X-Git-Url: http://www.privoxy.org/gitweb/?a=blobdiff_plain;ds=sidebyside;f=doc%2Fwebserver%2Fuser-manual%2Factions-file.html;h=25f310e3a5398d5e3dc6a75d0a03c2c7256b1d17;hb=e3c12117d30c2f42bd47c929099f95295f2c3404;hp=a08da896b45b643cedbbe7e7aecbc6c72c0022c9;hpb=72081f829de368392d04076728f8c991178c0080;p=privoxy.git
diff --git a/doc/webserver/user-manual/actions-file.html b/doc/webserver/user-manual/actions-file.html
index a08da896..25f310e3 100644
--- a/doc/webserver/user-manual/actions-file.html
+++ b/doc/webserver/user-manual/actions-file.html
@@ -1,23 +1,28 @@
-
+
8. Actions Files The actions files are used to define what actions
+> The actions files are used to define what actions
Privoxy takes for which URLs, and thus determine
+> takes for which URLs, and thus determines
how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
- transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof). There
- are three such files included with There
+ are three action files included with Privoxy
- with differing purposes:
- with
+ differing purposes: match-all.action - is used to define which
+ "actions" relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups,
+ content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default.
+ It should be the first actions file loaded
+ default.action - is the primary action file
- that sets the initial values for all actions. It is intended to
- provide a base level of functionality for
- Privoxy's array of features. So it is
- a set of broad rules that should work reasonably well for users everywhere.
- This is the file that the developers are keeping updated, and making available to users.
- - defines many exceptions (both
+ positive and negative) from the default set of actions that's configured
+ in match-all.action. It is a set of rules that should
+ work reasonably well as-is for most users. This file is only supposed to
+ be edited by the developers. It should be the second actions file loaded.
+ user.action - is intended to be for local site
- preferences and exceptions. As an example, if your ISP or your bank
- has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
- thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
- standard.action - is used by the web based editor,
- to set various pre-defined sets of rules for the default actions section
- in default.action. These have increasing levels of
- aggressiveness Edit Set to Cautious Set to Medium Set to Advanced
+ These have increasing levels of aggressiveness and have no influence on your browsing unless
- you select them explicitly in the editorand have no
+ influence on your browsing unless you select them explicitly in the
+ editor. It is not recommend
- to edit this file.
- . A default installation should be pre-set to
+ Cautious. New users should try this for a while before
+ adjusting the settings to more aggressive levels. The more aggressive
+ the settings, then the more likelihood there is of problems such as sites
+ not working as they should.
+ The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
- The Edit button allows you to turn each
+ action on/off individually for fine-tuning. The Cautious
+ button changes the actions list to low/safe settings which will activate
+ ad blocking and a minimal set of Privoxy's features, and subsequently
+ there will be less of a chance for accidental problems. The
+ Medium button sets the list to a medium level of
+ other features and a low level set of privacy features. The
+ Advanced button sets the list to a high level of
+ ad blocking and medium level of privacy. See the chart below. The latter
+ three buttons over-ride any changes via with the
+ Edit button. More fine-tuning can be done in the
+ lower sections of this internal page.
+ While the actions file editor allows to enable these settings in all
+ actions files, they are only supposed to be enabled in the first one
+ to make sure you don't unintentionally overrule earlier rules.
+ The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
+ standard.actiondefault.action are:
- Medium | Adventuresome | AdvancedAd-blocking by URL | Ad-blocking Aggressivenessyes | mediumyes | highyes | high Ad-filtering by size | yes | yes | yes | GIF de-animation | no | yes | Referer forging | Ad-filtering by linkno | yes | noyes | Cookie handling | Pop-up killingnone | blocks onlysession-only | blocks onlykill | blocks only Pop-up killing | Privacy Featuresunsolicited | lowunsolicited | mediumall | medium/high Fast redirects | Cookie handlingno | noneno | session-onlyyes | kill HTML taming | Referer forgingyes | noyes | JavaScript taming | GIF de-animationyes | noyes | Web-bug killing | Fast redirectsyes | noyes | noyes | Fun text replacements | HTML tamingno | Image tag reordering | JavaScript tamingno | Ad-filtering by link | Web-bug killingno | no | yesyes | Demoronizer | Image tag reorderingno | no | yesyes |
- The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
file, and are processed in the order they are defined (e.g.
default.action is typically process before
+> is typically processed before
user.actionhttp://config.privoxy.org/show-status. .
+ The over-riding principle when applying actions, is that the last action that
+ matches a given URL wins. The broadest, most general rules go first
+ (defined in default.action),
+ followed by any exceptions (typically also in
+ default.action), which are then followed lastly by any
+ local preferences (typically in user.action).
+ Generally, user.action has the last word.
+ An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use
default.action,
- with the advantage that is a separate file, which makes preserving your
+ with the advantage that it is a separate file, which makes preserving your
personal settings across Privoxy
Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
- just some obnoxious URL that you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
+ just some obnoxious URL whose content you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
- written to disk), content can be modified, JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
+ written to disk), content can be modified, some JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
fooled, and much more. See below for a complete list
@@ -409,7 +501,7 @@ CLASS="SECT2"
>, like cookie suppression
or script disabling, may render some sites unusable that rely on these
techniques to work properly. Finding the right mix of actions is not always easy and
- certainly a matter of personal taste. In general, it can be said that the more
+ certainly a matter of personal taste. And, things can always change, requiring
+ refinements in the configuration. In general, it can be said that the more
"aggressive" sites you
will have to make later. If, for example, you want to crunch all cookies per
default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for sites that you
- regularly use and that require cookies for actually useful puposes, like maybe
- your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper. We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
@@ -443,7 +536,7 @@ CLASS="SECT2"
> http://config.privoxy.org/show-status .
- The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single feature on a
- per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults like
- enable-edit-actions must be enabled for
+ this to work. The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single
+ feature on a per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults
+ like "Cautious", "Medium" or or
+ "Adventuresome".
- Warning: the "Advanced". Warning: the "Adventuresome" setting is not only more aggressive,
- but includes settings that are fun and subversive, and which some may find of
- dubious merit! "Advanced" setting is more
+ aggressive, and will be more likely to cause problems for some sites.
+ Experienced users only!
+ If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
- the actions files. Look at default.action which is richly
- commented. which is richly commented with many
+ good examples.8.3. How Actions are Applied to URLs8.3. How Actions are Applied to Requests Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections,
@@ -499,29 +598,34 @@ HREF="actions-file.html#ALIASES"
be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on regular sections: They have a
heading line (often split up to multiple lines for readability) which consist
of a list of actions, separated by whitespace and enclosed in curly braces.
- Below that, there is a list of URL patterns, each on a separate line. To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
- compared to all patterns in each action file file. Every time it matches, the list of
- applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated, using the heading
- of the section in which the pattern is located. If multiple matches for
- the same URL set the same action differently, the last match wins. If not,
- the effects are aggregated. E.g. a URL might match a regular section with
- a heading line of "action file".
+ Every time it matches, the list of applicable actions for the request is
+ incrementally updated, using the heading of the section in which the
+ pattern is located. The same is done again for tags and tag patterns later on. If multiple applying sections set the same action differently,
+ the last match wins. If not, the effects are aggregated.
+ E.g. a URL might match a regular section with a heading line of {
+handle-as-image } },
- then later another one with just {
+block } }, resulting
in both actions to apply. actions to apply. And there may well be
+ cases where you will want to combine actions together. Such a section then
+ might look like: { +handle-as-image +block{Banner ads.} }
+ # Block these as if they were images. Send no block page.
+ banners.example.com
+ media.example.com/.*banners
+ .example.com/images/ads/ |
+ You can trace this process for any given URL by visiting You can trace this process for URL patterns and any given URL by visiting http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info. More detail on this is provided in the Appendix, Examples and more detail on this is provided in the Appendix, Anatomy of an Action. Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action section. "patterns"
- to determine what actions might apply to which sites and pages your browser
- attempts to access. These actions might apply to which sites and
+ pages your browser attempts to access. These "patterns" use wild card type
- use wild
+ card type pattern matching to achieve a high degree of
+> matching to achieve a high degree of
flexibility. This allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match
against many similar patterns. Generally, a Privoxy pattern has the form
- Generally, an URL pattern has the form
+ <domain><port>/<path>, where the
+ <domain>/<path>, where both the
- <domain>, the <domain> and <port>
+ and the <path> are
- optional. (This is why the special <path> are optional. (This is why the special
+ / pattern matches all
- URLs). Note that the protocol portion of the URL pattern (e.g.
