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5 <!entity p-intro SYSTEM "privoxy.sgml">
6 <!entity seealso SYSTEM "seealso.sgml">
7 <!entity buildsource SYSTEM "buildsource.sgml">
8 <!entity contacting SYSTEM "contacting.sgml">
9 <!entity history SYSTEM "history.sgml">
10 <!entity copyright SYSTEM "copyright.sgml">
11 <!entity license SYSTEM "license.sgml">
12 <!entity p-authors SYSTEM "p-authors.sgml">
13 <!entity config SYSTEM "p-config.sgml">
14 <!entity p-version SYSTEM "doc_version.tmp">
15 <!entity p-status SYSTEM "doc_status.tmp">
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17 <!entity % p-not-stable "IGNORE">
18 <!entity % p-stable "IGNORE">
19 <!entity % p-text "IGNORE"> <!-- define we are not a text only doc -->
20 <!entity % p-doc "INCLUDE"> <!-- and we are a formal doc -->
21 <!entity % p-readme "IGNORE">
22 <!entity % user-man "IGNORE">
23 <!entity % config-file "IGNORE">
24 <!entity % p-supp-userman "IGNORE"> <!-- Omit some from supported.sgml -->
25 <!entity my-copy "©"> <!-- kludge for docbook2man -->
26 <!entity % draft "IGNORE"> <!-- WIP stuff -->
29 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml,v $
32 This file belongs into
33 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
35 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.8 2002/10/21 02:46:09 hal9 Exp $
37 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 Privoxy Developers <developers@privoxy.org>
40 ========================================================================
41 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
42 anything in this, or other Privoxy documentation.
43 ========================================================================
50 <title>Privoxy &p-version; User Manual</title>
54 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
55 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
56 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001, 2002 by
57 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
61 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.8 2002/10/21 02:46:09 hal9 Exp $</pubdate>
65 Note: the following should generate a separate page, and a live link to it,
66 all nicely done. But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave
67 commented unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the
68 copyright/license declarations will be in their own sgml.
75 <holder>Privoxy Developers</holder>
78 <legalnotice id="legalnotice">
80 text goes here ........
92 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
93 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
94 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
100 The <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> gives users information on how to
101 install, configure and use <ulink
102 url="http://www.privoxy.org/"><application>Privoxy</application></ulink>.
105 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
107 <!-- end privoxy.sgml -->
110 You can find the latest version of the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> at <ulink
111 url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>.
112 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> on how to
113 contact the developers.
117 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
123 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
124 <sect1 label="1" id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
126 This documentation is included with the current &p-status; version of
127 <application>Privoxy</application>, v.&p-version;<![%p-not-stable;[,
128 and is mostly complete at this point.
129 Development of version 3.2 is just beginning,
130 and will include many significant changes and enhancements over
134 <!-- include only in non-stable versions -->
137 Since this is a &p-status; version, not all new features are well tested. This
138 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with
139 CVS sources). And there <emphasis>may be</emphasis> bugs, though hopefully
140 not many! Please find them!
144 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
145 <sect2 id="features"><title>Features</title>
147 In addition to <application>Internet Junkbuster's</application> traditional
148 features of ad and banner blocking and cookie management,
149 <application>Privoxy</application> provides new features<![%p-not-stable;[,
150 some of them currently under development]]>:
152 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml boilerplate here: -->
154 <!-- end boilerplate -->
159 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
162 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
163 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
166 <application>Privoxy</application> is available both in convenient pre-compiled
167 packages for a wide range of operating systems, and as raw source code.
168 For most users, we recommend using the packages, which can be downloaded from our
169 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Project
174 Note: If you have a previous <application>Junkbuster</application> or
175 <application>Privoxy</application> installation on your system, you
176 will need to remove it. On some platforms, this may be done for you as part
177 of their installation procedure. (See below for your platform). In any case
178 <emphasis>be sure to backup your old configuration if it is valuable to
179 you.</emphasis> See the <link linkend="upgradersnote">note to
180 upgraders</link> section below.
183 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
184 <sect2 id="installation-packages"><title>Binary Packages</title>
186 How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
189 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
190 <sect3 id="installation-pack-rpm"><title>Red Hat, SuSE and Conectiva RPMs</title>
193 RPMs can be installed with <literal>rpm -Uvh privoxy-&p-version;-1.rpm</literal>,
194 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location
195 of configuration files.
199 Note that on Red Hat, <application>Privoxy</application> will
200 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be automatically started on system boot. You will
201 need to enable that using <command>chkconfig</command>,
202 <command>ntsysv</command>, or similar methods. Note that SuSE will
203 automatically start Privoxy in the boot process.
207 If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM:
208 <literal>rpm --rebuild privoxy-&p-version;-1.src.rpm</literal>. This
209 will use your locally installed libraries and RPM version.
213 Also note that if you have a <application>Junkbuster</application> RPM installed
214 on your system, you need to remove it first, because the packages conflict.
215 Otherwise, RPM will try to remove <application>Junkbuster</application>
216 automatically, before installing <application>Privoxy</application>.
220 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
221 <sect3 id="installation-deb"><title>Debian</title>
223 DEBs can be installed with <literal>dpkg -i
224 privoxy_&p-version;-1.deb</literal>, and will use
225 <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location of configuration
230 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
231 <sect3 id="installation-pack-win"><title>Windows</title>
234 Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through
235 the installation process. You will find the configuration files
236 in the same directory as you installed Privoxy in. We do not
237 use the registry of Windows.
241 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
242 <sect3 id="installation-pack-bintgz"><title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX</title>
245 Create a new directory, <literal>cd</literal> to it, then unzip and
246 untar the archive. For the most part, you'll have to figure out where
247 things go. <!-- FIXME, more info needed? -->
251 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
252 <sect3 id="installation-os2"><title>OS/2</title>
255 First, make sure that no previous installations of
256 <application>Junkbuster</application> and / or
257 <application>Privoxy</application> are left on your
258 system. Check that no <application>Junkbuster</application>
259 or <application>Privoxy</application> objects are in
265 Then, just double-click the WarpIN self-installing archive, which will
266 guide you through the installation process. A shadow of the
267 <application>Privoxy</application> executable will be placed in your
268 startup folder so it will start automatically whenever OS/2 starts.
272 The directory you choose to install <application>Privoxy</application>
273 into will contain all of the configuration files.
277 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
278 <sect3 id="installation-mac"><title>Mac OSX</title>
280 Unzip the downloaded file (you can either double-click on the file
281 from the finder, or from the desktop if you downloaded it there).
282 Then, double-click on the package installer icon named
283 <literal>Privoxy.pkg</literal>
284 and follow the installation process.
285 <application>Privoxy</application> will be installed in the folder
286 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal>.
287 It will start automatically whenever you start up. To prevent it from
288 starting automatically, remove or rename the folder
289 <literal>/Library/StartupItems/Privoxy</literal>.
292 To start Privoxy by hand, double-click on
293 <literal>StartPrivoxy.command</literal> in the
294 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal> folder.
295 Or, type this command in the Terminal:
299 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
303 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
307 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
308 <sect3 id="installation-amiga"><title>AmigaOS</title>
310 Copy and then unpack the <filename>lha</filename> archive to a suitable location.
311 All necessary files will be installed into <application>Privoxy</application>
312 directory, including all configuration and log files. To uninstall, just
313 remove this directory.
317 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
318 <sect3 id="installattion-gentoo"><title>Gentoo</title>
320 Gentoo source packages (Ebuilds) for <application>Privoxy</application> are
321 contained in the Gentoo Portage Tree (they are not on the download page,
322 but there is a Gentoo section, where you can see when a new
323 <application>Privoxy</application> Version is added to the Portage Tree).
326 Before installing <application>Privoxy</application> under Gentoo just do
327 first <literal>emerge rsync</literal> to get the latest changes from the
328 Portage tree. With <literal>emerge privoxy</literal> you install the latest
332 Configuration files are in <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename>, the
333 documentation is in <filename>/usr/share/doc/privoxy-&p-version;</filename>
334 and the Log directory is in <filename>/var/log/privoxy</filename>.
340 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
341 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Building from Source</title>
344 The most convenient way to obtain the <application>Privoxy</application> sources
345 is to download the source tarball from our <ulink url="http://sf.net/projects/ijbswa/">project
350 If you like to live on the bleeding edge and are not afraid of using
351 possibly unstable development versions, you can check out the up-to-the-minute
352 version directly from <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=11118">the
353 CVS repository</ulink> or simply download <ulink
354 url="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/ijbswa-cvsroot.tar.gz">the nightly CVS
358 <!-- include buildsource.sgml boilerplate: -->
360 <!-- end boilerplate -->
363 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
364 <sect2 id="installation-keepupdated"><title>Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date</title>
366 As user feedback comes in and development continues, we will make updated versions
367 of both the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link> (as a <ulink
368 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&release_id=103670">separate
369 package</ulink>) and the software itself (including the actions file) available for
374 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
375 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
376 url="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-announce/">subscribe
377 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
381 In order not to loose your personal changes and adjustments when updating
382 to the latest <literal>default.action</literal> file we <emphasis>strongly
383 recommend</emphasis> that you use <literal>user.action</literal> for your
384 customization of <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
385 linkend="actions-file">Chapter on actions files</link> for details.
393 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
395 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
396 <sect1 id="upgradersnote">
397 <title>Note to Upgraders</title>
399 There are very significant changes from earlier
400 <application>Junkbuster</application> versions to the current
401 <application>Privoxy</application>. The number, names, syntax, and
402 purposes of configuration files have substantially changed.
