wild card type
1753 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> matching to achieve a high degree of
1754 flexibility. This allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match
1755 against many similar patterns.
1759 Generally, a <application>Privoxy</application> pattern has the form
1760 <literal><domain>/<path></literal>, where both the
1761 <literal><domain></literal> and <literal><path></literal> are
1762 optional. (This is why the special <literal>/</literal> pattern matches all
1763 URLs). Note that the protocol portion of the URL pattern (e.g.
1764 <literal>http://</literal>) should <emphasis>not</emphasis> be included in
1765 the pattern. This is assumed already!
1770 <term><literal>www.example.com/</literal></term>
1773 is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
1774 regardless of which document on that server is requested.
1779 <term><literal>www.example.com</literal></term>
1782 means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing <literal>/</literal> may
1788 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html</literal></term>
1791 matches only the single document <literal>/index.html</literal>
1792 on <literal>www.example.com</literal>.
1797 <term><literal>/index.html</literal></term>
1800 matches the document <literal>/index.html</literal>, regardless of the domain,
1801 i.e. on <emphasis>any</emphasis> web server.
1806 <term><literal>index.html</literal></term>
1809 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
1810 there is no top-level domain called <literal>.html</literal>.
1817 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1818 <sect3><title>The Domain Pattern</title>
1821 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
1822 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
1828 <term><literal>.example.com</literal></term>
1831 matches any domain that <emphasis>ENDS</emphasis> in
1832 <literal>.example.com</literal>
1837 <term><literal>www.</literal></term>
1840 matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
1841 <literal>www.</literal>
1846 <term><literal>.example.</literal></term>
1849 matches any domain that <emphasis>CONTAINS</emphasis> <literal>.example.</literal>
1850 (Correctly speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains <literal>example</literal> as a domain.)
1857 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
1858 themselves. They work pretty similar to shell wild-cards: <quote>*</quote>
1859 stands for zero or more arbitrary characters, <quote>?</quote> stands for
1860 any single character, you can define character classes in square
1861 brackets and all of that can be freely mixed:
1866 <term><literal>ad*.example.com</literal></term>
1869 matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
1870 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>
1875 <term><literal>*ad*.example.com</literal></term>
1878 matches all of the above, and then some.
1883 <term><literal>.?pix.com</literal></term>
1886 matches <literal>www.ipix.com</literal>,
1887 <literal>pictures.epix.com</literal>, <literal>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</literal> etc.
1892 <term><literal>www[1-9a-ez].example.c*</literal></term>
1895 matches <literal>www1.example.com</literal>,
1896 <literal>www4.example.cc</literal>, <literal>wwwd.example.cy</literal>,
1897 <literal>wwwz.example.com</literal> etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
1898 <literal>wwww.example.com</literal>.
1906 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1909 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1910 <sect3><title>The Path Pattern</title>
1913 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl compatible regular expressions
1914 (through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> library) for
1919 There is an <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link> with a brief quick-start into regular
1920 expressions, and full (very technical) documentation on PCRE regex syntax is available on-line
1921 at <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/man.txt">http://www.pcre.org/man.txt</ulink>.
1922 You might also find the Perl man page on regular expressions (<literal>man perlre</literal>)
1923 useful, which is available on-line at <ulink
1924 url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>.
1928 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the <quote>/</quote>,
1929 i.e. it matches as if it would start with a <quote>^</quote> (regular expression speak
1930 for the beginning of a line).
1934 Please also note that matching in the path is <emphasis>CASE INSENSITIVE</emphasis>
1935 by default, but you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
1936 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch: <literal>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</literal> will match
1937 only documents whose path starts with <literal>PaTtErN</literal> in
1938 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
1944 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1947 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1949 <sect2 id="actions">
1950 <title>Actions</title>
1952 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
1953 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a
1954 <quote>+</quote>, and turned off if preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. So a
1955 <literal>+action</literal> means <quote>do that action</quote>, e.g.
1956 <literal>+block</literal> means <quote>please block URLs that match the
1957 following patterns</quote>, and <literal>-block</literal> means <quote>don't
1958 block URLs that match the following patterns, even if <literal>+block</literal>
1959 previously applied.</quote>
1964 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
1965 separated by whitespace, like in
1966 <literal>{+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}}</literal>,
1967 followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which they apply.
1968 Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up a section
1969 of the actions file.
1973 There are three classes of actions:
1980 Boolean, i.e the action can only be <quote>enabled</quote> or
1981 <quote>disabled</quote>. Syntax:
1985 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # enable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
1986 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable></screen>
1989 Example: <literal>+block</literal>
1996 Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of action.
2001 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and set parameter to <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>,
2002 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
2003 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action. The parameter can be omitted</screen>
2006 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized action,
2007 the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are simply ignored.
2010 Example: <literal>+hide-user-agent{ Mozilla 1.0 }</literal>
2016 Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions,
2017 but they behave differently: If the action applies multiple times to the
2018 same URL, but with different parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> the parameters
2019 from <emphasis>all</emphasis> matches are remembered. This is used for actions
2020 that can be executed for the same request repeatedly, like adding multiple
2021 headers, or filtering through multiple filters. Syntax:
2025 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and add <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> to the list of parameters
2026 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # remove the parameter <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> from the list of parameters
2027 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
2028 <replaceable class="parameter">-name</replaceable> # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list</screen>
2031 Examples: <literal>+add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text}</literal> and
2032 <literal>+filter{html-annoyances}</literal>
2040 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no <quote>actions</quote> are
2041 taken. So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
2042 normal, non-blocking, non-anonymizing proxy. You must specifically enable the
2043 privacy and blocking features you need (although the provided default actions
2044 files will give a good starting point).
2048 Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. So exceptions
2049 to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
2050 in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files). For
2051 multi-valued actions, the actions are applied in the order they are specified.
2052 Actions files are processed in the order they are defined in
2053 <filename>config</filename> (the default installation has three actions
2054 files). It also quite possible for any given URL pattern to match more than
2055 one pattern and thus more than one set of actions!
2058 <!-- start actions listing -->
2060 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> actions are:
2064 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2065 <!-- Please note the below defined actions use id's that are -->
2066 <!-- probably linked from other places, so please don't change. -->
2068 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2071 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2073 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="add-header">
2074 <title>add-header</title>
2078 <term>Typical use:</term>
2080 <para>Confuse log analysis, custom applications</para>
2085 <term>Effect:</term>
2088 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
2095 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2097 <para>Multi-value.</para>
2102 <term>Parameter:</term>
2105 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not checked.
2106 It is recommended that you use the <quote><literal>X-</literal></quote> prefix
2116 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
2117 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
2118 <quote>HTTP headers</quote> are, you definitely don't need to worry about this
2125 <term>Example usage:</term>
2128 <screen>+add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}</screen>
2136 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2137 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="block">
2138 <title>block</title>
2142 <term>Typical use:</term>
2144 <para>Block ads or other obnoxious content</para>
2149 <term>Effect:</term>
2152 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the requests are not
2153 forwarded to the remote server, but answered locally with a substitute page or image,
2154 as determined by the <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>
2155 and <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> actions.
2162 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2164 <para>Boolean.</para>
2169 <term>Parameter:</term>
2179 <application>Privoxy</application> sends a special <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page
2180 for requests to blocked pages. This page contains links to find out why the request
2181 was blocked, and a click-through to the blocked content (the latter only if compiled with the
2182 force feature enabled). The <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page adapts to the available
2183 screen space -- it displays full-blown if space allows, or miniaturized and text-only
2184 if loaded into a small frame or window. If you are using <application>Privoxy</application>
2185 right now, you can take a look at the
2186 <ulink url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
2190 A very important exception occurs if <emphasis>both</emphasis>
2191 <literal>block</literal> and <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2192 apply to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
2193 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
2194 (see below) also applies, the type of image will be determined by its parameter,
2195 if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is sent.
2198 It is important to understand this process, in order
2199 to understand how <application>Privoxy</application> deals with
2200 ads and other unwanted content.
2203 The <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
2204 action can perform a very similar task, by <quote>blocking</quote>
2205 banner images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
2206 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
2207 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse the two.
2213 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2216 <screen>{+block} # Block and replace with "blocked" page
2217 .nasty-stuff.example.com
2219 {+block +handle-as-image} # Block and replace with image
2230 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2231 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-incoming-cookies">
2232 <title>crunch-incoming-cookies</title>
2236 <term>Typical use:</term>
2239 Prevent the web server from setting any cookies on your system
2245 <term>Effect:</term>
2248 Deletes any <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from server replies.
2255 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2257 <para>Boolean.</para>
2262 <term>Parameter:</term>
2274 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> cookies. For
2275 <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> cookies, use
2276 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>.
2277 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable cookies completely.
2280 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
2281 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
2282 since it would prevent the session cookies from being set. See also
2283 <literal><link linkend="filter-content-cookies">filter-content-cookies</link></literal>.
2289 <term>Example usage:</term>
2292 <screen>+crunch-incoming-cookies</screen>
2300 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2301 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-outgoing-cookies">
2302 <title>crunch-outgoing-cookies</title>
2306 <term>Typical use:</term>
2309 Prevent the web server from reading any cookies from your system
2315 <term>Effect:</term>
2318 Deletes any <quote>Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from client requests.
2325 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2327 <para>Boolean.</para>
2332 <term>Parameter:</term>
2344 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> cookies. For
2345 <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> cookies, use
2346 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>.
2347 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable cookies completely.
2350 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
2351 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
2352 since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
2358 <term>Example usage:</term>
2361 <screen>+crunch-outgoing-cookies</screen>
2370 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2371 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="deanimate-gifs">
2372 <title>deanimate-gifs</title>
2376 <term>Typical use:</term>
2378 <para>Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.</para>
2383 <term>Effect:</term>
2386 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
2393 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2395 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2400 <term>Parameter:</term>
2403 <quote>last</quote> or <quote>first</quote>
2412 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
2413 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
2414 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last
2415 frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
2416 most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
2417 last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
2420 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
2421 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
2428 <term>Example usage:</term>
2431 <screen>+deanimate-gifs{last}</screen>
2438 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2439 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="downgrade-http-version">
2440 <title>downgrade-http-version</title>
2444 <term>Typical use:</term>
2446 <para>Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1</para>
2451 <term>Effect:</term>
2454 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
2461 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2463 <para>Boolean.</para>
2468 <term>Parameter:</term>
2480 This is a left-over from the time when <application>Privoxy</application>
2481 didn't support important HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the
2482 unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server
2483 out there. Not all (optional) HTTP/1.1 features are supported yet, so there
2484 is a chance you might need this action.
2490 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2493 <screen>{+downgrade-http-version}
2494 problem-host.example.com</screen>
2502 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2503 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="fast-redirects">
2504 <title>fast-redirects</title>
2508 <term>Typical use:</term>
2510 <para>Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links</para>
2515 <term>Effect:</term>
2518 Cut off all but the last valid URL from requests.
2525 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2527 <para>Boolean.</para>
2532 <term>Parameter:</term>
2544 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
2545 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
2546 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
2547 resulting from this scheme typically look like:
2548 <emphasis>http://some.place/click-tracker.cgi?target=http://some.where.else</emphasis>.
2551 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
2552 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
2553 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
2554 to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
2555 browser ask the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
2559 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
2560 It is likely to break some sites. You should expect to need possibly
2561 many exceptions to this action, if it is enabled by default in
2562 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some sites just don't work without
2569 <term>Example usage:</term>
2572 <screen>{+fast-redirects}</screen>
2581 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2582 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter">
2583 <title>filter</title>
2587 <term>Typical use:</term>
2589 <para>Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size), do fun text replacements, etc.</para>
2594 <term>Effect:</term>
2597 All files of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which this
2598 action applies, are filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular expression
2599 based substitutions. (Note: as of version 3.0.3 plain text documents
2600 are exempted from filtering, because web servers often use the
2601 <literal>text/plain</literal> MIME type for all files whose type they
2609 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2611 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2616 <term>Parameter:</term>
2619 The name of a filter, as defined in the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>
2620 (typically <filename>default.filter</filename>, set by the
2621 <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
2622 option in the <link linkend="config">config file</link>). When used in its negative form,
2623 and without parameters, filtering is completely disabled.