- / pattern matches all URLs). Note that the protocol
+ portion of the URL pattern (e.g. http://) should http://) should
+ not be included in
- the pattern. This is assumed already! be included in the pattern. This is assumed already! The pattern matching syntax is different for the domain and path parts of
+ the URL. The domain part uses a simple globbing type matching technique,
+ while the path part uses more flexible
+ "Regular
+ Expressions" (POSIX 1003.2). The port part of a pattern is a decimal port number preceded by a colon
+ (:). If the domain part contains a numerical IPv6 address,
+ it has to be put into angle brackets
+ (<, >). - www.example.com/www.example.com/
is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to www.example.comwww.example.com,
- regardless of which document on that server is requested.
+ regardless of which document on that server is requested. So ALL pages in
+ this domain would be covered by the scope of this action. Note that a
+ simple example.com is different and would NOT match.
- www.example.comwww.example.com
means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing // may
be omitted.
- www.example.com/index.html
matches all the documents on www.example.com
+ whose name starts with /index.html.
+ - www.example.com/index.htmlwww.example.com/index.html$
matches only the single document matches only the single document /index.html/index.html
- on www.example.comwww.example.com.
- /index.html/index.html$
matches the document matches the document /index.html/index.html, regardless of the domain,
i.e. on any web server.
+> web server anywhere.
+ - :8000/
Matches any URL pointing to TCP port 8000.
- index.html<2001:db8::1>/
matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
- there is no top-level domain called Matches any URL with the host address .html2001:db8::1.
+ (Note that the real URL uses plain brackets, not angle brackets.)
+ - index.html
matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
+ there is no top-level domain called .html. So its
+ a mistake.
- .example.com.example.com
matches any domain that ENDS in
- matches any domain with first-level domain .example.comcom
+ and second-level domain example.
+ For example www.example.com,
+ example.com and foo.bar.baz.example.com.
+ Note that it wouldn't match if the second-level domain was another-example.
- www.www.
STARTS with
- www.
+>www. (It also matches the domain
+ www but most of the time that doesn't matter.)
- .example..example.
CONTAINS .example.
- (Correctly speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains .example..
+ And, by the way, also included would be any files or documents that exist
+ within that domain since no path limitations are specified. (Correctly
+ speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains example as
+ a domain.) This might be www.example.com,
+ news.example.de, or
+ example as a domain.)
+>www.example.net/cgi/testing.pl for instance. All these
+ cases are matched.
Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
- themselves. They work pretty similar to shell wild-cards: "*"
- stands for zero or more arbitrary characters, represents zero or more arbitrary characters (this is
+ equivalent to the
+ "Regular
+ Expression" based syntax of ".*"),
+ "?" stands for
- any single character, you can define character classes in square
- brackets and all of that can be freely mixed: represents any single character (this is equivalent to the
+ regular expression syntax of a simple "."), and you can define
+ "character classes" in square brackets which is similar to
+ the same regular expression technique. All of this can be freely mixed:- ad*.example.comad*.example.com
- *ad*.example.com*ad*.example.com
- .?pix.com.?pix.com
matches matches www.ipix.comwww.ipix.com,
- pictures.epix.com, pictures.epix.com, a.b.c.d.e.upix.coma.b.c.d.e.upix.com etc.
- www[1-9a-ez].example.c*www[1-9a-ez].example.c*
matches matches www1.example.comwww1.example.com,
- www4.example.cc, www4.example.cc, wwwd.example.cywwwd.example.cy,
- wwwz.example.comwwwz.example.com etc., but not
- wwww.example.comwwww.example.com.
While flexible, this is not the sophistication of full regular expression based syntax. Privoxy uses Perl compatible regular expressions
- (through the uses "modern" POSIX 1003.2
+ PCRE library) for
- matching the path. "Regular
+ Expressions" for matching the path portion (after the slash),
+ and is thus more flexible. There is an Appendix with a brief quick-start into regular
- expressions, and full (very technical) documentation on PCRE regex syntax is available on-line
- at http://www.pcre.org/man.txt.
- You might also find the Perl man page on regular expressions (man perlre)
- useful, which is available on-line at http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html. man re_format). Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the "(?-i)" switch: switch: www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.* will match
- only documents whose path starts with PaTtErNPaTtErN in
exactly this capitalization. - .example.com/.*
Is equivalent to just ".example.com", since any documents
+ within that domain are matched with or without the ".*"
+ regular expression. This is redundant
+ - .example.com/.*/index.html$
Will match any page in the domain of "example.com" that is
+ named "index.html", and that is part of some path. For
+ example, it matches "www.example.com/testing/index.html" but
+ NOT "www.example.com/index.html" because the regular
+ expression called for at least two "/'s", thus the path
+ requirement. It also would match
+ "www.example.com/testing/index_html", because of the
+ special meta-character ".".
+ - .example.com/(.*/)?index\.html$
This regular expression is conditional so it will match any page
+ named "index.html" regardless of path which in this case can
+ have one or more "/'s". And this one must contain exactly
+ ".html" (but does not have to end with that!).
+ - .example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)
This regular expression will match any path of "example.com"
+ that contains any of the words "ads", "banner",
+ "banners" (because of the "?") or "junk".
+ The path does not have to end in these words, just contain them.
+ - .example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)/.*\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$
This is very much the same as above, except now it must end in either
+ ".jpg", ".jpeg", ".gif" or ".png". So this
+ one is limited to common image formats.
+
There are many, many good examples to be found in default.action,
+ and more tutorials below in Appendix on regular expressions. Tag patterns are used to change the applying actions based on the
+ request's tags. Tags can be created with either the
+ client-header-tagger
+ or the server-header-tagger action. Tag patterns have to start with "TAG:", so Privoxy
+ can tell them apart from URL patterns. Everything after the colon
+ including white space, is interpreted as a regular expression with
+ path pattern syntax, except that tag patterns aren't left-anchored
+ automatically (Privoxy doesn't silently add a "^",
+ you have to do it yourself if you need it). To match all requests that are tagged with "foo"
+ your pattern line should be "TAG:^foo$",
+ "TAG:foo" would work as well, but it would also
+ match requests whose tags contain "foo" somewhere.
+ "TAG: foo" wouldn't work as it requires white space. Sections can contain URL and tag patterns at the same time,
+ but tag patterns are checked after the URL patterns and thus
+ always overrule them, even if they are located before the URL patterns. Once a new tag is added, Privoxy checks right away if it's matched by one
+ of the tag patterns and updates the action settings accordingly. As a result
+ tags can be used to activate other tagger actions, as long as these other
+ taggers look for headers that haven't already be parsed. For example you could tag client requests which use the
+ POST method,
+ then use this tag to activate another tagger that adds a tag if cookies
+ are sent, and then use a block action based on the cookie tag. This allows
+ the outcome of one action, to be input into a subsequent action. However if
+ you'd reverse the position of the described taggers, and activated the
+ method tagger based on the cookie tagger, no method tags would be created.
+ The method tagger would look for the request line, but at the time
+ the cookie tag is created, the request line has already been parsed. While this is a limitation you should be aware of, this kind of
+ indirection is seldom needed anyway and even the example doesn't
+ make too much sense. "-". So a
- +action+action means "do that action", e.g.
- +block+block means "please block URLs that match the
following patterns", and , and -block-block means "don't
- block URLs that match the following patterns, even if +block+block
previously applied."
Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
separated by whitespace, like in
- {+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}}{+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}},
followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which they apply.
Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up a section
of the actions file.
- There are three classes of actions: + +name # enable action name # enable action namename
- -name # disable action name # disable action namename |
- Example: +block+handle-as-image
+ +name{name{param} # enable action and set parameter to param} # enable action and set parameter to paramparam,
# overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
- -namename # disable action. The parameter can be omitted |
- Example: +hide-user-agent{ Mozilla 1.0 }+hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070602 Firefox/2.0.0.4}
+ +name{name{param} # enable action and add param} # enable action and add paramparam to the list of parameters
- -name{name{param} # remove the parameter param} # remove the parameter paramparam from the list of parameters
# If it was the last one left, disable the action.
- -name-name # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list |
- Examples: +add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text}+add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text} and
- +filter{html-annoyances}+filter{html-annoyances}
Privoxy would just be a
- normal, non-blocking, non-anonymizing proxy. You must specifically enable the
+ normal, non-blocking, non-filtering proxy. You must specifically enable the
privacy and blocking features you need (although the provided default actions
files will give a good starting point). Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. So exceptions
- to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
- in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files). For
- multi-valued actions, the actions are applied in the order they are specified.
- Actions files are processed in the order they are defined in
- Later defined action sections always over-ride earlier ones of the same type.
