1 <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN" [
2 <!entity % dummy "IGNORE">
3 <!entity supported SYSTEM "supported.sgml">
4 <!entity newfeatures SYSTEM "newfeatures.sgml">
5 <!entity p-intro SYSTEM "privoxy.sgml">
6 <!entity seealso SYSTEM "seealso.sgml">
7 <!entity buildsource SYSTEM "buildsource.sgml">
8 <!entity contacting SYSTEM "contacting.sgml">
9 <!entity history SYSTEM "history.sgml">
10 <!entity copyright SYSTEM "copyright.sgml">
11 <!entity license SYSTEM "license.sgml">
12 <!entity p-authors SYSTEM "p-authors.sgml">
13 <!entity config SYSTEM "p-config.sgml">
14 <!entity p-version "3.0.7">
15 <!entity p-status "beta">
16 <!entity % p-authors-formal "INCLUDE"> <!-- include additional text, etc -->
17 <!entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE">
18 <!entity % p-stable "IGNORE">
19 <!entity % p-text "IGNORE"> <!-- define we are not a text only doc -->
20 <!entity % p-doc "INCLUDE"> <!-- and we are a formal doc -->
21 <!entity % p-readme "IGNORE">
22 <!entity % user-man "IGNORE">
23 <!entity % config-file "IGNORE">
24 <!entity % p-supp-userman "IGNORE"> <!-- Omit some from supported.sgml -->
25 <!entity my-copy "©"> <!-- kludge for docbook2man -->
26 <!entity % draft "IGNORE"> <!-- WIP stuff -->
27 <!entity my-app "<application>Privoxy</application>">
30 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml,v $
33 This file belongs into
34 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
36 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.43 2007/11/14 18:45:39 fabiankeil Exp $
38 Copyright (C) 2001-2007 Privoxy Developers http://www.privoxy.org/
41 ========================================================================
42 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
43 anything in this, or other Privoxy documentation.
44 ========================================================================
51 <title>Privoxy &p-version; User Manual</title>
55 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
56 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
57 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001 - 2007 by
58 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
62 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.43 2007/11/14 18:45:39 fabiankeil Exp $</pubdate>
66 Note: the following should generate a separate page, and a live link to it,
67 all nicely done. But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave
68 commented unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the
69 copyright/license declarations will be in their own sgml.
82 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
83 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
84 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
90 The <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> gives users information on how to
91 install, configure and use <ulink
92 url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy</ulink>.
95 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
97 <!-- end privoxy.sgml -->
100 You can find the latest version of the <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> at <ulink
101 url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>.
102 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> on how to
103 contact the developers.
107 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
113 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
114 <sect1 label="1" id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
116 This documentation is included with the current &p-status; version of
117 <application>Privoxy</application>, v.&p-version;<![%p-not-stable;[,
118 and is mostly complete at this point. The most up to date reference for the
119 time being is still the comments in the source files and in the individual
120 configuration files. Development of a new version is currently nearing
121 completion, and includes significant changes and enhancements over
122 earlier versions. ]]>.
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 the core
139 features of ad blocking and
140 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookie</ulink> management,
141 <application>Privoxy</application> provides many supplemental
142 features<![%p-not-stable;[, some of them currently under development]]>,
143 that give the end-user more control, more privacy and more freedom:
145 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml boilerplate here: -->
147 <!-- end boilerplate -->
152 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
155 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
156 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
159 <application>Privoxy</application> is available both in convenient pre-compiled
160 packages for a wide range of operating systems, and as raw source code.
161 For most users, we recommend using the packages, which can be downloaded from our
162 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Project
168 On some platforms, the installer may remove previously installed versions, if
169 found. (See below for your platform). In any case <emphasis>be sure to backup
170 your old configuration if it is valuable to you.</emphasis> See the <link
171 linkend="upgradersnote">note to 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 <!-- XXX: The installation sections should be sorted -->
182 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
183 <sect3 id="installation-pack-rpm"><title>Red Hat and Fedora RPMs</title>
186 RPMs can be installed with <literal>rpm -Uvh privoxy-&p-version;-1.rpm</literal>,
187 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location
188 of configuration files.
192 Note that on Red Hat, <application>Privoxy</application> will
193 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be automatically started on system boot. You will
194 need to enable that using <command>chkconfig</command>,
195 <command>ntsysv</command>, or similar methods.
199 If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM:
200 <literal>rpm --rebuild privoxy-&p-version;-1.src.rpm</literal>. This
201 will use your locally installed libraries and RPM version.
205 Also note that if you have a <application>Junkbuster</application> RPM installed
206 on your system, you need to remove it first, because the packages conflict.
207 Otherwise, RPM will try to remove <application>Junkbuster</application>
208 automatically if found, before installing <application>Privoxy</application>.
212 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
213 <sect3 id="installation-deb"><title>Debian</title>
215 DEBs can be installed with <literal>apt-get install privoxy</literal>,
216 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location of
221 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
222 <sect3 id="installation-pack-win"><title>Windows</title>
225 Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through
226 the installation process. You will find the configuration files
227 in the same directory as you installed <application>Privoxy</application> in.
230 Version 3.0.5 beta introduced full <application>Windows</application> service
231 functionality. On Windows only, the <application>Privoxy</application>
232 program has two new command line arguments to install and uninstall
233 <application>Privoxy</application> as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>.
237 <term>Arguments:</term>
240 <replaceable class="parameter">--install</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
243 <replaceable class="parameter">--uninstall</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
249 After invoking <application>Privoxy</application> with
250 <command>--install</command>, you will need to bring up the
251 <application>Windows</application> service console to assign the user you
252 want <application>Privoxy</application> to run under, and whether or not you
253 want it to run whenever the system starts. You can start the
254 <application>Windows</application> services console with the following
255 command: <command>services.msc</command>. If you do not take the manual step
256 of modifying <application>Privoxy's</application> service settings, it will
257 not start. Note too that you will need to give Privoxy a user account that
258 actually exists, or it will not be permitted to
259 write to its log and configuration files.
264 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
265 <sect3 id="installation-pack-bintgz"><title>Solaris <!--, NetBSD, HP-UX--></title>
268 Create a new directory, <literal>cd</literal> to it, then unzip and
269 untar the archive. For the most part, you'll have to figure out where
270 things go. <!-- FIXME, more info needed? -->
274 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
275 <sect3 id="installation-os2"><title>OS/2</title>
278 First, make sure that no previous installations of
279 <application>Junkbuster</application> and / or
280 <application>Privoxy</application> are left on your
281 system. Check that no <application>Junkbuster</application>
282 or <application>Privoxy</application> objects are in
288 Then, just double-click the WarpIN self-installing archive, which will
289 guide you through the installation process. A shadow of the
290 <application>Privoxy</application> executable will be placed in your
291 startup folder so it will start automatically whenever OS/2 starts.
295 The directory you choose to install <application>Privoxy</application>
296 into will contain all of the configuration files.
300 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
301 <sect3 id="installation-mac"><title>Mac OSX</title>
303 Unzip the downloaded file (you can either double-click on the file
304 from the finder, or from the desktop if you downloaded it there).
305 Then, double-click on the package installer icon named
306 <literal>Privoxy.pkg</literal>
307 and follow the installation process.
308 <application>Privoxy</application> will be installed in the folder
309 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal>.
310 It will start automatically whenever you start up. To prevent it from
311 starting automatically, remove or rename the folder
312 <literal>/Library/StartupItems/Privoxy</literal>.
315 To start Privoxy by hand, double-click on
316 <literal>StartPrivoxy.command</literal> in the
317 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal> folder.
318 Or, type this command in the Terminal:
322 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
326 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
330 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
331 <sect3 id="installation-amiga"><title>AmigaOS</title>
333 Copy and then unpack the <filename>lha</filename> archive to a suitable location.
334 All necessary files will be installed into <application>Privoxy</application>
335 directory, including all configuration and log files. To uninstall, just
336 remove this directory.
340 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
341 <sect3 id="installation-tbz"><title>FreeBSD</title>
344 Privoxy is part of FreeBSD's Ports Collection, you can build and install
345 it with <literal>cd /usr/ports/www/privoxy; make install clean</literal>.
348 If you don't use the ports, you can fetch and install
349 the package with <literal>pkg_add -r privoxy</literal>.
352 The port skeleton and the package can also be downloaded from the
353 <ulink url="https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">File Release
354 Page</ulink>, but there's no reason to use them unless you're interested in the
355 beta releases which are only available there.
359 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
360 <sect3 id="installattion-gentoo"><title>Gentoo</title>
362 Gentoo source packages (Ebuilds) for <application>Privoxy</application> are
363 contained in the Gentoo Portage Tree (they are not on the download page,
364 but there is a Gentoo section, where you can see when a new
365 <application>Privoxy</application> Version is added to the Portage Tree).
368 Before installing <application>Privoxy</application> under Gentoo just do
369 first <literal>emerge rsync</literal> to get the latest changes from the
370 Portage tree. With <literal>emerge privoxy</literal> you install the latest
374 Configuration files are in <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename>, the
375 documentation is in <filename>/usr/share/doc/privoxy-&p-version;</filename>
376 and the Log directory is in <filename>/var/log/privoxy</filename>.
382 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
383 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Building from Source</title>
386 The most convenient way to obtain the <application>Privoxy</application> sources
387 is to download the source tarball from our
388 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&package_id=10571">project download
393 If you like to live on the bleeding edge and are not afraid of using
394 possibly unstable development versions, you can check out the up-to-the-minute
395 version directly from <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=11118">the
396 CVS repository</ulink>.
398 deprecated...out of business.
399 or simply download <ulink
400 url="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/ijbswa-cvsroot.tar.bz2">the nightly CVS
405 <!-- include buildsource.sgml boilerplate: -->
407 <!-- end boilerplate -->
410 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
411 <sect2 id="installation-keepupdated"><title>Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date</title>
413 As user feedback comes in and development continues, we will make updated versions
414 of both the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link> (as a <ulink
415 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&release_id=103670">separate
416 package</ulink>) and the software itself (including the actions file) available for
421 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
422 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
423 url="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-announce/">subscribe
424 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
428 In order not to lose your personal changes and adjustments when updating
429 to the latest <literal>default.action</literal> file we <emphasis>strongly
430 recommend</emphasis> that you use <literal>user.action</literal> and
431 <literal>user.filter</literal> for your local
432 customizations of <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
433 linkend="actions-file">Chapter on actions files</link> for details.
441 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
443 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
444 <sect1 id="whatsnew">
445 <title>What's New in this Release</title>
447 There are many improvements and new features since <application>Privoxy 3.0.6</application>, the last stable release:
454 Two new actions <link
455 linkend="server-header-tagger">server-header-tagger</link>
457 linkend="client-header-tagger">client-header-tagger</link>
458 that can be used to create arbitrary <quote>tags</quote>
459 based on client and server headers.
460 These <quote>tags</quote> can then subsequently be used
461 to control the other actions used for the current request,
462 greatly increasing &my-app;'s flexibility and selectivity. See <link
463 linkend="tag-pattern">tag patterns</link> for more information on tags.
469 Header filtering is done with dedicated header filters now. As a result
470 the actions <quote>filter-client-headers</quote> and <quote>filter-server-headers</quote>
471 that were introduced with <application>Privoxy 3.0.5</application> to apply
472 content filters to the headers have been removed.
473 See the new actions <link
474 linkend="server-header-filter">server-header-filter</link>
476 linkend="client-header-filter">client-header-filter</link> for details.
481 There are four new options for the main <filename>config</filename> file:
488 linkend="allow-cgi-request-crunching">allow-cgi-request-crunching</link>
489 which allows requests for Privoxy's internal CGI pages to be
490 blocked, redirected or (un)trusted like ordinary requests.
496 linkend="split-large-forms">split-large-forms</link>
497 that will work around a browser bug that caused IE6 and IE7 to
498 ignore the Submit button on the Privoxy's edit-actions-for-url CGI
505 linkend="accept-intercepted-requests">accept-intercepted-requests</link>
506 which allows to combine Privoxy with any packet filter to create an
507 intercepting proxy for HTTP/1.1 requests (and for HTTP/1.0 requests
508 with Host header set). This means clients can be forced to use
509 &my-app; even if their proxy settings are configured differently.
515 linkend="templdir">templdir</link>
516 to designate an alternate location for &my-app;'s
517 locally customized CGI templates so that
518 these are not overwritten during upgrades.
526 A new command line option <literal>--pre-chroot-nslookup hostname</literal> to
527 initialize the resolver library before chroot'ing. On some systems this
528 reduces the number of files that must be copied into the chroot tree.
529 (Patch provided by Stephen Gildea)
536 linkend="forward-override">forward-override</link> action
537 allows changing of the forwarding settings through the actions files.
538 Combined with tags, this allows to choose the forwarder based on
539 client headers like the <literal>User-Agent</literal>, or the request origin.
546 linkend="redirect">redirect</link> action can now use regular
547 expression substitutions against the original URL.
553 <application>zlib</application> support is now available as a compile
554 time option to filter compressed content. Patch provided by Wil Mahan.
559 Improve various filters, and add new ones.
566 Include support for RFC 3253 so that <filename>Subversion</filename> works
567 with &my-app;. Patch provided by Petr Kadlec.
573 Logging can be completely turned off by not specifying a logfile directive.
580 A number of improvements to Privoxy's internal CGI pages, including the
581 use of favicons for error and control pages.
587 Many bugfixes, memory leaks addressed, code improvements, and logging
593 <!-- pre-3.0.6 changes:
596 There are a number of new <link linkend="actions-file">actions</link>:
604 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite</link></literal>
609 <literal><link linkend="crunch-client-header">crunch-client-header</link></literal>
614 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>
619 <literal><link linkend="crunch-server-header">crunch-server-header</link></literal>
624 <literal><link linkend="filter-client-headers">filter-client-headers</link></literal>
629 <literal><link linkend="filter-server-headers">filter-server-headers</link></literal>
634 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>
639 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal>
644 <literal><link linkend="hide-accept-language">hide-accept-language</link></literal>
649 <literal><link linkend="hide-content-disposition">hide-content-disposition</link></literal>
654 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
659 <literal><link linkend="inspect-jpegs">inspect-jpegs</link></literal>
664 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>
669 <literal><link linkend="redirect">redirect</link></literal>
674 <literal><link linkend="treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks">treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</link></literal>
681 In addition, <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects</link></literal>
682 has been significantly improved with enhanced syntax.
685 And <literal><link linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal>
686 has a new option, <literal>conditional block</literal>.
693 <application>MS-Windows</application> versions can now be
695 linkend="installation-pack-win">installed and
696 started as a <emphasis>Windows service</emphasis></link>.
702 <filename>config</filename> has two new options:
704 linkend="enable-remote-http-toggle">enable-remote-http-toggle</link>,
706 linkend="forwarded-connect-retries">forwarded-connect-retries</link>.
709 And there is improved handling of the <link
710 linkend="user-manual">user-manual</link>
711 option, for placing documentation and help files on the local system.
717 There are six new <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>.
723 Actions files problems and suggestions are now being directed to:
724 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=460288">http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=460288</ulink>.
725 Please use this to report such configuration related problems as missed
726 ads, sites that don't function properly due to one action or another,
727 innocent images being blocked, etc.
733 In addition, there are numerous bug fixes and significant enhancements,
734 including error pages should no longer be cached if the problem is fixed,
735 much better DNS error handling, various logging improvements, and
736 configuration updates for better ad blocking and junk elimination.
744 For a more detailed list of changes please have a look at the ChangeLog.
747 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
749 <sect2 id="upgradersnote">
750 <title>Note to Upgraders</title>
753 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier
754 versions of <application>Privoxy</application>:
762 Some installers may remove earlier versions completely, including
763 configuration files. Save any important configuration files!
768 On the other hand, other installers may not overwrite any existing configuration
769 files, thinking you will want to do that. You may want to manually check
770 your saved files against the newer versions to see if the improvements have
771 merit, or whether there are new options that you may want to consider.
772 There are a number of new features, but most won't be available unless
773 these features are incorporated into your configuration somehow.
778 <filename>standard.action</filename> now only includes the enabled actions.
779 Not all actions as before.
785 See the full documentation on
786 <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects</link></literal>
787 which has changed syntax, and will require adjustments to local configs,
788 such as <filename>user.action</filename>. You must reference the new
793 { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
803 Logging is off by default now. If you need logging, it can be turned on
804 in the <link linkend="logfile">config file</link>.
810 Three other config file settings are now off by default:
811 <link linkend="enable-remote-toggle">enable-remote-toggle</link>,
812 <link linkend="enable-remote-http-toggle">enable-remote-http-toggle</link>,
813 and <link linkend="enable-edit-actions">enable-edit-actions</link>.
814 If you use or want these, you will need to explicitly enable them, and
815 be aware of the security issues involved.
821 The <quote>filter-client-headers</quote> and
822 <quote>filter-server-headers</quote> actions that were introduced with
823 <application>Privoxy 3.0.5</application> to apply content filters to
824 the headers have been removed and replaced with new actions.
826 linkend="whatsnew">What's New section</link> above.
834 What constitutes a <quote>default</quote> configuration has changed,
835 and you may want to review which actions are <quote>on</quote> by
836 default. This is primarily a matter of emphasis, but some features
837 you may have been used to, may now be <quote>off</quote> by default.
838 There are also a number of new actions and filters you may want to
839 consider, most of which are not fully incorporated into the default
840 settings as yet (see above).
847 The default actions setting is now <literal>Cautious</literal>. Previous
848 releases had a default setting of <literal>Medium</literal>. Experienced
849 users may want to adjust this, as it is fairly conservative by &my-app;
850 standards and past practices. See <ulink
851 url="http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default">
852 http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default</ulink>. New users
853 should try the default settings for a while before turning up the volume.
859 The default setting has filtering turned <emphasis>off</emphasis>, which
860 subsequently means that compression is <emphasis>on</emphasis>. Remember
861 that filtering does not work on compressed pages, so if you use, or want to
862 use, filtering, you will need to force compression off. Example:
866 { +<link linkend="filter">filter</link>{google} +<link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link> }
870 Or if you use a number of filters, or filter many sites, you may just want
871 to turn off compression for all sites in
872 <filename>default.action</filename> (or
873 <filename>user.action</filename>).
880 Also, <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> is
881 off by default now. If you've liked this feature in the past, you may want
882 to turn it back on in <filename>user.action</filename> now.
889 Some installers may not automatically start
890 <application>Privoxy</application> after installation.
901 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
902 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using Privoxy</title>
908 Install <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
909 linkend="installation">Installation Section</link> below for platform specific
916 Advanced users and those who want to offer <application>Privoxy</application>
917 service to more than just their local machine should check the <link
918 linkend="config">main config file</link>, especially the <link
919 linkend="access-control">security-relevant</link> options. These are
926 Start <application>Privoxy</application>, if the installation program has
927 not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
928 <link linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link>.
934 Set your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application> as HTTP and
935 HTTPS (SSL) <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>
936 by setting the proxy configuration for address of
937 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> and port <literal>8118</literal>.
938 <emphasis>DO NOT</emphasis> activate proxying for <literal>FTP</literal> or
939 any protocols besides HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) unless you intend to prevent your
940 browser from using these protocols.
946 Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad images.
947 If using <application>Privoxy</application> to manage
948 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
949 you should remove any currently stored cookies too.
955 A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for
956 most. There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
957 configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little
958 to no initial configuration is required in most cases, you may want
960 <ulink url="config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">web-based action editor</ulink> though.
961 Be sure to read the warnings first.
964 See the <link linkend="configuration">Configuration section</link> for more
965 configuration options, and how to customize your installation.
966 You might also want to look at the <link
967 linkend="quickstart-ad-blocking">next section</link> for a quick
968 introduction to how <application>Privoxy</application> blocks ads and
975 If you experience ads that slip through, innocent images that are
976 blocked, or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune
977 <application>Privoxy's</application> behavior, take a look at the <link
978 linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>. As a quick start, you might
979 find the <link linkend="act-examples">richly commented examples</link>
980 helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files through the <ulink
981 url="http://config.privoxy.org">web-based user interface</ulink>. The
982 Appendix <quote><link linkend="actionsanat">Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an
983 Action</link></quote> has hints on how to understand and debug actions that
984 <quote>misbehave</quote>.
989 Did anyone test these lately?
993 For easy access to &my-app;'s most important controls, drag the provided
994 <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklets</link> into your browser's
1002 Please see the section <link linkend="contact">Contacting the
1003 Developers</link> on how to report bugs, problems with websites or to get
1010 Now enjoy surfing with enhanced control, comfort and privacy!
1018 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1020 <sect2 id="quickstart-ad-blocking">
1021 <title>Quickstart to Ad Blocking</title>
1023 NOTE: This section is deliberately redundant for those that don't
1024 want to read the whole thing (which is getting lengthy).
1027 Ad blocking is but one of <application>Privoxy's</application>
1028 array of features. Many of these features are for the technically minded advanced
1029 user. But, ad and banner blocking is surely common ground for everybody.
1032 This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so
1033 you can get up to speed quickly without having to read the more extensive
1034 information provided below, though this is highly recommended.
1037 First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the
1038 more aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block
1039 things that were not intended. And the more likely that some things
1040 may not work as intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want
1041 extreme ad free browsing, be prepared to deal with more
1042 <quote>problem</quote> sites, and to spend more time adjusting the
1043 configuration to solve these unintended consequences. In short, there is
1044 not an easy way to eliminate <emphasis>all</emphasis> ads. Either take
1045 the easy way and settle for <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads blocked with the
1046 default configuration, or jump in and tweak it for your personal surfing
1047 habits and preferences.
1050 Secondly, a brief explanation of <application>Privoxy's </application>
1051 <quote>actions</quote>. <quote>Actions</quote> in this context, are
1052 the directives we use to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to perform
1053 some task relating to HTTP transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell
1054 <application>Privoxy</application> to take some <quote>action</quote>. Each
1055 action has a unique name and function. While there are many potential
1056 <application>actions</application> in <application>Privoxy's</application>
1057 arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking. <link
1058 linkend="actions">Actions</link>, and <link linkend="actions-file">action
1059 configuration files</link>, are explained in depth below.
1062 Actions are specified in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
1063 followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
1064 can actually be URL type <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> that use
1065 wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs. The
1066 actions, together with the URL patterns are called a section.
1069 When you connect to a website, the full URL will either match one or more
1070 of the sections as defined in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
1071 or not. If so, then <application>Privoxy</application> will perform the
1072 respective actions. If not, then nothing special happens. Furthermore, web
1073 pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web browser will
1074 use to load additional components of the page, as it parses the
1075 original page's HTML content. An ad image for instance, is just an URL
1076 embedded in the page somewhere. The image itself may be on the same server,
1077 or a server somewhere else on the Internet. Complex web pages will have many
1078 such embedded URLs. &my-app; can deal with each URL individually, so, for
1079 instance, the main page text is not touched, but images from such-and-such
1084 The most important actions for basic ad blocking are: <literal><link
1085 linkend="block">block</link></literal>, <literal><link
1086 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
1088 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal>,and
1089 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>:
1097 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> - this is perhaps
1098 the single most used action, and is particularly important for ad blocking.
1099 This action stops any contact between your browser and any URL patterns
1100 that match this action's configuration. It can be used for blocking ads,
1101 but also anything that is determined to be unwanted. By itself, it simply
1102 stops any communication with the remote server and sends
1103 <application>Privoxy</application>'s own built-in BLOCKED page instead to
1104 let you now what has happened (with some exceptions, see below).
1110 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> -
1111 tells <application>Privoxy</application> to treat this URL as an image.
1112 <application>Privoxy</application>'s default configuration already does this
1113 for all common image types (e.g. GIF), but there are many situations where this
1114 is not so easy to determine. So we'll force it in these cases. This is particularly
1115 important for ad blocking, since only if we know that it's an image of
1116 some kind, can we replace it with an image of our choosing, instead of the
1117 <application>Privoxy</application> BLOCKED page (which would only result in
1118 a <quote>broken image</quote> icon). There are some limitations to this
1119 though. For instance, you can't just brute-force an image substitution for
1120 an entire HTML page in most situations.