403 <application>Junkbuster 2.0.x</application> configuration
404 files will not migrate, <application>Junkbuster 2.9.x</application>
405 and <application>Privoxy</application> configurations will need to be
406 ported. The functionalities of the old <filename>blockfile</filename>,
407 <filename>cookiefile</filename> and <filename>imagelist</filename>
408 are now combined into the <link linkend="actions-file"><quote>actions
409 files</quote></link>.
410 <filename>default.action</filename>, is the main actions file. Local
411 exceptions should best be put into <filename>user.action</filename>.
414 A <link linkend="filter-file"><quote>filter file</quote></link> (typically
415 <filename>default.filter</filename>) is new as of <application>Privoxy
416 2.9.x</application>, and provides some of the new sophistication (explained
417 below). <filename>config</filename> is much the same as before.
420 If upgrading from a 2.0.x version, you will have to use the new config
421 files, and possibly adapt any personal rules from your older files.
422 When porting personal rules over from the old <filename>blockfile</filename>
423 to the new actions files, please note that even the pattern syntax has
424 changed. If upgrading from 2.9.x development versions, it is still
425 recommended to use the new configuration files.
428 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading:
436 The default listening port is now 8118 due to a conflict with another
442 Some installers may remove earlier versions completely. Save any
443 important configuration files!
448 <application>Privoxy</application> is controllable with a web browser
449 at the special URL: <ulink
450 url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
451 (Shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>). Many
452 aspects of configuration can be done here, including temporarily disabling
453 <application>Privoxy</application>.
458 The primary configuration files for cookie management, ad and banner
459 blocking, and many other aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
460 configuration are the <link linkend="actions-file">actions
461 files</link>. It is strongly recommended to become familiar with the new
462 actions concept below, before modifying these files. Locally defined rules
463 should go into <filename>user.action</filename>.
468 <!-- I think it is best to keep this somewhat vague, in case -->
469 <!-- the situation changes under our feet. -->
470 Some installers may not automatically start
471 <application>Privoxy</application> after installation.
479 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
480 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using <application>Privoxy</application></title>
486 If upgrading, from versions before 2.9.16, please back up any configuration
487 files. See the <link linkend="upgradersnote">Note to Upgraders</link> Section.
493 Install <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
494 linkend="installation">Installation Section</link> below for platform specific
501 Advanced users and those who want to offer <application>Privoxy</application>
502 service to more than just their local machine should check the <link
503 linkend="config">main config file</link>, especially the <link
504 linkend="access-control">security-relevant</link> options. These are
511 Start <application>Privoxy</application>, if the installation program has
512 not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
513 <link linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link>.
519 Set your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application> as HTTP and
520 HTTPS (SSL) proxy by setting the proxy configuration for address of
521 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> and port <literal>8118</literal>.
522 (<application>Junkbuster</application> and earlier versions of
523 <application>Privoxy</application> used port 8000.) See the section <link
524 linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link> below
525 for more details on this.
531 Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad images.
532 If using <application>Privoxy</application> to manage cookies, you should
533 remove any currently stored cookies too.
539 A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for
540 most. There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
541 configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little
542 to no initial configuration is required in most cases.
545 See the <link linkend="configuration">Configuration section</link> for more
546 configuration options, and how to customize your installation.
547 <![%draft;[ You might also want to look at the <link
548 linkend="quickstart-ad-blocking">next section</link> for a quick
549 introduction to how <application>Privoxy</application> blocks ads and
556 If you experience ads that slipped through, innocent images that are
557 blocked, or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune
558 <application>Privoxy's</application> behaviour, take a look at the <link
559 linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>. As a quick start, you might
560 find the <link linkend="act-examples">richly commented examples</link>
561 helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files through the <ulink
562 url="http://config.privoxy.org">web-based user interface</ulink>. The
563 Appendix <quote><link linkend="actionsanat">Anatomy of an
564 Action</link></quote> has hints how to debug actions that
565 <quote>misbehave</quote>.
571 Please see the section <link linkend="contact">Contacting the
572 Developers</link> on how to report bugs or problems with websites or to get
579 Now enjoy surfing with enhanced comfort and privacy!
587 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
589 <sect2 id="quickstart-ad-blocking">
590 <title>Quickstart to Ad Blocking</title>
592 NOTE: This section is deliberately redundant for those that don't
593 want to read the whole thing (which is getting lengthy).
596 Ad blocking is but one of <application>Privoxy's</application>
597 array of features. Many of these features are for the technically minded advanced
598 user. But, ad and banner blocking is surely common ground for everybody.
601 This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so
602 you can get up to speed quickly without having to read the more extensive
603 information provided below, though this is highly recommended.
606 First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the
607 more aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block
608 things that were not intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want
609 extreme ad free browsing, be prepared to deal with more
610 <quote>problem</quote> sites, and to spend more time adjusting the
611 configuration to solve these unintended consequences. In short, there is
612 not an easy way to eliminate <emphasis>all</emphasis> ads. Either take
613 the easy way and settle for <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads blocked with the
614 default configuration, or jump in and tweak it for your personal surfing
615 habits and preferences.
618 Secondly, a brief explanation of <application>Privoxy's </application>
619 <quote>actions</quote>. <quote>Actions</quote> in this context, are
620 the directives we use to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to perform
621 some task relating to HTTP transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell
622 <application>Privoxy</application> to take some <quote>action</quote>. Each
623 action has a unique name and function. While there are many potential
624 <application>actions</application> in <application>Privoxy's</application>
625 arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking. <link
626 linkend="actions">Actions</link>, and <link linkend="actions-file">action
627 configuration files</link>, are explained in depth below.
630 Actions are specified in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
631 followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
632 can actually be URL type <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> that use
633 wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs. The
634 actions, together with the URL patterns are called a section.
637 When you connect to a website, the full URL will either match one or more
638 of the sections as defined in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
639 or not. If so, then <application>Privoxy</application> will perform the
640 respective actions. If not, then nothing special happens. Furthermore, web
641 pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web browser will
642 use to load additional components of the page, as it parses the
643 original page's HTML content. An ad image for instance, is just an URL
644 embedded in the page somewhere. The image itself may be on the same server,
645 or a server somewhere else on the Internet. Complex web pages will have many
650 The actions we need to know about for ad blocking are: <literal><link
651 linkend="block">block</link></literal>, <literal><link
652 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>, and
653 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>:
661 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> - this action stops
662 any contact between your browser and any URL patterns that match this
663 action's configuration. It can be used for blocking ads, but also anything
664 that is determined to be unwanted. By itself, it simply stops any
665 communication with the remote server and sends <application>Privoxy</application>'s
666 own built-in BLOCKED page instead to let you now what has happened.
672 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> -
673 tells <application>Privoxy</application> to treat this URL as an image.
674 <application>Privoxy</application>'s default configuration already does this
675 for all common image types (e.g. GIF), but there are many situations where this
676 is not so easy to determine. So we'll force it in these cases. This is particularly
677 important for ad blocking, since only if we know that it's an image of
678 some kind, can we replace it with an image of our choosing, instead of the
679 <application>Privoxy</application> BLOCKED page (which would only result in
680 a <quote>broken image</quote> icon). There are some limitations to this
681 though. For instance, you can't just brute-force an image substitution for
682 an entire HTML page in most situations.
689 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> - tells
690 <application>Privoxy</application> what to display in place of an ad image that
691 has hit a block rule. For this to come into play, the URL must match a
692 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action somewhere in the
693 configuration, <emphasis>and</emphasis>, it must also match an
694 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action.
697 The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
701 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad
702 replacement is obvious. This is the default.
707 <emphasis>blank</emphasis> - A very small empty GIF image is displayed.
708 This is the so-called <quote>invisible</quote> configuration option.
713 <emphasis>http://<URL></emphasis> - A redirect to any image anywhere
714 of the user's choosing (advanced usage).
723 The quickest way to adjust any of these settings is with your browser through
724 the special <application>Privoxy</application> editor at <ulink
725 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
726 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>). This
727 is an internal page, and does not require Internet access. Select the
728 appropriate <quote>actions</quote> file, and click
729 <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>. It is best to put personal or
730 local preferences in <filename>user.action</filename> since this is not
731 meant to be overwritten during upgrades, and will over-ride the settings in
732 other files. Here you can insert new <quote>actions</quote>, and URLs for ad
733 blocking or other purposes, and make other adjustments to the configuration.
734 <application>Privoxy</application> will detect these changes automatically.
738 A quick and simple step by step example:
746 Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select
747 <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote> from the
755 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
760 Find <filename>user.action</filename> in the top section, and click
761 on <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>:
764 <!-- image of editor and actions files selections -->
766 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Actions Files in Use</title>
769 <imagedata fileref="../images/files-in-use.jpg" format="jpg">
772 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Actions Files in Use ]</phrase>
781 You should have a section with only
782 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> listed under
783 <quote>Actions:</quote>.
784 If not, click a <quote><guibutton>Insert new section below</guibutton></quote>
785 button, and in the new section that just appeared, click the
786 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button right under the word <quote>Actions:</quote>.
787 This will bring up a list of all actions. Find
788 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> near the top, and click
789 in the <quote>Enabled</quote> column, then <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote>
795 Now, in the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> actions section,
796 click the <quote><guibutton>Add</guibutton></quote> button, and paste the URL the
797 browser got from <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote>.
798 Remove the <literal>http://</literal> at the beginning of the URL. Then, click
799 <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote> (or
800 <quote><guibutton>OK</guibutton></quote> if in a pop-up window).
805 Now go back to the original page, and press <keycap>SHIFT-Reload</keycap>
806 (or flush all browser caches). The image should be gone now.
814 This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
815 wildcard pattern match to include potentially similar images from the same
816 site. For a more extensive explanation of <quote>patterns</quote>, and
817 the entire actions concept, see <link linkend="actions-file">the Actions
822 For advanced users who want to hand edit their config files, you might want
823 to now go to the <link linkend="act-examples">Actions Files Tutorial</link>.