+ So exceptions to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
+ in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files such
+ as user.action). For multi-valued actions, the actions
+ are applied in the order they are specified. Actions files are processed in
+ the order they are defined in config (the default installation has three actions
- files). It also quite possible for any given URL pattern to match more than
- one pattern and thus more than one set of actions! (the default
+ installation has three actions files). It also quite possible for any given
+ URL to match more than one "pattern" (because of wildcards and
+ regular expressions), and thus to trigger more than one set of actions! Last
+ match wins. The list of valid Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not checked.
It is recommended that you use the ""X-X-" prefix
for custom headers.
@@ -1275,6 +1810,9 @@ CLASS="QUOTE"
> are, you definitely don't need to worry about this
one.
Headers added by this action are not modified by other actions.
+ - Example usage:
Typical use: Block ads or other obnoxious content Block ads or other unwanted content- Effect:
Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the requests are not
- forwarded to the remote server, but answered locally with a substitute page or image,
- as determined by the Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the
+ requests are trapped by Privoxy and the requested URL is never retrieved,
+ but is answered locally with a substitute page or image, as determined by
+ the handle-as-image
- and ,
+ set-image-blocker, and
+ handle-as-empty-document actions.
+
- Type:
Boolean. Parameterized.- Parameter:
N/A A block reason that should be given to the user.- Notes:
"BLOCKED" page
- for requests to blocked pages. This page contains links to find out why the request
- was blocked, and a click-through to the blocked content (the latter only if compiled with the
- force feature enabled). The "BLOCKED" page adapts to the available
- screen space -- it displays full-blown if space allows, or miniaturized and text-only
- if loaded into a small frame or window. If you are using Privoxy
- right now, you can take a look at the
- "BLOCKED"
- page.
+ for requests to blocked pages. This page contains the block reason given as
+ parameter, a link to find out why the block action applies, and a click-through
+ to the blocked content (the latter only if the force feature is available and
+ enabled).
@@ -1393,23 +1926,23 @@ CLASS="EMPHASIS"
>both
- block and block and handle-as-image,
apply to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
- set-image-blocker
(see below) also applies, the type of image will be determined by its parameter,
if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is sent.
@@ -1420,15 +1953,16 @@ HREF="actions-file.html#SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"
CLASS="APPLICATION"
>Privoxy deals with
- ads and other unwanted content.
+ ads and other unwanted content. Blocking is a core feature, and one
+ upon which various other features depend.
The The filter
action can perform a very similar task, by {+block} # Block and replace with "blocked" page
-.nasty-stuff.example.com
+>{+block{No nasty stuff for you.}}
+# Block and replace with "blocked" page
+ .nasty-stuff.example.com
-{+block +handle-as-image} # Block and replace with image
-.ad.doubleclick.net
-.ads.r.us | Typical use: Prevent the web server from setting any cookies on your system
- Improve privacy by not forwarding the source of the request in the HTTP headers.- Effect:
Deletes any Deletes the "Set-Cookie:" HTTP headers from server replies.
+>"X-Forwarded-For:" HTTP header from the client request,
+ or adds a new one.
- Type:
Boolean. Parameterized.- Parameter:
N/A
- - Notes:
This action is only concerned with incoming cookies. For
- outgoing cookies, use
- It is safe and recommended to use crunch-outgoing-cookiesblock.
- Use both to disable cookies completely.
It makes no sense at all to use this action in conjunction
- with the session-cookies-only action,
- since it would prevent the session cookies from being set. See also
- filter-content-cookies.
+> Forwarding the source address of the request may make
+ sense in some multi-user setups but is also a privacy risk.
- Example usage:
+crunch-incoming-cookies +change-x-forwarded-for{block} | Typical use: Prevent the web server from reading any cookies from your system
+> Rewrite or remove single client headers.
- Effect:
Deletes any "Cookie:" HTTP headers from client requests.
+> All client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
+ the specified regular expression based substitutions.
- Type:
Boolean. Parameterized.- Parameter:
N/A
+> The name of a client-header filter, as defined in one of the
+ filter files.
- Notes:
This action is only concerned with outgoing cookies. For
- incoming cookies, use
- crunch-incoming-cookies.
- Use both to disable cookies completely.
+> Client-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
+ all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
+ you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
+ You can do that by using tags though.
It makes no sense at all to use this action in conjunction
- with the session-cookies-only action,
- since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
+> Client-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
+ and use their output as input.
+ If the request URL gets changed, Privoxy will detect that and use the new
+ one. This can be used to rewrite the request destination behind the client's
+ back, for example to specify a Tor exit relay for certain requests.
+ Please refer to the filter file chapter
+ to learn which client-header filters are available by default, and how to
+ create your own.
- Example usage:
Example usage (section): +crunch-outgoing-cookies # Hide Tor exit notation in Host and Referer Headers
+{+client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}}
+/
+ |
- Typical use:Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images. Block requests based on their headers.
+ - Effect:
De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
+> Client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
+ the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
+ tag.
- Parameter:
"last" or "first"
+> The name of a client-header tagger, as defined in one of the
+ filter files.
- Notes:
This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
- the option "first" is given, the first frame of the animation
- is used as the replacement. If Client-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
+ and as the header isn't modified, each tagger "last" is given, the last
- frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
- most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
- last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
+>"sees"
+ the original.
You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
- objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
- a GIF.
+> Client-header taggers are the first actions that are executed
+ and their tags can be used to control every other action.
- Example usage:
Example usage (section): +deanimate-gifs{last} # Tag every request with the User-Agent header
+{+client-header-tagger{user-agent}}
+/
+
+# Tagging itself doesn't change the action
+# settings, sections with TAG patterns do:
+#
+# If it's a download agent, use a different forwarding proxy,
+# show the real User-Agent and make sure resume works.
+{+forward-override{forward-socks5 10.0.0.2:2222 .} \
+ -hide-if-modified-since \
+ -overwrite-last-modified \
+ -hide-user-agent \
+ -filter \
+ -deanimate-gifs \
+}
+TAG:^User-Agent: NetBSD-ftp/
+TAG:^User-Agent: Novell ZYPP Installer
+TAG:^User-Agent: RPM APT-HTTP/
+TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/
+TAG:^User-Agent: Ubuntu APT-HTTP/
+TAG:^User-Agent: MPlayer/
+ | Typical use:Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1 Stop useless download menus from popping up, or change the browser's rendering mode- Effect:
Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
+> Replaces the "Content-Type:" HTTP server header.
- Type:
Boolean. Parameterized.- Parameter:
N/A
+> Any string.
- Notes:
This is a left-over from the time when The "Content-Type:" HTTP server header is used by the
+ browser to decide what to do with the document. The value of this
+ header can cause the browser to open a download menu instead of
+ displaying the document by itself, even if the document's format is
+ supported by the browser.
+ The declared content type can also affect which rendering mode
+ the browser chooses. If XHTML is delivered as "text/html",
+ many browsers treat it as yet another broken HTML document.
+ If it is send as "application/xml", browsers with
+ XHTML support will only display it, if the syntax is correct.
+ If you see a web site that proudly uses XHTML buttons, but sets
+ "Content-Type: text/html", you can use Privoxy
- didn't support important HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the
- unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server
- out there. Not all (optional) HTTP/1.1 features are supported yet, so there
- is a chance you might need this action.
+ to overwrite it with "application/xml" and validate
+ the web master's claim inside your XHTML-supporting browser.
+ If the syntax is incorrect, the browser will complain loudly.
+ You can also go the opposite direction: if your browser prints
+ error messages instead of rendering a document falsely declared
+ as XHTML, you can overwrite the content type with
+ "text/html" and have it rendered as broken HTML document.
+ By default content-type-overwrite only replaces
+ "Content-Type:" headers that look like some kind of text.
+ If you want to overwrite it unconditionally, you have to combine it with
+ force-text-mode.
+ This limitation exists for a reason, think twice before circumventing it.
+ Most of the time it's easier to replace this action with a custom
+ server-header filter.
+ It allows you to activate it for every document of a certain site and it will still
+ only replace the content types you aimed at.
+ Of course you can apply content-type-overwrite
+ to a whole site and then make URL based exceptions, but it's a lot
+ more work to get the same precision.
- Example usage (section):
Example usage (sections): {+downgrade-http-version}
-problem-host.example.com # Check if www.example.net/ really uses valid XHTML
+{ +content-type-overwrite{application/xml} }
+www.example.net/
+
+# but leave the content type unmodified if the URL looks like a style sheet
+{-content-type-overwrite}
+www.example.net/.*\.css$
+www.example.net/.*style |
- Typical use:Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links Remove a client header Privoxy has no dedicated action for.- Effect:
Cut off all but the last valid URL from requests.
+> Deletes every header sent by the client that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
- Type:
Boolean. Parameterized.- Parameter:
N/A
+> Any string.