1126 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> -
1127 sends an empty document instead of <application>Privoxy's</application>
1128 normal BLOCKED HTML page. This is useful for file types that are neither
1129 HTML nor images, such as blocking JavaScript files.
1136 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> - tells
1137 <application>Privoxy</application> what to display in place of an ad image that
1138 has hit a block rule. For this to come into play, the URL must match a
1139 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action somewhere in the
1140 configuration, <emphasis>and</emphasis>, it must also match an
1141 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action.
1144 The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
1148 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad
1149 replacement is obvious. This is the default.
1154 <emphasis>blank</emphasis> - A very small empty GIF image is displayed.
1155 This is the so-called <quote>invisible</quote> configuration option.
1160 <emphasis>http://<URL></emphasis> - A redirect to any image anywhere
1161 of the user's choosing (advanced usage).
1170 The quickest way to adjust any of these settings is with your browser through
1171 the special <application>Privoxy</application> editor at <ulink
1172 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1173 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>). This
1174 is an internal page, and does not require Internet access.
1178 Note that as of <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.7 beta the
1179 action editor is disabled by default. Check the
1180 <ulink url="config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions
1181 section in the configuration file</ulink> to learn why and in which
1182 cases it's safe to enable again.
1186 If you decided to enable the action editor, select the appropriate
1187 <quote>actions</quote> file, and click
1188 <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>. It is best to put personal or
1189 local preferences in <filename>user.action</filename> since this is not
1190 meant to be overwritten during upgrades, and will over-ride the settings in
1191 other files. Here you can insert new <quote>actions</quote>, and URLs for ad
1192 blocking or other purposes, and make other adjustments to the configuration.
1193 <application>Privoxy</application> will detect these changes automatically.
1197 A quick and simple step by step example:
1205 Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select
1206 <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote> from the
1214 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1219 Find <filename>user.action</filename> in the top section, and click
1220 on <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>:
1223 <!-- image of editor and actions files selections -->
1225 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Actions Files in Use</title>
1228 <imagedata fileref="files-in-use.jpg" format="jpg">
1231 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Actions Files in Use ]</phrase>
1240 You should have a section with only
1241 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> listed under
1242 <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1243 If not, click a <quote><guibutton>Insert new section below</guibutton></quote>
1244 button, and in the new section that just appeared, click the
1245 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button right under the word <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1246 This will bring up a list of all actions. Find
1247 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> near the top, and click
1248 in the <quote>Enabled</quote> column, then <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote>
1249 just below the list.
1254 Now, in the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> actions section,
1255 click the <quote><guibutton>Add</guibutton></quote> button, and paste the URL the
1256 browser got from <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote>.
1257 Remove the <literal>http://</literal> at the beginning of the URL. Then, click
1258 <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote> (or
1259 <quote><guibutton>OK</guibutton></quote> if in a pop-up window).
1264 Now go back to the original page, and press <keycap>SHIFT-Reload</keycap>
1265 (or flush all browser caches). The image should be gone now.
1273 This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
1274 wildcard pattern match to include potentially similar images from the same
1275 site. For a more extensive explanation of <quote>patterns</quote>, and
1276 the entire actions concept, see <link linkend="actions-file">the Actions
1281 For advanced users who want to hand edit their config files, you might want
1282 to now go to the <link linkend="act-examples">Actions Files Tutorial</link>.
1283 The ideas explained therein also apply to the web-based editor.
1286 There are also various
1287 <link linkend="filter">filters</link> that can be used for ad blocking
1288 (filters are a special subset of actions). These
1289 fall into the <quote>advanced</quote> usage category, and are explained in
1290 depth in later sections.
1297 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1300 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1301 <sect1 id="startup">
1302 <title>Starting Privoxy</title>
1304 Before launching <application>Privoxy</application> for the first time, you
1305 will want to configure your browser(s) to use
1306 <application>Privoxy</application> as a HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)
1307 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>. The default is
1308 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions
1309 used port 8000). This is the one configuration step <emphasis>that must be done
1313 Please note that <application>Privoxy</application> can only proxy HTTP and
1314 HTTPS traffic. It will not work with FTP or other protocols.
1317 <!-- image of Mozilla Proxy configuration -->
1319 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1320 Mozilla/Netscape HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) Settings</title>
1323 <imagedata fileref="proxy_setup.jpg" format="jpg">
1326 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Mozilla Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1334 With <application>Firefox</application>, this is typically set under:
1338 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>General</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connection Settings</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Manual Proxy Configuration</guibutton>
1343 Or optionally on some platforms:
1347 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>General</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connection Settings</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Manual Proxy Configuration</guibutton>
1353 With <application>Netscape</application> (and
1354 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under:
1359 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
1360 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
1361 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Proxies</guibutton> -> <guibutton>HTTP Proxy</guibutton>
1366 For <application>Internet Explorer v.5-6</application>:
1370 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Internet Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connections</guibutton> -> <guibutton>LAN Settings</guibutton>
1374 Then, check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info
1375 (Address: 127.0.0.1, Port: 8118). Include HTTPS (SSL), if you want HTTPS
1376 proxy support too (sometimes labeled <quote>Secure</quote>). Make sure any
1377 checkboxes like <quote>Use the same proxy server for all protocols</quote> is
1378 <emphasis>UNCHECKED</emphasis>. You want only HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)!
1381 <!-- image of IE Proxy configuration -->
1383 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1384 Internet Explorer HTTP and HTTPS (Secure) Settings</title>
1387 <imagedata fileref="proxy2.jpg" format="jpg">
1390 <phrase>[ Screenshot of IE Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1398 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
1399 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. Remove
1400 any <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
1401 if you want <application>Privoxy</application> to manage that. You are now
1402 ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
1403 <application>Privoxy</application>!
1407 <application>Privoxy</application> itself is typically started by specifying the
1408 main configuration file to be used on the command line. If no configuration
1409 file is specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application>
1410 will look for a file named <filename>config</filename> in the current
1411 directory. Except on Win32 where it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>.
1414 <sect2 id="start-redhat">
1415 <title>Red Hat and Fedora</title>
1417 A default Red Hat installation may not start &my-app; upon boot. It will use
1418 the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1423 # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
1431 # service privoxy start
1436 <sect2 id="start-debian">
1437 <title>Debian</title>
1439 We use a script. Note that Debian typically starts &my-app; upon booting per
1440 default. It will use the file
1441 <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1446 # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1452 omitting 10/31/06 HB
1454 <sect2 id="start-suse">
1457 We use a script. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename>
1458 as its main configuration file. Note that SuSE starts Privoxy upon booting
1468 <sect2 id="start-windows">
1469 <title>Windows</title>
1471 Click on the &my-app; Icon to start <application>Privoxy</application>. If no configuration file is
1472 specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application> will look
1473 for a file named <filename>config.txt</filename>. Note that Windows will
1474 automatically start &my-app; when the system starts if you chose that option
1478 <application>Privoxy</application> can run with full Windows service functionality.
1479 On Windows only, the &my-app; program has two new command line arguments
1480 to install and uninstall &my-app; as a service. See the
1481 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Windows Installation
1482 instructions</link> for details.
1486 <sect2 id="start-unices">
1487 <title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others</title>
1489 Example Unix startup command:
1493 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
1498 <sect2 id="start-os2">
1501 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
1502 start automatically when the system restarts. You can start it manually by
1503 double-clicking on the <application>Privoxy</application> icon in the
1504 <application>Privoxy</application> folder.
1508 <sect2 id="start-macosx">
1509 <title>Mac OSX</title>
1511 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
1512 start automatically when the system restarts. To start &my-app; manually,
1513 double-click on the <literal>StartPrivoxy.command</literal> icon in the
1514 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal> folder. Or, type this command
1519 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
1523 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
1528 <sect2 id="start-amigaos">
1529 <title>AmigaOS</title>
1531 Start <application>Privoxy</application> (with RUN <>NIL:) in your
1532 <filename>startnet</filename> script (AmiTCP), in
1533 <filename>s:user-startup</filename> (RoadShow), as startup program in your
1534 startup script (Genesis), or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx).
1535 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically quit when you quit your
1536 TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack may display that
1537 <application>Privoxy</application> is still running).
1541 <sect2 id="start-gentoo">
1542 <title>Gentoo</title>
1544 A script is again used. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config
1545 </filename> as its main configuration file.
1549 /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1553 Note that <application>Privoxy</application> is not automatically started at
1554 boot time by default. You can change this with the <literal>rc-update</literal>
1559 rc-update add privoxy default
1567 See the section <link linkend="cmdoptions">Command line options</link> for
1571 must find a better place for this paragraph
1574 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
1575 point. Most of the per site configuration is done in the
1576 <ulink url="actions-file.html"><quote>actions</quote></ulink> files. These are
1577 where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking, and other
1578 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. There are several
1579 such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.
1583 You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites for which you may prefer
1584 persistent cookies, and add these to your actions configuration as needed. By
1585 default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser
1586 session (aka <quote>session cookies</quote>), unless you add them to the
1587 configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will need
1588 to edit <filename>user.action</filename> (or through the web based interface)
1589 and disable this feature. If you use more than one browser, it would make
1590 more sense to let <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which
1591 case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
1595 Another feature where you will probably want to define exceptions for trusted
1596 sites is the popup-killing (through the <ulink
1597 url="actions-file.html#KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></ulink> and
1599 url="actions-file.html#FILTER-POPUPS"><quote>+filter{popups}</quote></ulink>
1600 actions), because your favorite shopping, banking, or leisure site may need
1601 popups (explained below).
1605 <application>Privoxy</application> does not support all of the optional HTTP/1.1
1606 features yet. In the unlikely event that you experience inexplicable problems
1607 with browsers that use HTTP/1.1 per default
1608 (like <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.), you might
1609 try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look under <literal>Edit ->
1610 Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
1611 Alternatively, set the <quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote> config option in
1612 <filename>default.action</filename> which will downgrade your browser's HTTP
1613 requests from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0 before processing them.
1617 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
1618 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
1619 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
1620 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote>
1621 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
1622 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1623 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1624 and then follow the link to <quote>View & Change the Current Configuration</quote>.
1625 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
1629 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
1630 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
1631 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
1632 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
1633 to a given URL. In addition to the actions file
1634 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
1635 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> (toggled) from this page.
1639 If you encounter problems, try loading the page without
1640 <application>Privoxy</application>. If that helps, enter the URL where
1641 you have the problems into <ulink url="http://p.p/show-url-info">the browser
1642 based rule tracing utility</ulink>. See which rules apply and why, and
1643 then try turning them off for that site one after the other, until the problem
1644 is gone. When you have found the culprit, you might want to turn the rest on
1649 If the above paragraph sounds gibberish to you, you might want to <link
1650 linkend="actions-file">read more about the actions concept</link>
1651 or even dive deep into the <link linkend="actionsanat">Appendix
1656 If you can't get rid of the problem at all, think you've found a bug in
1657 Privoxy, want to propose a new feature or smarter rules, please see the
1658 section <link linkend="contact"><quote>Contacting the
1659 Developers</quote></link> below.
1664 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1665 <sect2 id="cmdoptions">
1666 <title>Command Line Options</title>
1668 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
1669 command-line options:
1677 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
1680 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
1685 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
1688 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
1693 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
1696 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
1697 leader, and don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
1702 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
1705 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
1706 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failure to create or delete the
1707 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
1708 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
1713 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
1716 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
1717 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
1718 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
1723 <emphasis>--chroot</emphasis>
1726 Before changing to the user ID given in the <emphasis>--user</emphasis> option,
1727 chroot to that user's home directory, i.e. make the kernel pretend to the &my-app;
1728 process that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
1729 the impact of possible vulnerabilities in &my-app; to the files contained in that hierarchy.
1735 <emphasis>--pre-chroot-nslookup hostname</emphasis>
1738 Specifies a hostname to look up before doing a chroot. On some systems, initializing the
1739 resolver library involves reading config files from /etc and/or loading additional shared
1740 libraries from /lib. On these systems, doing a hostname lookup before the chroot reduces
1741 the number of files that must be copied into the chroot tree.
1744 For fastest startup speed, a good value is a hostname that is not in /etc/hosts but that
1745 your local name server (listed in /etc/resolv.conf) can resolve without recursion
1746 (that is, without having to ask any other name servers). The hostname need not exist,
1747 but if it doesn't, an error message (which can be ignored) will be output.
1753 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
1756 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
1757 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
1758 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
1759 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
1760 full path to avoid confusion. If no config file is found,
1761 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
1769 On <application>MS Windows</application> only there are two additional
1770 command-line options to allow <application>Privoxy</application> to install and
1771 run as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>. See the
1772 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Window Installation section</link>
1780 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1783 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1784 <sect1 id="configuration"><title>Privoxy Configuration</title>
1786 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is stored
1787 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
1788 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
1789 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
1793 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1796 <title>Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser</title>
1798 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface can be reached through the special
1799 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1800 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1801 which is a built-in page and works without Internet access.
1802 You will see the following section:
1806 <!-- Needs to be put in a table and colorized -->
1809 <bridgehead renderas="sect2"> Privoxy Menu</bridgehead>
1813 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View & change the current configuration</ulink>
1816 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">View the source code version numbers</ulink>
1819 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">View the request headers.</ulink>
1822 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">Look up which actions apply to a URL and why</ulink>
1825 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">Toggle Privoxy on or off</ulink>
1828 ▪ <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/
1829 &p-version;/user-manual/">Documentation</ulink>
1837 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
1838 <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, which is where the ad, banner,
1839 cookie, and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
1840 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
1841 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
1842 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
1846 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
1847 have problems with your current actions and filters. You can in fact use
1848 it as a test to see whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
1849 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
1850 to run as a proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e.
1851 <application>Privoxy</application> acts like a normal forwarding proxy. There
1852 is even a toggle <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklet</link> offered, so
1853 that you can toggle <application>Privoxy</application> with one click from
1858 Note that several of the features described above are disabled by default
1859 in <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.7 beta and later.
1861 <ulink url="config.html">configuration file</ulink> to learn why
1862 and in which cases it's safe to enable them again.
1867 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1872 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1874 <sect2 id="confoverview">
1875 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
1877 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
1878 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
1879 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
1880 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. <![%p-not-stable;[ The name
1881 and number of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
1882 subject to change as development progresses.]]>
1886 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though
1887 some settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the
1888 principle configuration files are:
1896 The <link linkend="config">main configuration file</link> is named <filename>config</filename>
1897 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
1898 on Windows. This is a required file.
1904 <filename>default.action</filename> (the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>)
1905 is used to define which <quote>actions</quote> relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups,
1906 content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default. It also defines many
1907 exceptions (both positive and negative) from this default set of actions that enable
1908 <application>Privoxy</application> to selectively eliminate the junk, and only the junk, on
1909 as many websites as possible.
1912 Multiple actions files may be defined in <filename>config</filename>. These
1913 are processed in the order they are defined. Local customizations and locally
1914 preferred exceptions to the default policies as defined in
1915 <filename>default.action</filename> (which you will most probably want
1916 to define sooner or later) are probably best applied in
1917 <filename>user.action</filename>, where you can preserve them across
1918 upgrades. <filename>standard.action</filename> is only for
1919 <application>Privoxy's</application> internal use.
1922 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from
1924 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1926 url="http://p.p/show-status">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>) for the
1927 various actions files.
1933 <quote>Filter files</quote> (the <link linkend="filter-file">filter
1934 file</link>) can be used to re-write the raw page content, including
1935 viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript, and whatever else
1936 lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only pre-defined here;
1937 whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
1938 <filename>default.filter</filename> includes various filters made
1939 available for use by the developers. Some are much more intrusive than
1940 others, and all should be used with caution. You may define additional
1941 filter files in <filename>config</filename> as you can with
1942 actions files. We suggest <filename>user.filter</filename> for any
1943 locally defined filters or customizations.
1951 The syntax of the configuration and filter files may change between different
1952 Privoxy versions, unfortunately some enhancements cost backwards compatibility.
1953 <!-- Add link to documentation-->
1957 All files use the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a
1958 comment (the rest of the line will be ignored) and understand line continuation
1959 through placing a backslash ("<literal>\</literal>") as the very last character
1960 in a line. If the <literal>#</literal> is preceded by a backslash, it looses
1961 its special function. Placing a <literal>#</literal> in front of an otherwise
1962 valid configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
1963 out" that line. Blank lines are ignored.
1967 The actions files and filter files
1968 can use Perl style <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> for
1969 maximum flexibility.
1973 After making any changes, there is no need to restart
1974 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
1975 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> detects such changes
1976 automatically. Note, however, that it may take one or two additional
1977 requests for the change to take effect. When changing the listening address
1978 of <application>Privoxy</application>, these <quote>wake up</quote> requests
1979 must obviously be sent to the <emphasis>old</emphasis> listening address.
1984 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
1985 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
1986 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
1987 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
1993 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1996 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1998 <!-- **************************************************** -->
1999 <!-- Include config.sgml here -->
2000 <!-- This is where the entire config file is detailed. -->
2002 <!-- end include -->
2005 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2009 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
2011 <sect1 id="actions-file"><title>Actions Files</title>
2014 The actions files are used to define what <emphasis>actions</emphasis>
2015 <application>Privoxy</application> takes for which URLs, and thus determines
2016 how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
2017 transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof).
2018 There are a number of such actions, with a wide range of functionality.
2019 Each action does something a little different.
2020 These actions give us a veritable arsenal of tools with which to exert
2021 our control, preferences and independence. Actions can be combined so that
2022 their effects are aggregated when applied against a given set of URLs.
2026 are three action files included with <application>Privoxy</application> with
2034 <filename>default.action</filename> - is the primary action file
2035 that sets the initial values for all actions. It is intended to
2036 provide a base level of functionality for
2037 <application>Privoxy's</application> array of features. So it is
2038 a set of broad rules that should work reasonably well as-is for most users.
2039 This is the file that the developers are keeping updated, and <link
2040 linkend="installation-keepupdated">making available to users</link>.
2041 The user's preferences as set in <filename>standard.action</filename>,
2042 e.g. either <literal>Cautious</literal> (the default),
2043 <literal>Medium</literal>, or <literal>Advanced</literal> (see
2049 <filename>user.action</filename> - is intended to be for local site
2050 preferences and exceptions. As an example, if your ISP or your bank
2051 has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
2052 thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
2057 <filename>standard.action</filename> - is used only by the web based editor
2058 at <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default">
2059 http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default</ulink>,
2060 to set various pre-defined sets of rules for the default actions section
2061 in <filename>default.action</filename>.
2064 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Cautious</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Medium</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Advanced</guibutton>
2067 These have increasing levels of aggressiveness <emphasis>and have no
2068 influence on your browsing unless you select them explicitly in the
2069 editor</emphasis>. A default installation should be pre-set to
2070 <literal>Cautious</literal> (versions prior to 3.0.5 were set to
2071 <literal>Medium</literal>). New users should try this for a while before
2072 adjusting the settings to more aggressive levels. The more aggressive
2073 the settings, then the more likelihood there is of problems such as sites
2074 not working as they should.
2077 The <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button allows you to turn each
2078 action on/off individually for fine-tuning. The <guibutton>Cautious</guibutton>
2079 button changes the actions list to low/safe settings which will activate
2080 ad blocking and a minimal set of &my-app;'s features, and subsequently
2081 there will be less of a chance for accidental problems. The
2082 <guibutton>Medium</guibutton> button sets the list to a medium level of
2083 other features and a low level set of privacy features. The
2084 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> button sets the list to a high level of
2085 ad blocking and medium level of privacy. See the chart below. The latter
2086 three buttons over-ride any changes via with the
2087 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button. More fine-tuning can be done in the
2088 lower sections of this internal page.
2091 It is not recommend to edit the <filename>standard.action</filename> file
2095 The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
2096 <filename>standard.action</filename> are<!-- different than this table which is out of date -->:
2099 <table frame=all><title>Default Configurations</title>
2100 <tgroup cols=4 align=left colsep=1 rowsep=1>
2101 <colspec colname=c1>
2102 <colspec colname=c2>
2103 <colspec colname=c3>
2104 <colspec colname=c4>
2107 <entry>Feature</entry>
2108 <entry>Cautious</entry>
2109 <entry>Medium</entry>
2110 <entry>Advanced</entry>
2115 <!-- <entry>f1</entry> -->
2116 <!-- <entry>f2</entry> -->
2117 <!-- <entry>f3</entry> -->
2118 <!-- <entry>f4</entry> -->
2124 <entry>Ad-blocking Aggressiveness</entry>
2125 <entry>medium</entry>
2131 <entry>Ad-filtering by size</entry>
2138 <entry>Ad-filtering by link</entry>
2144 <entry>Pop-up killing</entry>
2145 <entry>blocks only</entry>
2146 <entry>blocks only</entry>
2147 <entry>blocks only</entry>
2151 <entry>Privacy Features</entry>
2153 <entry>medium</entry>
2154 <entry>medium/high</entry>
2158 <entry>Cookie handling</entry>
2160 <entry>session-only</entry>
2165 <entry>Referer forging</entry>
2173 <entry>GIF de-animation</entry>
2181 <entry>Fast redirects</entry>
2188 <entry>HTML taming</entry>
2195 <entry>JavaScript taming</entry>
2202 <entry>Web-bug killing</entry>
2209 <entry>Image tag reordering</entry>
2225 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
2226 file, and are processed in the order they are defined (e.g.
2227 <filename>default.action</filename> is typically processed before
2228 <filename>user.action</filename>). The content of these can all be viewed and
2230 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2231 The over-riding principle when applying actions, is that the last action that
2232 matches a given URL wins. The broadest, most general rules go first
2233 (defined in <filename>default.action</filename>),
2234 followed by any exceptions (typically also in
2235 <filename>default.action</filename>), which are then followed lastly by any
2236 local preferences (typically in <emphasis>user</emphasis><filename>.action</filename>).
2237 Generally, <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word.
2241 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use
2242 <quote>aliases</quote> in an actions file, you have to place the (optional)
2243 <link linkend="aliases">alias section</link> at the top of that file.
2244 Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally to all
2245 sites and pages (be <emphasis>very careful</emphasis> with using such a
2246 universal set in <filename>user.action</filename> or any other actions file after
2247 <filename>default.action</filename>, because it will override the result
2248 from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
2249 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard
2250 <filename>user.action</filename> as an appendix to <filename>default.action</filename>,
2251 with the advantage that it is a separate file, which makes preserving your
2252 personal settings across <application>Privoxy</application> upgrades easier.
2256 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
2257 just some obnoxious URL whose content you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
2258 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
2259 written to disk), content can be modified, some JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
2260 fooled, and much more. See below for a <link linkend="actions">complete list
2264 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2266 <title>Finding the Right Mix</title>
2268 Note that some <link linkend="actions">actions</link>, like cookie suppression
2269 or script disabling, may render some sites unusable that rely on these
2270 techniques to work properly. Finding the right mix of actions is not always easy and
2271 certainly a matter of personal taste. And, things can always change, requiring
2272 refinements in the configuration. In general, it can be said that the more
2273 <quote>aggressive</quote> your default settings (in the top section of the
2274 actions file) are, the more exceptions for <quote>trusted</quote> sites you
2275 will have to make later. If, for example, you want to crunch all cookies per
2276 default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for sites that you
2277 regularly use and that require cookies for actually useful purposes, like maybe
2278 your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
2282 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
2283 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
2284 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
2285 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again :).
2289 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2291 <title>How to Edit</title>
2293 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by
2294 using our browser-based editor, which can be reached from <ulink
2295 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2296 Note: the config file option <link
2297 linkend="enable-edit-actions">enable-edit-actions</link> must be enabled for
2298 this to work. The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single
2299 feature on a per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults
2300 like <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> or
2301 <quote>Advanced</quote>. Warning: the <quote>Advanced</quote> setting is more
2302 aggressive, and will be more likely to cause problems for some sites.