824 The ideas explained therein also apply to the web-based editor.
831 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
834 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
836 <title>Starting <application>Privoxy</application></title>
838 Before launching <application>Privoxy</application> for the first time, you
839 will want to configure your browser(s) to use
840 <application>Privoxy</application> as a HTTP and HTTPS proxy. The default is
841 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions
842 used port 8000). This is the one configuration step that must be done!
845 Please note that <application>Privoxy</application> can only proxy HTTP and
846 HTTPS traffic. It will not work with FTP or other protocols.
849 <!-- image of Mozilla Proxy configuration -->
851 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration (Mozilla)</title>
854 <imagedata fileref="../images/proxy_setup.jpg" format="jpg">
857 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Mozilla Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
864 With <application>Netscape</application> (and
865 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under:
869 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
870 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
871 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton>
873 <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton>
875 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton>
877 <guibutton>Proxies</guibutton>
879 <guibutton>HTTP Proxy</guibutton>
883 For <application>Internet Explorer</application>:
887 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
888 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
889 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton>
891 <guibutton>Internet Properties</guibutton>
893 <guibutton>Connections</guibutton>
895 <guibutton>LAN Settings</guibutton>
899 Then, check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info
900 (Address: 127.0.0.1, Port: 8118). Include HTTPS (SSL), if you want HTTPS
905 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
906 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. You
907 are now ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
908 <application>Privoxy</application>!
912 <application>Privoxy</application> is typically started by specifying the
913 main configuration file to be used on the command line. If no configuration
914 file is specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application>
915 will look for a file named <filename>config</filename> in the current
916 directory. Except on Win32 where it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>.
919 <sect2 id="start-redhat">
920 <title>Red Hat and Conectiva</title>
922 We use a script. Note that Red Hat does not start Privoxy upon booting per
923 default. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as
924 its main configuration file.
928 # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
933 <sect2 id="start-debian">
934 <title>Debian</title>
936 We use a script. Note that Debian starts Privoxy upon booting per
937 default. It will use the file
938 <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
943 # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
948 <sect2 id="start-suse">
951 We use a script. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename>
952 as its main configuration file. Note that SuSE starts Privoxy upon booting
962 <sect2 id="start-windows">
963 <title>Windows</title>
965 Click on the Privoxy Icon to start Privoxy. If no configuration file is
966 specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application> will look
967 for a file named <filename>config.txt</filename>. Note that Windows will
968 automatically start Privoxy upon booting you PC.
972 <sect2 id="start-unices">
973 <title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others</title>
975 Example Unix startup command:
979 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
984 <sect2 id="start-os2">
987 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
988 start automatically when the system restarts. You can start it manually by
989 double-clicking on the <application>Privoxy</application> icon in the
990 <application>Privoxy</application> folder.
994 <sect2 id="start-macosx">
995 <title>Mac OSX</title>
997 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
998 start automatically when the system restarts. To start Privoxy by hand,
999 double-click on the <literal>StartPrivoxy.command</literal> icon in the
1000 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal> folder. Or, type this command
1005 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
1009 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
1014 <sect2 id="start-amigaos">
1015 <title>AmigaOS</title>
1017 Start <application>Privoxy</application> (with RUN <>NIL:) in your
1018 <filename>startnet</filename> script (AmiTCP), in
1019 <filename>s:user-startup</filename> (RoadShow), as startup program in your
1020 startup script (Genesis), or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx).
1021 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically quit when you quit your
1022 TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack may display that
1023 <application>Privoxy</application> is still running).
1027 <sect2 id="start-gentoo">
1028 <title>Gentoo</title>
1030 A script is again used. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config
1031 </filename> as its main configuration file.
1035 /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1039 Note that <application>Privoxy</application> is not automatically started at
1040 boot time by default. You can change this with the <literal>rc-update</literal>
1045 rc-update add privoxy default
1053 See the section <link linkend="cmdoptions">Command line options</link> for
1057 must find a better place for this paragraph
1060 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
1061 point. Most of the per site configuration is done in the
1062 <ulink url="actions-file.html"><quote>actions</quote></ulink> files. These are
1063 where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking, and other
1064 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. There are several
1065 such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.
1069 You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites for which you may prefer
1070 persistent cookies, and add these to your actions configuration as needed. By
1071 default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser
1072 session (aka <quote>session cookies</quote>), unless you add them to the
1073 configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will need
1074 to edit <filename>user.action</filename> (or through the web based interface)
1075 and disable this feature. If you use more than one browser, it would make
1076 more sense to let <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which
1077 case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
1081 Another feature where you will probably want to define exceptions for trusted
1082 sites is the popup-killing (through the <ulink
1083 url="actions-file.html#KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></ulink> and
1085 url="actions-file.html#FILTER-POPUPS"><quote>+filter{popups}</quote></ulink>
1086 actions), because your favorite shopping, banking, or leisure site may need
1087 popups (explained below).
1091 <application>Privoxy</application> is HTTP/1.1 compliant, but not all of
1092 the optional 1.1 features are as yet supported. In the unlikely event that
1093 you experience inexplicable problems with browsers that use HTTP/1.1 per default
1094 (like <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.), you might
1095 try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look under <literal>Edit ->
1096 Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
1097 Alternatively, set the <quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote> config option in
1098 <filename>default.action</filename> which will downgrade your browser's HTTP
1099 requests from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0 before processing them.
1103 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
1104 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
1105 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
1106 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote>
1107 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
1108 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1109 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1110 and then follow the link to <quote>View & Change the Current Configuration</quote>.
1111 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
1115 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
1116 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
1117 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
1118 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
1119 to a given URL. In addition to the actions file
1120 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
1121 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> (toggled) from this page.
1125 If you encounter problems, try loading the page without
1126 <application>Privoxy</application>. If that helps, enter the URL where
1127 you have the problems into <ulink url="http://p.p/show-url-info">the browser
1128 based rule tracing utility</ulink>. See which rules apply and why, and
1129 then try turning them off for that site one after the other, until the problem
1130 is gone. When you have found the culprit, you might want to turn the rest on
1135 If the above paragraph sounds gibberish to you, you might want to <link
1136 linkend="actions-file">read more about the actions concept</link>
1137 or even dive deep into the <link linkend="actionsanat">Appendix
1142 If you can't get rid of the problem at all, think you've found a bug in
1143 Privoxy, want to propose a new feature or smarter rules, please see the
1144 section <link linkend="contact"><quote>Contacting the
1145 Developers</quote></link> below.
1150 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1151 <sect2 id="cmdoptions">
1152 <title>Command Line Options</title>
1154 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
1155 command-line options:
1163 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
1166 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
1171 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
1174 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
1179 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
1182 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
1183 leader, and don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
1188 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
1192 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
1193 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failure to create or delete the
1194 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
1195 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
1200 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
1204 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
1205 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
1206 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
1211 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
1214 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
1215 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
1216 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
1217 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
1218 full path to avoid confusion. If no config file is found,
1219 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
1230 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1233 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1234 <sect1 id="configuration"><title><application>Privoxy</application> Configuration</title>
1236 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is stored
1237 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
1238 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
1239 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
1243 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1246 <title>Controlling <application>Privoxy</application> with Your Web Browser</title>
1248 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface can be reached through the special
1249 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1250 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1251 which is a built-in page and works without Internet access.
1252 You will see the following section:
1256 <!-- Needs to be put in a table and colorized -->
1259 <bridgehead renderas="sect2"> Privoxy Menu</bridgehead>
1263 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View & change the current configuration</ulink>
1266 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">View the source code version numbers</ulink>
1269 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">View the request headers.</ulink>
1272 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">Look up which actions apply to a URL and why</ulink>
1275 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">Toggle Privoxy on or off</ulink>
1278 ▪ <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/&p-version;/user-manual/">Documentation</ulink>
1286 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
1287 <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, which is where the ad, banner,
1288 cookie, and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
1289 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
1290 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
1291 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
1295 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
1296 have problems with your current actions and filters. You can in fact use
1297 it as a test to see whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
1298 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
1299 to run as a proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e.
1300 <application>Privoxy</application> acts like a normal forwarding proxy. There
1301 is even a toggle <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklet</link> offered, so
1302 that you can toggle <application>Privoxy</application> with one click from
1308 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1313 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1315 <sect2 id="confoverview">
1316 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
1318 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
1319 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
1320 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
1321 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. <![%p-not-stable;[ The name
1322 and number of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
1323 subject to change as development progresses.]]>
1327 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though
1328 some settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the
1329 principle configuration files are:
1337 The <link linkend="config">main configuration file</link> is named <filename>config</filename>
1338 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
1339 on Windows. This is a required file.
1345 <filename>default.action</filename> (the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>)
1346 is used to define which <quote>actions</quote> relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups,
1347 content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default. It also defines many
1348 exceptions (both positive and negative) from this default set of actions that enable
1349 <application>Privoxy</application> to selectively eliminate the junk, and only the junk, on
1350 as many websites as possible.
1353 Multiple actions files may be defined in <filename>config</filename>. These
1354 are processed in the order they are defined. Local customizations and locally
1355 preferred exceptions to the default policies as defined in
1356 <filename>default.action</filename> (which you will most probably want
1357 to define sooner or later) are probably best applied in
1358 <filename>user.action</filename>, where you can preserve them across
1359 upgrades. <filename>standard.action</filename> is for
1360 <application>Privoxy's</application> internal use.
1363 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from
1365 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1367 url="http://p.p/show-status">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>) for the
1368 various actions files.