2632 For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
2633 in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below for
2637 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
2638 slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
2639 passed the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way
2640 since the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more
2641 noticeable on slower connections.
2644 This is very powerful feature, but <quote>rolling your own</quote>
2645 filters requires a knowledge of regular expressions and HTML.
2648 The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
2649 <literal><link linkend="buffer-limit">buffer-limit</link></literal>
2650 option in the main <link linkend="config">config file</link>. The
2651 default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the buffered
2652 data, and all pending data, is passed through unfiltered.
2655 Inadequate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
2656 (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data
2657 (from HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate
2658 the integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might
2659 be necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering
2660 by defining appropriate <literal>-filter</literal> sections.
2663 At this time, <application>Privoxy</application> cannot (yet!) uncompress compressed
2664 documents. If you want filtering to work on all documents, even those that
2665 would normally be sent compressed, use the
2666 <literal><link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link></literal>
2667 action in conjunction with <literal>filter</literal>.
2670 Filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
2671 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
2672 action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism
2673 works quite differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners
2674 based on their size (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat
2678 <link linkend="contact">Feedback</link> with suggestions for new or
2679 improved filters is particularly welcome!
2682 The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
2683 predefined filter. There are <link linkend="predefined-filters">more
2684 verbose explanations</link> of what these filters do in the <link
2685 linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>.
2691 <term>Example usage (with filters from the distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file).
2692 See <link linkend="PREDEFINED-FILTERS">the Predefined Filters section</link> for
2693 more explanation on each:</term>
2696 <anchor id="filter-js-annoyances">
2697 <screen>+filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse</screen>
2700 <anchor id="filter-js-events">
2701 <screen>+filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites)</screen>
2704 <anchor id="filter-html-annoyances">
2705 <screen>+filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse</screen>
2708 <anchor id="filter-content-cookies">
2709 <screen>+filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content</screen>
2712 <anchor id="filter-refresh-tags">
2713 <screen>+filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups)</screen>
2716 <anchor id="filter-unsolicited-popups">
2717 <screen>+filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows</screen>
2720 <anchor id="filter-all-popups">
2721 <screen>+filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML</screen>
2724 <anchor id="filter-img-reorder">
2725 <screen>+filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective</screen>
2728 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-size">
2729 <screen>+filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size</screen>
2732 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-link">
2733 <screen>+filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers</screen>
2736 <anchor id="filter-webbugs">
2737 <screen>+filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)</screen>
2740 <anchor id="filter-tiny-textforms">
2741 <screen>+filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap</screen>
2744 <anchor id="filter-jumping-windows">
2745 <screen>+filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves</screen>
2748 <anchor id="filter-frameset-borders">
2749 <screen>+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizable</screen>
2752 <anchor id="filter-demoronizer">
2753 <screen>+filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets</screen>
2756 <anchor id="filter-shockwave-flash">
2757 <screen>+filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects</screen>
2760 <anchor id="filter-quicktime-kioskmode">
2761 <screen>+filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies saveable</screen>
2764 <anchor id="filter-fun">
2765 <screen>+filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!</screen>
2768 <anchor id="filter-crude-parental">
2769 <screen>+filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering (demo only)</screen>
2772 <anchor id="filter-ie-exploits">
2773 <screen>+filter{ie-exploits} # Disable some known Internet Explorer bug exploits</screen>
2781 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2782 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-image">
2783 <title>handle-as-image</title>
2787 <term>Typical use:</term>
2789 <para>Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images <emphasis>if they get blocked</emphasis>)</para>
2794 <term>Effect:</term>
2797 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
2798 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
2799 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
2800 page, or a replacement image (as determined by the <literal><link
2801 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> action) will be sent to the
2802 client as a substitute for the blocked content.
2809 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2811 <para>Boolean.</para>
2816 <term>Parameter:</term>
2828 The below generic example section is actually part of <filename>default.action</filename>.
2829 It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
2833 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
2834 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
2835 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
2838 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (in-line) ad
2839 frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
2840 Forcing <literal>handle-as-image</literal> in this situation will not replace the
2841 ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
2847 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
2850 <screen># Generic image extensions:
2853 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
2855 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
2856 # blocked as images:
2858 {+block +handle-as-image}
2859 some.nasty-banner-server.com/junk.cgi?output=trash
2861 # Banner source! Who cares if they also have non-image content?
2871 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2872 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-forwarded-for-headers">
2873 <title>hide-forwarded-for-headers</title>
2877 <term>Typical use:</term>
2879 <para>Improve privacy by hiding the true source of the request</para>
2884 <term>Effect:</term>
2887 Deletes any existing <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> HTTP header from client requests,
2888 and prevents adding a new one.
2895 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2897 <para>Boolean.</para>
2902 <term>Parameter:</term>
2914 It is fairly safe to leave this on.
2917 This action is scheduled for improvement: It should be able to generate forged
2918 <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> headers using random IP addresses from a specified network,
2919 to make successive requests from the same client look like requests from a pool of different
2920 users sharing the same proxy.
2926 <term>Example usage:</term>
2929 <screen>+hide-forwarded-for-headers</screen>
2937 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2938 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-from-header">
2939 <title>hide-from-header</title>
2943 <term>Typical use:</term>
2945 <para>Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address</para>
2950 <term>Effect:</term>
2953 Deletes any existing <quote>From:</quote> HTTP header, or replaces it with the
2961 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2963 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2968 <term>Parameter:</term>
2971 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
2980 The keyword <quote>block</quote> will completely remove the header
2981 (not to be confused with the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
2985 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
2986 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
2987 is actually used by a real person.
2990 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send
2991 <quote>From:</quote> headers anymore.
2997 <term>Example usage:</term>
3000 <screen>+hide-from-header{block}</screen> or
3001 <screen>+hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}</screen>
3009 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3010 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-referrer">
3011 <title>hide-referrer</title>
3012 <anchor id="hide-referer">
3015 <term>Typical use:</term>
3017 <para>Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site</para>
3022 <term>Effect:</term>
3025 Deletes the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) HTTP header from the client request,
3026 or replaces it with a forged one.
3033 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3035 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3040 <term>Parameter:</term>
3044 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header completely.</para>
3047 <para><quote>forge</quote> to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are talking to.</para>
3050 <para>Any other string to set a user defined referrer.</para>
3060 <quote>forge</quote> is the preferred option here, since some servers will
3061 not send images back otherwise, in an attempt to prevent their valuable
3062 content from being embedded elsewhere (and hence, without being surrounded
3063 by <emphasis>their</emphasis> banners).
3066 <literal>hide-referer</literal> is an alternate spelling of
3067 <literal>hide-referrer</literal> and the two can be can be freely
3068 substituted with each other. (<quote>referrer</quote> is the
3069 correct English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it
3070 requires it to be spelled as <quote>referer</quote>.)
3076 <term>Example usage:</term>
3079 <screen>+hide-referrer{forge}</screen> or
3080 <screen>+hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}</screen>
3088 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3089 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-user-agent">
3090 <title>hide-user-agent</title>
3094 <term>Typical use:</term>
3096 <para>Conceal your type of browser and client operating system</para>
3101 <term>Effect:</term>
3104 Replaces the value of the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> HTTP header
3105 in client requests with the specified value.
3112 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3114 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3119 <term>Parameter:</term>
3122 Any user-defined string.
3132 This breaks many web sites that depend on looking at this header in order
3133 to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
3134 way, is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> a <ulink
3135 url="http://www.javascriptkit.com/javaindex.shtml">smart way to do
3140 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
3141 browsers will access the same <application>Privoxy</application> is
3142 <emphasis>not recommended</emphasis>. In single-user, single-browser
3143 setups, you might use it to delete your OS version information from
3144 the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known bugs for your
3145 OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to access
3146 sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
3147 reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not
3148 let <application>Mozilla</application> enter, yet forging to a
3149 <application>Netscape 6.1</application> user-agent works just fine.
3150 (Must be just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
3153 This action is scheduled for improvement.
3159 <term>Example usage:</term>
3162 <screen>+hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}</screen>
3170 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3171 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="kill-popups">
3172 <title>kill-popups<anchor id="kill-popup"></title>
3176 <term>Typical use:</term>
3178 <para>Eliminate those annoying pop-up windows (deprecated)</para>
3183 <term>Effect:</term>
3186 While loading the document, replace JavaScript code that opens
3187 pop-up windows with (syntactically neutral) dummy code on the fly.
3194 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3196 <para>Boolean.</para>
3201 <term>Parameter:</term>
3213 This action is basically a built-in, hardwired special-purpose filter
3214 action, but there are important differences: For <literal>kill-popups</literal>,
3215 the document need not be buffered, so it can be incrementally rendered while
3216 downloading. But <literal>kill-popups</literal> doesn't catch as many pop-ups as
3218 linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>all-popups</replaceable>}</link></literal>
3219 does and is not as smart as <literal><link
3220 linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>unsolicited-popups</replaceable>}</link>
3224 Think of it as a fast and efficient replacement for a filter that you
3225 can use if you don't want any filtering at all. Note that it doesn't make
3226 sense to combine it with any <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> action,
3227 since as soon as one <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> applies,
3228 the whole document needs to be buffered anyway, which destroys the advantage of
3229 the <literal>kill-popups</literal> action over its filter equivalent.
3232 Killing all pop-ups unconditionally is problematic. Many shops and banks rely on
3233 pop-ups to display forms, shopping carts etc, and the <literal><link
3234 linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>unsolicited-popups</replaceable>}</link>
3235 </literal> does a fairly good job of catching only the unwanted ones.
3238 If the only kind of pop-ups that you want to kill are exit consoles (those
3239 <emphasis>really nasty</emphasis> windows that appear when you close an other
3240 one), you might want to use
3242 linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>js-annoyances</replaceable>}</literal>
3248 An alternate spelling is <literal>+kill-popup</literal>, which is
3256 <term>Example usage:</term>
3258 <para><screen>+kill-popups</screen></para>
3265 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3266 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="limit-connect">
3267 <title>limit-connect</title>
3271 <term>Typical use:</term>
3273 <para>Prevent abuse of <application>Privoxy</application> as a TCP proxy relay</para>
3278 <term>Effect:</term>
3281 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
3288 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3290 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3295 <term>Parameter:</term>
3298 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
3299 defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
3308 By default, i.e. if no <literal>limit-connect</literal> action applies,
3309 <application>Privoxy</application> only allows HTTP CONNECT
3310 requests to port 443 (the standard, secure HTTPS port). Use
3311 <literal>limit-connect</literal> if more fine-grained control is desired
3312 for some or all destinations.
3315 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
3316 (<quote>https://</quote> URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
3317 the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
3318 short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
3319 This can be a big security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can be
3320 abused as TCP relays very easily.
3323 If you don't know what any of this means, there probably is no reason to
3324 change this one, since the default is already very restrictive.
3330 <term>Example usages:</term>
3332 <!-- I had trouble getting the spacing to look right in my browser -->
3333 <!-- I probably have the wrong font setup, bollocks. -->
3334 <!-- Apparently the emphasis tag uses a proportional font no matter what -->
3336 <screen>+limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need not be specified.
3337 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
3338 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
3339 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK (gaping security hole!)</screen>
3346 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3347 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="prevent-compression">
3348 <title>prevent-compression</title>
3352 <term>Typical use:</term>
3355 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
3356 passed through <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>s
3362 <term>Effect:</term>
3365 Adds a header to the request that asks for uncompressed transfer.
3372 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3374 <para>Boolean.</para>
3379 <term>Parameter:</term>
3391 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
3392 is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But for the <literal><link
3393 linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>, <literal><link linkend="deanimate-gifs">deanimate-gifs</link></literal>
3394 and <literal><link linkend="kill-popups">kill-popups</link></literal> actions to work,
3395 <application>Privoxy</application> needs access to the uncompressed data.