2303 Experienced users only!
2307 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
2308 the actions files with your favorite text editor. Look at
2309 <filename>default.action</filename> which is richly commented with many
2315 <sect2 id="actions-apply">
2316 <title>How Actions are Applied to Requests</title>
2318 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections,
2319 like the <quote><link linkend="aliases">alias</link></quote> sections which will
2320 be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on regular sections: They have a
2321 heading line (often split up to multiple lines for readability) which consist
2322 of a list of actions, separated by whitespace and enclosed in curly braces.
2323 Below that, there is a list of URL and tag patterns, each on a separate line.
2327 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
2328 compared to all URL patterns in each <quote>action file</quote>.
2329 Every time it matches, the list of applicable actions for the request is
2330 incrementally updated, using the heading of the section in which the
2331 pattern is located. The same is done again for tags and tag patterns later on.
2335 If multiple applying sections set the same action differently,
2336 the last match wins. If not, the effects are aggregated.
2337 E.g. a URL might match a regular section with a heading line of <literal>{
2338 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link> }</literal>,
2339 then later another one with just <literal>{
2340 +<link linkend="block">block</link> }</literal>, resulting
2341 in <emphasis>both</emphasis> actions to apply. And there may well be
2342 cases where you will want to combine actions together. Such a section then
2348 { +<literal>handle-as-image</literal> +<literal>block</literal> }
2349 # Block these as if they were images. Send no block page.
2351 media.example.com/.*banners
2352 .example.com/images/ads/</screen>
2356 You can trace this process for URL patterns and any given URL by visiting <ulink
2357 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>.
2361 Examples and more detail on this is provided in the Appendix, <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">
2362 Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</link> section.
2366 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2367 <sect2 id="af-patterns">
2368 <title>Patterns</title>
2370 As mentioned, <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>patterns</quote>
2371 to determine what <emphasis>actions</emphasis> might apply to which sites and
2372 pages your browser attempts to access. These <quote>patterns</quote> use wild
2373 card type <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> matching to achieve a high degree of
2374 flexibility. This allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match
2375 against many similar patterns.
2379 Generally, an URL pattern has the form
2380 <literal><domain>/<path></literal>, where both the
2381 <literal><domain></literal> and <literal><path></literal> are
2382 optional. (This is why the special <literal>/</literal> pattern matches all
2383 URLs). Note that the protocol portion of the URL pattern (e.g.
2384 <literal>http://</literal>) should <emphasis>not</emphasis> be included in
2385 the pattern. This is assumed already!
2388 The pattern matching syntax is different for the domain and path parts of
2389 the URL. The domain part uses a simple globbing type matching technique,
2390 while the path part uses a more flexible
2391 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2392 Expressions (PCRE)</quote></ulink> based syntax.
2397 <term><literal>www.example.com/</literal></term>
2400 is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2401 regardless of which document on that server is requested. So ALL pages in
2402 this domain would be covered by the scope of this action. Note that a
2403 simple <literal>example.com</literal> is different and would NOT match.
2408 <term><literal>www.example.com</literal></term>
2411 means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing <literal>/</literal> may
2417 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html$</literal></term>
2420 matches all the documents on <literal>www.example.com</literal>
2421 whose name starts with <literal>/index.html</literal>.
2426 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html$</literal></term>
2429 matches only the single document <literal>/index.html</literal>
2430 on <literal>www.example.com</literal>.
2435 <term><literal>/index.html$</literal></term>
2438 matches the document <literal>/index.html</literal>, regardless of the domain,
2439 i.e. on <emphasis>any</emphasis> web server anywhere.
2444 <term><literal>index.html</literal></term>
2447 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
2448 there is no top-level domain called <literal>.html</literal>. So its
2456 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2457 <sect3><title>The Domain Pattern</title>
2460 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
2461 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
2467 <term><literal>.example.com</literal></term>
2470 matches any domain that <emphasis>ENDS</emphasis> in
2471 <literal>.example.com</literal>
2476 <term><literal>www.</literal></term>
2479 matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
2480 <literal>www.</literal>
2485 <term><literal>.example.</literal></term>
2488 matches any domain that <emphasis>CONTAINS</emphasis> <literal>.example.</literal>.
2489 And, by the way, also included would be any files or documents that exist
2490 within that domain since no path limitations are specified. (Correctly
2491 speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains <literal>example</literal> as
2492 a domain.) This might be <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2493 <literal>news.example.de</literal>, or
2494 <literal>www.example.net/cgi/testing.pl</literal> for instance. All these
2502 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
2503 themselves. These work similarly to shell globbing type wild-cards:
2504 <quote>*</quote> represents zero or more arbitrary characters (this is
2506 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2507 Expression</quote></ulink> based syntax of <quote>.*</quote>),
2508 <quote>?</quote> represents any single character (this is equivalent to the
2509 regular expression syntax of a simple <quote>.</quote>), and you can define
2510 <quote>character classes</quote> in square brackets which is similar to
2511 the same regular expression technique. All of this can be freely mixed:
2516 <term><literal>ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2519 matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
2520 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>
2525 <term><literal>*ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2528 matches all of the above, and then some.
2533 <term><literal>.?pix.com</literal></term>
2536 matches <literal>www.ipix.com</literal>,
2537 <literal>pictures.epix.com</literal>, <literal>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</literal> etc.
2542 <term><literal>www[1-9a-ez].example.c*</literal></term>
2545 matches <literal>www1.example.com</literal>,
2546 <literal>www4.example.cc</literal>, <literal>wwwd.example.cy</literal>,
2547 <literal>wwwz.example.com</literal> etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
2548 <literal>wwww.example.com</literal>.
2555 While flexible, this is not the sophistication of full regular expression based syntax.
2560 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2563 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2564 <sect3><title>The Path Pattern</title>
2567 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl compatible (PCRE)
2568 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2569 Expression</quote></ulink> based syntax
2570 (through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> library) for
2571 matching the path portion (after the slash), and is thus more flexible.
2575 There is an <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link> with a brief quick-start into regular
2576 expressions, and full (very technical) documentation on PCRE regex syntax is available on-line
2577 at <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/man.txt">http://www.pcre.org/man.txt</ulink>.
2578 You might also find the Perl man page on regular expressions (<literal>man perlre</literal>)
2579 useful, which is available on-line at <ulink
2580 url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html</ulink>.
2584 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the <quote>/</quote>,
2585 i.e. it matches as if it would start with a <quote>^</quote> (regular expression speak
2586 for the beginning of a line).
2590 Please also note that matching in the path is <emphasis>CASE INSENSITIVE</emphasis>
2591 by default, but you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
2592 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch: <literal>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</literal> will match
2593 only documents whose path starts with <literal>PaTtErN</literal> in
2594 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
2599 <term><literal>.example.com/.*</literal></term>
2602 Is equivalent to just <quote>.example.com</quote>, since any documents
2603 within that domain are matched with or without the <quote>.*</quote>
2604 regular expression. This is redundant
2609 <term><literal>.example.com/.*/index.html$</literal></term>
2612 Will match any page in the domain of <quote>example.com</quote> that is
2613 named <quote>index.html</quote>, and that is part of some path. For
2614 example, it matches <quote>www.example.com/testing/index.html</quote> but
2615 NOT <quote>www.example.com/index.html</quote> because the regular
2616 expression called for at least two <quote>/'s</quote>, thus the path
2617 requirement. It also would match
2618 <quote>www.example.com/testing/index_html</quote>, because of the
2619 special meta-character <quote>.</quote>.
2624 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)?index\.html$</literal></term>
2627 This regular expression is conditional so it will match any page
2628 named <quote>index.html</quote> regardless of path which in this case can
2629 have one or more <quote>/'s</quote>. And this one must contain exactly
2630 <quote>.html</quote> (but does not have to end with that!).
2635 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)</literal></term>
2638 This regular expression will match any path of <quote>example.com</quote>
2639 that contains any of the words <quote>ads</quote>, <quote>banner</quote>,
2640 <quote>banners</quote> (because of the <quote>?</quote>) or <quote>junk</quote>.
2641 The path does not have to end in these words, just contain them.
2646 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)/.*\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$</literal></term>
2649 This is very much the same as above, except now it must end in either
2650 <quote>.jpg</quote>, <quote>.jpeg</quote>, <quote>.gif</quote> or <quote>.png</quote>. So this
2651 one is limited to common image formats.
2658 There are many, many good examples to be found in <filename>default.action</filename>,
2659 and more tutorials below in <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>.
2664 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2667 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2668 <sect3 id="tag-pattern"><title>The Tag Pattern</title>
2671 Tag patterns are used to change the applying actions based on the
2672 request's tags. Tags can be created with either the
2673 <link linkend="CLIENT-HEADER-TAGGER">client-header-tagger</link>
2674 or the <link linkend="SERVER-HEADER-TAGGER">server-header-tagger</link> action.
2678 Tag patterns have to start with <quote>TAG:</quote>, so &my-app;
2679 can tell them apart from URL patterns. Everything after the colon
2680 including white space, is interpreted as a regular expression with
2681 path pattern syntax, except that tag patterns aren't left-anchored
2682 automatically (&my-app; doesn't silently add a <quote>^</quote>,
2683 you have to do it yourself if you need it).
2687 To match all requests that are tagged with <quote>foo</quote>
2688 your pattern line should be <quote>TAG:^foo$</quote>,
2689 <quote>TAG:foo</quote> would work as well, but it would also
2690 match requests whose tags contain <quote>foo</quote> somewhere.
2691 <quote>TAG: foo</quote> wouldn't work as it requires white space.
2695 Sections can contain URL and tag patterns at the same time,
2696 but tag patterns are checked after the URL patterns and thus
2697 always overrule them, even if they are located before the URL patterns.
2701 Once a new tag is added, Privoxy checks right away if it's matched by one
2702 of the tag patterns and updates the action settings accordingly. As a result
2703 tags can be used to activate other tagger actions, as long as these other
2704 taggers look for headers that haven't already be parsed.
2708 For example you could tag client requests which use the
2709 <literal>POST</literal> method,
2710 then use this tag to activate another tagger that adds a tag if cookies
2711 are sent, and then use a block action based on the cookie tag. This allows
2712 the outcome of one action, to be input into a subsequent action. However if
2713 you'd reverse the position of the described taggers, and activated the
2714 method tagger based on the cookie tagger, no method tags would be created.
2715 The method tagger would look for the request line, but at the time
2716 the cookie tag is created, the request line has already been parsed.
2720 While this is a limitation you should be aware of, this kind of
2721 indirection is seldom needed anyway and even the example doesn't
2722 make too much sense.
2729 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2732 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2734 <sect2 id="actions">
2735 <title>Actions</title>
2737 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
2738 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a
2739 <quote>+</quote>, and turned off if preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. So a
2740 <literal>+action</literal> means <quote>do that action</quote>, e.g.
2741 <literal>+block</literal> means <quote>please block URLs that match the
2742 following patterns</quote>, and <literal>-block</literal> means <quote>don't
2743 block URLs that match the following patterns, even if <literal>+block</literal>
2744 previously applied.</quote>
2749 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
2750 separated by whitespace, like in
2751 <literal>{+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}}</literal>,
2752 followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which they apply.
2753 Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up a section
2754 of the actions file.
2758 Actions fall into three categories:
2765 Boolean, i.e the action can only be <quote>enabled</quote> or
2766 <quote>disabled</quote>. Syntax:
2770 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # enable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
2771 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable></screen>
2774 Example: <literal>+block</literal>
2781 Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of action.
2786 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and set parameter to <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>,
2787 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
2788 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action. The parameter can be omitted</screen>
2791 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized action,
2792 the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are simply ignored.
2795 Example: <literal>+hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070602 Firefox/2.0.0.4}</literal>
2801 Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions,
2802 but they behave differently: If the action applies multiple times to the
2803 same URL, but with different parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> the parameters
2804 from <emphasis>all</emphasis> matches are remembered. This is used for actions
2805 that can be executed for the same request repeatedly, like adding multiple
2806 headers, or filtering through multiple filters. Syntax:
2810 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and add <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> to the list of parameters
2811 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # remove the parameter <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> from the list of parameters
2812 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
2813 <replaceable class="parameter">-name</replaceable> # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list</screen>
2816 Examples: <literal>+add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text}</literal> and
2817 <literal>+filter{html-annoyances}</literal>
2825 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no <quote>actions</quote> are
2826 taken. So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
2827 normal, non-blocking, non-filtering proxy. You must specifically enable the
2828 privacy and blocking features you need (although the provided default actions
2829 files will give a good starting point).
2833 Later defined action sections always over-ride earlier ones of the same type.
2834 So exceptions to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
2835 in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files such
2836 as <filename>user.action</filename>). For multi-valued actions, the actions
2837 are applied in the order they are specified. Actions files are processed in
2838 the order they are defined in <filename>config</filename> (the default
2839 installation has three actions files). It also quite possible for any given
2840 URL to match more than one <quote>pattern</quote> (because of wildcards and
2841 regular expressions), and thus to trigger more than one set of actions! Last
2845 <!-- start actions listing -->
2847 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> actions are:
2851 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2852 <!-- Please note the below defined actions use id's that are -->
2853 <!-- probably linked from other places, so please don't change. -->
2855 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2858 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2860 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="add-header">
2861 <title>add-header</title>
2865 <term>Typical use:</term>
2867 <para>Confuse log analysis, custom applications</para>
2872 <term>Effect:</term>
2875 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
2882 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2884 <para>Multi-value.</para>
2889 <term>Parameter:</term>
2892 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not checked.
2893 It is recommended that you use the <quote><literal>X-</literal></quote> prefix
2903 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
2904 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
2905 <quote>HTTP headers</quote> are, you definitely don't need to worry about this
2912 <term>Example usage:</term>
2915 <screen>+add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}</screen>
2923 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2924 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="block">
2925 <title>block</title>
2929 <term>Typical use:</term>
2931 <para>Block ads or other unwanted content</para>
2936 <term>Effect:</term>
2939 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the
2940 requests are trapped by &my-app; and the requested URL is never retrieved,
2941 but is answered locally with a substitute page or image, as determined by
2943 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2945 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>, and
2947 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> actions.
2955 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2957 <para>Boolean.</para>
2962 <term>Parameter:</term>
2972 <application>Privoxy</application> sends a special <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page
2973 for requests to blocked pages. This page contains links to find out why the request
2974 was blocked, and a click-through to the blocked content (the latter only if compiled with the
2975 force feature enabled). The <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page adapts to the available
2976 screen space -- it displays full-blown if space allows, or miniaturized and text-only
2977 if loaded into a small frame or window. If you are using <application>Privoxy</application>
2978 right now, you can take a look at the
2979 <ulink url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
2983 A very important exception occurs if <emphasis>both</emphasis>
2984 <literal>block</literal> and <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2985 apply to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
2986 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
2987 (see below) also applies, the type of image will be determined by its parameter,
2988 if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is sent.
2991 It is important to understand this process, in order
2992 to understand how <application>Privoxy</application> deals with
2993 ads and other unwanted content. Blocking is a core feature, and one
2994 upon which various other features depend.
2997 The <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
2998 action can perform a very similar task, by <quote>blocking</quote>
2999 banner images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
3000 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
3001 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse the two.
3007 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3011 # Block and replace with "blocked" page
3012 .nasty-stuff.example.com
3014 {+block +handle-as-image}
3015 # Block and replace with image
3019 {+block +handle-as-empty-document}
3020 # Block and then ignore
3021 adserver.exampleclick.net/.*\.js$</screen>
3031 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3032 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-header-filter">
3033 <title>client-header-filter</title>
3037 <term>Typical use:</term>
3040 Rewrite or remove single client headers.
3046 <term>Effect:</term>
3049 All client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
3050 the specified regular expression based substitutions.
3057 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3059 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3064 <term>Parameter:</term>
3067 The name of a client-header filter, as defined in one of the
3068 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
3077 Client-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
3078 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
3079 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
3080 You can do that by using tags though.
3083 Client-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
3084 and use their output as input.
3087 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
3088 to learn which client-header filters are available by default, and how to
3096 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3100 {+client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}}
3111 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3112 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-header-tagger">
3113 <title>client-header-tagger</title>
3117 <term>Typical use:</term>
3120 Block requests based on their headers.
3126 <term>Effect:</term>
3129 Client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
3130 the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
3138 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3140 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3145 <term>Parameter:</term>
3148 The name of a client-header tagger, as defined in one of the
3149 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
3158 Client-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
3159 and as the header isn't modified, each tagger <quote>sees</quote>
3163 Client-header taggers are the first actions that are executed
3164 and their tags can be used to control every other action.
3170 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3174 # Tag every request with the User-Agent header
3175 {+client-header-tagger{user-agent}}
3186 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3187 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="content-type-overwrite">
3188 <title>content-type-overwrite</title>
3192 <term>Typical use:</term>
3194 <para>Stop useless download menus from popping up, or change the browser's rendering mode</para>
3199 <term>Effect:</term>
3202 Replaces the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header.
3209 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3211 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3216 <term>Parameter:</term>
3228 The <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header is used by the
3229 browser to decide what to do with the document. The value of this
3230 header can cause the browser to open a download menu instead of
3231 displaying the document by itself, even if the document's format is
3232 supported by the browser.
3235 The declared content type can also affect which rendering mode
3236 the browser chooses. If XHTML is delivered as <quote>text/html</quote>,
3237 many browsers treat it as yet another broken HTML document.
3238 If it is send as <quote>application/xml</quote>, browsers with
3239 XHTML support will only display it, if the syntax is correct.
3242 If you see a web site that proudly uses XHTML buttons, but sets
3243 <quote>Content-Type: text/html</quote>, you can use &my-app;
3244 to overwrite it with <quote>application/xml</quote> and validate
3245 the web master's claim inside your XHTML-supporting browser.
3246 If the syntax is incorrect, the browser will complain loudly.
3249 You can also go the opposite direction: if your browser prints
3250 error messages instead of rendering a document falsely declared
3251 as XHTML, you can overwrite the content type with
3252 <quote>text/html</quote> and have it rendered as broken HTML document.
3255 By default <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal> only replaces
3256 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> headers that look like some kind of text.
3257 If you want to overwrite it unconditionally, you have to combine it with
3258 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>.
3259 This limitation exists for a reason, think twice before circumventing it.
3262 Most of the time it's easier to replace this action with a custom
3263 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
3264 It allows you to activate it for every document of a certain site and it will still
3265 only replace the content types you aimed at.
3268 Of course you can apply <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal>
3269 to a whole site and then make URL based exceptions, but it's a lot
3270 more work to get the same precision.
3276 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
3279 <screen># Check if www.example.net/ really uses valid XHTML
3280 { +content-type-overwrite{application/xml} }
3283 # but leave the content type unmodified if the URL looks like a style sheet
3284 {-content-type-overwrite}
3285 www.example.net/.*\.css$
3286 www.example.net/.*style
3295 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3296 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-client-header">
3300 <title>crunch-client-header</title>
3304 <term>Typical use:</term>
3306 <para>Remove a client header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3311 <term>Effect:</term>
3314 Deletes every header sent by the client that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3321 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3323 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3328 <term>Parameter:</term>
3340 This action allows you to block client headers for which no dedicated
3341 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists.
3342 <application>Privoxy</application> will remove every client header that
3343 contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3346 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3347 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3348 they contain the same string.
3351 <literal>crunch-client-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3352 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3353 parts of them, you should use a
3354 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header filter</link></literal>.
3358 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3365 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3368 <screen># Block the non-existent "Privacy-Violation:" client header
3369 { +crunch-client-header{Privacy-Violation:} }
3379 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3380 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-if-none-match">
3381 <title>crunch-if-none-match</title>
3387 <term>Typical use:</term>
3389 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
3394 <term>Effect:</term>
3397 Deletes the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header.
3404 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3406 <para>Boolean.</para>
3411 <term>Parameter:</term>
3423 Removing the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header
3424 is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
3425 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote> which
3426 would cause the browser to use a cached copy of the page.
3429 It is also useful to make sure the header isn't used as a cookie
3430 replacement (unlikely but possible).
3433 Blocking the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> header shouldn't cause any
3434 caching problems, as long as the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> header
3435 isn't blocked or missing as well.
3438 It is recommended to use this action together with
3439 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
3441 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>.
3447 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3450 <screen># Let the browser revalidate cached documents but don't
3451 # allow the server to use the revalidation headers for user tracking.
3452 {+hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
3453 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
3454 +crunch-if-none-match}
3463 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3464 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-incoming-cookies">
3465 <title>crunch-incoming-cookies</title>
3469 <term>Typical use:</term>
3472 Prevent the web server from setting HTTP cookies on your system
3478 <term>Effect:</term>
3481 Deletes any <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from server replies.
3488 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3490 <para>Boolean.</para>
3495 <term>Parameter:</term>
3507 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> HTTP cookies. For
3508 <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> HTTP cookies, use
3509 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>.
3510 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable HTTP cookies completely.
3513 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3514 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3515 since it would prevent the session cookies from being set. See also
3516 <literal><link linkend="filter-content-cookies">filter-content-cookies</link></literal>.
3522 <term>Example usage:</term>
3525 <screen>+crunch-incoming-cookies</screen>
3533 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3534 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-server-header">
3535 <title>crunch-server-header</title>
3541 <term>Typical use:</term>
3543 <para>Remove a server header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3548 <term>Effect:</term>
3551 Deletes every header sent by the server that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3558 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3560 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3565 <term>Parameter:</term>
3577 This action allows you to block server headers for which no dedicated
3578 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists. <application>Privoxy</application>
3579 will remove every server header that contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3582 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3583 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3584 they contain the same string.
3587 <literal>crunch-server-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3588 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3589 parts of them, you should use a custom
3590 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
3594 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3601 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3604 <screen># Crunch server headers that try to prevent caching
3605 { +crunch-server-header{no-cache} }
3614 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3615 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-outgoing-cookies">
3616 <title>crunch-outgoing-cookies</title>
3620 <term>Typical use:</term>
3623 Prevent the web server from reading any HTTP cookies from your system
3629 <term>Effect:</term>
3632 Deletes any <quote>Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from client requests.
3639 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3641 <para>Boolean.</para>
3646 <term>Parameter:</term>
3658 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> HTTP cookies. For
3659 <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> HTTP cookies, use
3660 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>.
3661 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable HTTP cookies completely.
3664 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3665 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3666 since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
3672 <term>Example usage:</term>
3675 <screen>+crunch-outgoing-cookies</screen>
3684 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3685 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="deanimate-gifs">
3686 <title>deanimate-gifs</title>
3690 <term>Typical use:</term>
3692 <para>Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.</para>
3697 <term>Effect:</term>
3700 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
3707 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3709 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3714 <term>Parameter:</term>
3717 <quote>last</quote> or <quote>first</quote>
3726 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
3727 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
3728 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last
3729 frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
3730 most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
3731 last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
3734 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
3735 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
3742 <term>Example usage:</term>
3745 <screen>+deanimate-gifs{last}</screen>
3752 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3753 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="downgrade-http-version">
3754 <title>downgrade-http-version</title>
3758 <term>Typical use:</term>
3760 <para>Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1</para>
3765 <term>Effect:</term>
3768 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
3775 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3777 <para>Boolean.</para>
3782 <term>Parameter:</term>
3794 This is a left-over from the time when <application>Privoxy</application>
3795 didn't support important HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the
3796 unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server
3797 out there. Not all HTTP/1.1 features and requirements are supported yet,
3798 so there is a chance you might need this action.
3804 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3807 <screen>{+downgrade-http-version}
3808 problem-host.example.com</screen>
3816 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3817 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="fast-redirects">
3818 <title>fast-redirects</title>
3822 <term>Typical use:</term>
3824 <para>Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links.</para>
3829 <term>Effect:</term>
3832 Detects redirection URLs and redirects the browser without contacting
3833 the redirection server first.
3840 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3842 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3847 <term>Parameter:</term>
3852 <quote>simple-check</quote> to just search for the string <quote>http://</quote>
3853 to detect redirection URLs.
3858 <quote>check-decoded-url</quote> to decode URLs (if necessary) before searching
3859 for redirection URLs.
3870 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
3871 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
3872 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
3873 resulting from this scheme typically look like:
3874 <quote>http://www.example.org/click-tracker.cgi?target=http%3a//www.example.net/</quote>.