1374 <filename>default.filter</filename> (the <link linkend="filter-file">filter
1375 file</link>) can be used to re-write the raw page content, including
1376 viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript, and whatever else
1377 lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only pre-defined here;
1378 whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files. Only one filter
1379 file may be defined.
1387 All files use the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a
1388 comment (the rest of the line will be ignored) and understand line continuation
1389 through placing a backslash ("<literal>\</literal>") as the very last character
1390 in a line. If the <literal>#</literal> is preceded by a backslash, it looses
1391 its special function. Placing a <literal>#</literal> in front of an otherwise
1392 valid configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
1397 The actions files and <filename>default.filter</filename>
1398 can use Perl style <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> for
1399 maximum flexibility.
1403 After making any changes, there is no need to restart
1404 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
1405 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> detects such changes
1406 automatically. Note, however, that it may take one or two additional
1407 requests for the change to take effect. When changing the listening address
1408 of <application>Privoxy</application>, these <quote>wake up</quote> requests
1409 must obviously be sent to the <emphasis>old</emphasis> listening address.
1414 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
1415 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
1416 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
1417 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
1423 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1426 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1428 <!-- **************************************************** -->
1429 <!-- Include config.sgml here -->
1430 <!-- This is where the entire config file is detailed. -->
1432 <!-- end include -->
1435 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1439 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1441 <sect1 id="actions-file"><title>Actions Files</title>
1444 The actions files are used to define what actions
1445 <application>Privoxy</application> takes for which URLs, and thus determine
1446 how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
1447 transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof). There
1448 are three such files included with <application>Privoxy</application>, with
1456 <filename>default.action</filename> - is the primary action file
1457 that sets the initial values for all actions. It is intended to
1458 provide a base level of functionality for
1459 <application>Privoxy's</application> array of features. So it is
1460 a set of broad rules that should work reasonably well for users everywhere.
1461 This is the file that the developers are keeping updated, and <link
1462 linkend="installation-keepupdated">making available to users</link>.
1467 <filename>user.action</filename> - is intended to be for local site
1468 preferences and exceptions. As an example, if your ISP or your bank
1469 has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
1470 thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
1475 <filename>standard.action</filename> - is used by the web based editor,
1476 to set various pre-defined sets of rules for the default actions section
1477 in <filename>default.action</filename>. These have increasing levels of
1478 aggressiveness <emphasis>and have no influence on your browsing unless
1479 you select them explicitly in the editor</emphasis>. It is not recommend
1487 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
1488 file, and are processed in the order they are defined. The content of these
1489 can all be viewed and edited from <ulink
1490 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
1494 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use
1495 <quote>aliases</quote> in an actions file, you have to place the (optional)
1496 <link linkend="aliases">alias section</link> at the top of that file.
1497 Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally to all
1498 sites and pages (be <emphasis>very careful</emphasis> with using such a
1499 universal set in <filename>user.action</filename> or any other actions file after
1500 <filename>default.action</filename>, because it will override the result
1501 from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
1502 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard
1503 <filename>user.action</filename> as an appendix to <filename>default.action</filename>,
1504 with the advantage that is a separate file, which makes preserving your
1505 personal settings across <application>Privoxy</application> upgrades easier.
1509 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
1510 just some obnoxious URL that you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
1511 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
1512 written to disk), content can be modified, JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
1513 fooled, and much more. See below for a <link linkend="actions">complete list
1517 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1519 <title>Finding the Right Mix</title>
1521 Note that some <link linkend="actions">actions</link>, like cookie suppression
1522 or script disabling, may render some sites unusable that rely on these
1523 techniques to work properly. Finding the right mix of actions is not always easy and
1524 certainly a matter of personal taste. In general, it can be said that the more
1525 <quote>aggressive</quote> your default settings (in the top section of the
1526 actions file) are, the more exceptions for <quote>trusted</quote> sites you
1527 will have to make later. If, for example, you want to kill popup windows per
1528 default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for sites that you
1529 regularly use and that require popups for actually useful content, like maybe
1530 your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
1534 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
1535 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
1536 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
1537 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again :).
1541 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1543 <title>How to Edit</title>
1545 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by
1546 using our browser-based editor, which can be reached from <ulink
1547 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
1548 The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single feature on a
1549 per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults like
1550 <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> or <quote>Radical</quote>.
1551 Warning: the <quote>Radical</quote> setting is not only more aggressive,
1552 but includes settings that are fun and subversive, and which some may find of
1557 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
1558 the actions files. Look at <filename>default.action</filename> which is richly
1564 <sect2 id="actions-apply">
1565 <title>How Actions are Applied to URLs</title>
1567 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections,
1568 like the <quote><link linkend="aliases">alias</link></quote> sections which will
1569 be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on regular sections: They have a
1570 heading line (often split up to multiple lines for readability) which consist
1571 of a list of actions, separated by whitespace and enclosed in curly braces.
1572 Below that, there is a list of URL patterns, each on a separate line.
1576 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
1577 compared to all patterns in each action file file. Every time it matches, the list of
1578 applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated, using the heading
1579 of the section in which the pattern is located. If multiple matches for
1580 the same URL set the same action differently, the last match wins. If not,
1581 the effects are aggregated. E.g. a URL might match a regular section with
1582 a heading line of <literal>{
1583 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link> }</literal>,
1584 then later another one with just <literal>{
1585 +<link linkend="block">block</link> }</literal>, resulting
1586 in <emphasis>both</emphasis> actions to apply.
1590 You can trace this process for any given URL by visiting <ulink
1591 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>.
1595 More detail on this is provided in the Appendix, <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">
1596 Anatomy of an Action</link>.
1600 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1601 <sect2 id="af-patterns">
1602 <title>Patterns</title>
1604 As mentioned, <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>patterns</quote>
1605 to determine what actions might apply to which sites and pages your browser
1606 attempts to access. These <quote>patterns</quote> use wild card type
1607 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> matching to achieve a high degree of
1608 flexibility. This allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match
1609 against many similar patterns.
1613 Generally, a <application>Privoxy</application> pattern has the form
1614 <literal><domain>/<path></literal>, where both the
1615 <literal><domain></literal> and <literal><path></literal> are
1616 optional. (This is why the special <literal>/</literal> pattern matches all
1617 URLs). Note that the protocol portion of the URL pattern (e.g.
1618 <literal>http://</literal>) should <emphasis>not</emphasis> be included in
1619 the pattern. This is assumed already!
1624 <term><literal>www.example.com/</literal></term>
1627 is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
1628 regardless of which document on that server is requested.
1633 <term><literal>www.example.com</literal></term>
1636 means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing <literal>/</literal> may
1642 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html</literal></term>
1645 matches only the single document <literal>/index.html</literal>
1646 on <literal>www.example.com</literal>.
1651 <term><literal>/index.html</literal></term>
1654 matches the document <literal>/index.html</literal>, regardless of the domain,
1655 i.e. on <emphasis>any</emphasis> web server.
1660 <term><literal>index.html</literal></term>
1663 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
1664 there is no top-level domain called <literal>.html</literal>.
1671 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1672 <sect3><title>The Domain Pattern</title>
1675 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
1676 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
1682 <term><literal>.example.com</literal></term>
1685 matches any domain that <emphasis>ENDS</emphasis> in
1686 <literal>.example.com</literal> (e.g. <literal>www.example.com</literal>)
1691 <term><literal>www.</literal></term>
1694 matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
1695 <literal>www.</literal>
1700 <term><literal>.example.</literal></term>
1703 matches any domain that <emphasis>CONTAINS</emphasis> <literal>.example.</literal>
1704 (Correctly speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains <literal>example</literal> as a domain.)
1711 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
1712 themselves. They work pretty similar to shell wild-cards: <quote>*</quote>
1713 stands for zero or more arbitrary characters, <quote>?</quote> stands for
1714 any single character, you can define character classes in square
1715 brackets and all of that can be freely mixed:
1720 <term><literal>ad*.example.com</literal></term>
1723 matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
1724 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>
1729 <term><literal>*ad*.example.com</literal></term>
1732 matches all of the above, and then some.
1737 <term><literal>.?pix.com</literal></term>
1740 matches <literal>www.ipix.com</literal>,
1741 <literal>pictures.epix.com</literal>, <literal>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</literal> etc.
1746 <term><literal>www[1-9a-ez].example.c*</literal></term>
1749 matches <literal>www1.example.com</literal>,
1750 <literal>www4.example.cc</literal>, <literal>wwwd.example.cy</literal>,
1751 <literal>wwwz.example.com</literal> etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
1752 <literal>wwww.example.com</literal>.
1760 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1763 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1764 <sect3><title>The Path Pattern</title>
1767 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl compatible regular expressions
1768 (through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> library) for
1773 There is an <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link> with a brief quick-start into regular
1774 expressions, and full (very technical) documentation on PCRE regex syntax is available on-line
1775 at <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/man.txt">http://www.pcre.org/man.txt</ulink>.
1776 You might also find the Perl man page on regular expressions (<literal>man perlre</literal>)
1777 useful, which is available on-line at <ulink
1778 url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>.
1782 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the <quote>/</quote>,
1783 i.e. it matches as if it would start with a <quote>^</quote> (regular expression speak
1784 for the beginning of a line).
1788 Please also note that matching in the path is <emphasis>CASE INSENSITIVE</emphasis>
1789 by default, but you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
1790 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch: <literal>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</literal> will match
1791 only documents whose path starts with <literal>PaTtErN</literal> in
1792 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
1798 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1801 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1803 <sect2 id="actions">
1804 <title>Actions</title>
1806 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
1807 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a
1808 <quote>+</quote>, and turned off if preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. So a
1809 <literal>+action</literal> means <quote>do that action</quote>, e.g.