3396 Unfortunately, <application>Privoxy</application> can't yet(!) uncompress, filter, and
3397 re-compress the content on the fly. So if you want to ensure that all websites, including
3398 those that normally compress, can be filtered, you need to use this action.
3401 This will slow down transfers from those websites, though. If you use any of the above-mentioned
3402 actions, you will typically want to use <literal>prevent-compression</literal> in conjunction
3406 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
3407 documents correctly (they send an empty document body). If you use <literal>prevent-compression</literal>
3408 per default, you'll have to add exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
3414 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
3417 <screen># Set default:
3419 {+prevent-compression}
3422 # Make exceptions for ill sites:
3424 {-prevent-compression}
3426 www.pclinuxonline.com</screen>
3435 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3436 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-vanilla-wafer">
3437 <title>send-vanilla-wafer</title>
3441 <term>Typical use:</term>
3444 Feed log analysis scripts with useless data.
3450 <term>Effect:</term>
3453 Sends a cookie with each request stating that you do not accept any copyright
3454 on cookies sent to you, and asking the site operator not to track you.
3461 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3463 <para>Boolean.</para>
3468 <term>Parameter:</term>
3480 The vanilla wafer is a (relatively) unique header and could conceivably be used to track you.
3483 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
3489 <term>Example usage:</term>
3492 <screen>+send-vanilla-wafer</screen>
3501 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3502 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-wafer">
3503 <title>send-wafer</title>
3507 <term>Typical use:</term>
3510 Send custom cookies or feed log analysis scripts with even more useless data.
3516 <term>Effect:</term>
3519 Sends a custom, user-defined cookie with each request.
3526 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3528 <para>Multi-value.</para>
3533 <term>Parameter:</term>
3536 A string of the form <quote><replaceable class="option">name</replaceable>=<replaceable
3537 class="parameter">value</replaceable></quote>.
3546 Being multi-valued, multiple instances of this action can apply to the same request,
3547 resulting in multiple cookies being sent.
3550 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
3555 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3558 <screen>{+send-wafer{UsingPrivoxy=true}}
3559 my-internal-testing-server.void</screen>
3567 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3568 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="session-cookies-only">
3569 <title>session-cookies-only</title>
3573 <term>Typical use:</term>
3576 Allow only temporary <quote>session</quote> cookies (for the current
3577 browser session <emphasis>only</emphasis>).
3583 <term>Effect:</term>
3586 Deletes the <quote>expires</quote> field from <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote>
3587 server headers. Most browsers will not store such cookies permanently and
3588 forget them in between sessions.
3595 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3597 <para>Boolean.</para>
3602 <term>Parameter:</term>
3614 This is less strict than <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> /
3615 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal> and allows you to browse
3616 websites that insist or rely on setting cookies, without compromising your privacy too badly.
3619 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed by
3620 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal> and will forget about them between sessions.
3621 This makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
3622 that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
3623 sites, and is the recommended setting.
3626 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>
3627 together with <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> or
3628 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>. If you do, cookies
3629 will be plainly killed.
3632 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an <quote>expires</quote>
3633 field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out to be sure.
3636 This setting also has no effect on cookies that may have been stored
3637 previously by the browser before starting <application>Privoxy</application>.
3638 These would have to be removed manually.
3641 <application>Privoxy</application> also uses
3642 the <link linkend="filter-content-cookies">content-cookies filter</link>
3643 to block some types of cookies. Content cookies are not effected by
3644 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>.
3650 <term>Example usage:</term>
3653 <screen>+session-cookies-only</screen>
3661 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3662 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="set-image-blocker">
3663 <title>set-image-blocker</title>
3667 <term>Typical use:</term>
3669 <para>Choose the replacement for blocked images</para>
3674 <term>Effect:</term>
3677 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If <emphasis>both</emphasis>
3678 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><link
3679 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> <emphasis>also</emphasis>
3680 apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an image,
3681 <emphasis>then</emphasis> the parameter of this action decides what will be
3682 sent as a replacement.
3689 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3691 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3696 <term>Parameter:</term>
3701 <quote>pattern</quote> to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is visually
3702 decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners were busted.
3707 <quote>blank</quote> to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners disappear
3708 completely, but makes it hard to detect where <application>Privoxy</application> has blocked
3709 images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if <application>Privoxy</application>
3710 has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
3715 <quote><replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable></quote> to
3716 send a redirect to <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>. You can redirect
3717 to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem (via <quote>file:///</quote> URL).
3720 A good application of redirects is to use special <application>Privoxy</application>-built-in
3721 URLs, which send the built-in images, as <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>.
3722 This has the same visual effect as specifying <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote> in
3723 the first place, but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of requesting
3724 it over and over again.
3735 The URLs for the built-in images are <quote>http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=<replaceable
3736 class="parameter">type</replaceable></quote>, where <replaceable class="parameter">type</replaceable> is
3737 either <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote>.
3740 There is a third (advanced) type, called <quote>auto</quote>. It is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> to be
3741 used in <literal>set-image-blocker</literal>, but meant for use from <link linkend="filter-file">filters</link>.
3742 Auto will select the type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an image.
3748 <term>Example usage:</term>
3754 <screen>+set-image-blocker{pattern}</screen>
3757 Redirect to the BSD devil:
3760 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}</screen>
3763 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
3766 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}</screen>
3774 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3776 <title>Summary</title>
3778 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
3779 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
3780 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
3781 content, and other criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard
3782 and fast rules for all sites. See the <link
3783 linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link> for a brief example on troubleshooting
3789 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3790 <sect2 id="aliases">
3791 <title>Aliases</title>
3793 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
3794 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other actions.
3795 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
3796 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab,
3798 <quote>{</quote> and <quote>}</quote>, but we <emphasis>strongly
3799 recommend</emphasis> that you only use <quote>a</quote> to <quote>z</quote>,
3800 <quote>0</quote> to <quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and <quote>-</quote>.
3801 Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start with a
3802 <quote>+</quote> or <quote>-</quote> sign, since they are merely textually
3806 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they <emphasis>must be
3807 defined in a special section at the top of the file!</emphasis>
3808 And there can only be one such section per actions file. Each actions file may
3809 have its own alias section, and the aliases defined in it are only visible
3813 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
3814 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
3815 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called
3816 <quote>shop</quote>, you can later change your policy on shops in
3817 <emphasis>one</emphasis> place, and your changes will take effect everywhere
3818 in the actions file where the <quote>shop</quote> alias is used. Calling aliases
3819 by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
3822 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though:
3823 <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in web-based action file
3824 editor honors aliases when reading the actions files, but it expands
3825 them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are of course preserved,
3826 but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
3828 This is likely to change in future versions of <application>Privoxy</application>.
3832 Now let's define some aliases...
3837 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
3839 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
3840 # must be at the top of the actions file!
3844 # These aliases just save typing later:
3845 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
3847 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
3848 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
3849 block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
3850 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
3852 # These aliases define combinations of actions
3853 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
3855 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="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link>
3856 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link>
3858 # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
3860 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
3861 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies</screen>
3865 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
3866 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
3867 up for the <quote>/</quote> pattern):
3872 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
3873 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
3876 .office.microsoft.com
3877 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
3881 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
3885 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
3888 # These shops require pop-ups:
3890 {shop -kill-popups -filter{all-popups}}
3892 .overclockers.co.uk</screen>
3896 Aliases like <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote> are often used for
3897 <quote>problem</quote> sites that require some actions to be disabled
3898 in order to function properly.
3902 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3903 <sect2 id="act-examples">
3904 <title>Actions Files Tutorial</title>
3906 The above chapters have shown <link linkend="actions-file">which actions files
3907 there are and how they are organized</link>, how actions are <link
3908 linkend="actions">specified</link> and <link linkend="actions-apply">applied
3909 to URLs</link>, how <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> work, and how to
3910 define and use <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link>. Now, let's look at an
3911 example <filename>default.action</filename> and <filename>user.action</filename>
3912 file and see how all these pieces come together:
3915 <sect3><title>default.action</title>
3918 Every config file should start with a short comment stating its purpose:
3922 <screen># Sample default.action file <developers@privoxy.org></screen>
3926 Then, since this is the <filename>default.action</filename> file, the
3927 first section is a special section for internal use that you needn't
3928 change or worry about:
3933 ##########################################################################
3934 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
3935 ##########################################################################
3938 for-privoxy-version=3.0</screen>
3942 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
3943 section from the above <link linkend="aliases">chapter on aliases</link>,
3944 that also explains why and how aliases are used:
3949 ##########################################################################
3951 ##########################################################################
3954 # These aliases just save typing later:
3955 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
3957 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
3958 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
3959 block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
3960 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
3962 # These aliases define combinations of actions
3963 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
3965 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="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link>
3966 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link></screen>
3970 Now come the regular sections, i.e. sets of actions, accompanied
3971 by URL patterns to which they apply. Remember <emphasis>all actions
3972 are disabled when matching starts</emphasis>, so we have to explicitly
3973 enable the ones we want.
3977 The first regular section is probably the most important. It has only
3978 one pattern, <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, but this pattern
3979 <link linkend="af-patterns">matches all URLs</link>. Therefore, the
3980 set of actions used in this <quote>default</quote> section <emphasis>will
3981 be applied to all requests as a start</emphasis>. It can be partly or
3982 wholly overridden by later matches further down this file, or in user.action,
3983 but it will still be largely responsible for your overall browsing
3988 Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
3989 no real need to disable any actions here, but we will do that nonetheless,
3990 to have a complete listing for your reference. (Remember: a <quote>+</quote>
3991 preceding the action name enables the action, a <quote>-</quote> disables!).
3992 Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
3993 multiple lines with line continuation.
3998 ##########################################################################
3999 # "Defaults" section:
4000 ##########################################################################
4002 -<link linkend="ADD-HEADER">add-header</link> \
4003 -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> \
4004 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> \
4005 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link> \
4006 +<link linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</link> \
4007 -<link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION">downgrade-http-version</link> \
4008 +<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> \
4009 +<link linkend="FILTER-JS-ANNOYANCES">filter{js-annoyances}</link> \
4010 -<link linkend="FILTER-JS-EVENTS">filter{js-events}</link> \
4011 +<link linkend="FILTER-HTML-ANNOYANCES">filter{html-annoyances}</link> \
4012 -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link> \
4013 +<link linkend="FILTER-REFRESH-TAGS">filter{refresh-tags}</link> \
4014 +<link linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{unsolicited-popups}</link> \
4015 -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> \
4016 +<link linkend="FILTER-IMG-REORDER">filter{img-reorder}</link> \
4017 +<link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE">filter{banners-by-size}</link> \
4018 -<link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-LINK">filter{banners-by-link}</link> \
4019 +<link linkend="FILTER-WEBBUGS">filter{webbugs}</link> \
4020 -<link linkend="FILTER-TINY-TEXTFORMS">filter{tiny-textforms}</link> \
4021 +<link linkend="FILTER-JUMPING-WINDOWS">filter{jumping-windows}</link> \
4022 -<link linkend="FILTER-FRAMESET-BORDERS">filter{frameset-borders}</link> \
4023 -<link linkend="FILTER-DEMORONIZER">filter{demoronizer}</link> \
4024 -<link linkend="FILTER-SHOCKWAVE-FLASH">filter{shockwave-flash}</link> \
4025 -<link linkend="FILTER-QUICKTIME-KIOSKMODE">filter{quicktime-kioskmode}</link> \
4026 -<link linkend="FILTER-FUN">filter{fun}</link> \
4027 -<link linkend="FILTER-CRUDE-PARENTAL">filter{crude-parental}</link> \
4028 +<link linkend="FILTER-IE-EXPLOITS">filter{ie-exploits}</link> \
4029 -<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> \
4030 +<link linkend="HIDE-FORWARDED-FOR-HEADERS">hide-forwarded-for-headers</link> \
4031 +<link linkend="HIDE-FROM-HEADER">hide-from-header{block}</link> \
4032 +<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer{forge}</link> \
4033 -<link linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT">hide-user-agent</link> \
4034 -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> \
4035 -<link linkend="LIMIT-CONNECT">limit-connect</link> \
4036 +<link linkend="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link> \
4037 -<link linkend="SEND-VANILLA-WAFER">send-vanilla-wafer</link> \
4038 -<link linkend="SEND-WAFER">send-wafer</link> \
4039 +<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> \
4040 +<link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER">set-image-blocker{pattern}</link> \
4042 / # forward slash will match *all* potential URL patterns.</screen>
4046 The default behavior is now set. Note that some actions, like not hiding
4047 the user agent, are part of a <quote>general policy</quote> that applies
4048 universally and won't get any exceptions defined later. Other choices,
4049 like not blocking (which is <emphasis>understandably</emphasis> the
4050 default!) need exceptions, i.e. we need to specify explicitly what we
4051 want to block in later sections.