3877 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
3878 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
3879 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
3880 to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
3881 browser asks the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
3885 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
3886 If it is enabled by default, you will have to create some exceptions to
3887 this action. It can lead to failures in several ways:
3890 Not every URLs with other URLs as parameters is evil.
3891 Some sites offer a real service that requires this information to work.
3892 For example a validation service needs to know, which document to validate.
3893 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> assumes that every URL parameter that
3894 looks like another URL is a redirection target, and will always redirect to
3895 the last one. Most of the time the assumption is correct, but if it isn't,
3896 the user gets redirected anyway.
3899 Another failure occurs if the URL contains other parameters after the URL parameter.
3901 <quote>http://www.example.org/?redirect=http%3a//www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3902 contains the redirection URL <quote>http://www.example.net/</quote>,
3903 followed by another parameter. <literal>fast-redirects</literal> doesn't know that
3904 and will cause a redirect to <quote>http://www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3905 Depending on the target server configuration, the parameter will be silently ignored
3906 or lead to a <quote>page not found</quote> error. You can prevent this problem by
3907 first using the <literal><link linkend="redirect">redirect</link></literal> action
3908 to remove the last part of the URL, but it requires a little effort.
3911 To detect a redirection URL, <literal>fast-redirects</literal> only
3912 looks for the string <quote>http://</quote>, either in plain text
3913 (invalid but often used) or encoded as <quote>http%3a//</quote>.
3914 Some sites use their own URL encoding scheme, encrypt the address
3915 of the target server or replace it with a database id. In theses cases
3916 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> is fooled and the request reaches the
3917 redirection server where it probably gets logged.
3923 <term>Example usage:</term>
3927 { +fast-redirects{simple-check} }
3930 { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
3931 another.example.com/testing</screen>
3940 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3941 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter">
3942 <title>filter</title>
3946 <term>Typical use:</term>
3948 <para>Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
3949 do fun text replacements, add personalized effects, etc.</para>
3954 <term>Effect:</term>
3957 All instances of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which
3958 this action applies, can be filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular
3959 expression based substitutions. (Note: as of version 3.0.3 plain text documents
3960 are exempted from filtering, because web servers often use the
3961 <literal>text/plain</literal> MIME type for all files whose type they don't know.)
3968 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3970 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3975 <term>Parameter:</term>
3978 The name of a content filter, as defined in the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>.
3979 Filters can be defined in one or more files as defined by the
3980 <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
3981 option in the <link linkend="config">config file</link>.
3982 <filename>default.filter</filename> is the collection of filters
3983 supplied by the developers. Locally defined filters should go
3984 in their own file, such as <filename>user.filter</filename>.
3987 When used in its negative form,
3988 and without parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> filtering is completely disabled.
3997 For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
3998 in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below for
4002 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
4003 slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
4004 passed the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way
4005 since the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more
4006 noticeable on slower connections.
4009 <quote>Rolling your own</quote>
4010 filters requires a knowledge of
4011 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
4012 Expressions</quote></ulink> and
4013 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html"><quote>HTML</quote></ulink>.
4014 This is very powerful feature, and potentially very intrusive.
4015 Filters should be used with caution, and where an equivalent
4016 <quote>action</quote> is not available.
4019 The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
4020 <literal><link linkend="buffer-limit">buffer-limit</link></literal>
4021 option in the main <link linkend="config">config file</link>. The
4022 default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the buffered
4023 data, and all pending data, is passed through unfiltered.
4026 Inappropriate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
4027 (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data
4028 (from HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate
4029 the integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might
4030 be necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering
4031 by defining appropriate <literal>-filter</literal> exceptions.
4034 Compressed content can't be filtered either, unless &my-app;
4035 is compiled with zlib support (requires at least &my-app; 3.0.7),
4036 in which case &my-app; will decompress the content before filtering
4040 If you use a &my-app; version without zlib support, but want filtering to work on
4041 as much documents as possible, even those that would normally be sent compressed,
4042 you must use the <literal><link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link></literal>
4043 action in conjunction with <literal>filter</literal>.
4046 Content filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
4047 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
4048 action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism
4049 works quite differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners
4050 based on their size (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat
4054 <link linkend="contact">Feedback</link> with suggestions for new or
4055 improved filters is particularly welcome!
4058 The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
4059 predefined filter. There are <link linkend="predefined-filters">more
4060 verbose explanations</link> of what these filters do in the <link
4061 linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>.
4067 <term>Example usage (with filters from the distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file).
4068 See <link linkend="PREDEFINED-FILTERS">the Predefined Filters section</link> for
4069 more explanation on each:</term>
4072 <anchor id="filter-js-annoyances">
4073 <screen>+filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse</screen>
4076 <anchor id="filter-js-events">
4077 <screen>+filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites)</screen>
4080 <anchor id="filter-html-annoyances">
4081 <screen>+filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse</screen>
4084 <anchor id="filter-content-cookies">
4085 <screen>+filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content</screen>
4088 <anchor id="filter-refresh-tags">
4089 <screen>+filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups)</screen>
4092 <anchor id="filter-unsolicited-popups">
4093 <screen>+filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
4096 <anchor id="filter-all-popups">
4097 <screen>+filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
4100 <anchor id="filter-img-reorder">
4101 <screen>+filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective</screen>
4104 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-size">
4105 <screen>+filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size</screen>
4108 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-link">
4109 <screen>+filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers</screen>
4112 <anchor id="filter-webbugs">
4113 <screen>+filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)</screen>
4116 <anchor id="filter-tiny-textforms">
4117 <screen>+filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap</screen>
4120 <anchor id="filter-jumping-windows">
4121 <screen>+filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves</screen>
4124 <anchor id="filter-frameset-borders">
4125 <screen>+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizeable</screen>
4128 <anchor id="filter-demoronizer">
4129 <screen>+filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets</screen>
4132 <anchor id="filter-shockwave-flash">
4133 <screen>+filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects</screen>
4136 <anchor id="filter-quicktime-kioskmode">
4137 <screen>+filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies savable</screen>
4140 <anchor id="filter-fun">
4141 <screen>+filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!</screen>
4144 <anchor id="filter-crude-parental">
4145 <screen>+filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering (demo only)</screen>
4148 <anchor id="filter-ie-exploits">
4149 <screen>+filter{ie-exploits} # Disable a known Internet Explorer bug exploits</screen>
4152 <anchor id="filter-site-specifics">
4153 <screen>+filter{site-specifics} # Custom filters for specific site related problems</screen>
4156 <anchor id="filter-google">
4157 <screen>+filter{google} # Removes text ads and other Google specific improvements</screen>
4160 <anchor id="filter-yahoo">
4161 <screen>+filter{yahoo} # Removes text ads and other Yahoo specific improvements</screen>
4164 <anchor id="filter-msn">
4165 <screen>+filter{msn} # Removes text ads and other MSN specific improvements</screen>
4168 <anchor id="filter-blogspot">
4169 <screen>+filter{blogspot} # Cleans up Blogspot blogs</screen>
4172 <anchor id="filter-no-ping">
4173 <screen>+filter{no-ping} # Removes non-standard ping attributes from anchor and area tags</screen>
4181 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4182 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="force-text-mode">
4183 <title>force-text-mode</title>
4189 <term>Typical use:</term>
4191 <para>Force <application>Privoxy</application> to treat a document as if it was in some kind of <emphasis>text</emphasis> format. </para>
4196 <term>Effect:</term>
4199 Declares a document as text, even if the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> isn't detected as such.
4206 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4208 <para>Boolean.</para>
4213 <term>Parameter:</term>
4225 As explained <literal><link linkend="filter">above</link></literal>,
4226 <application>Privoxy</application> tries to only filter files that are
4227 in some kind of text format. The same restrictions apply to
4228 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite</link></literal>.
4229 <literal>force-text-mode</literal> declares a document as text,
4230 without looking at the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> first.
4234 Think twice before activating this action. Filtering binary data
4235 with regular expressions can cause file damage.
4242 <term>Example usage:</term>
4255 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4256 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="forward-override">
4257 <title>forward-override</title>
4263 <term>Typical use:</term>
4265 <para>Change the forwarding settings based on User-Agent or request origin</para>
4270 <term>Effect:</term>
4273 Overrules the forward directives in the configuration file.
4280 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4282 <para>Multi-value.</para>
4287 <term>Parameter:</term>
4291 <para><quote>forward .</quote> to use a direct connection without any additional proxies.</para>
4295 <quote>forward 127.0.0.1:8123</quote> to use the HTTP proxy listening at 127.0.0.1 port 8123.
4300 <quote>forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 .</quote> to use the socks4a proxy listening at
4301 127.0.0.1 port 9050. Replace <quote>forward-socks4a</quote> with <quote>forward-socks4</quote>
4302 to use a socks4 connection (with local DNS resolution) instead.
4307 <quote>forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 proxy.example.org:8000</quote> to use the socks4a proxy
4308 listening at 127.0.0.1 port 9050 to reach the HTTP proxy listening at proxy.example.org port 8000.
4309 Replace <quote>forward-socks4a</quote> with <quote>forward-socks4</quote> to use a socks4 connection
4310 (with local DNS resolution) instead.
4321 This action takes parameters similar to the <!-- I hope this link actual works -->
4322 <link linkend="forwarding">forward</link> directives in the configuration
4323 file, but without the URL pattern. It can be used as replacement, but normally it's only
4324 used in cases where matching based on the request URL isn't sufficient.
4328 Please read the description for the <link linkend="forwarding">forward</link> directives before
4329 using this action. Forwarding to the wrong people will reduce your privacy and increase the
4330 chances of man-in-the-middle attacks.
4333 If the ports are missing or invalid, default values will be used. This might change
4334 in the future and you shouldn't rely on it. Otherwise incorrect syntax causes Privoxy
4338 Use the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">show-url-info CGI page</ulink>
4339 to verify that your forward settings do what you thought the do.
4346 <term>Example usage:</term>
4350 # Always use direct connections for requests previously tagged as
4351 # <quote>User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2.0</quote> and make sure
4352 # resuming downloads continues to work.
4353 # This way you can continue to use Tor for your normal browsing,
4354 # without overloading the Tor network with your FreeBSD ports updates
4355 # or downloads of bigger files like ISOs.
4356 {+forward-override{forward .} \
4357 -hide-if-modified-since \
4358 -overwrite-last-modified \
4360 TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2\.0$
4369 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4370 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-empty-document">
4371 <title>handle-as-empty-document</title>
4377 <term>Typical use:</term>
4379 <para>Mark URLs that should be replaced by empty documents <emphasis>if they get blocked</emphasis></para>
4384 <term>Effect:</term>
4387 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs.
4388 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
4389 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote>
4390 page, or an empty document will be sent to the client as a substitute for the blocked content.
4391 The <emphasis>empty</emphasis> document isn't literally empty, but actually contains a single space.
4398 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4400 <para>Boolean.</para>
4405 <term>Parameter:</term>
4417 Some browsers complain about syntax errors if JavaScript documents
4418 are blocked with <application>Privoxy's</application>
4419 default HTML page; this option can be used to silence them.
4420 And of course this action can also be used to eliminate the &my-app;
4421 BLOCKED message in frames.
4424 The content type for the empty document can be specified with
4425 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{}</link></literal>,
4426 but usually this isn't necessary.
4432 <term>Example usage:</term>
4435 <screen># Block all documents on example.org that end with ".js",
4436 # but send an empty document instead of the usual HTML message.
4437 {+block +handle-as-empty-document}
4447 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4448 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-image">
4449 <title>handle-as-image</title>
4453 <term>Typical use:</term>
4455 <para>Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images <emphasis>if they do get blocked</emphasis>, rather than HTML pages)</para>
4460 <term>Effect:</term>
4463 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
4464 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
4465 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
4466 page, or a replacement image (as determined by the <literal><link
4467 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> action) will be sent to the
4468 client as a substitute for the blocked content.
4475 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4477 <para>Boolean.</para>
4482 <term>Parameter:</term>
4494 The below generic example section is actually part of <filename>default.action</filename>.
4495 It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
4499 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
4500 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
4501 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
4504 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (in-line) ad
4505 frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
4506 Forcing <literal>handle-as-image</literal> in this situation will not replace the
4507 ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
4513 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
4516 <screen># Generic image extensions:
4519 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
4521 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
4522 # blocked as images:
4524 {+block +handle-as-image}
4525 some.nasty-banner-server.com/junk.cgi\?output=trash
4527 # Banner source! Who cares if they also have non-image content?
4537 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4538 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-accept-language">
4539 <title>hide-accept-language</title>
4545 <term>Typical use:</term>
4547 <para>Pretend to use different language settings.</para>
4552 <term>Effect:</term>
4555 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> HTTP header in client requests.
4562 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4564 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4569 <term>Parameter:</term>
4572 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4581 Faking the browser's language settings can be useful to make a
4582 foreign User-Agent set with
4583 <literal><link linkend="hide-user-agent">hide-user-agent</link></literal>
4587 However some sites with content in different languages check the
4588 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> to decide which one to take by default.
4589 Sometimes it isn't possible to later switch to another language without
4590 changing the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header first.
4593 Therefore it's a good idea to either only change the
4594 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header to languages you understand,
4595 or to languages that aren't wide spread.
4598 Before setting the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header
4599 to a rare language, you should consider that it helps to
4600 make your requests unique and thus easier to trace.
4601 If you don't plan to change this header frequently,
4602 you should stick to a common language.
4608 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4611 <screen># Pretend to use Canadian language settings.
4612 {+hide-accept-language{en-ca} \
4613 +hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenBSD i386; en-CA; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060628 Firefox/1.5.0.4} \
4623 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4624 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-content-disposition">
4625 <title>hide-content-disposition</title>
4631 <term>Typical use:</term>
4633 <para>Prevent download menus for content you prefer to view inside the browser.</para>
4638 <term>Effect:</term>
4641 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header set by some servers.
4648 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4650 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4655 <term>Parameter:</term>
4658 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4667 Some servers set the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header for
4668 documents they assume you want to save locally before viewing them.
4669 The <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header contains the file name
4670 the browser is supposed to use by default.
4673 In most browsers that understand this header, it makes it impossible to
4674 <emphasis>just view</emphasis> the document, without downloading it first,
4675 even if it's just a simple text file or an image.
4678 Removing the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header helps
4679 to prevent this annoyance, but some browsers additionally check the
4680 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> header, before they decide if they can
4681 display a document without saving it first. In these cases, you have
4682 to change this header as well, before the browser stops displaying
4686 It is also possible to change the server's file name suggestion
4687 to another one, but in most cases it isn't worth the time to set
4691 This action will probably be removed in the future,
4692 use server-header filters instead.
4698 <term>Example usage:</term>
4701 <screen># Disarm the download link in Sourceforge's patch tracker
4703 +content-type-overwrite{text/plain}\
4704 +hide-content-disposition{block} }
4705 .sourceforge.net/tracker/download\.php</screen>
4713 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4714 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-if-modified-since">
4715 <title>hide-if-modified-since</title>
4721 <term>Typical use:</term>
4723 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
4728 <term>Effect:</term>
4731 Deletes the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> HTTP client header or modifies its value.
4738 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4740 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4745 <term>Parameter:</term>
4748 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or a user defined value that specifies a range of hours.
4757 Removing this header is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
4758 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the
4759 browser to use a cached copy of the page.
4762 Instead of removing the header, <literal>hide-if-modified-since</literal> can
4763 also add or subtract a random amount of time to/from the header's value.
4764 You specify a range of minutes where the random factor should be chosen from and
4765 <application>Privoxy</application> does the rest. A negative value means
4766 subtracting, a positive value adding.
4769 Randomizing the value of the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> makes
4770 sure it isn't used as a cookie replacement, but you will run into
4771 caching problems if the random range is too high.
4774 It is a good idea to only use a small negative value and let
4775 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>
4776 handle the greater changes.
4779 It is also recommended to use this action together with
4780 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>.
4786 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4789 <screen># Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
4790 { +hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
4791 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
4792 +crunch-if-none-match}
4801 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4802 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-forwarded-for-headers">
4803 <title>hide-forwarded-for-headers</title>
4806 <term>Typical use:</term>
4808 <para>Improve privacy by not embedding the source of the request in the HTTP headers.</para>
4813 <term>Effect:</term>
4816 Deletes any existing <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> HTTP header from client requests,
4817 and prevents adding a new one.
4824 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4826 <para>Boolean.</para>
4831 <term>Parameter:</term>
4843 It is safe to leave this on.
4849 <term>Example usage:</term>
4852 <screen>+hide-forwarded-for-headers</screen>
4860 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4861 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-from-header">
4862 <title>hide-from-header</title>
4866 <term>Typical use:</term>
4868 <para>Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address</para>
4873 <term>Effect:</term>
4876 Deletes any existing <quote>From:</quote> HTTP header, or replaces it with the
4884 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4886 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4891 <term>Parameter:</term>
4894 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4903 The keyword <quote>block</quote> will completely remove the header
4904 (not to be confused with the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
4908 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
4909 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
4910 is actually used by a real person.
4913 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send
4914 <quote>From:</quote> headers anymore.
4920 <term>Example usage:</term>
4923 <screen>+hide-from-header{block}</screen> or
4924 <screen>+hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}</screen>
4932 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4933 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-referrer">
4934 <title>hide-referrer</title>
4935 <anchor id="hide-referer">
4938 <term>Typical use:</term>
4940 <para>Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site</para>
4945 <term>Effect:</term>
4948 Deletes the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) HTTP header from the client request,
4949 or replaces it with a forged one.
4956 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4958 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4963 <term>Parameter:</term>
4967 <para><quote>conditional-block</quote> to delete the header completely if the host has changed.</para>
4971 <para><quote>conditional-forge</quote> to forge the header if the host has changed.</para>
4975 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header unconditionally.</para>
4978 <para><quote>forge</quote> to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are talking to.</para>
4981 <para>Any other string to set a user defined referrer.</para>
4991 <literal>conditional-block</literal> is the only parameter,
4992 that isn't easily detected in the server's log file. If it blocks the
4993 referrer, the request will look like the visitor used a bookmark or
4994 typed in the address directly.
4997 Leaving the referrer unmodified for requests on the same host
4998 allows the server owner to see the visitor's <quote>click path</quote>,
4999 but in most cases she could also get that information by comparing
5000 other parts of the log file: for example the User-Agent if it isn't
5001 a very common one, or the user's IP address if it doesn't change between
5005 Always blocking the referrer, or using a custom one, can lead to
5006 failures on servers that check the referrer before they answer any
5007 requests, in an attempt to prevent their valuable content from being
5008 embedded or linked to elsewhere.
5011 Both <literal>conditional-block</literal> and <literal>forge</literal>
5012 will work with referrer checks, as long as content and valid referring page
5013 are on the same host. Most of the time that's the case.
5016 <literal>hide-referer</literal> is an alternate spelling of
5017 <literal>hide-referrer</literal> and the two can be can be freely
5018 substituted with each other. (<quote>referrer</quote> is the
5019 correct English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it
5020 requires it to be spelled as <quote>referer</quote>.)
5026 <term>Example usage:</term>
5029 <screen>+hide-referrer{forge}</screen> or
5030 <screen>+hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}</screen>
5038 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5039 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-user-agent">
5040 <title>hide-user-agent</title>
5044 <term>Typical use:</term>
5046 <para>Conceal your type of browser and client operating system</para>
5051 <term>Effect:</term>
5054 Replaces the value of the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> HTTP header
5055 in client requests with the specified value.
5062 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5064 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5069 <term>Parameter:</term>
5072 Any user-defined string.
5082 This can lead to problems on web sites that depend on looking at this header in
5083 order to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
5084 way, is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> the right thing to do: good web sites
5085 work browser-independently).
5087 <ulink url="http://www.javascriptkit.com/javaindex.shtml">smart way to do
5093 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
5094 browsers will access the same <application>Privoxy</application> is
5095 <emphasis>not recommended</emphasis>. In single-user, single-browser
5096 setups, you might use it to delete your OS version information from
5097 the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known bugs for your
5098 OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to access
5099 sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
5100 reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not
5101 let <application>Mozilla</application> enter, yet forging to a
5102 <application>Netscape 6.1</application> user-agent works just fine.
5103 (Must be just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
5106 More information on known user-agent strings can be found at
5107 <ulink url="http://www.user-agents.org/">http://www.user-agents.org/</ulink>
5109 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent</ulink>.
5115 <term>Example usage:</term>
5118 <screen>+hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}</screen>
5126 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5127 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="inspect-jpegs">
5128 <title>inspect-jpegs</title>
5134 <term>Typical use:</term>
5136 <para>To protect against the MS buffer over-run in JPEG processing</para>
5141 <term>Effect:</term>
5144 Protect against a known exploit
5151 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5153 <para>Boolean.</para>
5158 <term>Parameter:</term>
5170 See Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-028. JPEG images are one of the most
5171 common image types found across the Internet. The exploit as described can
5172 allow execution of code on the target system, giving an attacker access
5173 to the system in question by merely planting an altered JPEG image, which
5174 would have no obvious indications of what lurks inside. This action
5175 prevents this exploit.
5178 Note that the described exploit is only one of many,
5179 using this action does not mean that you no longer
5180 have to patch the client.
5187 <term>Example usage:</term>
5189 <para><screen>+inspect-jpegs</screen></para>
5196 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5197 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="kill-popups">
5198 <title>kill-popups<anchor id="kill-popup"></title>
5202 <term>Typical use:</term>
5204 <para>Eliminate those annoying pop-up windows (deprecated)</para>
5209 <term>Effect:</term>
5212 While loading the document, replace JavaScript code that opens
5213 pop-up windows with (syntactically neutral) dummy code on the fly.
5220 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5222 <para>Boolean.</para>
5227 <term>Parameter:</term>
5239 This action is basically a built-in, hardwired special-purpose filter
5240 action, but there are important differences: For <literal>kill-popups</literal>,
5241 the document need not be buffered, so it can be incrementally rendered while
5242 downloading. But <literal>kill-popups</literal> doesn't catch as many pop-ups as
5244 linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>all-popups</replaceable>}</link></literal>
5245 does and is not as smart as <literal><link
5246 linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>unsolicited-popups</replaceable>}</link>
5250 Think of it as a fast and efficient replacement for a filter that you
5251 can use if you don't want any filtering at all. Note that it doesn't make
5252 sense to combine it with any <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> action,
5253 since as soon as one <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> applies,
5254 the whole document needs to be buffered anyway, which destroys the advantage of
5255 the <literal>kill-popups</literal> action over its filter equivalent.
5258 Killing all pop-ups unconditionally is problematic. Many shops and banks rely on
5259 pop-ups to display forms, shopping carts etc, and the <literal><link
5260 linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>unsolicited-popups</replaceable>}</link>
5261 </literal> does a better job of catching only the unwanted ones.
5264 If the only kind of pop-ups that you want to kill are exit consoles (those
5265 <emphasis>really nasty</emphasis> windows that appear when you close an other
5266 one), you might want to use
5268 linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>js-annoyances</replaceable>}</literal>
5272 This action is most appropriate for browsers that don't have any controls
5273 for unwanted pop-ups. Not recommended for general usage.
5278 An alternate spelling is <literal>+kill-popup</literal>, which is
5286 <term>Example usage:</term>
5288 <para><screen>+kill-popups</screen></para>
5295 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5296 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="limit-connect">
5297 <title>limit-connect</title>
5301 <term>Typical use:</term>
5303 <para>Prevent abuse of <application>Privoxy</application> as a TCP proxy relay or disable SSL for untrusted sites</para>
5308 <term>Effect:</term>
5311 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
5318 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5320 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5325 <term>Parameter:</term>
5328 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
5329 defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
5338 By default, i.e. if no <literal>limit-connect</literal> action applies,
5339 <application>Privoxy</application> only allows HTTP CONNECT
5340 requests to port 443 (the standard, secure HTTPS port). Use
5341 <literal>limit-connect</literal> if more fine-grained control is desired
5342 for some or all destinations.