1810 <literal>+block</literal> means <quote>please block URLs that match the
1811 following patterns</quote>, and <literal>-block</literal> means <quote>don't
1812 block URLs that match the following patterns, even if <literal>+block</literal>
1813 previously applied.</quote>
1818 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
1819 separated by whitespace, like in
1820 <literal>{+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}}</literal>,
1821 followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which they apply.
1822 Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up a section
1823 of the actions file.
1827 There are three classes of actions:
1834 Boolean, i.e the action can only be <quote>enabled</quote> or
1835 <quote>disabled</quote>. Syntax:
1839 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # enable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
1840 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable></screen>
1843 Example: <literal>+block</literal>
1850 Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of action.
1855 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and set parameter to <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>,
1856 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
1857 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action. The parameter can be omitted</screen>
1860 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized action,
1861 the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are simply ignored.
1864 Example: <literal>+hide-user-agent{ Mozilla 1.0 }</literal>
1870 Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions,
1871 but they behave differently: If the action applies multiple times to the
1872 same URL, but with different parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> the parameters
1873 from <emphasis>all</emphasis> matches are remembered. This is used for actions
1874 that can be executed for the same request repeatedly, like adding multiple
1875 headers, or filtering through multiple filters. Syntax:
1879 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and add <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> to the list of parameters
1880 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # remove the parameter <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> from the list of parameters
1881 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
1882 <replaceable class="parameter">-name</replaceable> # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list</screen>
1885 Examples: <literal>+add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text}</literal> and
1886 <literal>+filter{html-annoyances}</literal>
1894 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no <quote>actions</quote> are
1895 taken. So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
1896 normal, non-blocking, non-anonymizing proxy. You must specifically enable the
1897 privacy and blocking features you need (although the provided default actions
1898 files will give a good starting point).
1902 Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. So exceptions
1903 to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
1904 in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files). For
1905 multi-valued actions, the actions are applied in the order they are specified.
1906 Actions files are processed in the order they are defined in
1907 <filename>config</filename> (the default installation has three actions
1908 files). It also quite possible for any given URL pattern to match more than
1909 one pattern and thus more than one set of actions!
1912 <!-- start actions listing -->
1914 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> actions are:
1918 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
1919 <!-- Please note the below defined actions use id's that are -->
1920 <!-- probably linked from other places, so please don't change. -->
1922 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
1925 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1927 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="add-header">
1928 <title>add-header</title>
1932 <term>Typical use:</term>
1934 <para>Confuse log analysis, custom applications</para>
1939 <term>Effect:</term>
1942 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
1949 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
1951 <para>Multi-value.</para>
1956 <term>Parameter:</term>
1959 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not checked.
1960 It is recommended that you use the <quote><literal>X-</literal></quote> prefix
1970 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
1971 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
1972 <quote>HTTP headers</quote> are, you definitely don't need to worry about this
1979 <term>Example usage:</term>
1982 <screen>+add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}</screen>
1990 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1991 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="block">
1992 <title>block</title>
1996 <term>Typical use:</term>
1998 <para>Block ads or other obnoxious content</para>
2003 <term>Effect:</term>
2006 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the requests are not
2007 forwarded to the remote server, but answered locally with a substitute page or image,
2008 as determined by the <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>
2009 and <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> actions.
2016 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2018 <para>Boolean.</para>
2023 <term>Parameter:</term>
2033 <application>Privoxy</application> sends a special <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page
2034 for requests to blocked pages. This page contains links to find out why the request
2035 was blocked, and a click-through to the blocked content (the latter only if compiled with the
2036 force feature enabled). The <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page adapts to the available
2037 screen space -- it displays full-blown if space allows, or miniaturized and text-only
2038 if loaded into a small frame or window. If you are using <application>Privoxy</application>
2039 right now, you can take a look at the
2040 <ulink url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
2044 A very important exception occurs if <emphasis>both</emphasis>
2045 <literal>block</literal> and <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2046 apply to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
2047 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
2048 (see below) also applies, the type of image will be determined by its parameter,
2049 if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is sent.
2052 It is important to understand this process, in order
2053 to understand how <application>Privoxy</application> deals with
2054 ads and other unwanted content.
2057 The <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
2058 action can perform a very similar task, by <quote>blocking</quote>
2059 banner images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
2060 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
2061 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse the two.
2067 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2070 <screen>{+block} # Block and replace with "blocked" page
2071 .nasty-stuff.example.com
2073 {+block +handle-as-image} # Block and replace with image
2084 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2085 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-incoming-cookies">
2086 <title>crunch-incoming-cookies</title>
2090 <term>Typical use:</term>
2093 Prevent the web server from setting any cookies on your system
2099 <term>Effect:</term>
2102 Deletes any <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from server replies.
2109 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2111 <para>Boolean.</para>
2116 <term>Parameter:</term>
2128 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> cookies. For
2129 <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> cookies, use
2130 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>.
2131 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable cookies completely.
2134 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
2135 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
2136 since it would prevent the session cookies from being set. See also
2137 <literal><link linkend="filter-content-cookies">filter-content-cookies</link></literal>.
2143 <term>Example usage:</term>
2146 <screen>+crunch-incoming-cookies</screen>
2154 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2155 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-outgoing-cookies">
2156 <title>crunch-outgoing-cookies</title>
2160 <term>Typical use:</term>
2163 Prevent the web server from reading any cookies from your system
2169 <term>Effect:</term>
2172 Deletes any <quote>Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from client requests.
2179 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2181 <para>Boolean.</para>
2186 <term>Parameter:</term>
2198 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> cookies. For
2199 <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> cookies, use
2200 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>.
2201 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable cookies completely.
2204 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
2205 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
2206 since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
2212 <term>Example usage:</term>
2215 <screen>+crunch-outgoing-cookies</screen>
2224 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2225 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="deanimate-gifs">
2226 <title>deanimate-gifs</title>
2230 <term>Typical use:</term>
2232 <para>Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.</para>
2237 <term>Effect:</term>
2240 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
2247 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2249 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2254 <term>Parameter:</term>
2257 <quote>last</quote> or <quote>first</quote>
2266 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
2267 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
2268 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last
2269 frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
2270 most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
2271 last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
2274 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
2275 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
2282 <term>Example usage:</term>
2285 <screen>+deanimate-gifs{last}</screen>
2292 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2293 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="downgrade-http-version">
2294 <title>downgrade-http-version</title>
2298 <term>Typical use:</term>
2300 <para>Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1</para>
2305 <term>Effect:</term>
2308 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
2315 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2317 <para>Boolean.</para>
2322 <term>Parameter:</term>
2334 This is a left-over from the time when <application>Privoxy</application>
2335 didn't support important HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the
2336 unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server
2337 out there. Not all (optional) HTTP/1.1 features are supported yet, so there
2338 is a chance you might need this action.
2344 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2347 <screen>{+downgrade-http-version}
2348 problem-host.example.com</screen>
2356 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2357 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="fast-redirects">
2358 <title>fast-redirects</title>
2362 <term>Typical use:</term>
2364 <para>Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links</para>
2369 <term>Effect:</term>
2372 Cut off all but the last valid URL from requests.
2379 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2381 <para>Boolean.</para>
2386 <term>Parameter:</term>
2398 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
2399 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
2400 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
2401 resulting from this scheme typically look like:
2402 <emphasis>http://some.place/click-tracker.cgi?target=http://some.where.else</emphasis>.
2405 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
2406 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
2407 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
2408 to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
2409 browser ask the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
2413 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
2414 It is likely to break some sites. You should expect to need possibly
2415 many exceptions to this action, if it is enabled by default in
2416 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some sites just don't work without
2423 <term>Example usage:</term>
2426 <screen>{+fast-redirects}</screen>
2435 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2436 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter">
2437 <title>filter</title>
2441 <term>Typical use:</term>
2443 <para>Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size), do fun text replacements, etc.</para>
2448 <term>Effect:</term>
2451 Text documents, including HTML and JavaScript, to which this action
2452 applies, are filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular expression
2453 based substitutions.
2460 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2462 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2467 <term>Parameter:</term>
2470 The name of a filter, as defined in the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>
2471 (typically <filename>default.filter</filename>, set by the
2472 <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
2473 option in the <link linkend="config">config file</link>). Filtering
2474 can be completely disabled without the use of parameters.
2483 For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
2484 in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below for
2488 This is potentially a very powerful feature! But <quote>rolling your own</quote>
2489 filters requires a knowledge of regular expressions and HTML.
2492 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
2493 slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
2494 passed the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way
2495 since the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more
2496 noticeable on slower connections.
2499 The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
2500 <literal><link linkend="buffer-limit">buffer-limit</link></literal>
2501 option in the main <link linkend="config">config file</link>. The
2502 default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the buffered
2503 data, and all pending data, is passed through unfiltered.
2506 Inappropriate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
2507 Encrypted SSL data (from HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either since
2508 this would violate the integrity of the secure transaction.
2511 At this time, <application>Privoxy</application> cannot (yet!) uncompress compressed
2512 documents. If you want filtering to work on all documents, even those that
2513 would normally be sent compressed, use the
2514 <literal><link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link></literal>
2515 action in conjunction with <literal>filter</literal>.
2518 Filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
2519 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
2520 action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism
2521 works quite differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners
2522 based on their size (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat
2526 <link linkend="contact">Feedback</link> with suggestions for new or
2527 improved filters is particularly welcome!