4055 The first of our specialized sections is concerned with <quote>fragile</quote>
4056 sites, i.e. sites that require minimum interference, because they are either
4057 very complex or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that
4058 make them unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will simply use
4059 our pre-defined <literal>fragile</literal> alias instead of stating the list
4060 of actions explicitly:
4065 ##########################################################################
4066 # Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
4067 ##########################################################################
4069 # "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
4072 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
4073 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com</screen>
4077 Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically
4078 require cookies to log in, and pop-up windows for shopping
4079 carts or item details. Again, we'll use a pre-defined alias:
4088 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
4090 .scan.co.uk</screen>
4093 <!-- No longer needed BEGIN OF COMMENTED OUT BLOCK
4096 Then, there are sites which rely on pop-up windows (yuck!) to work.
4097 Since we made pop-up-killing our default above, we need to make exceptions
4098 now. <ulink url="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla</ulink> users, who
4099 can turn on smart handling of unwanted pop-ups in their browsers, can
4101 -<literal><link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link></literal> (and
4102 -<literal><link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link></literal>) above
4103 and hence don't need this section. Anyway, disabling an already disabled
4104 action doesn't hurt, so we'll define our exceptions regardless of what was
4105 chosen in the defaults section:
4110 # These sites require pop-ups too :(
4112 { -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link> }
4115 .deutsche-bank-24.de</screen>
4118 END OF COMMENTED OUT BLOCK -->
4121 The <literal><link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link></literal>
4122 action, which we enabled per default above, breaks some sites. So disable
4123 it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
4128 { -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> }
4132 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
4133 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
4134 .nytimes.com</screen>
4138 It is important that <application>Privoxy</application> knows which
4139 URLs belong to images, so that <emphasis>if</emphasis> they are to
4140 be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
4141 Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it
4142 would destroy the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it
4143 would feed the advertisers (in terms of money <emphasis>and</emphasis>
4144 information). We can mark any URL as an image with the <literal><link
4145 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action,
4146 and marking all URLs that end in a known image file extension is a
4152 ##########################################################################
4154 ##########################################################################
4156 # Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
4157 # blocked further down this file:
4159 { +<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> }
4160 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$</screen>
4164 And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to
4165 generate the banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the
4166 request is for an image. Hence we block them <emphasis>and</emphasis>
4167 mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
4168 <literal>block-as-image</literal> alias defined above. (We could of
4169 course just as well use <literal>+<link linkend="block">block</link>
4170 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> here.)
4171 Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
4172 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
4173 action. Since all URLs have matched the default section with its
4174 <literal>+<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link>{pattern}</literal>
4175 action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:
4180 # Known ad generators:
4185 .ad.*.doubleclick.net
4186 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
4187 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
4194 One of the most important jobs of <application>Privoxy</application>
4195 is to block banners. A huge bunch of them are already <quote>blocked</quote>
4196 by the <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{banners-by-size}</literal>
4197 action, which we enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner
4198 images from the pages while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request
4199 them anymore, and hence they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally
4200 doesn't catch all banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we
4201 need a comprehensive list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the
4202 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action to them.
4205 First comes a bunch of generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
4206 matching typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes
4207 a list of individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here
4208 to keep the example short:
4213 ##########################################################################
4214 # Block these fine banners:
4215 ##########################################################################
4216 { <link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link> }
4224 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
4225 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
4227 # Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
4229 .hitbox.com</screen>
4233 You wouldn't believe how many advertisers actually call their banner
4234 servers ads.<replaceable>company</replaceable>.com, or call the directory
4235 in which the banners are stored simply <quote>banners</quote>. So the above
4236 generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
4239 But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want
4240 to block. The pattern <literal>.*ads.</literal> e.g. catches
4241 <quote>nasty-<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.nasty-corp.com</quote> as intended,
4242 but also <quote>downlo<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.sourcefroge.net</quote> or
4243 <quote><emphasis>ads</emphasis>l.some-provider.net.</quote> So here come some
4244 well-known exceptions to the <literal>+<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
4248 Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
4249 <quote>downloads.sourcefroge.net</quote>: Initially, all actions are deactivated,
4250 so it wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the
4251 URL, but just deactivates the <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
4252 action once again. Then it matches <literal>.*ads.</literal>, an exception to the
4253 general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
4254 <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link></literal> applies. And now, it'll match
4255 <literal>.*loads.</literal>, where <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">-block</link></literal>
4256 applies, so (unless it matches <emphasis>again</emphasis> further down) it ends up
4257 with no <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal> action applying.
4262 ##########################################################################
4263 # Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
4264 ##########################################################################
4268 { -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
4269 adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
4270 adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
4271 ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
4272 .edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
4273 .*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
4281 www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
4282 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv</screen>
4286 Filtering source code can have nasty side effects,
4287 so make an exception for our friends at sourceforge.net,
4288 and all paths with <quote>cvs</quote> in them. Note that
4289 <literal>-<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link></literal>
4290 disables <emphasis>all</emphasis> filters in one fell swoop!
4295 # Don't filter code!
4297 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
4299 .sourceforge.net</screen>
4303 The actual <filename>default.action</filename> is of course more
4304 comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
4309 <sect3><title>user.action</title>
4312 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies,
4313 which would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now,
4314 you might want to be more specific and have customized rules that
4315 are more suitable to your personal habits and preferences. These would
4316 be for narrowly defined situations like your ISP or your bank, and should
4317 be placed in <filename>user.action</filename>, which is parsed after all other
4318 actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any previously
4319 defined actions. <filename>user.action</filename> is also a
4320 <emphasis>safe</emphasis> place for your personal settings, since
4321 <filename>default.action</filename> is actively maintained by the
4322 <application>Privoxy</application> developers and you'll probably want
4323 to install updated versions from time to time.
4327 So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
4328 <filename>user.action</filename>:
4332 <!-- brief sample user.action here -->
4336 # My user.action file. <fred@foobar.com></screen>
4340 As <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link> are local to the actions
4341 file that they are defined in, you can't use the ones from
4342 <filename>default.action</filename>, unless you repeat them here:
4347 # Aliases are local to the file they are defined in.
4348 # (Re-)define aliases for this file:
4352 # These aliases just save typing later, and the alias names should
4353 # be self explanatory.
4355 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
4356 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
4357 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
4358 allow-popups = -filter{all-popups} -kill-popups
4359 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
4360 -block-as-image = -block
4362 # These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
4363 # certain types of sites:
4365 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referrer -kill-popups
4366 shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
4368 # Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
4370 allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}</screen>
4376 Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and
4377 you don't want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like
4378 to allow persistent cookies for these sites. The
4379 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal> alias defined above does exactly
4380 that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
4381 processing of cookies to make them only temporary.
4386 { allow-all-cookies }
4392 .redhat.com</screen>
4396 Your bank is allergic to some filter, but you don't know which, so you disable them all:
4401 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
4402 .your-home-banking-site.com</screen>
4406 Some file types you may not want to filter for various reasons:
4411 # Technical documentation is likely to contain strings that might
4412 # erroneously get altered by the JavaScript-oriented filters:
4417 # And this stupid host sends streaming video with a wrong MIME type,
4418 # so that Privoxy thinks it is getting HTML and starts filtering:
4420 stupid-server.example.com/</screen>
4424 Example of a simple <link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> action. Say you've
4425 seen an ad on your favourite page on example.com that you want to get rid of.
4426 You have right-clicked the image, selected <quote>copy image location</quote>
4427 and pasted the URL below while removing the leading http://, into a
4428 <literal>{ +block }</literal> section. Note that <literal>{ +handle-as-image
4429 }</literal> need not be specified, since all URLs ending in
4430 <literal>.gif</literal> will be tagged as images by the general rules as set
4431 in default.action anyway:
4436 { +<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
4437 www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.gif
4438 another.popular.site.net/more/junk/here/</screen>
4442 The URLs of dynamically generated banners, especially from large banner
4443 farms, often don't use the well-known image file name extensions, which
4444 makes it impossible for <application>Privoxy</application> to guess
4445 the file type just by looking at the URL.
4446 You can use the <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above for
4448 Note that objects which match this rule but then turn out NOT to be an
4449 image are typically rendered as a <quote>broken image</quote> icon by the
4450 browser. Use cautiously.
4458 ar.atwola.com/</screen>
4462 Now you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine,
4463 but you were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you
4464 were again too lazy to give <link linkend="contact">feedback</link>, so
4465 you just used the <literal>fragile</literal> alias on the site, and
4466 -- <emphasis>whoa!</emphasis> -- it worked. The <literal>fragile</literal>
4467 aliases disables those actions that are most likely to break a site. Also,
4468 good for testing purposes to see if it is <application>Privoxy</application>
4469 that is causing the problem or not.
4475 .forbes.com</screen>
4479 You like the <quote>fun</quote> text replacements in <filename>default.filter</filename>,
4480 but it is disabled in the distributed actions file. (My colleagues on the team just
4481 don't have a sense of humour, that's why! ;-). So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
4482 update-safe config, once and for all:
4487 { +<link linkend="filter-fun">filter{fun}</link> }
4488 / # For ALL sites!</screen>
4492 Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions
4493 to the filters in <filename>default.action</filename> for things that
4494 really shouldn't be filtered, like code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since
4495 <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word, these exceptions
4496 won't be valid for the <quote>fun</quote> filtering specified here.
4500 You might also worry about how your favourite free websites are
4501 funded, and find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements
4502 to survive. So you might want to specifically allow banners for those
4503 sites that you feel provide value to you:
4515 Note that <literal>allow-ads</literal> has been aliased to
4516 <literal>-<link linkend="block">block</link></literal>,
4517 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-size">filter{banners-by-size}</link></literal>, and
4518 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-link">filter{banners-by-link}</link></literal> above.
4522 <filename>user.action</filename> is generally the best place to define
4523 exceptions and additions to the default policies of
4524 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some actions are safe to have their
4525 default policies set here though. So let's set a default policy to have a
4526 <quote>blank</quote> image as opposed to the checkerboard pattern for
4527 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> sites. <quote>/</quote> of course matches all URL
4533 { +<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker{blank}</link> }
4534 / # ALL sites</screen>
4540 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
4544 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
4546 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
4548 <sect1 id="filter-file">
4549 <title>The Filter File</title>
4552 All text substitutions that can be invoked through the
4553 <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> action
4554 must first be defined in the filter file, which is typically
4555 called <filename>default.filter</filename> and which can be
4556 selected through the <literal>
4557 <link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal> config
4562 Typical reasons for doing such substitutions are to eliminate
4563 common annoyances in HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows,
4564 exit consoles, crippled windows without navigation tools, the
4565 infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to suppress images with certain
4566 width and height attributes (standard banner sizes or web-bugs),
4567 or just to have fun. The possibilities are endless.
4571 Filtering works on any text-based document type, including
4572 HTML, JavaScript, CSS etc. (all <literal>text/*</literal>
4573 MIME types, <emphasis>except</emphasis> <literal>text/plain</literal>).
4574 Substitutions are made at the source level, so if you want to <quote>roll
4575 your own</quote> filters, you should be familiar with HTML syntax.