5345 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
5346 (<quote>https://</quote> URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
5347 the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
5348 short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
5349 This can be a big security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can be
5350 abused as TCP relays very easily.
5353 <application>Privoxy</application> relays HTTPS traffic without seeing
5354 the decoded content. Websites can leverage this limitation to circumvent &my-app;'s
5355 filters. By specifying an invalid port range you can disable HTTPS entirely.
5356 If you plan to disable SSL by default, consider enabling
5357 <literal><link linkend="treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks ">treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</link></literal>
5358 as well, to be able to quickly create exceptions.
5364 <term>Example usages:</term>
5366 <!-- I had trouble getting the spacing to look right in my browser -->
5367 <!-- I probably have the wrong font setup, bollocks. -->
5368 <!-- Apparently the emphasis tag uses a proportional font no matter what -->
5370 <screen>+limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need not be specified.
5371 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
5372 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
5373 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK
5374 +limit-connect{,} # No HTTPS/SSL traffic is allowed</screen>
5381 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5382 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="prevent-compression">
5383 <title>prevent-compression</title>
5387 <term>Typical use:</term>
5390 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
5391 passed through <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>s.
5397 <term>Effect:</term>
5400 Removes the Accept-Encoding header which can be used to ask for compressed transfer.
5407 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5409 <para>Boolean.</para>
5414 <term>Parameter:</term>
5426 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
5427 is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But the <literal><link
5428 linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>, <literal><link linkend="deanimate-gifs">deanimate-gifs</link></literal>
5429 and <literal><link linkend="kill-popups">kill-popups</link></literal> actions need
5430 access to the uncompressed data.
5433 When compiled with zlib support (available since &my-app; 3.0.7), content that should be
5434 filtered is decompressed on-the-fly and you don't have to worry about this action.
5435 If you are using an older &my-app; version, or one that hasn't been compiled with zlib
5436 support, this action can be used to convince the server to send the content uncompressed.
5439 Most text-based instances compress very well, the size is seldom decreased by less than 50%,
5440 for markup-heavy instances like news feeds saving more than 90% of the original size isn't
5444 Not using compression will therefore slow down the transfer, and you should only
5445 enable this action if you really need it. As of &my-app; 3.0.7 it's disabled in all
5446 predefined action settings.
5449 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
5450 documents correctly. Broken PHP applications tend to send an empty document body,
5451 some IIS versions only send the beginning of the content. If you enable
5452 <literal>prevent-compression</literal> per default, you might want to add
5453 exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
5459 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
5463 # Selectively turn off compression, and enable a filter
5465 { +filter{tiny-textforms} +prevent-compression }
5466 # Match only these sites
5471 # Or instead, we could set a universal default:
5473 { +prevent-compression }
5476 # Then maybe make exceptions for broken sites:
5478 { -prevent-compression }
5479 .compusa.com/</screen>
5488 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5489 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="overwrite-last-modified">
5490 <title>overwrite-last-modified</title>
5496 <term>Typical use:</term>
5498 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
5503 <term>Effect:</term>
5506 Deletes the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> HTTP server header or modifies its value.
5513 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5515 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5520 <term>Parameter:</term>
5523 One of the keywords: <quote>block</quote>, <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote>
5524 and <quote>randomize</quote>
5533 Removing the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header is useful for filter
5534 testing, where you want to force a real reload instead of getting status
5535 code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the browser to reuse the old
5536 version of the page.
5539 The <quote>randomize</quote> option overwrites the value of the
5540 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with a randomly chosen time
5541 between the original value and the current time. In theory the server
5542 could send each document with a different <quote>Last-Modified:</quote>
5543 header to track visits without using cookies. <quote>Randomize</quote>
5544 makes it impossible and the browser can still revalidate cached documents.
5547 <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote> overwrites the value of the
5548 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with the current time. You could use
5549 this option together with
5550 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>
5551 to further customize your random range.
5554 The preferred parameter here is <quote>randomize</quote>. It is safe
5555 to use, as long as the time settings are more or less correct.
5556 If the server sets the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header to the time
5557 of the request, the random range becomes zero and the value stays the same.
5558 Therefore you should later randomize it a second time with
5559 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>,
5563 It is also recommended to use this action together with
5564 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>.
5570 <term>Example usage:</term>
5573 <screen># Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
5574 { +hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
5575 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
5576 +crunch-if-none-match}
5585 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5586 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="redirect">
5587 <title>redirect</title>
5593 <term>Typical use:</term>
5596 Redirect requests to other sites.
5602 <term>Effect:</term>
5605 Convinces the browser that the requested document has been moved
5606 to another location and the browser should get it from there.
5613 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5615 <para>Parameterized</para>
5620 <term>Parameter:</term>
5623 An absolute URL or a single pcrs command.
5632 Requests to which this action applies are answered with a
5633 HTTP redirect to URLs of your choosing. The new URL is
5634 either provided as parameter, or derived by applying a
5635 single pcrs command to the original URL.
5638 This action will be ignored if you use it together with
5639 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>.
5640 It can be combined with
5641 <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects{check-decoded-url}</link></literal>
5642 to redirect to a decoded version of a rewritten URL.
5645 Use this action carefully, make sure not to create redirection loops
5646 and be aware that using your own redirects might make it
5647 possible to fingerprint your requests.
5653 <term>Example usages:</term>
5656 <screen># Replace example.com's style sheet with another one
5657 { +redirect{http://localhost/css-replacements/example.com.css} }
5658 example.com/stylesheet\.css
5660 # Create a short, easy to remember nickname for a favorite site
5661 # (relies on the browser accept and forward invalid URLs to &my-app;)
5662 { +redirect{http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html} }
5665 # Always use the expanded view for Undeadly.org articles
5666 # (Note the $ at the end of the URL pattern to make sure
5667 # the request for the rewritten URL isn't redirected as well)
5668 {+redirect{s@$@&mode=expanded@}}
5669 undeadly.org/cgi\?action=article&sid=\d*$</screen>
5678 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5679 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-vanilla-wafer">
5680 <title>send-vanilla-wafer</title>
5684 <term>Typical use:</term>
5687 Feed log analysis scripts with useless data.
5693 <term>Effect:</term>
5696 Sends a cookie with each request stating that you do not accept any copyright
5697 on cookies sent to you, and asking the site operator not to track you.
5704 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5706 <para>Boolean.</para>
5711 <term>Parameter:</term>
5723 The vanilla wafer is a (relatively) unique header and could conceivably be used to track you.
5726 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
5732 <term>Example usage:</term>
5735 <screen>+send-vanilla-wafer</screen>
5744 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5745 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-wafer">
5746 <title>send-wafer</title>
5750 <term>Typical use:</term>
5753 Send custom cookies or feed log analysis scripts with even more useless data.
5759 <term>Effect:</term>
5762 Sends a custom, user-defined cookie with each request.
5769 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5771 <para>Multi-value.</para>
5776 <term>Parameter:</term>
5779 A string of the form <quote><replaceable class="option">name</replaceable>=<replaceable
5780 class="parameter">value</replaceable></quote>.
5789 Being multi-valued, multiple instances of this action can apply to the same request,
5790 resulting in multiple cookies being sent.
5793 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
5798 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5801 <screen>{+send-wafer{UsingPrivoxy=true}}
5802 my-internal-testing-server.void</screen>
5810 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5811 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="server-header-filter">
5812 <title>server-header-filter</title>
5816 <term>Typical use:</term>
5819 Rewrite or remove single server headers.
5825 <term>Effect:</term>
5828 All server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly
5829 through the specified regular expression based substitutions.
5836 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
5838 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5843 <term>Parameter:</term>
5846 The name of a server-header filter, as defined in one of the
5847 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
5856 Server-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
5857 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
5858 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
5859 You can do that by using tags though.
5862 Server-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
5863 and use their output as input.
5866 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
5867 to learn which server-header filters are available by default, and how to
5874 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5878 {+server-header-filter{html-to-xml}}
5879 example.org/xml-instance-that-is-delivered-as-html
5881 {+server-header-filter{xml-to-html}}
5882 example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
5892 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5893 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="server-header-tagger">
5894 <title>server-header-tagger</title>
5898 <term>Typical use:</term>
5901 Enable or disable filters based on the Content-Type header.
5907 <term>Effect:</term>
5910 Server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
5911 the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
5919 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
5921 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5926 <term>Parameter:</term>
5929 The name of a server-header tagger, as defined in one of the
5930 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
5939 Server-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
5940 and as the header isn't modified, each tagger <quote>sees</quote>
5944 Server-header taggers are executed before all other header actions
5945 that modify server headers. Their tags can be used to control
5946 all of the other server-header actions, the content filters
5947 and the crunch actions (<link linkend="redirect">redirect</link>
5948 and <link linkend="block">block</link>).
5951 Obviously crunching based on tags created by server-header taggers
5952 doesn't prevent the request from showing up in the server's log file.
5959 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5963 # Tag every request with the content type declared by the server
5964 {+server-header-tagger{content-type}}
5975 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5976 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="session-cookies-only">
5977 <title>session-cookies-only</title>
5981 <term>Typical use:</term>
5984 Allow only temporary <quote>session</quote> cookies (for the current
5985 browser session <emphasis>only</emphasis>).
5991 <term>Effect:</term>
5994 Deletes the <quote>expires</quote> field from <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote>
5995 server headers. Most browsers will not store such cookies permanently and
5996 forget them in between sessions.
6003 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
6005 <para>Boolean.</para>
6010 <term>Parameter:</term>
6022 This is less strict than <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> /
6023 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal> and allows you to browse
6024 websites that insist or rely on setting cookies, without compromising your privacy too badly.
6027 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed by
6028 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal> and will forget about them between sessions.
6029 This makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
6030 that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
6031 sites, and is the recommended setting.
6034 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>
6035 together with <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> or
6036 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>. If you do, cookies
6037 will be plainly killed.
6040 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an <quote>expires</quote>
6041 field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out to be sure.
6044 This setting also has no effect on cookies that may have been stored
6045 previously by the browser before starting <application>Privoxy</application>.
6046 These would have to be removed manually.
6049 <application>Privoxy</application> also uses
6050 the <link linkend="filter-content-cookies">content-cookies filter</link>
6051 to block some types of cookies. Content cookies are not effected by
6052 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>.
6058 <term>Example usage:</term>
6061 <screen>+session-cookies-only</screen>
6069 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6070 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="set-image-blocker">
6071 <title>set-image-blocker</title>
6075 <term>Typical use:</term>
6077 <para>Choose the replacement for blocked images</para>
6082 <term>Effect:</term>
6085 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If <emphasis>both</emphasis>
6086 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><link
6087 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> <emphasis>also</emphasis>
6088 apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an image,
6089 <emphasis>then</emphasis> the parameter of this action decides what will be
6090 sent as a replacement.
6097 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
6099 <para>Parameterized.</para>
6104 <term>Parameter:</term>
6109 <quote>pattern</quote> to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is visually
6110 decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners were busted.
6115 <quote>blank</quote> to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners disappear
6116 completely, but makes it hard to detect where <application>Privoxy</application> has blocked
6117 images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if <application>Privoxy</application>
6118 has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
6123 <quote><replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable></quote> to
6124 send a redirect to <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>. You can redirect
6125 to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem via <quote>file:///</quote> URL.
6126 (But note that not all browsers support redirecting to a local file system).
6129 A good application of redirects is to use special <application>Privoxy</application>-built-in
6130 URLs, which send the built-in images, as <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>.
6131 This has the same visual effect as specifying <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote> in
6132 the first place, but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of requesting
6133 it over and over again.
6144 The URLs for the built-in images are <quote>http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=<replaceable
6145 class="parameter">type</replaceable></quote>, where <replaceable class="parameter">type</replaceable> is
6146 either <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote>.
6149 There is a third (advanced) type, called <quote>auto</quote>. It is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> to be
6150 used in <literal>set-image-blocker</literal>, but meant for use from <link linkend="filter-file">filters</link>.
6151 Auto will select the type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an image.
6157 <term>Example usage:</term>
6163 <screen>+set-image-blocker{pattern}</screen>
6166 Redirect to the BSD daemon:
6169 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}</screen>
6172 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
6175 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}</screen>
6183 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6184 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks">
6185 <title>treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</title>
6191 <term>Typical use:</term>
6193 <para>Block forbidden connects with an easy to find error message.</para>
6198 <term>Effect:</term>
6201 If this action is enabled, <application>Privoxy</application> no longer
6202 makes a difference between forbidden connects and ordinary blocks.
6209 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
6211 <para>Boolean</para>
6216 <term>Parameter:</term>
6226 By default <application>Privoxy</application> answers
6227 <link linkend="limit-connect">forbidden <quote>Connect</quote> requests</link>
6228 with a short error message inside the headers. If the browser doesn't display
6229 headers (most don't), you just see an empty page.
6232 With this action enabled, <application>Privoxy</application> displays
6233 the message that is used for ordinary blocks instead. If you decide
6234 to make an exception for the page in question, you can do so by
6235 following the <quote>See why</quote> link.
6238 For <quote>Connect</quote> requests the clients tell
6239 <application>Privoxy</application> which host they are interested
6240 in, but not which document they plan to get later. As a result, the
6241 <quote>Go there anyway</quote> wouldn't work and is therefore suppressed.
6247 <term>Example usage:</term>
6250 <screen>+treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</screen>
6258 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6260 <title>Summary</title>
6262 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
6263 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
6264 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
6265 content, and other criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard
6266 and fast rules for all sites. See the <link
6267 linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link> for a brief example on troubleshooting
6273 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6274 <sect2 id="aliases">
6275 <title>Aliases</title>
6277 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
6278 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other actions.
6279 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
6280 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab,
6282 <quote>{</quote> and <quote>}</quote>, but we <emphasis>strongly
6283 recommend</emphasis> that you only use <quote>a</quote> to <quote>z</quote>,
6284 <quote>0</quote> to <quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and <quote>-</quote>.
6285 Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start with a
6286 <quote>+</quote> or <quote>-</quote> sign, since they are merely textually
6290 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they <emphasis>must be
6291 defined in a special section at the top of the file!</emphasis>
6292 And there can only be one such section per actions file. Each actions file may
6293 have its own alias section, and the aliases defined in it are only visible
6297 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
6298 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
6299 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called
6300 <quote>shop</quote>, you can later change your policy on shops in
6301 <emphasis>one</emphasis> place, and your changes will take effect everywhere
6302 in the actions file where the <quote>shop</quote> alias is used. Calling aliases
6303 by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
6306 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though:
6307 <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in web-based action file
6308 editor honors aliases when reading the actions files, but it expands
6309 them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are of course preserved,
6310 but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
6315 Now let's define some aliases...
6320 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
6322 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
6323 # must be at the top of the actions file!
6327 # These aliases just save typing later:
6328 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
6330 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
6331 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
6332 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
6333 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
6335 # These aliases define combinations of actions
6336 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
6338 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> -<link linkend="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link>
6340 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link>
6342 # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
6344 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
6345 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies</screen>
6349 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
6350 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
6351 up for the <quote>/</quote> pattern):
6356 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
6357 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
6360 .office.microsoft.com
6361 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
6362 # Gmail is really mail.google.com, not gmail.com
6366 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
6370 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
6373 # These shops require pop-ups:
6375 {-kill-popups -filter{all-popups} -filter{unsolicited-popups}}
6377 .overclockers.co.uk</screen>
6381 Aliases like <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote> are typically used for
6382 <quote>problem</quote> sites that require more than one action to be disabled
6383 in order to function properly.
6389 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6390 <sect2 id="act-examples">
6391 <title>Actions Files Tutorial</title>
6393 The above chapters have shown <link linkend="actions-file">which actions files
6394 there are and how they are organized</link>, how actions are <link
6395 linkend="actions">specified</link> and <link linkend="actions-apply">applied
6396 to URLs</link>, how <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> work, and how to
6397 define and use <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link>. Now, let's look at an
6398 example <filename>default.action</filename> and <filename>user.action</filename>
6399 file and see how all these pieces come together:
6402 <sect3><title>default.action</title>
6405 Every config file should start with a short comment stating its purpose:
6409 <screen># Sample default.action file <ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net></screen>
6413 Then, since this is the <filename>default.action</filename> file, the
6414 first section is a special section for internal use that you needn't
6415 change or worry about:
6420 ##########################################################################
6421 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
6422 ##########################################################################
6425 for-privoxy-version=3.0</screen>
6429 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
6430 section from the above <link linkend="aliases">chapter on aliases</link>,
6431 that also explains why and how aliases are used:
6436 ##########################################################################
6438 ##########################################################################
6441 # These aliases just save typing later:
6442 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
6444 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
6445 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
6446 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
6447 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
6449 # These aliases define combinations of actions
6450 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
6452 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>
6453 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link></screen>
6457 Now come the regular sections, i.e. sets of actions, accompanied
6458 by URL patterns to which they apply. Remember <emphasis>all actions
6459 are disabled when matching starts</emphasis>, so we have to explicitly
6460 enable the ones we want.
6464 The first regular section is probably the most important. It has only
6465 one pattern, <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, but this pattern
6466 <link linkend="af-patterns">matches all URLs</link>. Therefore, the
6467 set of actions used in this <quote>default</quote> section <emphasis>will
6468 be applied to all requests as a start</emphasis>. It can be partly or
6469 wholly overridden by later matches further down this file, or in user.action,
6470 but it will still be largely responsible for your overall browsing
6475 Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
6476 no real need to disable any actions here, but we will do that nonetheless,
6477 to have a complete listing for your reference. (Remember: a <quote>+</quote>
6478 preceding the action name enables the action, a <quote>-</quote> disables!).
6479 Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
6480 multiple lines with line continuation.
6485 ##########################################################################
6486 # "Defaults" section:
6487 ##########################################################################
6489 -<link linkend="ADD-HEADER">add-header</link> \
6490 -<link linkend="CLIENT-HEADER-FILTER">client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}</link> \
6491 -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> \
6492 -<link linkend="CONTENT-TYPE-OVERWRITE">content-type-overwrite</link> \
6493 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-CLIENT-HEADER">crunch-client-header</link> \
6494 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-IF-NONE-MATCH">crunch-if-none-match</link> \
6495 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> \
6496 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-SERVER-HEADER">crunch-server-header</link> \
6497 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link> \
6498 +<link linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</link> \
6499 -<link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION">downgrade-http-version</link> \
6500 -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects{check-decoded-url}</link> \
6501 -<link linkend="FILTER-JS-ANNOYANCES">filter{js-annoyances}</link> \
6502 -<link linkend="FILTER-JS-EVENTS">filter{js-events}</link> \
6503 +<link linkend="FILTER-HTML-ANNOYANCES">filter{html-annoyances}</link> \
6504 -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link> \
6505 +<link linkend="FILTER-REFRESH-TAGS">filter{refresh-tags}</link> \
6506 -<link linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{unsolicited-popups}</link> \
6507 -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> \
6508 -<link linkend="FILTER-IMG-REORDER">filter{img-reorder}</link> \
6509 -<link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE">filter{banners-by-size}</link> \
6510 -<link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-LINK">filter{banners-by-link}</link> \
6511 +<link linkend="FILTER-WEBBUGS">filter{webbugs}</link> \
6512 -<link linkend="FILTER-TINY-TEXTFORMS">filter{tiny-textforms}</link> \
6513 -<link linkend="FILTER-JUMPING-WINDOWS">filter{jumping-windows}</link> \
6514 -<link linkend="FILTER-FRAMESET-BORDERS">filter{frameset-borders}</link> \
6515 -<link linkend="FILTER-DEMORONIZER">filter{demoronizer}</link> \
6516 -<link linkend="FILTER-SHOCKWAVE-FLASH">filter{shockwave-flash}</link> \
6517 -<link linkend="FILTER-QUICKTIME-KIOSKMODE">filter{quicktime-kioskmode}</link> \
6518 -<link linkend="FILTER-FUN">filter{fun}</link> \
6519 -<link linkend="FILTER-CRUDE-PARENTAL">filter{crude-parental}</link> \
6520 +<link linkend="FILTER-IE-EXPLOITS">filter{ie-exploits}</link> \
6521 -<link linkend="FILTER-GOOGLE">filter{google}</link> \
6522 -<link linkend="FILTER-YAHOO">filter{yahoo}</link> \
6523 -<link linkend="FILTER-MSN">filter{msn}</link> \
6524 -<link linkend="FILTER-BLOGSPOT">filter{blogspot}</link> \
6525 -<link linkend="FILTER-NO-PING">filter{no-ping}</link> \
6526 -<link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> \
6527 -<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-EMPTY-DOCUMENT">handle-as-empty-document</link> \
6528 -<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> \
6529 -<link linkend="HIDE-ACCEPT-LANGUAGE">hide-accept-language</link> \
6530 -<link linkend="HIDE-CONTENT-DISPOSITION">hide-content-disposition</link> \
6531 -<link linkend="HIDE-IF-MODIFIED-SINCE">hide-if-modified-since</link> \
6532 +<link linkend="HIDE-FORWARDED-FOR-HEADERS">hide-forwarded-for-headers</link> \
6533 +<link linkend="HIDE-FROM-HEADER">hide-from-header{block}</link> \
6534 +<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer{forge}</link> \
6535 -<link linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT">hide-user-agent</link> \
6536 -<link linkend="INSPECT-JPEGS">inspect-jpegs</link> \
6537 -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> \
6538 -<link linkend="LIMIT-CONNECT">limit-connect</link> \
6539 +<link linkend="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link> \
6540 -<link linkend="OVERWRITE-LAST-MODIFIED">overwrite-last-modified</link> \
6541 -<link linkend="REDIRECT">redirect</link> \
6542 -<link linkend="SEND-VANILLA-WAFER">send-vanilla-wafer</link> \
6543 -<link linkend="SEND-WAFER">send-wafer</link> \
6544 -<link linkend="SERVER-HEADER-FILTER">server-header-filter{xml-to-html}</link> \
6545 -<link linkend="SERVER-HEADER-FILTER">server-header-filter{html-to-xml}</link> \
6546 +<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> \
6547 +<link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER">set-image-blocker{pattern}</link> \
6548 -<link linkend="TREAT-FORBIDDEN-CONNECTS-LIKE-BLOCKS">treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</link> \
6550 / # forward slash will match *all* potential URL patterns.</screen>
6554 The default behavior is now set. Note that some actions, like not hiding
6555 the user agent, are part of a <quote>general policy</quote> that applies
6556 universally and won't get any exceptions defined later. Other choices,
6557 like not blocking (which is <emphasis>understandably</emphasis> the
6558 default!) need exceptions, i.e. we need to specify explicitly what we
6559 want to block in later sections.
6563 The first of our specialized sections is concerned with <quote>fragile</quote>
6564 sites, i.e. sites that require minimum interference, because they are either
6565 very complex or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that
6566 make them unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will simply use
6567 our pre-defined <literal>fragile</literal> alias instead of stating the list
6568 of actions explicitly:
6573 ##########################################################################
6574 # Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
6575 ##########################################################################
6577 # "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
6580 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
6581 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
6582 mail.google.com</screen>
6586 Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically
6587 require cookies to log in, and pop-up windows for shopping
6588 carts or item details. Again, we'll use a pre-defined alias:
6597 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
6599 .scan.co.uk</screen>
6602 <!-- No longer needed BEGIN OF COMMENTED OUT BLOCK
6605 Then, there are sites which rely on pop-up windows (yuck!) to work.
6606 Since we made pop-up-killing our default above, we need to make exceptions
6607 now. <ulink url="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla</ulink> users, who
6608 can turn on smart handling of unwanted pop-ups in their browsers, can
6610 -<literal><link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link></literal> (and
6611 -<literal><link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link></literal>) above
6612 and hence don't need this section. Anyway, disabling an already disabled
6613 action doesn't hurt, so we'll define our exceptions regardless of what was
6614 chosen in the defaults section:
6619 # These sites require pop-ups too :(
6621 { -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link> }
6624 .deutsche-bank-24.de</screen>
6627 END OF COMMENTED OUT BLOCK -->
6630 The <literal><link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link></literal>
6631 action, which we enabled per default above, breaks some sites. So disable
6632 it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
6637 { -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> }
6641 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
6642 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
6643 .nytimes.com</screen>
6647 It is important that <application>Privoxy</application> knows which
6648 URLs belong to images, so that <emphasis>if</emphasis> they are to
6649 be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
6650 Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it
6651 would destroy the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it
6652 would feed the advertisers (in terms of money <emphasis>and</emphasis>
6653 information). We can mark any URL as an image with the <literal><link
6654 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action,
6655 and marking all URLs that end in a known image file extension is a
6661 ##########################################################################
6663 ##########################################################################
6665 # Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
6666 # blocked further down this file:
6668 { +<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> }
6669 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$</screen>
6673 And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to
6674 generate the banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the
6675 request is for an image. Hence we block them <emphasis>and</emphasis>
6676 mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
6677 <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above. (We could of
6678 course just as well use <literal>+<link linkend="block">block</link>
6679 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> here.)