- Notes:
- Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
- will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
- parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
- resulting from this scheme typically look like:
+> This action allows you to block client headers for which no dedicated
+ Privoxy action exists.
Privoxy will remove every client header that
+ contains the string you supplied as parameter.
+ Regular expressions are http://some.place/click-tracker.cgi?target=http://some.where.elsenot supported.
- Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
- URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
- since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
- to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
- browser ask the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
- the advertisers.
+> and you can't
+ use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
+ they contain the same string.
This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
- It is likely to break some sites. You should expect to need possibly
- many exceptions to this action, if it is enabled by default in
+> crunch-client-header is only meant for quick tests.
+ If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
+ parts of them, you should use a
default.action. Some sites just don't work without
- it.
+CLASS="LITERAL"
+>client-header filter.
Warning | Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
+ |
- Example usage:
Example usage (section): {+fast-redirects} # Block the non-existent "Privacy-Violation:" client header
+{ +crunch-client-header{Privacy-Violation:} }
+/
+ |
- 8.5.8. filter8.5.8. crunch-if-none-matchTypical use:Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size), do fun text replacements, etc. Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.- Effect:
All files of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which this
- action applies, are filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular expression
- based substitutions. (Note: as of version 3.0.3 plain text documents
- are exempted from filtering, because web servers often use the
- text/plain MIME type for all files whose type they
- don't know.)
+> Deletes the "If-None-Match:" HTTP client header.
- Type:
Parameterized. Boolean.- Parameter:
The name of a filter, as defined in the filter file
- (typically default.filter, set by the
- filterfile
- option in the config file). When used in its negative form,
- and without parameters, filtering is completely disabled.
+> N/A
- Notes:
For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
- in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below for
- a list.
+> Removing the "If-None-Match:" HTTP client header
+ is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
+ reload instead of getting status code "304" which
+ would cause the browser to use a cached copy of the page.
Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
- slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
- passed the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way
- since the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more
- noticeable on slower connections.
+> It is also useful to make sure the header isn't used as a cookie
+ replacement (unlikely but possible).
This is very powerful feature, but Blocking the "rolling your own"
- filters requires a knowledge of regular expressions and HTML.
+>"If-None-Match:" header shouldn't cause any
+ caching problems, as long as the "If-Modified-Since:" header
+ isn't blocked or missing as well.
The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
- It is recommended to use this action together with
+ buffer-limithide-if-modified-since
- option in the main config file. The
- default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the buffered
- data, and all pending data, is passed through unfiltered.
- Inadequate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
- (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data
- (from HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate
- the integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might
- be necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering
- by defining appropriate -filter sections.
+>overwrite-last-modified.
- Example usage (section):
At this time, Privoxy cannot (yet!) uncompress compressed
- documents. If you want filtering to work on all documents, even those that
- would normally be sent compressed, use the
- prevent-compression # Let the browser revalidate cached documents but don't
+# allow the server to use the revalidation headers for user tracking.
+{+hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
+ +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
+ +crunch-if-none-match}
+/ |
- action in conjunction with filter.
Filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
- block
- action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism
- works quite differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners
- based on their size (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat
- standardized.
+NAME="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES"
+>8.5.9. crunch-incoming-cookies- Typical use:
Prevent the web server from setting HTTP cookies on your system
- Effect:
Feedback with suggestions for new or
- improved filters is particularly welcome!
+> Deletes any "Set-Cookie:" HTTP headers from server replies.
- Type:
The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
- predefined filter. There are more
- verbose explanations of what these filters do in the filter file chapterBoolean. - Parameter:
N/A
+ - Notes:
This action is only concerned with incoming HTTP cookies. For
+ outgoing HTTP cookies, use
+ crunch-outgoing-cookies.
+ Use both to disable HTTP cookies completely.
+ It makes no sense at all to use this action in conjunction
+ with the session-cookies-only action,
+ since it would prevent the session cookies from being set. See also
+ filter-content-cookies.
- Example usage (with filters from the distribution default.filter file).
- See the Predefined Filters section for
- more explanation on each:
Example usage:
- +filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse +crunch-incoming-cookies |
- Typical use:
Remove a server header Privoxy has no dedicated action for. - Effect:
Deletes every header sent by the server that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
+ - Type:
Parameterized. - Parameter:
Any string.
+ - Notes:
This action allows you to block server headers for which no dedicated
+ Privoxy action exists. Privoxy
- Regular expressions are not supported and you can't
+ use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
+ they contain the same string.
+ crunch-server-header is only meant for quick tests.
+ If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
+ parts of them, you should use a custom
+ server-header filter.
+ +filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites) Warning | Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
+ |
- - Example usage (section):
- +filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse # Crunch server headers that try to prevent caching
+{ +crunch-server-header{no-cache} }
+/ |
- +filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content |
+>- Typical use:
Prevent the web server from reading any HTTP cookies from your system
+ - Effect:
Deletes any "Cookie:" HTTP headers from client requests.
- Type:
- Boolean.- Parameter:
N/A
+ - Notes:
This action is only concerned with outgoing HTTP cookies. For
+ incoming HTTP cookies, use
+ crunch-incoming-cookies.
+ Use both to disable HTTP cookies completely.
+ It makes no sense at all to use this action in conjunction
+ with the session-cookies-only action,
+ since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
+ - Example usage:
+filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups) +crunch-outgoing-cookies |
- Typical use:
Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images. - Effect:
De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
+ - Type:
Parameterized. - Parameter:
"last" or "first"
- - Notes:
This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
+ the option "first" is given, the first frame of the animation
+ is used as the replacement. If "last" is given, the last
+ frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
+ most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
+ last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
+ You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
+ objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
+ a GIF.
+ - Example usage:
+filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows +deanimate-gifs{last} |
+ - Typical use:
Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1 - Effect:
Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
- Type:
Boolean. - Parameter:
N/A
+ - Notes:
This is a left-over from the time when Privoxy
- - Example usage (section):
+filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML {+downgrade-http-version}
+problem-host.example.com |
- - Typical use:
Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links. - Effect:
Detects redirection URLs and redirects the browser without contacting
+ the redirection server first.
+ - Type:
Parameterized. - Parameter:
- Notes:
+ Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
+ will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
+ parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
+ resulting from this scheme typically look like:
+ "http://www.example.org/click-tracker.cgi?target=http%3a//www.example.net/".
+ Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
+ URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
+ since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
+ to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
+ browser asks the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
+ the advertisers.
+ This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
+ If it is enabled by default, you will have to create some exceptions to
+ this action. It can lead to failures in several ways:
+ Not every URLs with other URLs as parameters is evil.
+ Some sites offer a real service that requires this information to work.
+ For example a validation service needs to know, which document to validate.
+ fast-redirects assumes that every URL parameter that
+ looks like another URL is a redirection target, and will always redirect to
+ the last one. Most of the time the assumption is correct, but if it isn't,
+ the user gets redirected anyway.
+ Another failure occurs if the URL contains other parameters after the URL parameter.
+ The URL:
+ "http://www.example.org/?redirect=http%3a//www.example.net/&foo=bar".
+ contains the redirection URL "http://www.example.net/",
+ followed by another parameter. fast-redirects doesn't know that
+ and will cause a redirect to "http://www.example.net/&foo=bar".
+ Depending on the target server configuration, the parameter will be silently ignored
+ or lead to a "page not found" error. You can prevent this problem by
+ first using the redirect action
+ to remove the last part of the URL, but it requires a little effort.
+ To detect a redirection URL, fast-redirects only
+ looks for the string "http://", either in plain text
+ (invalid but often used) or encoded as "http%3a//".
+ Some sites use their own URL encoding scheme, encrypt the address
+ of the target server or replace it with a database id. In theses cases
+ fast-redirects is fooled and the request reaches the
+ redirection server where it probably gets logged.
+ - Example usage:
{ +fast-redirects{simple-check} }
+ one.example.com
+
+ { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
+ another.example.com/testing |
+
- Typical use:
Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
+ do fun text replacements, add personalized effects, etc. - Effect:
All instances of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which
+ this action applies, can be filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular
+ expression based substitutions. (Note: as of version 3.0.3 plain text documents
+ are exempted from filtering, because web servers often use the
+ text/plain MIME type for all files whose type they don't know.)
+ - Type:
Parameterized. - Parameter:
The name of a content filter, as defined in the filter file.
+ Filters can be defined in one or more files as defined by the
+ filterfile
+ option in the config file.
+ default.filter is the collection of filters
+ supplied by the developers. Locally defined filters should go
+ in their own file, such as user.filter.