4579 Just like the <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, the
4580 filter file is organized in sections, which are called <emphasis>filters</emphasis>
4581 here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with the
4582 <emphasis>keyword</emphasis> <literal>FILTER:</literal>, followed by
4583 the filter's <emphasis>name</emphasis>, and a short (one line)
4584 <emphasis>description</emphasis> of what it does. Below that line
4585 come the <emphasis>jobs</emphasis>, i.e. lines that define the actual
4586 text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
4587 should describe what the filter <emphasis>eliminates</emphasis>. The
4588 comment is used in the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
4589 user interface</ulink>.
4593 Once a filter called <replaceable>name</replaceable> has been defined
4594 in the filter file, it can be invoked by using an action of the form
4595 +<literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>name</replaceable>}</literal>
4596 in any <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>.
4600 A filter header line for a filter called <quote>foo</quote> could look
4605 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"</screen>
4609 Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that
4610 define what text replacements the filter executes. They are specified
4611 in a syntax that imitates <ulink url="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</ulink>'s
4612 <literal>s///</literal> operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you
4613 will find this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the
4614 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/pcrs.3.html">PCRS man page</ulink>
4615 for the subtle differences to Perl behaviour. Most notably, the non-standard
4616 option letter <literal>U</literal> is supported, which turns the default
4617 to ungreedy matching.
4621 If you are new to regular expressions, you might want to take a look at
4622 the <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>, and
4623 see the <ulink url="http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perl.html">Perl
4625 <ulink url="http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perlop.html#s-PATTERN-REPLACEMENT-egimosx">the
4626 <literal>s///</literal> operator's syntax</ulink> and <ulink
4627 url="http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perlre.html">Perl-style regular
4628 expressions</ulink> in general.
4629 The below examples might also help to get you started.
4633 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
4635 <sect2><title>Filter File Tutorial</title>
4637 Now, let's complete our <quote>foo</quote> filter. We have already defined
4638 the heading, but the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace
4639 <quote>foo</quote> with <quote>bar</quote>, there is only one (trivial) job
4644 <screen>s/foo/bar/</screen>
4648 But wait! Didn't the comment say that <emphasis>all</emphasis> occurrences
4649 of <quote>foo</quote> should be replaced? Our current job will only take
4650 care of the first <quote>foo</quote> on each page. For global substitution,
4651 we'll need to add the <literal>g</literal> option:
4655 <screen>s/foo/bar/g</screen>
4659 Our complete filter now looks like this:
4662 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
4663 s/foo/bar/g</screen>
4667 Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see
4668 a filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
4669 abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
4675 FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
4677 # Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
4679 s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg</screen>
4683 Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses
4684 <literal>|</literal> as the delimiter instead of <literal>/</literal>, because
4685 the pattern contains a forward slash, which would otherwise have to be escaped
4686 by a backslash (<literal>\</literal>).
4690 Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <literal><script.*</literal>
4691 enclosed in parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and <literal>*</literal>
4692 means: <quote>Match an arbitrary number of the element left of myself</quote>, this
4693 matches <quote><script</quote>, followed by <emphasis>any</emphasis> text, i.e.
4694 it matches the whole page, from the start of the first <script> tag.
4698 That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: <literal>document\.referrer</literal>
4699 matches only the exact string <quote>document.referrer</quote>. The dot needed to
4700 be <emphasis>escaped</emphasis>, i.e. preceded by a backslash, to take away its
4701 special meaning as a joker, and make it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is:
4702 Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including,
4703 the text <quote>document.referrer</quote>, if <emphasis>both</emphasis> are present
4704 in the page (and appear in that order).
4708 But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in parentheses,
4709 is <literal>.*</script></literal>. You already know what <literal>.*</literal>
4710 means, so the whole pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script>
4711 tag in a page to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text
4712 <quote>document.referrer</quote> appears somewhere in between.
4716 This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the parentheses:
4717 The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed in parentheses, will be
4718 remembered and be available through the variables <literal>$1, $2, ...</literal> in
4719 the substitute. The <literal>U</literal> option switches to ungreedy matching, which means
4720 that the first <literal>.*</literal> in the pattern will only <quote>eat up</quote> all
4721 text in between <quote><script</quote> and the <emphasis>first</emphasis> occurrence
4722 of <quote>document.referrer</quote>, and that the second <literal>.*</literal> will
4723 only span the text up to the <emphasis>first</emphasis> <quote></script></quote>
4724 tag. Furthermore, the <literal>s</literal> option says that the match may span
4725 multiple lines in the page, and the <literal>g</literal> option again means that the
4726 substitution is global.
4730 So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
4731 <quote>document.referrer</quote>. Remember the parts of the script from
4732 (and including) the start tag up to (and excluding) the string
4733 <quote>document.referrer</quote> as <literal>$1</literal>, and the part following
4734 that string, up to and including the closing tag, as <literal>$2</literal>.
4738 Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
4739 lets look at the substitute: <literal>$1"Not Your Business!"$2</literal> is
4740 easy to read: The text remembered as <literal>$1</literal>, followed by
4741 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> (<emphasis>including</emphasis>
4742 the quotation marks!), followed by the text remembered as <literal>$2</literal>.
4743 This produces an exact copy of the original string, with the middle part
4744 (the <quote>document.referrer</quote>) replaced by <literal>"Not Your
4745 Business!"</literal>.
4749 The whole job now reads: Replace <quote>document.referrer</quote> by
4750 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> wherever it appears inside a
4751 <script> tag. Note that this job won't break JavaScript syntax,
4752 since both the original and the replacement are syntactically valid
4753 string objects. The script just won't have access to the referrer
4754 information anymore.
4758 We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but
4759 this time only point out the constructs of special interest:
4764 # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
4766 s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig</screen>
4770 <literal>\s</literal> stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline,
4771 carriage return, form feed), so that <literal>\s*</literal> means: <quote>zero
4772 or more whitespace</quote>. The <literal>?</literal> in <literal>.*?</literal>
4773 makes this matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the <literal>U</literal>
4774 option is not set). The <literal>['"]</literal> construct means: <quote>a single
4775 <emphasis>or</emphasis> a double quote</quote>. Finally, <literal>\1</literal> is
4776 a backreference to the first parenthesis just like <literal>$1</literal> above,
4777 with the difference that in the <emphasis>pattern</emphasis>, a backslash indicates
4778 a backreference, whereas in the <emphasis>substitute</emphasis>, it's the dollar.
4782 So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
4783 strings to the <quote>window.status</quote> object with a dummy assignment
4784 (using a variable name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with
4785 real variables in scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless
4786 descriptions are displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when
4787 you move your mouse over links.
4792 # Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
4794 s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU</screen>
4799 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">OnUnload
4800 event binding</ulink> in the HTML DOM was a <emphasis>CRIME</emphasis>.
4801 When I close a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta.
4802 This job replaces the <quote>onunload</quote> attribute in
4803 <quote><body></quote> tags with the dummy word <literal>never</literal>.
4804 Note that the <literal>i</literal> option makes the pattern matching
4805 case-insensitive. Also note that ungreedy matching alone doesn't always guarantee
4806 a minimal match: In the first parenthesis, we had to use <literal>[^>]*</literal>
4807 instead of <literal>.*</literal> to prevent the match from exceeding the
4808 <body> tag if it doesn't contain <quote>OnUnload</quote>, but the page's
4813 The last example is from the fun department:
4818 FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
4820 # Spice the daily news:
4822 s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig</screen>
4826 Note the <literal>(?!\.com)</literal> part (a so-called negative lookahead)
4827 in the job's pattern, which means: Don't match, if the string
4828 <quote>.com</quote> appears directly following <quote>microsoft</quote>
4829 in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being trashed, while
4830 still replacing the word everywhere else.
4835 # Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
4837 s* industry[ -]leading \
4839 | customer[ -]focused \
4840 | market[ -]driven \
4841 | award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
4842 | high[ -]performance \
4843 | solutions[ -]based \
4847 *<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
4852 The <literal>x</literal> option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for
4853 e.g. the liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
4861 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
4863 <sect2 id="predefined-filters"><title>The Pre-defined Filters</title>
4867 Note each filter is also listed in the +filter action section above. Please
4868 keep these listings in sync.
4873 The distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file contains a selection of
4874 pre-defined filters for your convenience:
4879 <term><emphasis>js-annoyances</emphasis></term>
4882 The purpose of this filter is to get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.
4887 replaces JavaScript references to the browser's referrer information
4888 with the string "Not Your Business!". This compliments the <literal><link
4889 linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal> action on the content level.
4894 removes the bindings to the DOM's
4895 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">unload
4896 event</ulink> which we feel has no right to exist and is responsible for most <quote>exit consoles</quote>, i.e.
4897 nasty windows that pop up when you close another one.
4902 removes code that causes new windows to be opened with undesired properties, such as being
4903 full-screen, non-resizable, without location, status or menu bar etc.
4912 <term><emphasis>js-events</emphasis></term>
4915 This is a very radical measure. It removes virtually all JavaScript event bindings, which
4916 means that scripts can not react to user actions such as mouse movements or clicks, window
4917 resizing etc, anymore.
4920 We <emphasis>strongly discourage</emphasis> using this filter as a default since it breaks
4921 many legitimate scripts. It is meant for use only on extra-nasty sites (should you really
4928 <term><emphasis>html-annoyances</emphasis></term>
4931 This filter will undo many common instances of HTML based abuse.
4934 The <literal>BLINK</literal> and <literal>MARQUEE</literal> tags
4935 are neutralized (yeah baby!), and browser windows will be created as
4936 resizable (as of course they should be!), and will have location,
4937 scroll and menu bars -- even if specified otherwise.
4943 <term><emphasis>content-cookies</emphasis></term>
4946 Most cookies are set in the HTTP dialogue, where they can be intercepted
4948 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>
4949 and <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>
4950 actions. But web sites increasingly make use of HTML meta tags and JavaScript
4951 to sneak cookies to the browser on the content level.
4954 This filter disables HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets cookies. Use
4955 it wherever you would also use the cookie crunch actions.
4961 <term><emphasis>refresh tags</emphasis></term>
4964 Disable any refresh tags if the interval is greater than nine seconds (so
4965 that redirections done via refresh tags are not destroyed). This is useful
4966 for dial-on-demand setups, or for those who find this HTML feature
4973 <term><emphasis>unsolicited-popups</emphasis></term>
4976 This filter attempts to prevent only <quote>unsolicited</quote> pop-up
4977 windows from opening, yet still allow pop-up windows that the user
4978 has explicitly chosen to open. It was added in version 3.0.1,
4979 as an improvement over earlier such filters.
4982 Technical note: The filter works by redefining the window.open JavaScript
4983 function to a dummy function during the loading and rendering phase of each
4984 HTML page access, and restoring the function afterwards.
4990 <term><emphasis>all-popups</emphasis></term>
4993 Attempt to prevent <emphasis>all</emphasis> pop-up windows from opening.
4994 Note this should be used with more discretion than the above, since it is
4995 more likely to break some sites that require pop-ups for normal usage. Use
5002 <term><emphasis>img-reorder</emphasis></term>
5005 This is a helper filter that has no value if used alone. It makes the
5006 <literal>banners-by-size</literal> and <literal>banners-by-link</literal>
5007 (see below) filters more effective and should be enabled together with them.
5013 <term><emphasis>banners-by-size</emphasis></term>
5016 This filter removes image tags purely based on what size they are. Fortunately
5017 for us, many ads and banner images tend to conform to certain standardized
5018 sizes, which makes this filter quite effective for ad stripping purposes.
5021 Occasionally this filter will cause false positives on images that are not ads,
5022 but just happen to be of one of the standard banner sizes.
5028 <term><emphasis>banners-by-link</emphasis></term>
5031 This is an experimental filter that attempts to kill any banners if
5032 their URLs seem to point to known or suspected click trackers. It is currently
5033 not of much value and is not recommended for use by default.
5039 <term><emphasis>webbugs</emphasis></term>
5042 Webbugs are small, invisible images (technically 1X1 GIF images), that
5043 are used to track users across websites, and collect information on them.