6680 Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
6681 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
6682 action. Since all URLs have matched the default section with its
6683 <literal>+<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link>{pattern}</literal>
6684 action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:
6689 # Known ad generators:
6694 .ad.*.doubleclick.net
6695 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6696 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6702 One of the most important jobs of <application>Privoxy</application>
6703 is to block banners. Many of these can be <quote>blocked</quote>
6704 by the <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{banners-by-size}</literal>
6705 action, which we enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner
6706 images from the pages while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request
6707 them anymore, and hence they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally
6708 doesn't catch all banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we
6709 need a comprehensive list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the
6710 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action to them.
6713 First comes many generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
6714 matching typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes
6715 a list of individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here
6716 to keep the example short:
6721 ##########################################################################
6722 # Block these fine banners:
6723 ##########################################################################
6724 { <link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link> }
6732 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
6733 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
6735 # Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
6737 .hitbox.com</screen>
6741 It's quite remarkable how many advertisers actually call their banner
6742 servers ads.<replaceable>company</replaceable>.com, or call the directory
6743 in which the banners are stored simply <quote>banners</quote>. So the above
6744 generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
6747 But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want
6748 to block. The pattern <literal>.*ads.</literal> e.g. catches
6749 <quote>nasty-<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.nasty-corp.com</quote> as intended,
6750 but also <quote>downlo<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.sourcefroge.net</quote> or
6751 <quote><emphasis>ads</emphasis>l.some-provider.net.</quote> So here come some
6752 well-known exceptions to the <literal>+<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6756 Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
6757 <quote>downloads.sourcefroge.net</quote>: Initially, all actions are deactivated,
6758 so it wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the
6759 URL, but just deactivates the <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6760 action once again. Then it matches <literal>.*ads.</literal>, an exception to the
6761 general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
6762 <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link></literal> applies. And now, it'll match
6763 <literal>.*loads.</literal>, where <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">-block</link></literal>
6764 applies, so (unless it matches <emphasis>again</emphasis> further down) it ends up
6765 with no <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal> action applying.
6770 ##########################################################################
6771 # Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
6772 ##########################################################################
6776 { -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
6777 adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
6778 adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
6779 adobe. # (has nothing to do with ads either)
6780 ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
6781 .edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
6782 .*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
6790 www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
6791 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv</screen>
6795 Filtering source code can have nasty side effects,
6796 so make an exception for our friends at sourceforge.net,
6797 and all paths with <quote>cvs</quote> in them. Note that
6798 <literal>-<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link></literal>
6799 disables <emphasis>all</emphasis> filters in one fell swoop!
6804 # Don't filter code!
6806 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6811 .sourceforge.net</screen>
6815 The actual <filename>default.action</filename> is of course much more
6816 comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
6821 <sect3><title>user.action</title>
6824 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies,
6825 which would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now,
6826 you might want to be more specific and have customized rules that
6827 are more suitable to your personal habits and preferences. These would
6828 be for narrowly defined situations like your ISP or your bank, and should
6829 be placed in <filename>user.action</filename>, which is parsed after all other
6830 actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any previously
6831 defined actions. <filename>user.action</filename> is also a
6832 <emphasis>safe</emphasis> place for your personal settings, since
6833 <filename>default.action</filename> is actively maintained by the
6834 <application>Privoxy</application> developers and you'll probably want
6835 to install updated versions from time to time.
6839 So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
6840 <filename>user.action</filename>:
6844 <!-- brief sample user.action here -->
6848 # My user.action file. <fred@foobar.com></screen>
6852 As <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link> are local to the actions
6853 file that they are defined in, you can't use the ones from
6854 <filename>default.action</filename>, unless you repeat them here:
6859 # Aliases are local to the file they are defined in.
6860 # (Re-)define aliases for this file:
6864 # These aliases just save typing later, and the alias names should
6865 # be self explanatory.
6867 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
6868 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6869 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
6870 allow-popups = -filter{all-popups} -kill-popups
6871 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
6872 -block-as-image = -block
6874 # These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
6875 # certain types of sites:
6877 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referrer -kill-popups
6878 shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
6880 # Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
6882 allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}
6884 # Alias for specific file types that are text, but might have conflicting
6885 # MIME types. We want the browser to force these to be text documents.
6886 handle-as-text = -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> +-<link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{text/plain}</link> +-<link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-CONTENT-DISPOSITION">hide-content-disposition</link></screen>
6891 Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and
6892 you don't want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like
6893 to allow persistent cookies for these sites. The
6894 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal> alias defined above does exactly
6895 that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
6896 processing of cookies to make them only temporary.
6901 { allow-all-cookies }
6905 .redhat.com</screen>
6909 Your bank is allergic to some filter, but you don't know which, so you disable them all:
6914 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6915 .your-home-banking-site.com</screen>
6919 Some file types you may not want to filter for various reasons:
6924 # Technical documentation is likely to contain strings that might
6925 # erroneously get altered by the JavaScript-oriented filters:
6930 # And this stupid host sends streaming video with a wrong MIME type,
6931 # so that Privoxy thinks it is getting HTML and starts filtering:
6933 stupid-server.example.com/</screen>
6937 Example of a simple <link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> action. Say you've
6938 seen an ad on your favourite page on example.com that you want to get rid of.
6939 You have right-clicked the image, selected <quote>copy image location</quote>
6940 and pasted the URL below while removing the leading http://, into a
6941 <literal>{ +block }</literal> section. Note that <literal>{ +handle-as-image
6942 }</literal> need not be specified, since all URLs ending in
6943 <literal>.gif</literal> will be tagged as images by the general rules as set
6944 in default.action anyway:
6949 { +<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
6950 www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor\.gif
6951 another.popular.site.net/more/junk/here/</screen>
6955 The URLs of dynamically generated banners, especially from large banner
6956 farms, often don't use the well-known image file name extensions, which
6957 makes it impossible for <application>Privoxy</application> to guess
6958 the file type just by looking at the URL.
6959 You can use the <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above for
6961 Note that objects which match this rule but then turn out NOT to be an
6962 image are typically rendered as a <quote>broken image</quote> icon by the
6963 browser. Use cautiously.
6972 ar.atwola.com/</screen>
6976 Now you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine,
6977 but you were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you
6978 were again too lazy to give <link linkend="contact">feedback</link>, so
6979 you just used the <literal>fragile</literal> alias on the site, and
6980 -- <emphasis>whoa!</emphasis> -- it worked. The <literal>fragile</literal>
6981 aliases disables those actions that are most likely to break a site. Also,
6982 good for testing purposes to see if it is <application>Privoxy</application>
6983 that is causing the problem or not. We later find other regular sites
6984 that misbehave, and add those to our personalized list of troublemakers:
6992 .mybank.com</screen>
6996 You like the <quote>fun</quote> text replacements in <filename>default.filter</filename>,
6997 but it is disabled in the distributed actions file. (My colleagues on the team just
6998 don't have a sense of humour, that's why! ;-). So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
6999 update-safe config, once and for all:
7004 { +<link linkend="filter-fun">filter{fun}</link> }
7005 / # For ALL sites!</screen>
7009 Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions
7010 to the filters in <filename>default.action</filename> for things that
7011 really shouldn't be filtered, like code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since
7012 <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word, these exceptions
7013 won't be valid for the <quote>fun</quote> filtering specified here.
7017 You might also worry about how your favourite free websites are
7018 funded, and find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements
7019 to survive. So you might want to specifically allow banners for those
7020 sites that you feel provide value to you:
7032 Note that <literal>allow-ads</literal> has been aliased to
7033 <literal>-<link linkend="block">block</link></literal>,
7034 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-size">filter{banners-by-size}</link></literal>, and
7035 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-link">filter{banners-by-link}</link></literal> above.
7039 Invoke another alias here to force an over-ride of the MIME type <literal>
7040 application/x-sh</literal> which typically would open a download type
7041 dialog. In my case, I want to look at the shell script, and then I can save
7042 it should I choose to.
7052 <filename>user.action</filename> is generally the best place to define
7053 exceptions and additions to the default policies of
7054 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some actions are safe to have their
7055 default policies set here though. So let's set a default policy to have a
7056 <quote>blank</quote> image as opposed to the checkerboard pattern for
7057 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> sites. <quote>/</quote> of course matches all URL
7063 { +<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker{blank}</link> }
7064 / # ALL sites</screen>
7070 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7074 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7076 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
7078 <sect1 id="filter-file">
7079 <title>Filter Files</title>
7082 On-the-fly text substitutions need
7083 to be defined in a <quote>filter file</quote>. Once defined, they
7084 can then be invoked as an <quote>action</quote>.
7088 &my-app; supports three different filter actions:
7089 <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> to
7090 rewrite the content that is send to the client,
7091 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header-filter</link></literal>
7092 to rewrite headers that are send by the client, and
7093 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header-filter</link></literal>
7094 to rewrite headers that are send by the server, and
7098 &my-app; also supports two tagger actions:
7099 <literal><link linkend="client-header-tagger">client-header-tagger</link></literal>
7101 <literal><link linkend="server-header-tagger">server-header-tagger</link></literal>.
7102 Taggers and filters use the same syntax in the filter files, the difference
7103 is that taggers don't modify the text they are filtering, but use a rewritten
7104 version of the filtered text as tag. The tags can then be used to change the
7105 applying actions through sections with <link linkend="tag-pattern">tag-patterns</link>.
7110 Multiple filter files can be defined through the <literal> <link
7111 linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal> config directive. The filters
7112 as supplied by the developers will be found in
7113 <filename>default.filter</filename>. It is recommended that any locally
7114 defined or modified filters go in a separately defined file such as
7115 <filename>user.filter</filename>.
7120 Command tasks for content filters are to eliminate common annoyances in
7121 HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows,
7122 exit consoles, crippled windows without navigation tools, the
7123 infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to suppress images with certain
7124 width and height attributes (standard banner sizes or web-bugs),
7125 or just to have fun.
7129 Content filtering works on any text-based document type, including
7130 HTML, JavaScript, CSS etc. (all <literal>text/*</literal>
7131 MIME types, <emphasis>except</emphasis> <literal>text/plain</literal>).
7132 Substitutions are made at the source level, so if you want to <quote>roll
7133 your own</quote> filters, you should first be familiar with HTML syntax,
7134 and, of course, regular expressions.
7138 Just like the <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, the
7139 filter file is organized in sections, which are called <emphasis>filters</emphasis>
7140 here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with one of the
7141 <emphasis>keywords</emphasis> <literal>FILTER:</literal>,
7142 <literal>CLIENT-HEADER-FILTER:</literal> or <literal>SERVER-HEADER-FILTER:</literal>
7143 followed by the filter's <emphasis>name</emphasis>, and a short (one line)
7144 <emphasis>description</emphasis> of what it does. Below that line
7145 come the <emphasis>jobs</emphasis>, i.e. lines that define the actual
7146 text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
7147 should describe what the filter <emphasis>eliminates</emphasis>. The
7148 comment is used in the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
7149 user interface</ulink>.
7153 Once a filter called <replaceable>name</replaceable> has been defined
7154 in the filter file, it can be invoked by using an action of the form
7155 +<literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>name</replaceable>}</literal>
7156 in any <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>.
7160 Filter definitions start with a header line that contains the filter
7161 type, the filter name and the filter description.
7162 A content filter header line for a filter called <quote>foo</quote> could look
7167 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"</screen>
7171 Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that
7172 define what text replacements the filter executes. They are specified
7173 in a syntax that imitates <ulink url="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</ulink>'s
7174 <literal>s///</literal> operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you
7175 will find this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the
7176 PCRS documentation for the subtle differences to Perl behaviour. Most
7177 notably, the non-standard option letter <literal>U</literal> is supported,
7178 which turns the default to ungreedy matching.
7183 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
7184 Expressions</quote></ulink>, you might want to take a look at
7185 the <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>, and
7186 see the <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl
7188 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlop.html">the
7189 <literal>s///</literal> operator's syntax</ulink> and <ulink
7190 url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl-style regular
7191 expressions</ulink> in general.
7192 The below examples might also help to get you started.
7196 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
7198 <sect2><title>Filter File Tutorial</title>
7200 Now, let's complete our <quote>foo</quote> content filter. We have already defined
7201 the heading, but the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace
7202 <quote>foo</quote> with <quote>bar</quote>, there is only one (trivial) job
7207 <screen>s/foo/bar/</screen>
7211 But wait! Didn't the comment say that <emphasis>all</emphasis> occurrences
7212 of <quote>foo</quote> should be replaced? Our current job will only take
7213 care of the first <quote>foo</quote> on each page. For global substitution,
7214 we'll need to add the <literal>g</literal> option:
7218 <screen>s/foo/bar/g</screen>
7222 Our complete filter now looks like this:
7225 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
7226 s/foo/bar/g</screen>
7230 Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see
7231 a filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
7232 abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
7238 FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
7240 # Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
7242 s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg</screen>
7246 Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses
7247 <literal>|</literal> as the delimiter instead of <literal>/</literal>, because
7248 the pattern contains a forward slash, which would otherwise have to be escaped
7249 by a backslash (<literal>\</literal>).
7253 Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <literal><script.*</literal>
7254 enclosed in parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and <literal>*</literal>
7255 means: <quote>Match an arbitrary number of the element left of myself</quote>, this
7256 matches <quote><script</quote>, followed by <emphasis>any</emphasis> text, i.e.
7257 it matches the whole page, from the start of the first <script> tag.
7261 That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: <literal>document\.referrer</literal>
7262 matches only the exact string <quote>document.referrer</quote>. The dot needed to
7263 be <emphasis>escaped</emphasis>, i.e. preceded by a backslash, to take away its
7264 special meaning as a joker, and make it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is:
7265 Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including,
7266 the text <quote>document.referrer</quote>, if <emphasis>both</emphasis> are present
7267 in the page (and appear in that order).
7271 But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in parentheses,
7272 is <literal>.*</script></literal>. You already know what <literal>.*</literal>
7273 means, so the whole pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script>
7274 tag in a page to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text
7275 <quote>document.referrer</quote> appears somewhere in between.
7279 This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the parentheses:
7280 The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed in parentheses, will be
7281 remembered and be available through the variables <literal>$1, $2, ...</literal> in
7282 the substitute. The <literal>U</literal> option switches to ungreedy matching, which means
7283 that the first <literal>.*</literal> in the pattern will only <quote>eat up</quote> all
7284 text in between <quote><script</quote> and the <emphasis>first</emphasis> occurrence
7285 of <quote>document.referrer</quote>, and that the second <literal>.*</literal> will
7286 only span the text up to the <emphasis>first</emphasis> <quote></script></quote>
7287 tag. Furthermore, the <literal>s</literal> option says that the match may span
7288 multiple lines in the page, and the <literal>g</literal> option again means that the
7289 substitution is global.
7293 So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
7294 <quote>document.referrer</quote>. Remember the parts of the script from
7295 (and including) the start tag up to (and excluding) the string
7296 <quote>document.referrer</quote> as <literal>$1</literal>, and the part following
7297 that string, up to and including the closing tag, as <literal>$2</literal>.
7301 Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
7302 lets look at the substitute: <literal>$1"Not Your Business!"$2</literal> is
7303 easy to read: The text remembered as <literal>$1</literal>, followed by
7304 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> (<emphasis>including</emphasis>
7305 the quotation marks!), followed by the text remembered as <literal>$2</literal>.
7306 This produces an exact copy of the original string, with the middle part
7307 (the <quote>document.referrer</quote>) replaced by <literal>"Not Your
7308 Business!"</literal>.
7312 The whole job now reads: Replace <quote>document.referrer</quote> by
7313 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> wherever it appears inside a
7314 <script> tag. Note that this job won't break JavaScript syntax,
7315 since both the original and the replacement are syntactically valid
7316 string objects. The script just won't have access to the referrer
7317 information anymore.
7321 We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but
7322 this time only point out the constructs of special interest:
7327 # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
7329 s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig</screen>
7333 <literal>\s</literal> stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline,
7334 carriage return, form feed), so that <literal>\s*</literal> means: <quote>zero
7335 or more whitespace</quote>. The <literal>?</literal> in <literal>.*?</literal>
7336 makes this matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the <literal>U</literal>
7337 option is not set). The <literal>['"]</literal> construct means: <quote>a single
7338 <emphasis>or</emphasis> a double quote</quote>. Finally, <literal>\1</literal> is
7339 a back-reference to the first parenthesis just like <literal>$1</literal> above,
7340 with the difference that in the <emphasis>pattern</emphasis>, a backslash indicates
7341 a back-reference, whereas in the <emphasis>substitute</emphasis>, it's the dollar.
7345 So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
7346 strings to the <quote>window.status</quote> object with a dummy assignment
7347 (using a variable name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with
7348 real variables in scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless
7349 descriptions are displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when
7350 you move your mouse over links.
7355 # Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
7357 s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU</screen>
7362 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">OnUnload
7363 event binding</ulink> in the HTML DOM was a <emphasis>CRIME</emphasis>.
7364 When I close a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta.
7365 This job replaces the <quote>onunload</quote> attribute in
7366 <quote><body></quote> tags with the dummy word <literal>never</literal>.
7367 Note that the <literal>i</literal> option makes the pattern matching
7368 case-insensitive. Also note that ungreedy matching alone doesn't always guarantee
7369 a minimal match: In the first parenthesis, we had to use <literal>[^>]*</literal>
7370 instead of <literal>.*</literal> to prevent the match from exceeding the
7371 <body> tag if it doesn't contain <quote>OnUnload</quote>, but the page's
7376 The last example is from the fun department:
7381 FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
7383 # Spice the daily news:
7385 s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig</screen>
7389 Note the <literal>(?!\.com)</literal> part (a so-called negative lookahead)
7390 in the job's pattern, which means: Don't match, if the string
7391 <quote>.com</quote> appears directly following <quote>microsoft</quote>
7392 in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being trashed, while
7393 still replacing the word everywhere else.
7398 # Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
7400 s* industry[ -]leading \
7402 | customer[ -]focused \
7403 | market[ -]driven \
7404 | award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
7405 | high[ -]performance \
7406 | solutions[ -]based \
7410 *<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
7415 The <literal>x</literal> option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for
7416 e.g. the liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
7424 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
7426 <sect2 id="predefined-filters"><title>The Pre-defined Filters</title>
7430 Note each filter is also listed in the +filter action section above. Please
7431 keep these listings in sync.
7436 The distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file contains a selection of
7437 pre-defined filters for your convenience:
7442 <term><emphasis>js-annoyances</emphasis></term>
7445 The purpose of this filter is to get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.
7450 replaces JavaScript references to the browser's referrer information
7451 with the string "Not Your Business!". This compliments the <literal><link
7452 linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal> action on the content level.
7457 removes the bindings to the DOM's
7458 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">unload
7459 event</ulink> which we feel has no right to exist and is responsible for most <quote>exit consoles</quote>, i.e.
7460 nasty windows that pop up when you close another one.
7465 removes code that causes new windows to be opened with undesired properties, such as being
7466 full-screen, non-resizeable, without location, status or menu bar etc.
7472 Use with caution. This is an aggressive filter, and can break sites that
7473 rely heavily on JavaScript.
7479 <term><emphasis>js-events</emphasis></term>
7482 This is a very radical measure. It removes virtually all JavaScript event bindings, which
7483 means that scripts can not react to user actions such as mouse movements or clicks, window
7484 resizing etc, anymore. Use with caution!
7487 We <emphasis>strongly discourage</emphasis> using this filter as a default since it breaks
7488 many legitimate scripts. It is meant for use only on extra-nasty sites (should you really
7495 <term><emphasis>html-annoyances</emphasis></term>
7498 This filter will undo many common instances of HTML based abuse.
7501 The <literal>BLINK</literal> and <literal>MARQUEE</literal> tags
7502 are neutralized (yeah baby!), and browser windows will be created as
7503 resizeable (as of course they should be!), and will have location,
7504 scroll and menu bars -- even if specified otherwise.
7510 <term><emphasis>content-cookies</emphasis></term>
7513 Most cookies are set in the HTTP dialog, where they can be intercepted
7515 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>
7516 and <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>
7517 actions. But web sites increasingly make use of HTML meta tags and JavaScript
7518 to sneak cookies to the browser on the content level.
7521 This filter disables most HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets
7522 cookies. It cannot detect all clever uses of these types of code, so it
7523 should not be relied on as an absolute fix. Use it wherever you would also
7524 use the cookie crunch actions.
7530 <term><emphasis>refresh tags</emphasis></term>
7533 Disable any refresh tags if the interval is greater than nine seconds (so
7534 that redirections done via refresh tags are not destroyed). This is useful
7535 for dial-on-demand setups, or for those who find this HTML feature
7542 <term><emphasis>unsolicited-popups</emphasis></term>
7545 This filter attempts to prevent only <quote>unsolicited</quote> pop-up
7546 windows from opening, yet still allow pop-up windows that the user
7547 has explicitly chosen to open. It was added in version 3.0.1,
7548 as an improvement over earlier such filters.
7551 Technical note: The filter works by redefining the window.open JavaScript
7552 function to a dummy function, <literal>PrivoxyWindowOpen()</literal>,
7553 during the loading and rendering phase of each HTML page access, and
7554 restoring the function afterward.
7557 This is recommended only for browsers that cannot perform this function
7558 reliably themselves. And be aware that some sites require such windows
7559 in order to function normally. Use with caution.
7565 <term><emphasis>all-popups</emphasis></term>
7568 Attempt to prevent <emphasis>all</emphasis> pop-up windows from opening.
7569 Note this should be used with even more discretion than the above, since
7570 it is more likely to break some sites that require pop-ups for normal
7571 usage. Use with caution.
7577 <term><emphasis>img-reorder</emphasis></term>
7580 This is a helper filter that has no value if used alone. It makes the
7581 <literal>banners-by-size</literal> and <literal>banners-by-link</literal>
7582 (see below) filters more effective and should be enabled together with them.
7588 <term><emphasis>banners-by-size</emphasis></term>
7591 This filter removes image tags purely based on what size they are. Fortunately
7592 for us, many ads and banner images tend to conform to certain standardized
7593 sizes, which makes this filter quite effective for ad stripping purposes.
7596 Occasionally this filter will cause false positives on images that are not ads,
7597 but just happen to be of one of the standard banner sizes.
7600 Recommended only for those who require extreme ad blocking. The default
7601 block rules should catch 95+% of all ads <emphasis>without</emphasis> this filter enabled.
7607 <term><emphasis>banners-by-link</emphasis></term>
7610 This is an experimental filter that attempts to kill any banners if
7611 their URLs seem to point to known or suspected click trackers. It is currently
7612 not of much value and is not recommended for use by default.
7618 <term><emphasis>webbugs</emphasis></term>
7621 Webbugs are small, invisible images (technically 1X1 GIF images), that
7622 are used to track users across websites, and collect information on them.
7623 As an HTML page is loaded by the browser, an embedded image tag causes the
7624 browser to contact a third-party site, disclosing the tracking information
7625 through the requested URL and/or cookies for that third-party domain, without
7626 the user ever becoming aware of the interaction with the third-party site.