2533 <term>Example usage (with filters from the distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file):</term>
2536 <anchor id="filter-html-annoyances">
2537 <screen>+filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse.</screen>
2540 <anchor id="filter-js-annoyances">
2541 <screen>+filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse</screen>
2544 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-size">
2545 <screen>+filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners based on their size for this page (<emphasis>very</emphasis> efficient!)</screen>
2548 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-link">
2549 <screen>+filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners based on the link they are contained in (experimental)</screen>
2552 <anchor id="filter-img-reorder">
2553 <screen>+filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective</screen>
2556 <anchor id="filter-content-cookies">
2557 <screen>+filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come sneaking in the HTML or JS content</screen>
2560 <anchor id="filter-popups">
2561 <screen>+filter{popups} # Kill all popups in JS and HTML</screen>
2564 <anchor id="filter-webbugs">
2565 <screen>+filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)</screen>
2568 <anchor id="filter-fun">
2569 <screen>+filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!</screen>
2572 <anchor id="filter-frameset-borders">
2573 <screen>+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizeable</screen>
2576 <anchor id="filter-refresh-tags">
2577 <screen>+filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups)</screen>
2580 <anchor id="filter-nimda">
2581 <screen>+filter{nimda} # Remove Nimda (virus) code.</screen>
2584 <anchor id="filter-shockwave-flash">
2585 <screen>+filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects</screen>
2588 <anchor id="filter-crude-parental">
2589 <screen>+filter{crude-parental} # Kill all web pages that contain the words "sex" or "warez"</screen>
2592 <anchor id="filter-js-events">
2593 <screen>+filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings (<emphasis>Radically destructive!</emphasis> Only for extra nasty sites) </screen>
2596 <anchor id="filter-demoronizer">
2597 <screen>+filter{demoronizer} # Fix non-standard MS font extensions for non-MS browsers</screen>
2605 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2606 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-image">
2607 <title>handle-as-image</title>
2611 <term>Typical use:</term>
2613 <para>Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images <emphasis>if they get blocked</emphasis>)</para>
2618 <term>Effect:</term>
2621 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
2622 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
2623 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
2624 page, or a replacement image (as determined by the <literal><link
2625 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> action) will be sent to the
2626 client as a substitute for the blocked content.
2633 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2635 <para>Boolean.</para>
2640 <term>Parameter:</term>
2652 The below generic example section is actually part of <filename>default.action</filename>.
2653 It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
2657 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
2658 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
2659 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
2662 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (in-line) ad
2663 frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
2664 Forcing <literal>handle-as-image</literal> in this situation will not replace the
2665 ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
2671 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
2674 <screen># Generic image extensions:
2677 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
2679 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
2680 # blocked as images:
2682 {+block +handle-as-image}
2683 some.nasty-banner-server.com/junk.cgi?output=trash
2685 # Banner source! Who cares if they also have non-image content?
2695 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2696 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-forwarded-for-headers">
2697 <title>hide-forwarded-for-headers</title>
2701 <term>Typical use:</term>
2703 <para>Improve privacy by hiding the true source of the request</para>
2708 <term>Effect:</term>
2711 Deletes any existing <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> HTTP header from client requests,
2712 and prevents adding a new one.
2719 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2721 <para>Boolean.</para>
2726 <term>Parameter:</term>
2738 It is fairly safe to leave this on.
2741 This action is scheduled for improvement: It should be able to generate forged
2742 <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> headers using random IP addresses from a specified network,
2743 to make successive requests from the same client look like requests from a pool of different
2744 users sharing the same proxy.
2750 <term>Example usage:</term>
2753 <screen>+hide-forwarded-for-headers</screen>
2761 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2762 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-from-header">
2763 <title>hide-from-header</title>
2767 <term>Typical use:</term>
2769 <para>Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address</para>
2774 <term>Effect:</term>
2777 Deletes any existing <quote>From:</quote> HTTP header, or replaces it with the
2785 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2787 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2792 <term>Parameter:</term>
2795 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
2804 The keyword <quote>block</quote> will completely remove the header
2805 (not to be confused with the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
2809 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
2810 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
2811 is actually used by a real person.
2814 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send
2815 <quote>From:</quote> headers anymore.
2821 <term>Example usage:</term>
2824 <screen>+hide-from-header{block}</screen> or
2825 <screen>+hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}</screen>
2833 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2834 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-referrer">
2835 <title>hide-referrer</title>
2836 <anchor id="hide-referer">
2839 <term>Typical use:</term>
2841 <para>Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site</para>
2846 <term>Effect:</term>
2849 Deletes the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) HTTP header from the client request,
2850 or replaces it with a forged one.
2857 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2859 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2864 <term>Parameter:</term>
2868 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header completely.</para>
2871 <para><quote>forge</quote> to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are talking to.</para>
2874 <para>Any other string to set a user defined referrer.</para>
2884 <quote>forge</quote> is the preferred option here, since some servers will
2885 not send images back otherwise, in an attempt to prevent their valuable
2886 content from being embedded elsewhere (and hence, without being surrounded
2887 by <emphasis>their</emphasis> banners).
2890 <literal>hide-referer</literal> is an alternate spelling of
2891 <literal>hide-referrer</literal> and the two can be can be freely
2892 substituted with each other. (<quote>referrer</quote> is the
2893 correct English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it
2894 requires it to be spelled as <quote>referer</quote>.)
2900 <term>Example usage:</term>
2903 <screen>+hide-referrer{forge}</screen> or
2904 <screen>+hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}</screen>
2912 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2913 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-user-agent">
2914 <title>hide-user-agent</title>
2918 <term>Typical use:</term>
2920 <para>Conceal your type of browser and client operating system</para>
2925 <term>Effect:</term>
2928 Replaces the value of the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> HTTP header
2929 in client requests with the specified value.
2936 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2938 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2943 <term>Parameter:</term>
2946 Any user-defined string.
2956 This breaks many web sites that depend on looking at this header in order
2957 to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
2958 way, is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> a <ulink
2959 url="http://www.javascriptkit.com/javaindex.shtml">smart way to do
2964 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
2965 browsers will access the same <application>Privoxy</application> is
2966 <emphasis>not recommended</emphasis>. In single-user, single-browser
2967 setups, you might use it to delete your OS version information from
2968 the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known bugs for your
2969 OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to access
2970 sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
2971 reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not
2972 let <application>Mozilla</application> enter, yet forging to a
2973 <application>Netscape 6.1</application> user-agent works just fine.
2974 (Must be just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
2977 This action is scheduled for improvement.
2983 <term>Example usage:</term>
2986 <screen>+hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}</screen>
2994 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2995 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="kill-popups">
2996 <title>kill-popups<anchor id="kill-popup"></title>
3000 <term>Typical use:</term>
3002 <para>Eliminate those annoying pop-up windows</para>
3007 <term>Effect:</term>
3010 While loading the document, replace JavaScript code that opens
3011 pop-up windows with (syntactically neutral) dummy code on the fly.
3018 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3020 <para>Boolean.</para>
3025 <term>Parameter:</term>
3037 This action is easily confused with the built-in, hardwired <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
3038 action, but there are important differences: For <literal>kill-popups</literal>,
3039 the document need not be buffered, so it can be incrementally rendered while
3040 downloading. But <literal>kill-popups</literal> doesn't catch as many pop-ups as
3042 linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>popups</replaceable>}</literal>
3046 Think of it as a fast and efficient replacement for a filter that you
3047 can use if you don't want any filtering at all. Note that it doesn't make
3048 sense to combine it with any <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> action,
3049 since as soon as one <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> applies,
3050 the whole document needs to be buffered anyway, which destroys the advantage of
3051 the <literal>kill-popups</literal> action over its filter equivalent.
3054 Killing all pop-ups is a dangerous business. Many shops and banks rely on
3055 pop-ups to display forms, shopping carts etc, and killing only the unwanted pop-ups
3056 would require artificial intelligence in <application>Privoxy</application>.
3057 If the only kind of pop-ups that you want to kill are exit consoles (those
3058 <emphasis>really nasty</emphasis> windows that appear when you close an other
3059 one), you might want to use
3061 linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>js-annoyances</replaceable>}</literal>
3067 An alternate spelling is <literal>+kill-popup</literal>, which is
3075 <term>Example usage:</term>
3077 <para><screen>+kill-popups</screen></para>
3084 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3085 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="limit-connect">
3086 <title>limit-connect</title>
3090 <term>Typical use:</term>
3092 <para>Prevent abuse of <application>Privoxy</application> as a TCP proxy relay</para>
3097 <term>Effect:</term>
3100 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
3107 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3109 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3114 <term>Parameter:</term>
3117 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
3118 defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
3127 By default, i.e. if no <literal>limit-connect</literal> action applies,
3128 <application>Privoxy</application> only allows HTTP CONNECT
3129 requests to port 443 (the standard, secure HTTPS port). Use
3130 <literal>limit-connect</literal> if more fine-grained control is desired
3131 for some or all destinations.
3134 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
3135 (<quote>https://</quote> URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
3136 the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
3137 short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
3138 This can be a big security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can be
3139 abused as TCP relays very easily.
3142 If you don't know what any of this means, there probably is no reason to
3143 change this one, since the default is already very restrictive.
3149 <term>Example usages:</term>
3151 <!-- I had trouble getting the spacing to look right in my browser -->
3152 <!-- I probably have the wrong font setup, bollocks. -->
3153 <!-- Apparently the emphasis tag uses a proportional font no matter what -->
3155 <screen>+limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need not be specified.
3156 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
3157 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
3158 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK (gaping security hole!)</screen>
3165 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3166 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="prevent-compression">
3167 <title>prevent-compression</title>
3171 <term>Typical use:</term>
3174 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
3175 passed through <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>s
3181 <term>Effect:</term>
3184 Adds a header to the request that asks for uncompressed transfer.
3191 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3193 <para>Boolean.</para>
3198 <term>Parameter:</term>
3210 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
3211 is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But for the <literal><link
3212 linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>, <literal><link linkend="deanimate-gifs">deanimate-gifs</link></literal>
3213 and <literal><link linkend="kill-popups">kill-popups</link></literal> actions to work,
3214 <application>Privoxy</application> needs access to the uncompressed data.