5044 As an HTML page is loaded by the browser, an embedded image tag causes the
5045 browser to contact a third-party site, disclosing the tracking information
5046 through the requested URL and/or cookies for that third-party domain, without
5047 the use ever becoming aware of the interaction with the third-party site.
5048 HTML-ized spam also uses a similar technique to verify email addresses.
5051 This filter removes the HTML code that loads such <quote>webbugs</quote>.
5057 <term><emphasis>tiny-textforms</emphasis></term>
5060 A rather special-purpose filter that can be used to enlarge textareas (those
5061 multi-line text boxes in web forms) and turn off hard word wrap in them.
5062 It was written for the sourceforge.net tracker system where such boxes are
5063 a nuisance, but it can be handy on other sites, too.
5066 It is not recommended to use this filter as a default.
5072 <term><emphasis>jumping-windows</emphasis></term>
5075 Many consider windows that move, or resize themselves to be abusive. This filter
5076 neutralizes the related JavaScript code. Note that some sites might not display
5077 or behave as intended when using this filter.
5083 <term><emphasis>frameset-borders</emphasis></term>
5086 Some web designers seem to assume that everyone in the world will view their
5087 web sites using the same browser brand and version, screen resolution etc,
5088 because only that assumption could explain why they'd use static frame sizes,
5089 yet prevent their frames from being resized by the user, should they be too
5090 small to show their whole content.
5093 This filter removes the related HTML code. It should only be applied to sites
5100 <term><emphasis>demoronizer</emphasis></term>
5103 Many Microsoft products that generate HTML use non-standard extensions (read:
5104 violations) of the ISO 8859-1 aka Latin-1 character set. This causes those
5105 HTML documents to display with errors on standard-compliant platforms.
5108 This filter translates the MS-only characters into Latin-1 equivalents.
5109 It is not necessary when using MS products, and will cause corruption of
5110 all documents that use 8-bit character sets other than Latin-1. It's mostly
5111 worthwhile for Europeans on non-MS platforms, if wierd garbage characters
5112 sometimes appear on some pages.
5118 <term><emphasis>shockwave-flash</emphasis></term>
5121 A filter for shockwave haters. As the name suggests, this filter strips code
5122 out of web pages that is used to embed shockwave flash objects.
5130 <term><emphasis>quicktime-kioskmode</emphasis></term>
5133 Change HTML code that embeds Quicktime objects so that kioskmode, which
5134 prevents saving, is disabled.
5140 <term><emphasis>fun</emphasis></term>
5143 Text replacements for subversive browsing fun. Make fun of your favorite
5144 Monopolist or play buzzword bingo.
5150 <term><emphasis>crude-parental</emphasis></term>
5153 A demonstration-only filter that shows how <application>Privoxy</application>
5154 can be used to delete web content on a keyword basis.
5160 <term><emphasis>ie-exploits</emphasis></term>
5163 A collection of text replacements to disable malicious HTML and JavaScript
5164 code that exploits known security holes in Internet Explorer.
5167 Presently, it only protects against Nimda and a cross-site scripting bug, and
5168 would need active maintenance to provide more substantial protection.
5174 <term><emphasis>site-specifics</emphasis></term>
5177 Some web sites have very specific problems, the cure for which doesn't apply
5178 anywhere else, or could even cause damage on other sites.
5181 This is a collection of such site-specific cures which should only be applied
5182 to the sites they were intended for, which is what the supplied
5183 <filename>default.action</filename> file does. Users shouldn't need to change
5184 anything regarding this filter.
5191 <term><emphasis> </emphasis></term>
5205 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
5209 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5211 <sect1 id="templates">
5212 <title>Templates</title>
5214 All <application>Privoxy</application> built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the
5215 <ulink url="http://show-the-404-error.page"><quote>404 - No Such Domain</quote>
5216 error page</ulink>, the <ulink
5217 url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
5219 and all pages of its <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
5220 user interface</ulink>, are generated from <emphasis>templates</emphasis>.
5221 (<application>Privoxy</application> must be running for the above links to work as
5226 These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the <link linkend="confdir">configuration
5227 directory</link> called <filename>templates</filename>. On Unixish platforms,
5229 <ulink url="file:///etc/privoxy/templates/"><filename>/etc/privoxy/templates/</filename></ulink>.
5233 The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called symbols
5234 or exports), which <application>Privoxy</application> fills at run time. You can
5235 edit the templates with a normal text editor, should you want to customize them.
5236 (<emphasis>Not recommended for the casual user</emphasis>). Note that
5237 just like in configuration files, lines starting with <literal>#</literal> are
5238 ignored when the templates are filled in.
5242 The place-holders are of the form <literal>@name@</literal>, and you will
5243 find a list of available symbols, which vary from template to template,
5244 in the comments at the start of each file. Note that these comments are not
5245 always accurate, and that it's probably best to look at the existing HTML
5246 code to find out which symbols are supported and what they are filled in with.
5250 A special application of this substitution mechanism is to make whole
5251 blocks of HTML code disappear when a specific symbol is set. We use this
5252 for many purposes, one of them being to include the beta warning in all
5253 our user interface (CGI) pages when <application>Privoxy</application>
5254 in in an alpha or beta development stage:
5259 <!-- @if-unstable-start -->
5261 ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
5263 <!-- if-unstable-end@ --></screen>
5267 If the "unstable" symbol is set, everything in between and including
5268 <literal>@if-unstable-start</literal> and <literal>if-unstable-end@</literal>
5269 will disappear, leaving nothing but an empty comment:
5273 <screen><!-- --></screen>
5277 There's also an if-then-else construct and an <literal>#include</literal>
5278 mechanism, but you'll sure find out if you are inclined to edit the
5283 All templates refer to a style located at
5284 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet"><literal>http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet</literal></ulink>.
5285 This is, of course, locally served by <application>Privoxy</application>
5286 and the source for it can be found and edited in the
5287 <filename>cgi-style.css</filename> template.
5292 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
5296 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5298 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
5301 <!-- Include contacting.sgml boilerplate: -->
5303 <!-- end boilerplate -->
5307 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
5310 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5311 <sect1 id="copyright"><title><application>Privoxy</application> Copyright, License and History</title>
5313 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
5315 <!-- end copyright -->
5317 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5318 <sect2><title>License</title>
5319 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
5321 <!-- end copyright -->
5323 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
5326 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5328 <sect2 id="history"><title>History</title>
5329 <!-- Include history.sgml: -->
5331 <!-- end history -->
5334 <sect2 id="authors"><title>Authors</title>
5335 <!-- Include p-authors.sgml: -->
5337 <!-- end authors -->
5342 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
5345 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5346 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See Also</title>
5347 <!-- Include seealso.sgml: -->
5349 <!-- end seealso -->
5354 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5355 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
5358 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5360 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
5362 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl-style <quote>regular
5363 expressions</quote> in its <link linkend="actions-file">actions
5364 files</link> and <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>,
5365 through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> and
5366 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/">PCRS</ulink> libraries.
5370 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
5371 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
5372 introduction only. A full explanation would require a <ulink
5373 url="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/">book</ulink> ;-)
5377 Regular expressions provide a language to describe patterns that can be
5378 run against strings of characters (letter, numbers, etc), to see if they
5379 match the string or not. The patterns are themselves (sometimes complex)
5380 strings of literal characters, combined with wild-cards, and other special
5381 characters, called meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have
5382 special meanings and are used to build complex patterns to be matched against.
5383 Perl Compatible Regular Expressions are an especially convenient
5384 <quote>dialect</quote> of the regular expression language.
5388 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
5389 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
5390 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
5391 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
5392 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
5393 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
5394 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
5395 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
5399 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
5400 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
5401 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
5402 and then some examples:
5407 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
5408 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
5410 </simplelist></para>
5414 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
5417 </simplelist></para>
5421 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
5424 </simplelist></para>
5428 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
5431 </simplelist></para>
5435 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
5436 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
5437 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
5438 not as a special meta-character. Example: <quote>example\.com</quote>, makes
5439 sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded to its
5440 meta-character meaning of any single character).
5442 </simplelist></para>
5446 <emphasis>[]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
5447 any of the enclosed characters are encountered. For instance, <quote>[0-9]</quote>
5448 matches any numeric digit (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine
5449 this with <quote>+</quote> to match any digit one of more times: <quote>[0-9]+</quote>.
5451 </simplelist></para>
5455 <emphasis>()</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
5456 or multiple sub-expressions.
5458 </simplelist></para>
5462 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
5463 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
5464 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches. As an example:
5465 <quote>/(this|that) example/</quote> uses grouping and the bar character
5466 and would match either <quote>this example</quote> or <quote>that
5467 example</quote>, and nothing else.
5469 </simplelist></para>
5472 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
5473 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
5474 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
5475 be more illuminating:
5479 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
5480 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
5481 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
5482 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
5483 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
5484 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
5485 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
5486 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
5487 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
5488 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
5489 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
5490 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
5491 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
5492 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
5497 A now something a little more complex:
5501 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
5502 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
5503 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
5504 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
5505 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
5506 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
5507 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
5512 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
5513 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
5514 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
5515 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
5516 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
5517 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
5518 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
5519 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
5520 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
5521 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
5522 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
5523 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
5524 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
5525 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
5526 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
5527 changing our regular expression to:
5528 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
5533 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
5534 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
5535 <quote>[]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
5536 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
5537 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
5538 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
5539 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
5540 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
5541 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
5542 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
5543 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
5544 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
5545 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
5546 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
5547 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
5548 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
5549 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
5550 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
5551 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
5552 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
5553 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
5554 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
5555 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
5556 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
5557 in the expression anywhere).
5561 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
5562 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
5563 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
5564 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
5565 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
5570 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
5571 <ulink url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>
5575 For information on regular expression based substitutions and their applications
5576 in filters, please see the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file tutorial</link>
5581 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
5584 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5586 <title><application>Privoxy</application>'s Internal Pages</title>
5589 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
5590 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
5591 trap certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
5592 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
5593 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
5594 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
5595 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
5601 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
5602 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
5603 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
5604 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
5617 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
5621 There is a shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (But it
5622 doesn't provide a fall-back to a real page, in case the request is not
5623 sent through <application>Privoxy</application>)
5629 Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
5630 editing of actions files:
5634 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
5641 Show the source code version numbers:
5645 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">http://config.privoxy.org/show-version</ulink>
5652 Show the browser's request headers:
5656 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">http://config.privoxy.org/show-request</ulink>
5663 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
5667 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
5674 Toggle Privoxy on or off. In this case, <quote>Privoxy</quote> continues
5675 to run, but only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking place:
5679 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
5683 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
5687 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
5692 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
5701 These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
5705 <sect3 id="bookmarklets">
5706 <title>Bookmarklets</title>
5708 Below are some <quote>bookmarklets</quote> to allow you to easily access a
5709 <quote>mini</quote> version of some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
5710 special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer, but should work
5711 equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which support
5712 JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not by
5713 clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
5716 To save them, right-click the link and choose <quote>Add to Favorites</quote>
5717 (IE) or <quote>Add Bookmark</quote> (Netscape). You will get a warning that
5718 the bookmark <quote>may not be safe</quote> - just click OK. Then you can run the
5719 Bookmarklet directly from your favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access,
5720 you can put them on the <quote>Links</quote> bar (IE) or the <quote>Personal
5721 Toolbar</quote> (Netscape), and run them with a single click.
5730 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>
5737 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>
5744 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)
5751 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>
5757 <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>
5762 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info?url='+escape(location.href),'Why').focus());">Privoxy - Why?</ulink>
5769 Credit: The site which gave us the general idea for these bookmarklets is
5770 <ulink url="http://www.bookmarklets.com/">www.bookmarklets.com</ulink>. They
5771 have more information about bookmarklets.