+ When used in its negative form,
+ and without parameters, all filtering is completely disabled.
+ - Notes:
For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
+ in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below for
+ a list.
+ Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
+ slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
+ passed the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way
+ since the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more
+ noticeable on slower connections.
+ "Rolling your own"
+ filters requires a knowledge of
+ "Regular
+ Expressions" and
+ "HTML".
+ This is very powerful feature, and potentially very intrusive.
+ Filters should be used with caution, and where an equivalent
+ "action" is not available.
+ The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
+ buffer-limit
+ option in the main config file. The
+ default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the buffered
+ data, and all pending data, is passed through unfiltered.
+ Inappropriate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
+ (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data
+ (from HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate
+ the integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might
+ be necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering
+ by defining appropriate -filter exceptions.
+ Compressed content can't be filtered either, unless Privoxy
+ is compiled with zlib support (requires at least Privoxy 3.0.7),
+ in which case Privoxy will decompress the content before filtering
+ it.
+ If you use a Privoxy version without zlib support, but want filtering to work on
+ as much documents as possible, even those that would normally be sent compressed,
+ you must use the prevent-compression
+ action in conjunction with filter.
+ Content filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
+ block
+ action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism
+ works quite differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners
+ based on their size (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat
+ standardized.
+ Feedback with suggestions for new or
+ improved filters is particularly welcome!
+ The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
+ predefined filter. There are more
+ verbose explanations of what these filters do in the filter file chapter.
+ - Example usage (with filters from the distribution default.filter file).
+ See the Predefined Filters section for
+ more explanation on each:
+ +filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse. |
+
+ +filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings and timers (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites). |
+
+ +filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse. |
+
+ +filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content. |
+
+ +filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups). |
+
+ +filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows. Useful if your browser lacks this ability. |
+
+ +filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML. Useful if your browser lacks this ability. |
+
+ +filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective. |
+
+ +filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size. |
+
+ +filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers. |
+
+ +filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking). |
+
+ +filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap. |
+
+ +filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves. |
+
+ +filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizable. |
+
+ +filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets. |
+
+ +filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects. |
+
+filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective +filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies saveable. |
+filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size +filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun! |
+filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers +filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering. Note that this filter doesn't work reliably. |
+filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking) +filter{ie-exploits} # Disable some known Internet Explorer bug exploits. |
+filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap +filter{site-specifics} # Cure for site-specific problems. Don't apply generally! |
+filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves +filter{no-ping} # Removes non-standard ping attributes in <a> and <area> tags. |
+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizable +filter{google} # CSS-based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation and the toolbar advertisement. |
+filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets +filter{yahoo} # CSS-based block for Yahoo text ads. Also removes a width limitation. |
+filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects +filter{msn} # CSS-based block for MSN text ads. Also removes tracking URLs and a width limitation. |
+filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies saveable +filter{blogspot} # Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this. |
+
- Typical use:
Force Privoxy to treat a document as if it was in some kind of text format. - Effect:
Declares a document as text, even if the "Content-Type:" isn't detected as such.
+ - Type:
Boolean. - Parameter:
N/A
+ - Notes:
As explained above,
+ Privoxy tries to only filter files that are
+ in some kind of text format. The same restrictions apply to
+ content-type-overwrite.
+ force-text-mode declares a document as text,
+ without looking at the "Content-Type:" first.
+ Warning | Think twice before activating this action. Filtering binary data
+ with regular expressions can cause file damage.
+ |
- Example usage:
+
- Typical use:
Change the forwarding settings based on User-Agent or request origin - Effect:
Overrules the forward directives in the configuration file.
+ - Type:
Multi-value. - Parameter:
"forward ." to use a direct connection without any additional proxies. "forward 127.0.0.1:8123" to use the HTTP proxy listening at 127.0.0.1 port 8123.
+ "forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 ." to use the socks4a proxy listening at
+ 127.0.0.1 port 9050. Replace "forward-socks4a" with "forward-socks4"
+ to use a socks4 connection (with local DNS resolution) instead, use "forward-socks5"
+ for socks5 connections (with remote DNS resolution).
+ "forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 proxy.example.org:8000" to use the socks4a proxy
+ listening at 127.0.0.1 port 9050 to reach the HTTP proxy listening at proxy.example.org port 8000.
+ Replace "forward-socks4a" with "forward-socks4" to use a socks4 connection
+ (with local DNS resolution) instead, use "forward-socks5"
+ for socks5 connections (with remote DNS resolution).
+
- Notes:
This action takes parameters similar to the
+ forward directives in the configuration
+ file, but without the URL pattern. It can be used as replacement, but normally it's only
+ used in cases where matching based on the request URL isn't sufficient.
+ Warning | Please read the description for the forward directives before
+ using this action. Forwarding to the wrong people will reduce your privacy and increase the
+ chances of man-in-the-middle attacks.
+ If the ports are missing or invalid, default values will be used. This might change
+ in the future and you shouldn't rely on it. Otherwise incorrect syntax causes Privoxy
+ to exit.
+ Use the show-url-info CGI page
+ to verify that your forward settings do what you thought the do.
+ |
- Example usage:
# Always use direct connections for requests previously tagged as
+# "User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2.0" and make sure
+# resuming downloads continues to work.
+# This way you can continue to use Tor for your normal browsing,
+# without overloading the Tor network with your FreeBSD ports updates
+# or downloads of bigger files like ISOs.
+# Note that HTTP headers are easy to fake and therefore their
+# values are as (un)trustworthy as your clients and users.
+{+forward-override{forward .} \
+ -hide-if-modified-since \
+ -overwrite-last-modified \
+}
+TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2\.0$
+ |
- Typical use:
Mark URLs that should be replaced by empty documents if they get blocked - Effect:
This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs.
+ If the block action also applies,
+ the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML "BLOCKED"
- empty document isn't literally empty, but actually contains a single space.
+ - Type:
Boolean. - Parameter:
N/A
+ - Notes:
Some browsers complain about syntax errors if JavaScript documents
+ are blocked with Privoxy's
+ default HTML page; this option can be used to silence them.
+ And of course this action can also be used to eliminate the Privoxy
+ BLOCKED message in frames.
+ The content type for the empty document can be specified with
+ content-type-overwrite{},
+ but usually this isn't necessary.
+ - Example usage:
+filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun! # Block all documents on example.org that end with ".js",
+# but send an empty document instead of the usual HTML message.
+{+block{Blocked JavaScript} +handle-as-empty-document}
+example.org/.*\.js$
+ |
- Typical use:
Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images if they do get blocked, rather than HTML pages) - Effect:
This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
+ If the block action also applies,
+ the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML "blocked"
- set-image-blocker action) will be sent to the
+ client as a substitute for the blocked content.
+ - Type:
Boolean. - Parameter:
N/A
+ - Notes:
The below generic example section is actually part of default.action.
+ It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
+ be left intact.
+ Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
+ block, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
+ reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
+ Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (in-line) ad
+ frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
+ Forcing handle-as-image in this situation will not replace the
+ ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
+ - Example usage (sections):
+filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering (demo only) # Generic image extensions:
+#
+{+handle-as-image}
+/.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
+
+# These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
+# blocked as images:
+#
+{+block{Nasty banners.} +handle-as-image}
+nasty-banner-server.example.com/junk.cgi\?output=trash |
- Typical use:
Pretend to use different language settings. - Effect:
Deletes or replaces the "Accept-Language:" HTTP header in client requests.
+ - Type:
Parameterized. - Parameter:
Keyword: "block", or any user defined value.
+ - Notes:
Faking the browser's language settings can be useful to make a
+ foreign User-Agent set with
+ hide-user-agent
+ more believable.
+
- However some sites with content in different languages check the
+ "Accept-Language:" to decide which one to take by default.
+ Sometimes it isn't possible to later switch to another language without
+ changing the "Accept-Language:" header first.
+ Therefore it's a good idea to either only change the
+ "Accept-Language:" header to languages you understand,
+ or to languages that aren't wide spread.
+ Before setting the "Accept-Language:" header
+ to a rare language, you should consider that it helps to
+ make your requests unique and thus easier to trace.
+ If you don't plan to change this header frequently,
+ you should stick to a common language.
+ - Example usage (section):
+filter{ie-exploits} # Disable some known Internet Explorer bug exploits # Pretend to use Canadian language settings.
+{+hide-accept-language{en-ca} \
++hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenBSD i386; en-CA; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060628 Firefox/1.5.0.4} \
+}
+/ | Typical use:Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images if they get blocked) Prevent download menus for content you prefer to view inside the browser.- Effect:
This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
- If the block action also applies,
- the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML Deletes or replaces the "blocked"
- page, or a replacement image (as determined by the set-image-blocker action) will be sent to the
- client as a substitute for the blocked content.