7627 HTML-ized spam also uses a similar technique to verify email addresses.
7630 This filter removes the HTML code that loads such <quote>webbugs</quote>.
7636 <term><emphasis>tiny-textforms</emphasis></term>
7639 A rather special-purpose filter that can be used to enlarge textareas (those
7640 multi-line text boxes in web forms) and turn off hard word wrap in them.
7641 It was written for the sourceforge.net tracker system where such boxes are
7642 a nuisance, but it can be handy on other sites, too.
7645 It is not recommended to use this filter as a default.
7651 <term><emphasis>jumping-windows</emphasis></term>
7654 Many consider windows that move, or resize themselves to be abusive. This filter
7655 neutralizes the related JavaScript code. Note that some sites might not display
7656 or behave as intended when using this filter. Use with caution.
7662 <term><emphasis>frameset-borders</emphasis></term>
7665 Some web designers seem to assume that everyone in the world will view their
7666 web sites using the same browser brand and version, screen resolution etc,
7667 because only that assumption could explain why they'd use static frame sizes,
7668 yet prevent their frames from being resized by the user, should they be too
7669 small to show their whole content.
7672 This filter removes the related HTML code. It should only be applied to sites
7679 <term><emphasis>demoronizer</emphasis></term>
7682 Many Microsoft products that generate HTML use non-standard extensions (read:
7683 violations) of the ISO 8859-1 aka Latin-1 character set. This can cause those
7684 HTML documents to display with errors on standard-compliant platforms.
7687 This filter translates the MS-only characters into Latin-1 equivalents.
7688 It is not necessary when using MS products, and will cause corruption of
7689 all documents that use 8-bit character sets other than Latin-1. It's mostly
7690 worthwhile for Europeans on non-MS platforms, if weird garbage characters
7691 sometimes appear on some pages, or user agents that don't correct for this on
7694 My version of Mozilla (ancient) shows litte square boxes for quote
7695 characters, and apostrophes on moronized pages. So many pages have this, I
7696 can read them fine now. HB 08/27/06
7703 <term><emphasis>shockwave-flash</emphasis></term>
7706 A filter for shockwave haters. As the name suggests, this filter strips code
7707 out of web pages that is used to embed shockwave flash objects.
7715 <term><emphasis>quicktime-kioskmode</emphasis></term>
7718 Change HTML code that embeds Quicktime objects so that kioskmode, which
7719 prevents saving, is disabled.
7725 <term><emphasis>fun</emphasis></term>
7728 Text replacements for subversive browsing fun. Make fun of your favorite
7729 Monopolist or play buzzword bingo.
7735 <term><emphasis>crude-parental</emphasis></term>
7738 A demonstration-only filter that shows how <application>Privoxy</application>
7739 can be used to delete web content on a keyword basis.
7745 <term><emphasis>ie-exploits</emphasis></term>
7748 An experimental collection of text replacements to disable malicious HTML and JavaScript
7749 code that exploits known security holes in Internet Explorer.
7752 Presently, it only protects against Nimda and a cross-site scripting bug, and
7753 would need active maintenance to provide more substantial protection.
7759 <term><emphasis>site-specifics</emphasis></term>
7762 Some web sites have very specific problems, the cure for which doesn't apply
7763 anywhere else, or could even cause damage on other sites.
7766 This is a collection of such site-specific cures which should only be applied
7767 to the sites they were intended for, which is what the supplied
7768 <filename>default.action</filename> file does. Users shouldn't need to change
7769 anything regarding this filter.
7775 <term><emphasis>google</emphasis></term>
7778 A CSS based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation
7779 and the toolbar advertisement.
7785 <term><emphasis>yahoo</emphasis></term>
7788 Another CSS based block, this time for Yahoo text ads. And removes
7789 a width limitation as well.
7795 <term><emphasis>msn</emphasis></term>
7798 Another CSS based block, this time for MSN text ads. And removes
7799 tracking URLs, as well as a width limitation.
7805 <term><emphasis>blogspot</emphasis></term>
7808 Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this one!
7811 This filter also intentionally removes some navigation stuff and sets the
7812 page width to 100%. As a result, some rounded <quote>corners</quote> would
7813 appear to early or not at all and as fixing this would require a browser
7814 that understands background-size (CSS3), they are removed instead.
7820 <term><emphasis>xml-to-html</emphasis></term>
7823 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from xml to html.
7829 <term><emphasis>html-to-xml</emphasis></term>
7832 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from html to xml.
7838 <term><emphasis>no-ping</emphasis></term>
7841 Removes the non-standard <literal>ping</literal> attribute from
7842 anchor and area HTML tags.
7848 <term><emphasis>hide-tor-exit-notation</emphasis></term>
7851 Client-header filter to remove the <command>Tor</command> exit node notation
7852 found in Host and Referer headers.
7855 If &my-app; and <command>Tor</command> are chained and &my-app;
7856 is configured to use socks4a, one can use <quote>http://www.example.org.foobar.exit/</quote>
7857 to access the host <quote>www.example.org</quote> through the
7858 <command>Tor</command> exit node <quote>foobar</quote>.
7861 As the HTTP client isn't aware of this notation, it treats the
7862 whole string <quote>www.example.org.foobar.exit</quote> as host and uses it
7863 for the <quote>Host</quote> and <quote>Referer</quote> headers. From the
7864 server's point of view the resulting headers are invalid and can cause problems.
7867 An invalid <quote>Referer</quote> header can trigger <quote>hot-linking</quote>
7868 protections, an invalid <quote>Host</quote> header will make it impossible for
7869 the server to find the right vhost (several domains hosted on the same IP address).
7872 This client-header filter removes the <quote>foo.exit</quote> part in those headers
7873 to prevent the mentioned problems. Note that it only modifies
7874 the HTTP headers, it doesn't make it impossible for the server
7875 to detect your <command>Tor</command> exit node based on the IP address
7876 the request is coming from.
7883 <term><emphasis> </emphasis></term>
7897 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7901 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7903 <sect1 id="templates">
7904 <title>Privoxy's Template Files</title>
7906 All <application>Privoxy</application> built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the
7907 <ulink url="http://show-the-404-error.page"><quote>404 - No Such Domain</quote>
7908 error page</ulink>, the <ulink
7909 url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
7911 and all pages of its <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
7912 user interface</ulink>, are generated from <emphasis>templates</emphasis>.
7913 (<application>Privoxy</application> must be running for the above links to work as
7918 These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the <link linkend="confdir">configuration
7919 directory</link> called <filename>templates</filename>. On Unixish platforms,
7921 <ulink url="file:///etc/privoxy/templates/"><filename>/etc/privoxy/templates/</filename></ulink>.
7925 The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called symbols
7926 or exports), which <application>Privoxy</application> fills at run time. It
7927 is possible to edit the templates with a normal text editor, should you want
7928 to customize them. (<emphasis>Not recommended for the casual
7929 user</emphasis>). Should you create your own custom templates, you should use
7930 the <filename>config</filename> setting <link linkend="templdir">templdir</link>
7931 to specify an alternate location, so your templates do not get overwritten
7935 Note that just like in configuration files, lines starting
7936 with <literal>#</literal> are ignored when the templates are filled in.
7940 The place-holders are of the form <literal>@name@</literal>, and you will
7941 find a list of available symbols, which vary from template to template,
7942 in the comments at the start of each file. Note that these comments are not
7943 always accurate, and that it's probably best to look at the existing HTML
7944 code to find out which symbols are supported and what they are filled in with.
7948 A special application of this substitution mechanism is to make whole
7949 blocks of HTML code disappear when a specific symbol is set. We use this
7950 for many purposes, one of them being to include the beta warning in all
7951 our user interface (CGI) pages when <application>Privoxy</application>
7952 is in an alpha or beta development stage:
7957 <!-- @if-unstable-start -->
7959 ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
7961 <!-- if-unstable-end@ --></screen>
7965 If the "unstable" symbol is set, everything in between and including
7966 <literal>@if-unstable-start</literal> and <literal>if-unstable-end@</literal>
7967 will disappear, leaving nothing but an empty comment:
7971 <screen><!-- --></screen>
7975 There's also an if-then-else construct and an <literal>#include</literal>
7976 mechanism, but you'll sure find out if you are inclined to edit the
7981 All templates refer to a style located at
7982 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet"><literal>http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet</literal></ulink>.
7983 This is, of course, locally served by <application>Privoxy</application>
7984 and the source for it can be found and edited in the
7985 <filename>cgi-style.css</filename> template.
7990 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7994 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7996 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
7999 <!-- Include contacting.sgml boilerplate: -->
8001 <!-- end boilerplate -->
8005 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
8008 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8009 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Privoxy Copyright, License and History</title>
8011 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
8013 <!-- end copyright -->
8015 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8016 <sect2><title>License</title>
8017 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
8019 <!-- end copyright -->
8021 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
8024 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8026 <sect2 id="history"><title>History</title>
8027 <!-- Include history.sgml: -->
8029 <!-- end history -->
8032 <sect2 id="authors"><title>Authors</title>
8033 <!-- Include p-authors.sgml: -->
8035 <!-- end authors -->
8040 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
8043 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8044 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See Also</title>
8045 <!-- Include seealso.sgml: -->
8047 <!-- end seealso -->
8052 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8053 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
8056 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8058 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
8060 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl-style <quote>regular
8061 expressions</quote> in its <link linkend="actions-file">actions
8062 files</link> and <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>,
8063 through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> and
8066 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/">PCRS</ulink> libraries.
8068 <application>PCRS</application> libraries.
8072 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
8073 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
8074 introduction only. A full explanation would require a <ulink
8075 url="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/">book</ulink> ;-)
8079 Regular expressions provide a language to describe patterns that can be
8080 run against strings of characters (letter, numbers, etc), to see if they
8081 match the string or not. The patterns are themselves (sometimes complex)
8082 strings of literal characters, combined with wild-cards, and other special
8083 characters, called meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have
8084 special meanings and are used to build complex patterns to be matched against.
8085 Perl Compatible Regular Expressions are an especially convenient
8086 <quote>dialect</quote> of the regular expression language.
8090 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
8091 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
8092 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
8093 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
8094 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
8095 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
8096 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
8097 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
8101 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
8102 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
8103 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
8104 and then some examples:
8109 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
8110 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
8112 </simplelist></para>
8116 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
8119 </simplelist></para>
8123 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
8126 </simplelist></para>
8130 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
8133 </simplelist></para>
8137 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
8138 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
8139 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
8140 not as a special meta-character. Example: <quote>example\.com</quote>, makes
8141 sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded to its
8142 meta-character meaning of any single character).
8144 </simplelist></para>
8148 <emphasis>[ ]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
8149 any of the enclosed characters are encountered. For instance, <quote>[0-9]</quote>
8150 matches any numeric digit (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine
8151 this with <quote>+</quote> to match any digit one of more times: <quote>[0-9]+</quote>.
8153 </simplelist></para>
8157 <emphasis>( )</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
8158 or multiple sub-expressions.
8160 </simplelist></para>
8164 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
8165 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
8166 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches. As an example:
8167 <quote>/(this|that) example/</quote> uses grouping and the bar character
8168 and would match either <quote>this example</quote> or <quote>that
8169 example</quote>, and nothing else.
8171 </simplelist></para>
8174 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
8175 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
8176 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
8177 be more illuminating:
8181 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
8182 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
8183 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
8184 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
8185 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
8186 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
8187 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
8188 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
8189 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
8190 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
8191 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
8192 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
8193 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
8194 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
8199 And now something a little more complex:
8203 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
8204 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
8205 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
8206 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
8207 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
8208 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
8209 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
8214 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
8215 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
8216 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
8217 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
8218 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
8219 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
8220 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
8221 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
8222 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
8223 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
8224 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
8225 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
8226 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
8227 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
8228 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
8229 changing our regular expression to:
8230 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
8235 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
8236 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
8237 <quote>[ ]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
8238 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
8239 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
8240 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
8241 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
8242 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
8243 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
8244 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
8245 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
8246 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
8247 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
8248 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
8249 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
8250 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
8251 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
8252 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
8253 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
8254 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
8255 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
8256 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
8257 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
8258 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
8259 in the expression anywhere).
8263 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
8264 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
8265 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
8266 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
8267 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
8272 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
8273 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html</ulink>
8277 For information on regular expression based substitutions and their applications
8278 in filters, please see the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file tutorial</link>
8283 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
8286 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8288 <title>Privoxy's Internal Pages</title>
8291 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
8292 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
8293 trap certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
8294 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
8295 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
8296 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
8297 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
8303 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
8304 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
8305 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
8306 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
8319 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
8323 There is a shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (But it
8324 doesn't provide a fall-back to a real page, in case the request is not
8325 sent through <application>Privoxy</application>)
8331 Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
8332 editing of actions files:
8336 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
8343 Show the source code version numbers:
8347 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">http://config.privoxy.org/show-version</ulink>
8354 Show the browser's request headers:
8358 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">http://config.privoxy.org/show-request</ulink>
8365 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
8369 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
8376 Toggle Privoxy on or off. This feature can be turned off/on in the main
8377 <filename>config</filename> file. When toggled <quote>off</quote>, <quote>Privoxy</quote>
8378 continues to run, but only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking
8383 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
8387 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
8391 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
8396 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
8405 These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
8409 <sect3 id="bookmarklets">
8410 <title>Bookmarklets</title>
8412 Below are some <quote>bookmarklets</quote> to allow you to easily access a
8413 <quote>mini</quote> version of some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
8414 special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer, but should work
8415 equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which support
8416 JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not by
8417 clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
8420 To save them, right-click the link and choose <quote>Add to Favorites</quote>
8421 (IE) or <quote>Add Bookmark</quote> (Netscape). You will get a warning that
8422 the bookmark <quote>may not be safe</quote> - just click OK. Then you can run the
8423 Bookmarklet directly from your favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access,
8424 you can put them on the <quote>Links</quote> bar (IE) or the <quote>Personal
8425 Toolbar</quote> (Netscape), and run them with a single click.
8434 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>
8441 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>
8448 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)
8455 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>
8461 <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>
8467 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info?url='+escape(location.href),'Why').focus());">Privoxy - Why?</ulink>
8474 Credit: The site which gave us the general idea for these bookmarklets is
8475 <ulink url="http://www.bookmarklets.com/">www.bookmarklets.com</ulink>. They
8476 have more information about bookmarklets.
8485 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8487 <title>Chain of Events</title>
8489 Let's take a quick look at how some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
8490 core features are triggered, and the ensuing sequence of events when a web
8491 page is requested by your browser:
8498 First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send
8499 the request to <application>Privoxy</application>, which will in turn,
8500 relay the request to the remote web server after passing the following
8506 <application>Privoxy</application> traps any request for its own internal CGI
8507 pages (e.g <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>) and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
8512 Next, <application>Privoxy</application> checks to see if the URL
8514 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link> patterns. If
8515 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be contacted.
8516 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>
8518 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-EMPTY-DOCUMENT"><quote>+handle-as-empty-document</quote></link>
8519 are then checked, and if there is no match, an
8520 HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page is sent back to the browser. Otherwise, if
8521 it does match, an image is returned for the former, and an empty text
8522 document for the latter. The type of image would depend on the setting of
8523 <link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><quote>+set-image-blocker</quote></link>
8524 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
8529 Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the
8530 <filename>trust</filename> file, then that is done.
8535 If the URL pattern matches the <link
8536 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link> action,
8537 it is then processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
8542 Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
8543 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. <link
8544 linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT"><quote>+hide-user-agent</quote></link>,
8545 etc.), headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and
8551 Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web
8557 First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
8558 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
8559 filtered as determined by the
8560 <link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES"><quote>+crunch-incoming-cookies</quote></link>,
8561 <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>,
8562 and <link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION"><quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote></link>
8568 If the <link linkend="KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></link>
8569 action applies, and it is an HTML or JavaScript document, the popup-code in the
8570 response is filtered on-the-fly as it is received.
8575 If any <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
8577 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
8578 action applies (and the document type fits the action), the rest of the page is
8579 read into memory (up to a configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from
8580 <filename>default.filter</filename> and any other filter files) are
8581 processed against the buffered content. Filters are applied in the order
8582 they are specified in one of the filter files. Animated GIFs, if present,
8583 are reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
8584 setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by
8585 <application>Privoxy</application> back to your browser.
8588 If neither a <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
8590 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
8591 matches, then <application>Privoxy</application> passes the raw data through
8592 to the client browser as it becomes available.
8597 As the browser receives the now (possibly filtered) page content, it
8598 reads and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page
8599 source, e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
8600 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a
8601 separate request (this is easily viewable in <application>Privoxy's</application>
8602 logs). And each such request is in turn processed just as above. Note that a
8603 complex web page will have many, many such embedded URLs. If these
8604 secondary requests are to a different server, then quite possibly a very
8605 differing set of actions is triggered.
8612 NOTE: This is somewhat of a simplistic overview of what happens with each URL
8613 request. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, we have focused on
8614 <application>Privoxy's</application> core features only.
8620 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8621 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
8622 <title>Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</title>
8625 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies
8626 <link linkend="ACTIONS">actions</link> and <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>
8627 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so
8628 easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to
8629 <emphasis>see</emphasis> just what <application>Privoxy</application> is
8630 doing. Especially, if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing
8631 is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to look at
8632 the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
8633 <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> whose consequences are not
8638 One quick test to see if <application>Privoxy</application> is causing a problem
8639 or not, is to disable it temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting
8640 step. See <link linkend="bookmarklets">the Bookmarklets</link> section on a quick
8641 and easy way to do this (be sure to flush caches afterward!). Looking at the
8642 logs is a good idea too. (Note that both the toggle feature and logging are
8643 enabled via <filename>config</filename> file settings, and may need to be
8644 turned <quote>on</quote>.)
8647 Another easy troubleshooting step to try is if you have done any
8648 customization of your installation, revert back to the installed
8649 defaults and see if that helps. There are times the developers get complaints
8650 about one thing or another, and the problem is more related to a customized
8651 configuration issue.
8655 <application>Privoxy</application> also provides the
8656 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
8657 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
8658 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
8662 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
8663 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
8664 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
8665 help with filtering effects (i.e. the <link
8666 linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action) from
8667 one of the filter files since this is handled very
8668 differently and not so easy to trap! It also will not tell you about any other
8669 URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are testing. For instance, images
8670 such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw page source of HTML pages. So
8671 you will only get info for the actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area
8672 -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you
8673 will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View
8674 Page Source</quote> option for this. Or right click on the ad, and grab the
8679 Let's try an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
8680 and look at it one section at a time in a sample configuration (your real
8681 configuration may vary):
8686 Matches for http://www.google.com:
8688 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8690 {+deanimate-gifs {last}
8691 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8692 +filter {refresh-tags}
8693 +filter {img-reorder}
8694 +filter {banners-by-size}
8696 +filter {jumping-windows}
8697 +filter {ie-exploits}
8698 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
8699 +hide-from-header {block}
8700 +hide-referrer {forge}
8701 +session-cookies-only
8702 +set-image-blocker {pattern}
8705 { -session-cookies-only }
8711 In file: user.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8712 (no matches in this file)
8717 This is telling us how we have defined our
8718 <link linkend="ACTIONS"><quote>actions</quote></link>, and
8719 which ones match for our test case, <quote>google.com</quote>.
8720 Displayed is all the actions that are available to us. Remember,
8721 the <literal>+</literal> sign denotes <quote>on</quote>. <literal>-</literal>
8722 denotes <quote>off</quote>. So some are <quote>on</quote> here, but many
8723 are <quote>off</quote>. Each example we try may provide a slightly different
8724 end result, depending on our configuration directives.
8728 is for our <filename>default.action</filename> file. The large, multi-line
8729 listing, is how the actions are set to match for all URLs, i.e. our default
8730 settings. If you look at your <quote>actions</quote> file, this would be the
8731 section just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section near the top. This
8732 will apply to all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end
8733 of the listing -- <quote> / </quote>.
8737 But we have defined additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
8738 rules, and then we list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions
8739 would apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit
8740 matches for <quote>.google.com</quote>. The first is negating our previous
8741 cookie setting, which was for <link
8742 linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>
8743 (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent cookies for google, at
8744 least that is how it is in this example. The second turns
8745 <emphasis>off</emphasis> any <link
8746 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link>
8747 action, allowing this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading
8748 dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will match any hosts and
8749 sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
8750 <quote>www.google.com</quote> or <quote>mail.google.com</quote>. But it would not
8751 match <quote>www.google.de</quote>! So, apparently, we have these two actions
8752 defined as exceptions to the general rules at the top somewhere in the lower
8753 part of our <filename>default.action</filename> file, and
8754 <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced somewhere in these latter sections.
8758 Then, for our <filename>user.action</filename> file, we again have no hits.
8759 So there is nothing google-specific that we might have added to our own, local
8760 configuration. If there was, those actions would over-rule any actions from
8761 previously processed files, such as <filename>default.action</filename>.
8762 <filename>user.action</filename> typically has the last word. This is the
8763 best place to put hard and fast exceptions,
8767 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
8768 <application>Privoxy</application> is applying all its <quote>actions</quote>
8769 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
8780 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
8781 -content-type-overwrite
8782 -crunch-client-header
8783 -crunch-if-none-match
8784 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8785 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8786 -crunch-server-header
8787 +deanimate-gifs {last}
8788 -downgrade-http-version
8791 -filter {content-cookies}
8792 -filter {all-popups}
8793 -filter {banners-by-link}
8794 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8795 -filter {frameset-borders}
8796 -filter {demoronizer}
8797 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8798 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8800 -filter {crude-parental}
8801 -filter {site-specifics}
8802 -filter {js-annoyances}
8803 -filter {html-annoyances}
8804 +filter {refresh-tags}
8805 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8806 +filter {img-reorder}
8807 +filter {banners-by-size}
8809 +filter {jumping-windows}
8810 +filter {ie-exploits}
8817 -handle-as-empty-document
8819 -hide-accept-language
8820 -hide-content-disposition
8821 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
8822 +hide-from-header {block}
8823 -hide-if-modified-since
8824 +hide-referrer {forge}
8829 -overwrite-last-modified
8830 -prevent-compression
8834 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
8835 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
8836 -session-cookies-only
8837 +set-image-blocker {pattern}
8838 -treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks </screen>
8842 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
8843 <quote>fast-redirects</quote> and <quote>session-cookies-only</quote>,
8844 which are activated specifically for this site in our configuration,
8845 and thus show in the <quote>Final Results</quote>.
8849 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
8861 { +block +handle-as-image }
8862 .[a-vx-z]*.doubleclick.net
8867 We'll just show the interesting part here - the explicit matches. It is
8868 matched three different times. Two <quote>+block</quote> sections,
8869 and a <quote>+block +handle-as-image</quote>,
8870 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
8871 <quote>+block-as-image</quote>. (<link
8872 linkend="ALIASES"><quote>Aliases</quote></link> are defined in
8873 the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
8878 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
8879 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
8880 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
8881 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
8882 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
8883 is done here -- as both a <link
8884 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link>
8885 <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
8886 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>.
8887 The custom alias <quote><literal>+block-as-image</literal></quote> just
8888 simplifies the process and make it more readable.
8892 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
8893 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
8899 Matches for http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
8901 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8905 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
8906 -content-type-overwrite
8907 -crunch-client-header
8908 -crunch-if-none-match
8909 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8910 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8911 -crunch-server-header
8913 -downgrade-http-version
8914 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8916 -filter {content-cookies}
8917 -filter {all-popups}
8918 -filter {banners-by-link}
8919 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8920 -filter {frameset-borders}
8921 -filter {demoronizer}
8922 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8923 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8925 -filter {crude-parental}
8926 -filter {site-specifics}
8927 -filter {js-annoyances}
8928 -filter {html-annoyances}
8929 +filter {refresh-tags}
8930 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8931 +filter {img-reorder}
8932 +filter {banners-by-size}
8934 +filter {jumping-windows}
8935 +filter {ie-exploits}
8942 -handle-as-empty-document
8944 -hide-accept-language
8945 -hide-content-disposition
8946 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
8947 +hide-from-header{block}
8948 +hide-referer{forge}
8952 -overwrite-last-modified
8953 +prevent-compression
8957 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
8958 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
8959 +session-cookies-only
8960 +set-image-blocker{blank}
8961 -treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks }
8964 { +block +handle-as-image }
8970 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote> in our
8971 configuration! But we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the
8972 blank page. It is actually triggering two different actions here, and
8973 the effects are aggregated so that the URL is blocked, and &my-app; is told
8974 to treat the block as if it were an image. But this is, of course, all wrong.