5780 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5782 <title>Chain of Events</title>
5784 Let's take a quick look at the basic sequence of events when a web page is
5785 requested by your browser and <application>Privoxy</application> is on duty:
5792 First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send
5793 the request to <application>Privoxy</application>, which will in turn,
5794 relay the request to the remote web server after passing the following
5800 <application>Privoxy</application> traps any request for its own internal CGI
5801 pages (e.g http://p.p/) and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
5806 Next, <application>Privoxy</application> checks to see if the URL
5808 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link> patterns. If
5809 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be contacted.
5810 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>
5811 is then checked and if it does not match, an
5812 HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page is sent back. Otherwise, if it does match,
5813 an image is returned. The type of image depends on the setting of <link
5814 linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><quote>+set-image-blocker</quote></link>
5815 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
5820 Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the
5821 <filename>trust</filename> file, then that is done.
5826 If the URL pattern matches the <link
5827 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link> action,
5828 it is then processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
5833 Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
5834 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. <link
5835 linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT"><quote>+hide-user-agent</quote></link>,
5836 etc.), headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and
5842 Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web page and related
5848 First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
5849 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
5850 filtered as determined by the
5851 <link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES"><quote>+crunch-incoming-cookies</quote></link>,
5852 <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>,
5853 and <link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION"><quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote></link>
5859 If the <link linkend="KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></link>
5860 action applies, and it is an HTML or JavaScript document, the popup-code in the
5861 response is filtered on-the-fly as it is received.
5866 If a <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>
5868 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
5869 action applies (and the document type fits the action), the rest of the page is
5870 read into memory (up to a configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from
5871 <filename>default.filter</filename>) are processed against the buffered
5872 content. Filters are applied in the order they are specified in the
5873 <filename>default.filter</filename> file. Animated GIFs, if present, are
5874 reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
5875 setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by
5876 <application>Privoxy</application> back to your browser.
5879 If neither <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>
5881 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
5882 matches, then <application>Privoxy</application> passes the raw data through
5883 to the client browser as it becomes available.
5888 As the browser receives the now (probably filtered) page content, it
5889 reads and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page
5890 source, e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
5891 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a new
5892 request. And each such request is in turn processed as above. Note that a
5893 complex web page may have many such embedded URLs.
5903 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5904 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
5905 <title>Anatomy of an Action</title>
5908 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies
5909 <link linkend="ACTIONS">actions</link> and <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>
5910 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so
5911 easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to
5912 <emphasis>see</emphasis> just what <application>Privoxy</application> is
5913 doing. Especially, if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing
5914 is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to look at
5915 the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
5916 <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> whose consequences are not
5921 One quick test to see if <application>Privoxy</application> is causing a problem
5922 or not, is to disable it temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting
5923 step. See <link linkend="bookmarklets">the Bookmarklets</link> section on a quick
5924 and easy way to do this (be sure to flush caches afterward!). Looking at the
5925 logs is a good idea too.
5929 <application>Privoxy</application> also provides the
5930 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
5931 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
5932 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
5936 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
5937 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
5938 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
5939 help with filtering effects (i.e. the <link
5940 linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action) from
5941 the <filename>default.filter</filename> file since this is handled very
5942 differently and not so easy to trap! It also will not tell you about any other
5943 URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are testing. For instance, images
5944 such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw page source of HTML pages. So
5945 you will only get info for the actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area
5946 -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you
5947 will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View
5948 Page Source</quote> option for this. Or right click on the ad, and grab the
5953 Let's try an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
5954 and look at it one section at a time:
5959 Matches for http://google.com:
5961 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
5965 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
5966 -crunch-incoming-cookies
5967 +deanimate-gifs{last}
5968 -downgrade-http-version
5972 -filter{shockwave-flash}
5973 -filter{crude-parental}
5974 +filter{html-annoyances}
5975 +filter{js-annoyances}
5976 +filter{content-cookies}
5978 +filter{refresh-tags}
5980 +filter{banners-by-size}
5981 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
5982 +hide-from-header{block}
5983 +hide-referer{forge}
5988 +prevent-compression
5991 +session-cookies-only
5992 +set-image-blocker{pattern} }
5995 { -session-cookies-only }
6001 In file: user.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
6002 (no matches in this file)
6007 This tells us how we have defined our
6008 <link linkend="ACTIONS"><quote>actions</quote></link>, and
6009 which ones match for our example, <quote>google.com</quote>. The first listing
6010 is any matches for the <filename>standard.action</filename> file. No hits at
6011 all here on <quote>standard</quote>. Then next is <quote>default</quote>, or
6012 our <filename>default.action</filename> file. The large, multi-line listing,
6013 is how the actions are set to match for all URLs, i.e. our default settings.
6014 If you look at your <quote>actions</quote> file, this would be the section
6015 just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section near the top. This will apply to
6016 all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end of the listing
6017 -- <quote>/</quote>.
6021 But we can define additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
6022 rules, and then list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions would
6023 apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit matches for
6024 <quote>.google.com</quote>. The first is negating our previous cookie setting,
6026 linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>
6027 (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent cookies for google. The
6028 second turns <emphasis>off</emphasis> any
6030 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link>
6031 action, allowing this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading
6032 dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will match any hosts and
6033 sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
6034 <quote>www.google.com</quote>. So, apparently, we have these two actions
6035 defined somewhere in the lower part of our <filename>default.action</filename>
6036 file, and <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced somewhere in these latter
6041 Then, for our <filename>user.action</filename> file, we again have no hits.
6045 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
6046 <application>Privoxy</application> is applying all its <quote>actions</quote>
6047 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
6058 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6059 -crunch-incoming-cookies
6060 +deanimate-gifs{last}
6061 -downgrade-http-version
6065 -filter{shockwave-flash}
6066 -filter{crude-parental}
6067 +filter{html-annoyances}
6068 +filter{js-annoyances}
6069 +filter{content-cookies}
6071 +filter{refresh-tags}
6073 +filter{banners-by-size}
6074 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
6075 +hide-from-header{block}
6076 +hide-referer{forge}
6081 +prevent-compression
6084 -session-cookies-only
6085 +set-image-blocker{pattern}
6090 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
6091 <quote>fast-redirects</quote> and <quote>session-cookies-only</quote>.
6095 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
6101 { +block +handle-as-image }
6104 { +block +handle-as-image }
6107 { +block +handle-as-image }
6113 We'll just show the interesting part here, the explicit matches. It is
6114 matched three different times. Each as an <quote>+block +handle-as-image</quote>,
6115 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
6116 <quote>+imageblock</quote>. (<link
6117 linkend="ALIASES"><quote>Aliases</quote></link> are defined in
6118 the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
6123 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
6124 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
6125 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
6126 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
6127 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
6128 is done here -- as both a <link
6129 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link>
6130 <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
6132 linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>.
6133 The custom alias <quote>+imageblock</quote> just simplifies the process and make
6138 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
6139 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
6145 Matches for http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
6147 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
6151 -crunch-incoming-cookies
6152 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6154 -downgrade-http-version
6156 +filter{html-annoyances}
6157 +filter{js-annoyances}
6158 +filter{kill-popups}
6161 +filter{banners-by-size}
6164 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
6165 +hide-from-header{block}
6166 +hide-referer{forge}
6170 +prevent-compression
6173 +session-cookies-only
6174 +set-image-blocker{blank} }
6177 { +block +handle-as-image }
6183 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote>! But
6184 we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the blank page. We could
6185 now add a new action below this that explicitly does <emphasis>not</emphasis>
6186 block (<quote>{-block}</quote>) paths with <quote>adsl</quote>. There are
6187 various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
6199 Now the page displays ;-) Be sure to flush your browser's caches when
6200 making such changes. Or, try using <literal>Shift+Reload</literal>.
6204 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
6211 { +block +handle-as-image }
6217 That actually was very telling and pointed us quickly to where the problem
6218 was. If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default
6219 rules in the first section is causing the problem. This would require some
6220 guesswork, and maybe a little trial and error to isolate the offending rule.
6221 One likely cause would be one of the <quote>{+filter}</quote> actions. These
6222 tend to be harder to troubleshoot. Try adding the URL for the site to one of
6223 aliases that turn off <quote>+filter</quote>:
6231 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
6239 <quote>{shop}</quote> is an <quote>alias</quote> that expands to
6240 <quote>{ -filter -session-cookies-only }</quote>.
6241 Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
6254 This would turn off all filtering for that site. This would probably be most
6255 appropriately put in <filename>user.action</filename>, for local site
6260 Images that are inexplicably being blocked, may well be hitting the
6261 <quote>+filter{banners-by-size}</quote> rule, which assumes
6262 that images of certain sizes are ad banners (works well most of the time
6263 since these tend to be standardized).
6267 <quote>{fragile}</quote> is an alias that disables most actions. This can be
6268 used as a last resort for problem sites. Remember to flush caches! If this
6269 still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining actions one by
6270 one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
6279 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
6280 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
6281 Public License as published by the Free Software
6282 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
6283 your option) any later version.
6285 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
6286 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
6287 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
6288 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
6289 License for more details.
6291 The GNU General Public License should be included with
6292 this file. If not, you can view it at
6293 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
6294 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59
6295 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
6297 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
6298 Revision 1.123.2.38 2004/01/30 16:47:51 oes
6299 Some minor clarifications
6301 Revision 1.123.2.37 2004/01/29 22:36:11 hal9
6302 Updates for no longer filtering text/plain, and demoronizer default settings,
6303 and copyright notice dates.
6305 Revision 1.123.2.36 2003/12/10 02:26:26 hal9
6306 Changed the demoronizer filter description.
6308 Revision 1.123.2.35 2003/11/06 13:36:37 oes
6309 Updated link to nightly CVS tarball
6311 Revision 1.123.2.34 2003/06/26 23:50:16 hal9
6312 Add a small bit on filtering and problems re: source code being corrupted.
6314 Revision 1.123.2.33 2003/05/08 18:17:33 roro
6315 Use apt-get instead of dpkg to install Debian package, which is more
6316 solid, uses the correct and most recent Debian version automatically.
6318 Revision 1.123.2.32 2003/04/11 03:13:57 hal9
6319 Add small note about only one filterfile (as opposed to multiple actions
6322 Revision 1.123.2.31 2003/03/26 02:03:43 oes
6323 Updated hard-coded copyright dates
6325 Revision 1.123.2.30 2003/03/24 12:58:56 hal9
6326 Add new section on Predefined Filters.
6328 Revision 1.123.2.29 2003/03/20 02:45:29 hal9
6329 More problems with \-\-chroot causing markup problems :(
6331 Revision 1.123.2.28 2003/03/19 00:35:24 hal9
6332 Manual edit of revision log because 'chroot' (even inside a comment) was
6333 causing Docbook to hang here (due to double hyphen and the processor thinking
6336 Revision 1.123.2.27 2003/03/18 19:37:14 oes
6337 s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
6339 Revision 1.123.2.26 2003/03/17 16:50:53 oes
6340 Added documentation for new chroot option
6342 Revision 1.123.2.25 2003/03/15 18:36:55 oes
6343 Adapted to the new filters
6345 Revision 1.123.2.24 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
6346 Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
6349 Revision 1.123.2.23 2002/10/21 02:32:01 hal9
6350 Updates to the user.action examples section. A few new ones.
6352 Revision 1.123.2.22 2002/10/12 00:51:53 hal9
6353 Add demoronizer to filter section.
6355 Revision 1.123.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
6356 s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
6358 Revision 1.123.2.20 2002/10/10 03:49:21 hal9
6359 Add notes to session-cookies-only and Quickstart about pre-existing
6360 cookies. Also, note content-cookies work differently.