+>"Content-Disposition:" HTTP header set by some servers.
- Type:
Boolean. Parameterized.- Parameter:
N/A
+> Keyword: "block", or any user defined value.
- Notes:
The below generic example section is actually part of default.action.
- It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
- be left intact.
+> Some servers set the "Content-Disposition:" HTTP header for
+ documents they assume you want to save locally before viewing them.
+ The "Content-Disposition:" header contains the file name
+ the browser is supposed to use by default.
Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
- block, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
- reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
+> In most browsers that understand this header, it makes it impossible to
+ just view the document, without downloading it first,
+ even if it's just a simple text file or an image.
Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (in-line) ad
- frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
- Forcing handle-as-image in this situation will not replace the
- ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
+> Removing the "Content-Disposition:" header helps
+ to prevent this annoyance, but some browsers additionally check the
+ "Content-Type:" header, before they decide if they can
+ display a document without saving it first. In these cases, you have
+ to change this header as well, before the browser stops displaying
+ download menus.
+ It is also possible to change the server's file name suggestion
+ to another one, but in most cases it isn't worth the time to set
+ it up.
+ This action will probably be removed in the future,
+ use server-header filters instead.
- Example usage (sections):
Example usage: # Generic image extensions:
-#
-{+handle-as-image}
-/.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
-
-# These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
-# blocked as images:
-#
-{+block +handle-as-image}
-some.nasty-banner-server.com/junk.cgi?output=trash
-
-# Banner source! Who cares if they also have non-image content?
-ad.doubleclick.net # Disarm the download link in Sourceforge's patch tracker
+{ -filter \
+ +content-type-overwrite{text/plain}\
+ +hide-content-disposition{block} }
+ .sourceforge.net/tracker/download\.php | Typical use:Improve privacy by hiding the true source of the request Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.- Effect:
Deletes any existing Deletes the "X-Forwarded-for:" HTTP header from client requests,
- and prevents adding a new one.
+>"If-Modified-Since:" HTTP client header or modifies its value.
- Type:
Boolean. Parameterized.- Parameter:
N/A
+> Keyword: "block", or a user defined value that specifies a range of hours.
- Notes:
It is fairly safe to leave this on.
+> Removing this header is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
+ reload instead of getting status code "304", which would cause the
+ browser to use a cached copy of the page.
This action is scheduled for improvement: It should be able to generate forged
+> Instead of removing the header, hide-if-modified-since can
+ also add or subtract a random amount of time to/from the header's value.
+ You specify a range of minutes where the random factor should be chosen from and
Privoxy does the rest. A negative value means
+ subtracting, a positive value adding.
+ Randomizing the value of the "X-Forwarded-for:" headers using random IP addresses from a specified network,
- to make successive requests from the same client look like requests from a pool of different
- users sharing the same proxy.
+>"If-Modified-Since:" makes
+ it less likely that the server can use the time as a cookie replacement,
+ but you will run into caching problems if the random range is too high.
+ It is a good idea to only use a small negative value and let
+ overwrite-last-modified
+ handle the greater changes.
+ It is also recommended to use this action together with
+ crunch-if-none-match,
+ otherwise it's more or less pointless.
- Example usage:
Example usage (section): +hide-forwarded-for-headers # Let the browser revalidate but make tracking based on the time less likely.
+{+hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
+ +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
+ +crunch-if-none-match}
+/ | 8.5.11. hide-from-header8.5.23. hide-from-header"block" will completely remove the header
- (not to be confused with the block
action).
8.5.12. hide-referrer8.5.24. hide-referrer"conditional-block" to delete the header completely if the host has changed. "conditional-forge" to forge the header if the host has changed. "block" to delete the header completely. to delete the header unconditionally.Notes: conditional-block is the only parameter,
+ that isn't easily detected in the server's log file. If it blocks the
+ referrer, the request will look like the visitor used a bookmark or
+ typed in the address directly.
+ Leaving the referrer unmodified for requests on the same host
+ allows the server owner to see the visitor's "forge" is the preferred option here, since some servers will
- not send images back otherwise, in an attempt to prevent their valuable
- content from being embedded elsewhere (and hence, without being surrounded
- by their banners).
+>"click path",
+ but in most cases she could also get that information by comparing
+ other parts of the log file: for example the User-Agent if it isn't
+ a very common one, or the user's IP address if it doesn't change between
+ different requests.
+ Always blocking the referrer, or using a custom one, can lead to
+ failures on servers that check the referrer before they answer any
+ requests, in an attempt to prevent their content from being
+ embedded or linked to elsewhere.
+ Both conditional-block and forge
+ will work with referrer checks, as long as content and valid referring page
+ are on the same host. Most of the time that's the case.
- hide-refererhide-referer is an alternate spelling of
- hide-referrerhide-referrer and the two can be can be freely
- substituted with each other. ("referrer" is the
- correct English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it
- requires it to be spelled as "referer".)
- - Example usage:
8.5.13. hide-user-agent8.5.25. hide-user-agent Typical use:Conceal your type of browser and client operating system Try to conceal your type of browser and client operating system- Effect:
This breaks many web sites that depend on looking at this header in order
- to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
+> This can lead to problems on web sites that depend on looking at this header in
+ order to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
way, is NOT a smart way to do
- that!).
+> the right thing to do: good web sites
+ work browser-independently).
| This action is scheduled for improvement.
+> More information on known user-agent strings can be found at
+ http://www.user-agents.org/
+ and
+ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent.
- Typical use:
Prevent abuse of Privoxy as a TCP proxy relay or disable SSL for untrusted sites - Effect:
Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
+ - Type:
Parameterized. - Parameter:
A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
+ defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
+ - Notes:
By default, i.e. if no limit-connect action applies,
+ Privoxy allows HTTP CONNECT requests to all
+ ports. Use limit-connect if fine-grained control
+ is desired for some or all destinations.
+ The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
+ ("https://" URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
+ the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
+ short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
+ This means CONNECT-enabled proxies can be used as TCP relays very easily.
+ Privoxy relays HTTPS traffic without seeing
+ the decoded content. Websites can leverage this limitation to circumvent Privoxy's
+ filters. By specifying an invalid port range you can disable HTTPS entirely.
+ - Example usages:
+limit-connect{443} # Port 443 is OK.
++limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
++limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
++limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK
++limit-connect{,} # No HTTPS/SSL traffic is allowed |
+
Typical use: Eliminate those annoying pop-up windows (deprecated) Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
+ passed through filters.
+ - Effect:
While loading the document, replace JavaScript code that opens
- pop-up windows with (syntactically neutral) dummy code on the fly.
+> Removes the Accept-Encoding header which can be used to ask for compressed transfer.
- Notes:
This action is basically a built-in, hardwired special-purpose filter
- action, but there are important differences: For kill-popups,
- the document need not be buffered, so it can be incrementally rendered while
- downloading. But kill-popups doesn't catch as many pop-ups as
- More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
+ is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But the filter{all-popups}
- does and is not as smart as filter and
+ filter{unsolicited-popups}deanimate-gifs
- is.
+ actions need access to the uncompressed data.
Think of it as a fast and efficient replacement for a filter that you
- can use if you don't want any filtering at all. Note that it doesn't make
- sense to combine it with any filter action,
- since as soon as one filter applies,
- the whole document needs to be buffered anyway, which destroys the advantage of
- the kill-popups action over its filter equivalent.
+> When compiled with zlib support (available since Privoxy 3.0.7), content that should be
+ filtered is decompressed on-the-fly and you don't have to worry about this action.
+ If you are using an older Privoxy version, or one that hasn't been compiled with zlib
+ support, this action can be used to convince the server to send the content uncompressed.
Killing all pop-ups unconditionally is problematic. Many shops and banks rely on
- pop-ups to display forms, shopping carts etc, and the filter{unsolicited-popups}
- does a fairly good job of catching only the unwanted ones.
+> Most text-based instances compress very well, the size is seldom decreased by less than 50%,
+ for markup-heavy instances like news feeds saving more than 90% of the original size isn't
+ unusual.
If the only kind of pop-ups that you want to kill are exit consoles (those
- really nasty windows that appear when you close an other
- one), you might want to use
- Not using compression will therefore slow down the transfer, and you should only
+ enable this action if you really need it. As of Privoxy 3.0.7 it's disabled in all
+ predefined action settings.
+ Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
+ documents correctly. Broken PHP applications tend to send an empty document body,
+ some IIS versions only send the beginning of the content. If you enable
+ filter{js-annoyances}
- instead.