3215 Unfortunately, <application>Privoxy</application> can't yet(!) uncompress, filter, and
3216 re-compress the content on the fly. So if you want to ensure that all websites, including
3217 those that normally compress, can be filtered, you need to use this action.
3220 This will slow down transfers from those websites, though. If you use any of the above-mentioned
3221 actions, you will typically want to use <literal>prevent-compression</literal> in conjunction
3225 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
3226 documents correctly (they send an empty document body). If you use <literal>prevent-compression</literal>
3227 per default, you'll have to add exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
3233 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
3236 <screen># Set default:
3238 {+prevent-compression}
3241 # Make exceptions for ill sites:
3243 {-prevent-compression}
3245 www.pclinuxonline.com</screen>
3254 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3255 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-vanilla-wafer">
3256 <title>send-vanilla-wafer</title>
3260 <term>Typical use:</term>
3263 Feed log analysis scripts with useless data.
3269 <term>Effect:</term>
3272 Sends a cookie with each request stating that you do not accept any copyright
3273 on cookies sent to you, and asking the site operator not to track you.
3280 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3282 <para>Boolean.</para>
3287 <term>Parameter:</term>
3299 The vanilla wafer is a (relatively) unique header and could conceivably be used to track you.
3302 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
3308 <term>Example usage:</term>
3311 <screen>+send-vanilla-wafer</screen>
3320 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3321 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-wafer">
3322 <title>send-wafer</title>
3326 <term>Typical use:</term>
3329 Send custom cookies or feed log analysis scripts with even more useless data.
3335 <term>Effect:</term>
3338 Sends a custom, user-defined cookie with each request.
3345 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3347 <para>Multi-value.</para>
3352 <term>Parameter:</term>
3355 A string of the form <quote><replaceable class="option">name</replaceable>=<replaceable
3356 class="parameter">value</replaceable></quote>.
3365 Being multi-valued, multiple instances of this action can apply to the same request,
3366 resulting in multiple cookies being sent.
3369 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
3374 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3377 <screen>{+send-wafer{UsingPrivoxy=true}}
3378 my-internal-testing-server.void</screen>
3386 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3387 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="session-cookies-only">
3388 <title>session-cookies-only</title>
3392 <term>Typical use:</term>
3395 Allow only temporary <quote>session</quote> cookies (for the current browser session <emphasis>only</emphasis>).
3401 <term>Effect:</term>
3404 Deletes the <quote>expires</quote> field from <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> server headers.
3405 Most browsers will not store such cookies permanently and forget them in between sessions.
3412 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3414 <para>Boolean.</para>
3419 <term>Parameter:</term>
3431 This is less strict than <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> /
3432 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal> and allows you to browse
3433 websites that insist or rely on setting cookies, without compromising your privacy too badly.
3436 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed by
3437 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal> and will forget about them between sessions.
3438 This makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
3439 that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
3440 sites, and is the recommended setting.
3443 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>
3444 together with <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> or
3445 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>. If you do, cookies
3446 will be plainly killed.
3449 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an <quote>expires</quote>
3450 field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out to be sure.
3453 This setting also has no effect on cookies that may have been stored
3454 previously by the browser before starting <application>Privoxy</application>.
3455 These would have to be removed manually.
3458 <application>Privoxy</application> also uses
3459 the <link linkend="filter-content-cookies">content-cookies filter</link>
3460 to block some types of cookies. Content cookies are not effected by
3461 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>.
3467 <term>Example usage:</term>
3470 <screen>+session-cookies-only</screen>
3478 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3479 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="set-image-blocker">
3480 <title>set-image-blocker</title>
3484 <term>Typical use:</term>
3486 <para>Choose the replacement for blocked images</para>
3491 <term>Effect:</term>
3494 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If <emphasis>both</emphasis>
3495 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><link
3496 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> <emphasis>also</emphasis>
3497 apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an image,
3498 <emphasis>then</emphasis> the parameter of this action decides what will be
3499 sent as a replacement.
3506 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3508 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3513 <term>Parameter:</term>
3518 <quote>pattern</quote> to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is visually
3519 decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners were busted.
3524 <quote>blank</quote> to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners disappear
3525 completely, but makes it hard to detect where <application>Privoxy</application> has blocked
3526 images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if <application>Privoxy</application>
3527 has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
3532 <quote><replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable></quote> to
3533 send a redirect to <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>. You can redirect
3534 to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem (via <quote>file:///</quote> URL).
3537 A good application of redirects is to use special <application>Privoxy</application>-built-in
3538 URLs, which send the built-in images, as <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>.
3539 This has the same visual effect as specifying <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote> in
3540 the first place, but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of requesting
3541 it over and over again.
3552 The URLs for the built-in images are <quote>http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=<replaceable
3553 class="parameter">type</replaceable></quote>, where <replaceable class="parameter">type</replaceable> is
3554 either <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote>.
3557 There is a third (advanced) type, called <quote>auto</quote>. It is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> to be
3558 used in <literal>set-image-blocker</literal>, but meant for use from <link linkend="filter-file">filters</link>.
3559 Auto will select the type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an image.
3565 <term>Example usage:</term>
3571 <screen>+set-image-blocker{pattern}</screen>
3574 Redirect to the BSD devil:
3577 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}</screen>
3580 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
3583 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}</screen>
3591 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3593 <title>Summary</title>
3595 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
3596 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
3597 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
3598 content, and other criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard
3599 and fast rules for all sites. See the <link
3600 linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link> for a brief example on troubleshooting
3606 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3607 <sect2 id="aliases">
3608 <title>Aliases</title>
3610 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
3611 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other actions.
3612 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
3613 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab,
3615 <quote>{</quote> and <quote>}</quote>, but we <emphasis>strongly
3616 recommend</emphasis> that you only use <quote>a</quote> to <quote>z</quote>,
3617 <quote>0</quote> to <quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and <quote>-</quote>.
3618 Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start with a
3619 <quote>+</quote> or <quote>-</quote> sign, since they are merely textually
3623 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they <emphasis>must be
3624 defined in a special section at the top of the file!</emphasis>
3625 And there can only be one such section per actions file. Each actions file may
3626 have its own alias section, and the aliases defined in it are only visible
3630 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
3631 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
3632 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called
3633 <quote>shop</quote>, you can later change your policy on shops in
3634 <emphasis>one</emphasis> place, and your changes will take effect everywhere
3635 in the actions file where the <quote>shop</quote> alias is used. Calling aliases
3636 by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
3639 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though:
3640 <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in web-based action file
3641 editor honors aliases when reading the actions files, but it expands
3642 them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are of course preserved,
3643 but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
3645 This is likely to change in future versions of <application>Privoxy</application>.
3649 Now let's define some aliases...
3654 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
3656 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
3657 # must be at the top of the actions file!
3661 # These aliases just save typing later:
3662 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
3664 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
3665 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
3666 block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
3667 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
3669 # These aliases define combinations of actions
3670 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
3672 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referer -kill-popups
3673 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -filter{popups} -kill-popups
3675 # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
3677 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
3678 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies</screen>
3682 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
3683 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
3684 up for the <quote>/</quote> pattern):
3689 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
3690 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
3693 .office.microsoft.com
3694 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
3698 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
3702 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
3705 # These shops require pop-ups:
3707 {shop -kill-popups -filter{popups}}
3709 .overclockers.co.uk</screen>
3713 Aliases like <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote> are often used for
3714 <quote>problem</quote> sites that require some actions to be disabled
3715 in order to function properly.
3719 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3720 <sect2 id="act-examples">
3721 <title>Actions Files Tutorial</title>
3723 The above chapters have shown <link linkend="actions-file">which actions files
3724 there are and how they are organized</link>, how actions are <link
3725 linkend="actions">specified</link> and <link linkend="actions-apply">applied
3726 to URLs</link>, how <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> work, and how to
3727 define and use <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link>. Now, let's look at an
3728 example <filename>default.action</filename> and <filename>user.action</filename>
3729 file and see how all these pieces come together:
3732 <sect3><title>default.action</title>
3735 Every config file should start with a short comment stating its purpose:
3739 <screen># Sample default.action file <developers@privoxy.org></screen>
3743 Then, since this is the <filename>default.action</filename> file, the
3744 first section is a special section for internal use that you needn't
3745 change or worry about:
3750 ##########################################################################
3751 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
3752 ##########################################################################
3755 for-privoxy-version=3.0</screen>
3759 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
3760 section from the above <link linkend="aliases">chapter on aliases</link>,
3761 that also explains why and how aliases are used:
3766 ##########################################################################
3768 ##########################################################################
3771 # These aliases just save typing later:
3772 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
3774 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
3775 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
3776 block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
3777 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
3779 # These aliases define combinations of actions
3780 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
3782 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referer -kill-popups
3783 shop = mercy-for-cookies -filter{popups} -kill-popups</screen>
3787 Now come the regular sections, i.e. sets of actions, accompanied
3788 by URL patterns to which they apply. Remember <emphasis>all actions
3789 are disabled when matching starts</emphasis>, so we have to explicitly
3790 enable the ones we want.
3794 The first regular section is probably the most important. It has only
3795 one pattern, <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, but this pattern
3796 <link linkend="af-patterns">matches all URLs</link>. Therefore, the
3797 set of actions used in this <quote>default</quote> section <emphasis>will
3798 be applied to all requests as a start</emphasis>. It can be partly or
3799 wholly overridden by later matches further down this file, or in user.action,
3800 but it will still be largely responsible for your overall browsing
3805 Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
3806 no real need to disable any actions here, but we will do that nonetheless,
3807 to have a complete listing for your reference. (Remember: a <quote>+</quote>
3808 preceding the action name enables the action, a <quote>-</quote> disables!).