6362 Revision 1.123.2.19 2002/09/26 01:25:36 hal9
6363 More explanation on Privoxy patterns, more on content-cookies and SSL.
6365 Revision 1.123.2.18 2002/08/22 23:47:58 hal9
6366 Add 'Documentation' to Privoxy Menu shot in Configuration section to match
6369 Revision 1.123.2.17 2002/08/18 01:13:05 hal9
6370 Spell checked (only one typo this time!).
6372 Revision 1.123.2.16 2002/08/09 19:20:54 david__schmidt
6373 Update to Mac OSX startup script name
6375 Revision 1.123.2.15 2002/08/07 17:32:11 oes
6376 Converted some internal links from ulink to link for PDF creation; no content changed
6378 Revision 1.123.2.14 2002/08/06 09:16:13 oes
6379 Nits re: actions file download
6381 Revision 1.123.2.13 2002/08/02 18:23:19 g_sauthoff
6382 Just 2 small corrections to the Gentoo sections
6384 Revision 1.123.2.12 2002/08/02 18:17:21 g_sauthoff
6385 Added 2 Gentoo sections
6387 Revision 1.123.2.11 2002/07/26 15:20:31 oes
6388 - Added version info to title
6389 - Added info on new filters
6390 - Revised parts of the filter file tutorial
6391 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
6393 Revision 1.123.2.10 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
6394 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
6396 Revision 1.123.2.9 2002/07/11 03:40:28 david__schmidt
6398 Updated Mac OSX sections due to installation location change
6400 Revision 1.123.2.8 2002/06/09 16:36:32 hal9
6401 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
6403 Revision 1.123.2.7 2002/06/09 00:29:34 hal9
6404 Touch ups on filtering, in actions section and Anatomy.
6406 Revision 1.123.2.6 2002/06/06 23:11:03 hal9
6407 Fix broken link. Linkchecked all docs.
6409 Revision 1.123.2.5 2002/05/29 02:01:02 hal9
6410 This is break out of the entire config section from u-m, so it can
6411 eventually be used to generate the comments, etc in the main config file
6412 so that these are in sync with each other.
6414 Revision 1.123.2.4 2002/05/27 03:28:45 hal9
6415 Ooops missed something from David.
6417 Revision 1.123.2.3 2002/05/27 03:23:17 hal9
6418 Fix FIXMEs for OS2 and OSX startup. Fix Redhat typos (should be Red Hat).
6419 That's a wrap, I think.
6421 Revision 1.123.2.2 2002/05/26 19:02:09 hal9
6422 Move Amiga stuff around to take of FIXME in start up section.
6424 Revision 1.123.2.1 2002/05/26 17:04:25 hal9
6425 -Spellcheck, very minor edits, and sync across branches
6427 Revision 1.123 2002/05/24 23:19:23 hal9
6428 Include new image (Proxy setup). More fun with guibutton.
6429 Minor corrections/clarifications here and there.
6431 Revision 1.122 2002/05/24 13:24:08 oes
6432 Added Bookmarklet for one-click pre-filled access to show-url-info
6434 Revision 1.121 2002/05/23 23:20:17 oes
6435 - Changed more (all?) references to actions to the
6436 <literal><link> style.
6437 - Small fixes in the actions chapter
6438 - Small clarifications in the quickstart to ad blocking
6439 - Removed <emphasis> from <title>s since the new doc CSS
6440 renders them red (bad in TOC).
6442 Revision 1.120 2002/05/23 19:16:43 roro
6443 Correct Debian specials (installation and startup).
6445 Revision 1.119 2002/05/22 17:17:05 oes
6448 Revision 1.118 2002/05/21 04:54:55 hal9
6449 -New Section: Quickstart to Ad Blocking
6450 -Reformat Actions Anatomy to match new CGI layout
6452 Revision 1.117 2002/05/17 13:56:16 oes
6453 - Reworked & extended Templates chapter
6454 - Small changes to Regex appendix
6455 - #included authors.sgml into (C) and hist chapter
6457 Revision 1.116 2002/05/17 03:23:46 hal9
6458 Fixing merge conflict in Quickstart section.
6460 Revision 1.115 2002/05/16 16:25:00 oes
6461 Extended the Filter File chapter & minor fixes
6463 Revision 1.114 2002/05/16 09:42:50 oes
6464 More ulink->link, added some hints to Quickstart section
6466 Revision 1.113 2002/05/15 21:07:25 oes
6467 Extended and further commented the example actions files
6469 Revision 1.112 2002/05/15 03:57:14 hal9
6470 Spell check. A few minor edits here and there for better syntax and
6473 Revision 1.111 2002/05/14 23:01:36 oes
6476 Revision 1.110 2002/05/14 19:10:45 oes
6477 Restored alphabetical order of actions
6479 Revision 1.109 2002/05/14 17:23:11 oes
6480 Renamed the prevent-*-cookies actions, extended aliases section and moved it before the example AFs
6482 Revision 1.108 2002/05/14 15:29:12 oes
6483 Completed proofreading the actions chapter
6485 Revision 1.107 2002/05/12 03:20:41 hal9
6486 Small clarifications for 127.0.0.1 vs localhost for listen-address since this
6487 apparently an important distinction for some OS's.
6489 Revision 1.106 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
6490 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
6491 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
6492 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
6494 Revision 1.105 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
6495 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
6497 Revision 1.104 2002/05/04 08:44:45 swa
6500 Revision 1.103 2002/05/04 00:40:53 hal9
6501 -Remove the TOC first page kludge. It's fixed proper now in ldp.dsl.in.
6502 -Some minor additions to Quickstart.
6504 Revision 1.102 2002/05/03 17:46:00 oes
6505 Further proofread & reactivated short build instructions
6507 Revision 1.101 2002/05/03 03:58:30 hal9
6508 Move the user-manual config directive to top of section. Add note about
6509 Privoxy needing read permissions for configs, and write for logs.
6511 Revision 1.100 2002/04/29 03:05:55 hal9
6512 Add clarification on differences of new actions files.
6514 Revision 1.99 2002/04/28 16:59:05 swa
6515 more structure in starting section
6517 Revision 1.98 2002/04/28 05:43:59 hal9
6518 This is the break up of configuration.html into multiple files. This
6519 will probably break links elsewhere :(
6521 Revision 1.97 2002/04/27 21:04:42 hal9
6522 -Rewrite of Actions File example.
6523 -Add section for user-manual directive in config.
6525 Revision 1.96 2002/04/27 05:32:00 hal9
6526 -Add short section to Filter Files to tie in with +filter action.
6527 -Start rewrite of examples in Actions Examples (not finished).
6529 Revision 1.95 2002/04/26 17:23:29 swa
6530 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
6532 Revision 1.94 2002/04/26 05:24:36 hal9
6533 -Add most of Andreas suggestions to Chain of Events section.
6534 -A few other minor corrections and touch up.
6536 Revision 1.92 2002/04/25 18:55:13 hal9
6537 More catchups on new actions files, and new actions names.
6538 Other assorted cleanups, and minor modifications.
6540 Revision 1.91 2002/04/24 02:39:31 hal9
6541 Add 'Chain of Events' section.
6543 Revision 1.90 2002/04/23 21:41:25 hal9
6544 Linuxconf is deprecated on RH, substitute chkconfig.
6546 Revision 1.89 2002/04/23 21:05:28 oes
6547 Added hint for startup on Red Hat
6549 Revision 1.88 2002/04/23 05:37:54 hal9
6550 Add AmigaOS install stuff.
6552 Revision 1.87 2002/04/23 02:53:15 david__schmidt
6553 Updated OSX installation section
6554 Added a few English tweaks here an there
6556 Revision 1.86 2002/04/21 01:46:32 hal9
6557 Re-write actions section.
6559 Revision 1.85 2002/04/18 21:23:23 hal9
6560 Fix ugly typo (mine).
6562 Revision 1.84 2002/04/18 21:17:13 hal9
6563 Spell Redhat correctly (ie Red Hat). A few minor grammar corrections.
6565 Revision 1.83 2002/04/18 18:21:12 oes
6566 Added RPM install detail
6568 Revision 1.82 2002/04/18 12:04:50 oes
6571 Revision 1.81 2002/04/18 11:50:24 oes
6572 Extended Install section - needs fixing by packagers
6574 Revision 1.80 2002/04/18 10:45:19 oes
6575 Moved text to buildsource.sgml, renamed some filters, details
6577 Revision 1.79 2002/04/18 03:18:06 hal9
6578 Spellcheck, and minor touchups.
6580 Revision 1.78 2002/04/17 18:04:16 oes
6583 Revision 1.77 2002/04/17 13:51:23 oes
6584 Proofreading, part one
6586 Revision 1.76 2002/04/16 04:25:51 hal9
6587 -Added 'Note to Upgraders' and re-ordered the 'Quickstart' section.
6588 -Note about proxy may need requests to re-read config files.
6590 Revision 1.75 2002/04/12 02:08:48 david__schmidt
6591 Remove OS/2 building info... it is already in the developer-manual
6593 Revision 1.74 2002/04/11 00:54:38 hal9
6594 Add small section on submitting actions.
6596 Revision 1.73 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
6599 Revision 1.72 2002/04/10 04:06:19 hal9
6600 Added actions feedback to Bookmarklets section
6602 Revision 1.71 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
6603 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
6605 Revision 1.70 2002/04/08 20:53:56 swa
6608 Revision 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9
6609 -Add privoxy-man-page.sgml, for man page.
6610 -Add authors.sgml for AUTHORS (and p-authors.sgml)
6611 -Reworked various aspects of various docs.
6612 -Added additional comments to sub-docs.
6614 Revision 1.68 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
6615 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
6617 Revision 1.67 2002/04/04 17:27:57 swa
6618 more single file to be included at multiple points. make maintaining easier
6620 Revision 1.66 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
6621 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
6622 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
6623 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
6624 eventually be set by Makefile.
6625 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
6627 Revision 1.65 2002/04/03 19:52:07 swa
6628 enhance squid section due to user suggestion
6630 Revision 1.64 2002/04/03 03:53:43 hal9
6631 A few minor bug fixes, and touch ups. Ready for review.
6633 Revision 1.63 2002/04/01 16:24:49 hal9
6634 Define entities to include boilerplate text. See doc/source/*.
6636 Revision 1.62 2002/03/30 04:15:53 hal9
6637 - Fix privoxy.org/config links.
6638 - Paste in Bookmarklets from Toggle page.
6639 - Move Quickstart nearer top, and minor rework.
6641 Revision 1.61 2002/03/29 01:31:08 hal9
6644 Revision 1.60 2002/03/27 01:57:34 hal9
6645 Added more to Anatomy section.
6647 Revision 1.59 2002/03/27 00:54:33 hal9
6648 Touch up intro for new name.
6650 Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
6651 we have a new homepage!
6653 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
6654 A few minor catch ups with name change.
6656 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
6657 configure needs to be generated.
6659 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
6660 we are too lazy to make a block-built
6661 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
6663 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
6664 name change related issue.
6666 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
6667 name change. changed filenames.
6669 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
6672 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
6673 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
6674 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
6675 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
6676 comments and remarks to history untouched.
6678 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
6681 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
6682 New section in Appendix.
6684 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
6685 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
6687 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
6688 correct feedback channels
6690 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
6691 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
6693 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
6696 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
6697 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
6699 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
6700 Added imageblock{pattern}.
6702 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
6705 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
6706 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
6708 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
6709 provide correct feedback channels
6711 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
6712 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
6714 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
6715 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
6717 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
6718 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
6720 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
6721 Add new - - user option.
6723 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
6724 Added section on command line options.
6726 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
6727 Changed default port to 8118
6729 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
6730 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
6732 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
6733 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
6734 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
6737 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
6740 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
6741 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
6743 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
6744 Update OS/2 build section
6746 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
6747 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
6748 will work - no other changes are needed.
6750 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
6751 Added a very short section on Templates
6753 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
6754 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
6756 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
6757 Touch ups for *.action files.
6759 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
6762 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
6763 Updates for recent changes.
6765 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
6766 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
6768 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
6769 Correct 2 minor errors
6771 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
6772 *** empty log message ***
6774 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
6775 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
6777 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
6778 wrong url in documentation
6780 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
6781 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
6783 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
6786 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
6789 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
6792 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
6793 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
6795 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
6796 Some additions, and re-arranging.
6798 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
6801 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
6802 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
6804 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
6807 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
6808 source files for junkbuster documentation
6810 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
6811 first proposal of a structure.
6813 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
6814 docs should have an author.
6816 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
6817 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.
projects / privoxy.git / blob