+>prevent-compression per default, you might want to add
+ exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
- Example usage:
Example usage (sections): +kill-popups # Selectively turn off compression, and enable a filter
+#
+{ +filter{tiny-textforms} +prevent-compression }
+# Match only these sites
+ .google.
+ sourceforge.net
+ sf.net
+
+# Or instead, we could set a universal default:
+#
+{ +prevent-compression }
+ / # Match all sites
+
+# Then maybe make exceptions for broken sites:
+#
+{ -prevent-compression }
+.compusa.com/ |
+ Typical use:Prevent abuse of Privoxy as a TCP proxy relay Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.- Effect:
Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
+> Deletes the "Last-Modified:" HTTP server header or modifies its value.
- Parameter:
A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
- defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
+> One of the keywords: "block", "reset-to-request-time"
+ and "randomize"
- Notes:
By default, i.e. if no limit-connect action applies,
+> Removing the "Last-Modified:" header is useful for filter
+ testing, where you want to force a real reload instead of getting status
+ code "304", which would cause the browser to reuse the old
+ version of the page.
+ The "randomize" option overwrites the value of the
Privoxy only allows HTTP CONNECT
- requests to port 443 (the standard, secure HTTPS port). Use
- "Last-Modified:" header with a randomly chosen time
+ between the original value and the current time. In theory the server
+ could send each document with a different "Last-Modified:"
+ header to track visits without using cookies. "Randomize"
+ makes it impossible and the browser can still revalidate cached documents.
+ "reset-to-request-time" overwrites the value of the
+ "Last-Modified:" header with the current time. You could use
+ this option together with
+ limit-connect if more fine-grained control is desired
- for some or all destinations.
+>hide-if-modified-since
+ to further customize your random range.
The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
- ( The preferred parameter here is "https://" URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
- the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
- short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
- This can be a big security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can be
- abused as TCP relays very easily.
- "randomize". It is safe
+ to use, as long as the time settings are more or less correct.
+ If the server sets the "Last-Modified:" header to the time
+ of the request, the random range becomes zero and the value stays the same.
+ Therefore you should later randomize it a second time with
+ hided-if-modified-since,
+ just to be sure.
+ If you don't know what any of this means, there probably is no reason to
- change this one, since the default is already very restrictive.
- It is also recommended to use this action together with
+ crunch-if-none-match.
+ - Example usages:
Example usage: +limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need not be specified.
-+limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
-+limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
-+limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK (gaping security hole!) # Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
+{ +hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
+ +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
+ +crunch-if-none-match}
+/ | Typical use: Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
- passed through filters
+> Redirect requests to other sites.
- Effect:
Adds a header to the request that asks for uncompressed transfer.
+> Convinces the browser that the requested document has been moved
+ to another location and the browser should get it from there.
- Type:
Boolean. Parameterized- Parameter:
N/A
+> An absolute URL or a single pcrs command.
- Notes:
More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
- is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But for the Requests to which this action applies are answered with a
+ HTTP redirect to URLs of your choosing. The new URL is
+ either provided as parameter, or derived by applying a
+ single pcrs command to the original URL.
+ This action will be ignored if you use it together with
+ filter, block.
+ It can be combined with
+ deanimate-gifsfast-redirects{check-decoded-url}
- and kill-popups actions to work,
- Privoxy needs access to the uncompressed data.
- Unfortunately, Privoxy can't yet(!) uncompress, filter, and
- re-compress the content on the fly. So if you want to ensure that all websites, including
- those that normally compress, can be filtered, you need to use this action.
+ to redirect to a decoded version of a rewritten URL.
This will slow down transfers from those websites, though. If you use any of the above-mentioned
- actions, you will typically want to use prevent-compression in conjunction
- with them.
+> Use this action carefully, make sure not to create redirection loops
+ and be aware that using your own redirects might make it
+ possible to fingerprint your requests.
Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
- documents correctly (they send an empty document body). If you use prevent-compression
- per default, you'll have to add exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
+> In case of problems with your redirects, or simply to watch
+ them working, enable debug 128.
- Example usage (sections):
Example usages: # Set default:
-#
-{+prevent-compression}
-/ # Match all sites
+># Replace example.com's style sheet with another one
+{ +redirect{http://localhost/css-replacements/example.com.css} }
+ example.com/stylesheet\.css
-# Make exceptions for ill sites:
-#
-{-prevent-compression}
-www.debianhelp.org
-www.pclinuxonline.com Privoxy)
+{ +redirect{http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html} }
+ a
+
+# Always use the expanded view for Undeadly.org articles
+# (Note the $ at the end of the URL pattern to make sure
+# the request for the rewritten URL isn't redirected as well)
+{+redirect{s@$@&mode=expanded@}}
+undeadly.org/cgi\?action=article&sid=\d*$
+
+# Redirect Google search requests to MSN
+{+redirect{s@^http://[^/]*/search\?q=([^&]*).*@http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=$1@}}
+.google.com/search
+
+# Redirect MSN search requests to Yahoo
+{+redirect{s@^http://[^/]*/results\.aspx\?q=([^&]*).*@http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=$1@}}
+search.msn.com//results\.aspx\?q=
+
+# Redirect remote requests for this manual
+# to the local version delivered by Privoxy
+{+redirect{s@^http://www@http://config@}}
+www.privoxy.org/user-manual/ | Typical use: Feed log analysis scripts with useless data.
+> Rewrite or remove single server headers.
- Effect:
Sends a cookie with each request stating that you do not accept any copyright
- on cookies sent to you, and asking the site operator not to track you.
+> All server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly
+ through the specified regular expression based substitutions.
- Type:
Boolean. Parameterized.- Parameter:
N/A
+> The name of a server-header filter, as defined in one of the
+ filter files.
- Notes:
The vanilla wafer is a (relatively) unique header and could conceivably be used to track you.
+> Server-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
+ all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
+ you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
+ You can do that by using tags though.
+ Server-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
+ and use their output as input.
This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
+> Please refer to the filter file chapter
+ to learn which server-header filters are available by default, and how to
+ create your own.
- Example usage:
Example usage (section): +send-vanilla-wafer {+server-header-filter{html-to-xml}}
+example.org/xml-instance-that-is-delivered-as-html
+
+{+server-header-filter{xml-to-html}}
+example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
+ |
- Typical use: Send custom cookies or feed log analysis scripts with even more useless data.
+> Enable or disable filters based on the Content-Type header.
- Effect:
Sends a custom, user-defined cookie with each request.
+> Server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
+ the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
+ tag.
- Type:
Multi-value. Parameterized.- Parameter:
A string of the form "name=value" The name of a server-header tagger, as defined in one of the
+ filter files.
Notes: Being multi-valued, multiple instances of this action can apply to the same request,
- resulting in multiple cookies being sent.
+> Server-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
+ and as the header isn't modified, each tagger "sees"
+ the original.
+ Server-header taggers are executed before all other header actions
+ that modify server headers. Their tags can be used to control
+ all of the other server-header actions, the content filters
+ and the crunch actions (redirect
+ and block).
This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
+> Obviously crunching based on tags created by server-header taggers
+ doesn't prevent the request from showing up in the server's log file.
- Example usage (section):
{+send-wafer{UsingPrivoxy=true}}
-my-internal-testing-server.void # Tag every request with the content type declared by the server
+{+server-header-tagger{content-type}}
+/
+ |
- 8.5.19. session-cookies-only8.5.32. session-cookies-onlyNotes: This is less strict than This is less strict than crunch-incoming-cookies /
- crunch-outgoing-cookies and allows you to browse
websites that insist or rely on setting cookies, without compromising your privacy too badly.
Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed by
- session-cookies-onlysession-cookies-only and will forget about them between sessions.
This makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
@@ -3780,23 +6381,23 @@ CLASS="emphasis"
CLASS="EMPHASIS"
>no sense at all to use to use session-cookies-onlysession-cookies-only
- together with crunch-incoming-cookies or
- crunch-outgoing-cookies. If you do, cookies
will be plainly killed.
content-cookies filter
to block some types of cookies. Content cookies are not effected by
- session-cookies-onlysession-cookies-only.
8.5.20. set-image-blocker8.5.33. set-image-blockerboth
- block and handle-as-image ""target-urltarget-url" to
- send a redirect to target-urltarget-url. You can redirect
- to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem (via "file:///" URL).
+> URL.
+ (But note that not all browsers support redirecting to a local file system).
A good application of redirects is to use special Privoxy-built-in
- URLs, which send the built-in images, as target-urltarget-url.