8975 We could now add a new action below this (or better in our own
8976 <filename>user.action</filename> file) that explicitly
8977 <emphasis>un</emphasis> blocks (
8978 <link linkend="BLOCK"><quote>{-block}</quote></link>) paths with
8979 <quote>adsl</quote> in them (remember, last match in the configuration
8980 wins). There are various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
8992 Now the page displays ;-)
8993 Remember to flush your browser's caches when making these kinds of changes to
8994 your configuration to insure that you get a freshly delivered page! Or, try
8995 using <literal>Shift+Reload</literal>.
8999 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
9006 { +block +handle-as-image }
9012 That actually was very helpful and pointed us quickly to where the problem
9013 was. If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default
9014 rules in the first section of <filename>default.action</filename> is causing
9015 the problem. This would require some guesswork, and maybe a little trial and
9016 error to isolate the offending rule. One likely cause would be one of the
9017 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> actions.
9018 These tend to be harder to troubleshoot.
9019 Try adding the URL for the site to one of aliases that turn off
9020 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>:
9028 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
9036 <quote><literal>{ shop }</literal></quote> is an <quote>alias</quote> that expands to
9037 <quote><literal>{ -filter -session-cookies-only }</literal></quote>.
9038 Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
9046 # Disable ALL filter actions for sites in this section
9054 This would turn off all filtering for these sites. This is best
9055 put in <filename>user.action</filename>, for local site
9056 exceptions. Note that when a simple domain pattern is used by itself (without
9057 the subsequent path portion), all sub-pages within that domain are included
9058 automatically in the scope of the action.
9062 Images that are inexplicably being blocked, may well be hitting the
9063 <link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE"><quote>+filter{banners-by-size}</quote></link>
9065 that images of certain sizes are ad banners (works well
9066 <emphasis>most of the time</emphasis> since these tend to be standardized).
9070 <quote><literal>{ fragile }</literal></quote> is an alias that disables most
9071 actions that are the most likely to cause trouble. This can be used as a
9072 last resort for problem sites.
9078 # Handle with care: easy to break
9080 mybank.example.com</screen>
9085 <emphasis>Remember to flush caches!</emphasis> Note that the
9086 <literal>mail.google</literal> reference lacks the TLD portion (e.g.
9087 <quote>.com</quote>. This will effectively match any TLD with
9088 <literal>google</literal> in it, such as <literal>mail.google.de</literal>,
9092 If this still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining
9093 actions one by one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
9102 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
9103 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
9104 Public License as published by the Free Software
9105 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
9106 your option) any later version.
9108 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
9109 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
9110 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
9111 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
9112 License for more details.
9114 The GNU General Public License should be included with
9115 this file. If not, you can view it at
9116 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
9117 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
9118 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301,
9121 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
9122 Revision 2.43 2007/11/14 18:45:39 fabiankeil
9123 - Mention some more contributors in the "New in this Release" list.
9126 Revision 2.42 2007/11/12 03:32:40 hal9
9127 Updates for "What's New" and "Notes to Upgraders". Various other changes in
9128 preparation for new release. User Manual is almost ready.
9130 Revision 2.41 2007/11/11 16:32:11 hal9
9131 This is primarily syncing What's New and Note to Upgraders sections with the many
9132 new features and changes (gleaned from memory but mostly from ChangeLog).
9134 Revision 2.40 2007/11/10 17:10:59 fabiankeil
9135 In the first third of the file, mention several times that
9136 the action editor is disabled by default in 3.0.7 beta and later.
9138 Revision 2.39 2007/11/05 02:34:49 hal9
9139 Various changes in preparation for the upcoming release. Much yet to be done.
9141 Revision 2.38 2007/09/22 16:01:42 fabiankeil
9142 Update embedded show-url-info output.
9144 Revision 2.37 2007/08/27 16:09:55 fabiankeil
9145 Fix pre-chroot-nslookup description which I failed to
9146 copy and paste properly. Reported by Stephen Gildea.
9148 Revision 2.36 2007/08/26 16:47:14 fabiankeil
9149 Add Stephen Gildea's pre-chroot-nslookup patch [#1276666],
9150 extensive comments moved to user manual.
9152 Revision 2.35 2007/08/26 14:59:49 fabiankeil
9153 Minor rewordings and fixes.
9155 Revision 2.34 2007/08/05 15:19:50 fabiankeil
9156 - Don't claim HTTP/1.1 compliance.
9157 - Use $ in some of the path pattern examples.
9158 - Use a hide-user-agent example argument without
9159 leading and trailing space.
9160 - Make it clear that the cookie actions work with
9162 - Rephrase the inspect-jpegs text to underline
9163 that it's only meant to protect against a single
9166 Revision 2.33 2007/07/27 10:57:35 hal9
9167 Add references for user-agent strings for hide-user-agenet
9169 Revision 2.32 2007/06/07 12:36:22 fabiankeil
9170 Apply Roland's 29_usermanual.dpatch to fix a bunch
9171 of syntax errors I collected over the last months.
9173 Revision 2.31 2007/06/02 14:01:37 fabiankeil
9174 Start to document forward-override{}.
9176 Revision 2.30 2007/04/25 15:10:36 fabiankeil
9177 - Describe installation for FreeBSD.
9178 - Start to document taggers and tag patterns.
9179 - Don't confuse devils and daemons.
9181 Revision 2.29 2007/04/05 11:47:51 fabiankeil
9182 Some updates regarding header filtering,
9183 handling of compressed content and redirect's
9184 support for pcrs commands.
9186 Revision 2.28 2006/12/10 23:42:48 hal9
9187 Fix various typos reported by Adam P. Thanks.
9189 Revision 2.27 2006/11/14 01:57:47 hal9
9190 Dump all docs prior to 3.0.6 release. Various minor changes to faq and user
9193 Revision 2.26 2006/10/24 11:16:44 hal9
9196 Revision 2.25 2006/10/18 10:50:33 hal9
9197 Add note that since filters are off in Cautious, compression is ON. Turn off
9198 compression to make filters work on all sites.
9200 Revision 2.24 2006/10/03 11:13:54 hal9
9201 More references to the new filters. Include html this time around.
9203 Revision 2.23 2006/10/02 22:43:53 hal9
9204 Contains new filter definitions from Fabian, and few other miscellaneous
9207 Revision 2.22 2006/09/22 01:27:55 hal9
9208 Final commit of probably various minor changes here and there. Unless
9209 something changes this should be ready for pending release.
9211 Revision 2.21 2006/09/20 03:21:36 david__schmidt
9212 Just the tiniest tweak. Wafer thin!
9214 Revision 2.20 2006/09/10 14:53:54 hal9
9215 Results of spell check. User manual has some updates to standard.actions file
9218 Revision 2.19 2006/09/08 12:19:02 fabiankeil
9219 Adjust hide-if-modified-since example values
9220 to reflect the recent changes.
9222 Revision 2.18 2006/09/08 02:38:57 hal9
9224 -Fix a number of broken links.
9225 -Migrate the new Windows service command line options, and reference as
9227 -Rebuild so that can be used with the new "user-manual" config capabilities.
9230 Revision 2.17 2006/09/05 13:25:12 david__schmidt
9231 Add Windows service invocation stuff (duplicated) in FAQ and in user manual under Windows startup. One probably ought to reference the other.
9233 Revision 2.16 2006/09/02 12:49:37 hal9
9234 Various small updates for new actions, filterfiles, etc.
9236 Revision 2.15 2006/08/30 11:15:22 hal9
9237 More work on the new actions, especially filter-*-headers, and What's New
9238 section. User Manual is close to final form for 3.0.4 release. Some tinkering
9239 and proof reading left to do.
9241 Revision 2.14 2006/08/29 10:59:36 hal9
9242 Add a "Whats New in this release" Section. Further work on multiple filter
9243 files, and assorted other minor changes.
9245 Revision 2.13 2006/08/22 11:04:59 hal9
9246 Silence warnings and errors. This should build now. New filters were only
9247 stubbed in. More to be done.
9249 Revision 2.12 2006/08/14 08:40:39 fabiankeil
9250 Documented new actions that were part of
9251 the "minor Privoxy improvements".
9253 Revision 2.11 2006/07/18 14:48:51 david__schmidt
9254 Reorganizing the repository: swapping out what was HEAD (the old 3.1 branch)
9255 with what was really the latest development (the v_3_0_branch branch)
9257 Revision 1.123.2.43 2005/05/23 09:59:10 hal9
9260 Revision 1.123.2.42 2004/12/04 14:39:57 hal9
9261 Fix two minor typos per bug SF report.
9263 Revision 1.123.2.41 2004/03/23 12:58:42 oes
9266 Revision 1.123.2.40 2004/02/27 12:48:49 hal9
9267 Add comment re: redirecting to local file system for set-image-blocker may
9268 is dependent on browser.
9270 Revision 1.123.2.39 2004/01/30 22:31:40 oes
9271 Added a hint re bookmarklets to Quickstart section
9273 Revision 1.123.2.38 2004/01/30 16:47:51 oes
9274 Some minor clarifications
9276 Revision 1.123.2.37 2004/01/29 22:36:11 hal9
9277 Updates for no longer filtering text/plain, and demoronizer default settings,
9278 and copyright notice dates.
9280 Revision 1.123.2.36 2003/12/10 02:26:26 hal9
9281 Changed the demoronizer filter description.
9283 Revision 1.123.2.35 2003/11/06 13:36:37 oes
9284 Updated link to nightly CVS tarball
9286 Revision 1.123.2.34 2003/06/26 23:50:16 hal9
9287 Add a small bit on filtering and problems re: source code being corrupted.
9289 Revision 1.123.2.33 2003/05/08 18:17:33 roro
9290 Use apt-get instead of dpkg to install Debian package, which is more
9291 solid, uses the correct and most recent Debian version automatically.
9293 Revision 1.123.2.32 2003/04/11 03:13:57 hal9
9294 Add small note about only one filterfile (as opposed to multiple actions
9297 Revision 1.123.2.31 2003/03/26 02:03:43 oes
9298 Updated hard-coded copyright dates
9300 Revision 1.123.2.30 2003/03/24 12:58:56 hal9
9301 Add new section on Predefined Filters.
9303 Revision 1.123.2.29 2003/03/20 02:45:29 hal9
9304 More problems with \-\-chroot causing markup problems :(
9306 Revision 1.123.2.28 2003/03/19 00:35:24 hal9
9307 Manual edit of revision log because 'chroot' (even inside a comment) was
9308 causing Docbook to hang here (due to double hyphen and the processor thinking
9311 Revision 1.123.2.27 2003/03/18 19:37:14 oes
9312 s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
9314 Revision 1.123.2.26 2003/03/17 16:50:53 oes
9315 Added documentation for new chroot option
9317 Revision 1.123.2.25 2003/03/15 18:36:55 oes
9318 Adapted to the new filters
9320 Revision 1.123.2.24 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
9321 Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
9324 Revision 1.123.2.23 2002/10/21 02:32:01 hal9
9325 Updates to the user.action examples section. A few new ones.
9327 Revision 1.123.2.22 2002/10/12 00:51:53 hal9
9328 Add demoronizer to filter section.
9330 Revision 1.123.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
9331 s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
9333 Revision 1.123.2.20 2002/10/10 03:49:21 hal9
9334 Add notes to session-cookies-only and Quickstart about pre-existing
9335 cookies. Also, note content-cookies work differently.
9337 Revision 1.123.2.19 2002/09/26 01:25:36 hal9
9338 More explanation on Privoxy patterns, more on content-cookies and SSL.
9340 Revision 1.123.2.18 2002/08/22 23:47:58 hal9
9341 Add 'Documentation' to Privoxy Menu shot in Configuration section to match
9344 Revision 1.123.2.17 2002/08/18 01:13:05 hal9
9345 Spell checked (only one typo this time!).
9347 Revision 1.123.2.16 2002/08/09 19:20:54 david__schmidt
9348 Update to Mac OSX startup script name
9350 Revision 1.123.2.15 2002/08/07 17:32:11 oes
9351 Converted some internal links from ulink to link for PDF creation; no content changed
9353 Revision 1.123.2.14 2002/08/06 09:16:13 oes
9354 Nits re: actions file download
9356 Revision 1.123.2.13 2002/08/02 18:23:19 g_sauthoff
9357 Just 2 small corrections to the Gentoo sections
9359 Revision 1.123.2.12 2002/08/02 18:17:21 g_sauthoff
9360 Added 2 Gentoo sections
9362 Revision 1.123.2.11 2002/07/26 15:20:31 oes
9363 - Added version info to title
9364 - Added info on new filters
9365 - Revised parts of the filter file tutorial
9366 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
9368 Revision 1.123.2.10 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
9369 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
9371 Revision 1.123.2.9 2002/07/11 03:40:28 david__schmidt
9373 Updated Mac OSX sections due to installation location change
9375 Revision 1.123.2.8 2002/06/09 16:36:32 hal9
9376 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
9378 Revision 1.123.2.7 2002/06/09 00:29:34 hal9
9379 Touch ups on filtering, in actions section and Anatomy.
9381 Revision 1.123.2.6 2002/06/06 23:11:03 hal9
9382 Fix broken link. Linkchecked all docs.
9384 Revision 1.123.2.5 2002/05/29 02:01:02 hal9
9385 This is break out of the entire config section from u-m, so it can
9386 eventually be used to generate the comments, etc in the main config file
9387 so that these are in sync with each other.
9389 Revision 1.123.2.4 2002/05/27 03:28:45 hal9
9390 Ooops missed something from David.
9392 Revision 1.123.2.3 2002/05/27 03:23:17 hal9
9393 Fix FIXMEs for OS2 and OSX startup. Fix Redhat typos (should be Red Hat).
9394 That's a wrap, I think.
9396 Revision 1.123.2.2 2002/05/26 19:02:09 hal9
9397 Move Amiga stuff around to take of FIXME in start up section.
9399 Revision 1.123.2.1 2002/05/26 17:04:25 hal9
9400 -Spellcheck, very minor edits, and sync across branches
9402 Revision 1.123 2002/05/24 23:19:23 hal9
9403 Include new image (Proxy setup). More fun with guibutton.
9404 Minor corrections/clarifications here and there.
9406 Revision 1.122 2002/05/24 13:24:08 oes
9407 Added Bookmarklet for one-click pre-filled access to show-url-info
9409 Revision 1.121 2002/05/23 23:20:17 oes
9410 - Changed more (all?) references to actions to the
9411 <literal><link> style.
9412 - Small fixes in the actions chapter
9413 - Small clarifications in the quickstart to ad blocking
9414 - Removed <emphasis> from <title>s since the new doc CSS
9415 renders them red (bad in TOC).
9417 Revision 1.120 2002/05/23 19:16:43 roro
9418 Correct Debian specials (installation and startup).
9420 Revision 1.119 2002/05/22 17:17:05 oes
9423 Revision 1.118 2002/05/21 04:54:55 hal9
9424 -New Section: Quickstart to Ad Blocking
9425 -Reformat Actions Anatomy to match new CGI layout
9427 Revision 1.117 2002/05/17 13:56:16 oes
9428 - Reworked & extended Templates chapter
9429 - Small changes to Regex appendix
9430 - #included authors.sgml into (C) and hist chapter
9432 Revision 1.116 2002/05/17 03:23:46 hal9
9433 Fixing merge conflict in Quickstart section.
9435 Revision 1.115 2002/05/16 16:25:00 oes
9436 Extended the Filter File chapter & minor fixes
9438 Revision 1.114 2002/05/16 09:42:50 oes
9439 More ulink->link, added some hints to Quickstart section
9441 Revision 1.113 2002/05/15 21:07:25 oes
9442 Extended and further commented the example actions files
9444 Revision 1.112 2002/05/15 03:57:14 hal9
9445 Spell check. A few minor edits here and there for better syntax and
9448 Revision 1.111 2002/05/14 23:01:36 oes
9451 Revision 1.110 2002/05/14 19:10:45 oes
9452 Restored alphabetical order of actions
9454 Revision 1.109 2002/05/14 17:23:11 oes
9455 Renamed the prevent-*-cookies actions, extended aliases section and moved it before the example AFs
9457 Revision 1.108 2002/05/14 15:29:12 oes
9458 Completed proofreading the actions chapter
9460 Revision 1.107 2002/05/12 03:20:41 hal9
9461 Small clarifications for 127.0.0.1 vs localhost for listen-address since this
9462 apparently an important distinction for some OS's.
9464 Revision 1.106 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
9465 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
9466 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
9467 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
9469 Revision 1.105 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
9470 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
9472 Revision 1.104 2002/05/04 08:44:45 swa
9475 Revision 1.103 2002/05/04 00:40:53 hal9
9476 -Remove the TOC first page kludge. It's fixed proper now in ldp.dsl.in.
9477 -Some minor additions to Quickstart.
9479 Revision 1.102 2002/05/03 17:46:00 oes
9480 Further proofread & reactivated short build instructions
9482 Revision 1.101 2002/05/03 03:58:30 hal9
9483 Move the user-manual config directive to top of section. Add note about
9484 Privoxy needing read permissions for configs, and write for logs.
9486 Revision 1.100 2002/04/29 03:05:55 hal9
9487 Add clarification on differences of new actions files.
9489 Revision 1.99 2002/04/28 16:59:05 swa
9490 more structure in starting section
9492 Revision 1.98 2002/04/28 05:43:59 hal9
9493 This is the break up of configuration.html into multiple files. This
9494 will probably break links elsewhere :(
9496 Revision 1.97 2002/04/27 21:04:42 hal9
9497 -Rewrite of Actions File example.
9498 -Add section for user-manual directive in config.
9500 Revision 1.96 2002/04/27 05:32:00 hal9
9501 -Add short section to Filter Files to tie in with +filter action.
9502 -Start rewrite of examples in Actions Examples (not finished).
9504 Revision 1.95 2002/04/26 17:23:29 swa
9505 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
9507 Revision 1.94 2002/04/26 05:24:36 hal9
9508 -Add most of Andreas suggestions to Chain of Events section.
9509 -A few other minor corrections and touch up.
9511 Revision 1.92 2002/04/25 18:55:13 hal9
9512 More catchups on new actions files, and new actions names.
9513 Other assorted cleanups, and minor modifications.
9515 Revision 1.91 2002/04/24 02:39:31 hal9
9516 Add 'Chain of Events' section.
9518 Revision 1.90 2002/04/23 21:41:25 hal9
9519 Linuxconf is deprecated on RH, substitute chkconfig.
9521 Revision 1.89 2002/04/23 21:05:28 oes
9522 Added hint for startup on Red Hat
9524 Revision 1.88 2002/04/23 05:37:54 hal9
9525 Add AmigaOS install stuff.
9527 Revision 1.87 2002/04/23 02:53:15 david__schmidt
9528 Updated OSX installation section
9529 Added a few English tweaks here an there
9531 Revision 1.86 2002/04/21 01:46:32 hal9
9532 Re-write actions section.
9534 Revision 1.85 2002/04/18 21:23:23 hal9
9535 Fix ugly typo (mine).
9537 Revision 1.84 2002/04/18 21:17:13 hal9
9538 Spell Redhat correctly (ie Red Hat). A few minor grammar corrections.
9540 Revision 1.83 2002/04/18 18:21:12 oes
9541 Added RPM install detail
9543 Revision 1.82 2002/04/18 12:04:50 oes
9546 Revision 1.81 2002/04/18 11:50:24 oes
9547 Extended Install section - needs fixing by packagers
9549 Revision 1.80 2002/04/18 10:45:19 oes
9550 Moved text to buildsource.sgml, renamed some filters, details
9552 Revision 1.79 2002/04/18 03:18:06 hal9
9553 Spellcheck, and minor touchups.
9555 Revision 1.78 2002/04/17 18:04:16 oes
9558 Revision 1.77 2002/04/17 13:51:23 oes
9559 Proofreading, part one
9561 Revision 1.76 2002/04/16 04:25:51 hal9
9562 -Added 'Note to Upgraders' and re-ordered the 'Quickstart' section.
9563 -Note about proxy may need requests to re-read config files.
9565 Revision 1.75 2002/04/12 02:08:48 david__schmidt
9566 Remove OS/2 building info... it is already in the developer-manual
9568 Revision 1.74 2002/04/11 00:54:38 hal9
9569 Add small section on submitting actions.
9571 Revision 1.73 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
9574 Revision 1.72 2002/04/10 04:06:19 hal9
9575 Added actions feedback to Bookmarklets section
9577 Revision 1.71 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
9578 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
9580 Revision 1.70 2002/04/08 20:53:56 swa
9583 Revision 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9
9584 -Add privoxy-man-page.sgml, for man page.
9585 -Add authors.sgml for AUTHORS (and p-authors.sgml)
9586 -Reworked various aspects of various docs.
9587 -Added additional comments to sub-docs.
9589 Revision 1.68 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
9590 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
9592 Revision 1.67 2002/04/04 17:27:57 swa
9593 more single file to be included at multiple points. make maintaining easier
9595 Revision 1.66 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
9596 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
9597 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
9598 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
9599 eventually be set by Makefile.
9600 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
9602 Revision 1.65 2002/04/03 19:52:07 swa
9603 enhance squid section due to user suggestion
9605 Revision 1.64 2002/04/03 03:53:43 hal9
9606 A few minor bug fixes, and touch ups. Ready for review.
9608 Revision 1.63 2002/04/01 16:24:49 hal9
9609 Define entities to include boilerplate text. See doc/source/*.
9611 Revision 1.62 2002/03/30 04:15:53 hal9
9612 - Fix privoxy.org/config links.
9613 - Paste in Bookmarklets from Toggle page.
9614 - Move Quickstart nearer top, and minor rework.
9616 Revision 1.61 2002/03/29 01:31:08 hal9
9619 Revision 1.60 2002/03/27 01:57:34 hal9
9620 Added more to Anatomy section.
9622 Revision 1.59 2002/03/27 00:54:33 hal9
9623 Touch up intro for new name.
9625 Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
9626 we have a new homepage!
9628 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
9629 A few minor catch ups with name change.
9631 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
9632 configure needs to be generated.
9634 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
9635 we are too lazy to make a block-built
9636 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
9638 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
9639 name change related issue.
9641 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
9642 name change. changed filenames.
9644 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
9647 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
9648 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
9649 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
9650 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
9651 comments and remarks to history untouched.
9653 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
9656 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
9657 New section in Appendix.
9659 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
9660 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
9662 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
9663 correct feedback channels
9665 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
9666 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
9668 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
9671 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
9672 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
9674 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
9675 Added imageblock{pattern}.
9677 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
9680 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
9681 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
9683 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
9684 provide correct feedback channels
9686 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
9687 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
9689 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
9690 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
9692 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
9693 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
9695 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
9696 Add new - - user option.
9698 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
9699 Added section on command line options.
9701 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
9702 Changed default port to 8118
9704 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
9705 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
9707 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
9708 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
9709 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
9712 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
9715 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
9716 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
9718 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
9719 Update OS/2 build section
9721 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
9722 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
9723 will work - no other changes are needed.
9725 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
9726 Added a very short section on Templates
9728 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
9729 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
9731 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
9732 Touch ups for *.action files.
9734 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
9737 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
9738 Updates for recent changes.
9740 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
9741 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
9743 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
9744 Correct 2 minor errors
9746 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
9747 *** empty log message ***
9749 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
9750 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
9752 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
9753 wrong url in documentation
9755 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
9756 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
9758 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
9761 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
9764 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
9767 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
9768 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
9770 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
9771 Some additions, and re-arranging.
9773 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
9776 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
9777 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
9779 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
9782 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
9783 source files for junkbuster documentation
9785 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
9786 first proposal of a structure.
9788 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
9789 docs should have an author.
9791 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
9792 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.