This has the same visual effect as specifying The URLs for the built-in images are "http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type="http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=typetype", where , where typetype is
either NOT to be
- used in set-image-blockerset-image-blocker, but meant for use from filters
Redirect to the BSD devil:
+> Redirect to the BSD daemon:
Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
@@ -4230,11 +6842,7 @@ CLASS="APPLICATION"
editor honors aliases when reading the actions files, but it expands
them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are of course preserved,
but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
- with it.
- This is likely to change in future versions of Privoxy. Now let's define some aliases... crunch-outgoing-cookies
- block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
- mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only -hide-referrer -kill-popupsprevent-compression
+
shop = -crunch-all-cookies -filter{all-popups} -kill-popups
# Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
@@ -4336,7 +6942,8 @@ CLASS="SCREEN"
{fragile}
.office.microsoft.com
.windowsupdate.microsoft.com
- .nytimes.com
+ # Gmail is really mail.google.com, not gmail.com
+ mail.google.com
# Shopping sites:
# Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
@@ -4344,11 +6951,11 @@ CLASS="SCREEN"
{shop}
.quietpc.com
.worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
- .scan.co.uk
+ mybank.example.com
# These shops require pop-ups:
#
- {shop -kill-popups -filter{all-popups}}
+ {-filter{all-popups} -filter{unsolicited-popups}}
.dabs.com
.overclockers.co.uk and "fragile" are often used for
+> are typically used for
"problem" sites that require some actions to be disabled
+> sites that require more than one action to be disabled
in order to function properly. . Now, let's look at an
example match-all.action, default.action
+ and user.action file and see how all these pieces come together: Remember all actions are disabled when matching starts,
+ so we have to explicitly enable the ones we want. While the match-all.action file only contains a
+ single section, it is probably the most important one. It has only one
+ pattern, "/", but this pattern
+ matches all URLs. Therefore, the set of
+ actions used in this "default" section will
+ be applied to all requests as a start. It can be partly or
+ wholly overridden by other actions files like default.action and
+ and user.action
- file and see how all these pieces come together: , but it will still be largely responsible
+ for your overall browsing experience. Every config file should start with a short comment stating its purpose: Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
+ no need to disable any actions here. (Remember: a "+"
+ preceding the action name enables the action, a "-" disables!).
+ Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
+ multiple lines with line continuation. Then, since this is the The default behavior is now set. If you aren't a developer, there's no need for you to edit the
+ default.action file. It is maintained by
+ the Privoxy developers and if you disagree with some of the
+ sections, you should overrule them in your user.action. Understanding the default.action file, the
-first section is a special section for internal use that you needn't
-change or worry about: file can
+ help you with your user.action, though. The first section in this file is a special section for internal use
+ that prevents older Privoxy versions from reading the file: ##########################################################################
# Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
##########################################################################
-
{{settings}}
-for-privoxy-version=3.0 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
-section from the above After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
+ section from the above chapter on aliases,
-that also explains why and how aliases are used: Now come the regular sections, i.e. sets of actions, accompanied
- by URL patterns to which they apply. Remember all actions
- are disabled when matching starts, so we have to explicitly
- enable the ones we want. The first regular section is probably the most important. It has only
- one pattern, "/", but this pattern
- matches all URLs. Therefore, the
- set of actions used in this "default" section will
- be applied to all requests as a start. It can be partly or
- wholly overridden by later matches further down this file, or in user.action,
- but it will still be largely responsible for your overall browsing
- experience. Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
- no real need to disable any actions here, but we will do that nonetheless,
- to have a complete listing for your reference. (Remember: a "+"
- preceding the action name enables the action, a "-" disables!).
- Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
- multiple lines with line continuation. The default behavior is now set. Note that some actions, like not hiding
- the user agent, are part of a "general policy" that applies
- universally and won't get any exceptions defined later. Other choices,
- like not blocking (which is understandably the
- default!) need exceptions, i.e. we need to specify explicitly what we
- want to block in later sections. The first of our specialized sections is concerned with "fragile"fragilefragile alias instead of stating the list
of actions explicitly:
The The fast-redirects
- action, which we enabled per default above, breaks some sites. So disable
- it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves: match-all.action,
+ breaks some sites. So disable it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves: and
- information). We can mark any URL as an image with the handle-as-image action,
and marking all URLs that end in a known image file extension is a
good start:
mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
- block-as-image+block-as-image alias defined above. (We could of
- course just as well use +handle-as-image here.)
Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
- set-image-blocker
action. Since all URLs have matched the default section with its
- +set-image-blocker{pattern}{pattern}
action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:# Known ad generators:
#
-{ block-as-image }
+{ +block-as-image }
ar.atwola.com
.ad.doubleclick.net
.ad.*.doubleclick.net
.a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
.a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
bs*.gsanet.com
-bs*.einets.com
.qkimg.netPrivoxy
- is to block banners. A huge bunch of them are already "blocked"
- by the filter{banners-by-size}{banners-by-size}
action, which we enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner
images from the pages while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request
them anymore, and hence they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally
doesn't catch all banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we
need a comprehensive list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the
- block action to them. First comes a bunch of generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
+> First comes many generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
matching typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes
a list of individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here
to keep the example short: +block+block{Banner ads.} }
# Generic patterns:
@@ -5056,10 +7518,12 @@ count*.
> You wouldn't believe how many advertisers actually call their banner
- servers ads. It's quite remarkable how many advertisers actually call their banner
+ servers ads.companycompany.com, or call the directory
in which the banners are stored simply But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want
- to block. The pattern .*ads..*ads. e.g. catches
l.some-provider.net." So here come some
- well-known exceptions to the +block
section above. "downloads.sourcefroge.net": Initially, all actions are deactivated,
so it wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the
- URL, but just deactivates the block
- action once again. Then it matches .*ads..*ads., an exception to the
general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
- +block applies. And now, it'll match
- .*loads., where .*loads., where -block
applies, so (unless it matches again further down) it ends up
- with no block action applying. }
adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
+adobe. # (has nothing to do with ads either)
ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
.edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
.*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
@@ -5204,12 +7669,12 @@ www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv"cvs" in them. Note that
- -filter
disables filter }
-/.*cvs
+/(.*/)?cvs
+bugzilla.
+developer.
+wiki.
.sourceforge.net The actual default.action is of course more
+> is of course much more
comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works. So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies,
@@ -5300,7 +7768,7 @@ WIDTH="100%"
> # My user.action file. <fred@foobar.com> # My user.action file. <fred@example.com> | filter +-content-type-overwrite{text/plain} +-force-text-mode -hide-content-disposition
-
-
Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and
you don't want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like
to allow persistent cookies for these sites. The
- allow-all-cookiesallow-all-cookies alias defined above does exactly
that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
processing of cookies to make them only temporary. { allow-all-cookies }
-sourceforge.net
-sunsolve.sun.com
-.slashdot.org
-.yahoo.com
-.msdn.microsoft.com
-.redhat.com filter }
-.your-home-banking-site.com
"copy image location"
and pasted the URL below while removing the leading http://, into a
- { +block } section. Note that { +block{} } section. Note that { +handle-as-image
- } need not be specified, since all URLs ending in
- .gif.gif will be tagged as images by the general rules as set
in default.action anyway:{ +block }
-www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.gif
-another.popular.site.net/more/junk/here/{Nasty ads.} }
+ www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor\.gif
+ another.example.net/more/junk/here/
Privoxy to guess
the file type just by looking at the URL.
- You can use the +block-as-image+block-as-image alias defined above for
these cases.
Note that objects which match this rule but then turn out NOT to be an
@@ -5501,9 +7981,10 @@ WIDTH="100%"
>{ +block-as-image }
-.doubleclick.net
-/Realmedia/ads/
-ar.atwola.com/
feedback, so
- you just used the fragilefragile alias on the site, and
-- whoa! -- it worked. The -- it worked. The fragilefragile
aliases disables those actions that are most likely to break a site. Also,
good for testing purposes to see if it is Privoxy
- that is causing the problem or not.default.filter,
- but it is disabled in the distributed actions file. (My colleagues on the team just
- don't have a sense of humour, that's why! ;-). So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
+ but it is disabled in the distributed actions file.
+ So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
update-safe config, once and for all:filter{fun} }
-/ # For ALL sites! { allow-ads }
-.sourceforge.net
-.slashdot.org
-.osdn.net
Note that Note that allow-adsallow-ads has been aliased to
- -block,
- -filter{banners-by-size}, and
- -filter{banners-by-link} above. Invoke another alias here to force an over-ride of the MIME type application/x-sh which typically would open a download type
+ dialog. In my case, I want to look at the shell script, and then I can save
+ it should I choose to. { handle-as-text }
+ /.*\.sh$ | user.actionThe Filter FileFilter Files
| | | |
|