3809 Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
3810 multiple lines with line continuation.
3815 ##########################################################################
3816 # "Defaults" section:
3817 ##########################################################################
3819 -<link linkend="ADD-HEADER">add-header</link> \
3820 -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> \
3821 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> \
3822 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link> \
3823 +<link linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</link> \
3824 -<link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION">downgrade-http-version</link> \
3825 +<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> \
3826 +<link linkend="FILTER-HTML-ANNOYANCES">filter{html-annoyances}</link> \
3827 +<link linkend="FILTER-JS-ANNOYANCES">filter{js-annoyances}</link> \
3828 -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link> \
3829 +<link linkend="FILTER-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link> \
3830 +<link linkend="FILTER-WEBBUGS">filter{webbugs}</link> \
3831 -<link linkend="FILTER-REFRESH-TAGS">filter{refresh-tags}</link> \
3832 -<link linkend="FILTER-FUN">filter{fun}</link> \
3833 +<link linkend="FILTER-NIMDA">filter{nimda}</link> \
3834 +<link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE">filter{banners-by-size}</link> \
3835 -<link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-LINK">filter{banners-by-link}</link> \
3836 -<link linkend="FILTER-IMG-REORDER">filter{img-reorder}</link> \
3837 -<link linkend="FILTER-SHOCKWAVE-FLASH">filter{shockwave-flash}</link> \
3838 -<link linkend="FILTER-CRUDE-PARENTAL">filter{crude-parental}</link> \
3839 -<link linkend="FILTER-JS-EVENTS">filter{js-events}</link> \
3840 -<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> \
3841 +<link linkend="HIDE-FORWARDED-FOR-HEADERS">hide-forwarded-for-headers</link> \
3842 +<link linkend="HIDE-FROM-HEADER">hide-from-header{block}</link> \
3843 +<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer{forge}</link> \
3844 -<link linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT">hide-user-agent</link> \
3845 -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> \
3846 -<link linkend="LIMIT-CONNECT">limit-connect</link> \
3847 +<link linkend="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link> \
3848 -<link linkend="SEND-VANILLA-WAFER">send-vanilla-wafer</link> \
3849 -<link linkend="SEND-WAFER">send-wafer</link> \
3850 +<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> \
3851 +<link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER">set-image-blocker{pattern}</link> \
3853 / # forward slash will match *all* potential URL patterns.</screen>
3857 The default behavior is now set. Note that some actions, like not hiding
3858 the user agent, are part of a <quote>general policy</quote> that applies
3859 universally and won't get any exceptions defined later. Other choices,
3860 like not blocking (which is <emphasis>understandably</emphasis> the
3861 default!) need exceptions, i.e. we need to specify explicitly what we
3862 want to block in later sections.
3863 We will also want to make exceptions from our general pop-up-killing,
3864 and use our defined aliases for that.
3868 The first of our specialized sections is concerned with <quote>fragile</quote>
3869 sites, i.e. sites that require minimum interference, because they are either
3870 very complex or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that
3871 make them unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will simply use
3872 our pre-defined <literal>fragile</literal> alias instead of stating the list
3873 of actions explicitly:
3878 ##########################################################################
3879 # Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
3880 ##########################################################################
3882 # "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
3885 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
3886 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com</screen>
3890 Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically
3891 require cookies to log in, and pop-up windows for shopping
3892 carts or item details. Again, we'll use a pre-defined alias:
3901 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
3903 .scan.co.uk</screen>
3907 Then, there are sites which rely on pop-up windows (yuck!) to work.
3908 Since we made pop-up-killing our default above, we need to make exceptions
3909 now. <ulink url="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla</ulink> users, who
3910 can turn on smart handling of unwanted pop-ups in their browsers, can
3912 -<literal><link linkend="FILTER-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link></literal> (and
3913 -<literal><link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link></literal>) above
3914 and hence don't need this section. Anyway, disabling an already disabled
3915 action doesn't hurt, so we'll define our exceptions regardless of what was
3916 chosen in the defaults section:
3921 # These sites require pop-ups too :(
3923 { -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link> }
3926 .deutsche-bank-24.de</screen>
3930 The <literal><link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link></literal>
3931 action, which we enabled per default above, breaks some sites. So disable
3932 it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
3937 { -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> }
3941 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
3942 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
3943 .nytimes.com</screen>
3947 It is important that <application>Privoxy</application> knows which
3948 URLs belong to images, so that <emphasis>if</emphasis> they are to
3949 be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
3950 Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it
3951 would destroy the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it
3952 would feed the advertisers (in terms of money <emphasis>and</emphasis>
3953 information). We can mark any URL as an image with the <literal><link
3954 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action,
3955 and marking all URLs that end in a known image file extension is a
3961 ##########################################################################
3963 ##########################################################################
3965 # Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
3966 # blocked further down this file:
3968 { +<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> }
3969 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$</screen>
3973 And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to
3974 generate the banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the
3975 request is for an image. Hence we block them <emphasis>and</emphasis>
3976 mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
3977 <literal>block-as-image</literal> alias defined above. (We could of
3978 course just as well use <literal>+<link linkend="block">block</link>
3979 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> here.)
3980 Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
3981 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
3982 action. Since all URLs have matched the default section with its
3983 <literal>+<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link>{pattern}</literal>
3984 action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:
3989 # Known ad generators:
3994 .ad.*.doubleclick.net
3995 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
3996 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
4003 One of the most important jobs of <application>Privoxy</application>
4004 is to block banners. A huge bunch of them are already <quote>blocked</quote>
4005 by the <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{banners-by-size}</literal>
4006 action, which we enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner
4007 images from the pages while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request
4008 them anymore, and hence they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally
4009 doesn't catch all banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we
4010 need a comprehensive list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the
4011 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action to them.
4014 First comes a bunch of generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
4015 matching typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes
4016 a list of individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here
4017 to keep the example short:
4022 ##########################################################################
4023 # Block these fine banners:
4024 ##########################################################################
4025 { <link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link> }
4033 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
4034 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
4036 # Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
4038 .hitbox.com</screen>
4042 You wouldn't believe how many advertisers actually call their banner
4043 servers ads.<replaceable>company</replaceable>.com, or call the directory
4044 in which the banners are stored simply <quote>banners</quote>. So the above
4045 generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
4048 But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want
4049 to block. The pattern <literal>.*ads.</literal> e.g. catches
4050 <quote>nasty-<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.nasty-corp.com</quote> as intended,
4051 but also <quote>downlo<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.sourcefroge.net</quote> or
4052 <quote><emphasis>ads</emphasis>l.some-provider.net.</quote> So here come some
4053 well-known exceptions to the <literal>+<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
4057 Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
4058 <quote>downloads.sourcefroge.net</quote>: Initially, all actions are deactivated,
4059 so it wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the
4060 URL, but just deactivates the <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
4061 action once again. Then it matches <literal>.*ads.</literal>, an exception to the
4062 general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
4063 <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link></literal> applies. And now, it'll match
4064 <literal>.*loads.</literal>, where <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">-block</link></literal>
4065 applies, so (unless it matches <emphasis>again</emphasis> further down) it ends up
4066 with no <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal> action applying.
4071 ##########################################################################
4072 # Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
4073 ##########################################################################
4077 { -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
4078 adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
4079 adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
4080 ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
4081 .edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
4082 .*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
4090 www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
4091 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv</screen>
4095 Filtering source code can have nasty side effects,
4096 so make an exception for our friends at sourceforge.net,
4097 and all paths with <quote>cvs</quote> in them. Note that
4098 <literal>-<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link></literal>
4099 disables <emphasis>all</emphasis> filters in one fell swoop!
4104 # Don't filter code!
4106 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
4108 .sourceforge.net</screen>
4112 The actual <filename>default.action</filename> is of course more
4113 comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
4118 <sect3><title>user.action</title>
4120 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies,
4121 which would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now,
4122 you might want to be more specific and have customized rules that
4123 are more suitable to your personal habits and preferences. These would
4124 be for narrowly defined situations like your ISP or your bank, and should
4125 be placed in <filename>user.action</filename>, which is parsed after all other
4126 actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any previously
4127 defined actions. <filename>user.action</filename> is also a
4128 <emphasis>safe</emphasis> place for your personal settings, since
4129 <filename>default.action</filename> is actively maintained by the
4130 <application>Privoxy</application> developers and you'll probably want
4131 to install updated versions from time to time.
4135 So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
4136 <filename>user.action</filename>:
4140 <!-- brief sample user.action here -->
4144 # My user.action file. <fred@foobar.com></screen>
4148 As <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link> are local to the actions
4149 file that they are defined in, you can't use the ones from
4150 <filename>default.action</filename>, unless you repeat them here:
4155 # Aliases are local to the file they are defined in.
4156 # (Re-)define aliases for this file:
4160 # These aliases just save typing later, and the alias names should
4161 # be self explanatory.
4163 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
4164 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
4165 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
4166 allow-popups = -filter{popups} -kill-popups
4167 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
4168 -block-as-image = -block
4170 # These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
4171 # certain types of sites:
4173 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referer -kill-popups
4174 shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
4176 # Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
4178 allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}</screen>
4184 Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and
4185 you don't want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like
4186 to allow persistent cookies for these sites. The
4187 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal> alias defined above does exactly
4188 that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
4189 processing of cookies to make them only temporary.
4194 { allow-all-cookies }
4199 .redhat.com</screen>
4203 Your bank needs popups and is allergic to some filter, but you don't
4204 know which, so you disable them all:
4209 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> }
4210 .your-home-banking-site.com</screen>
4214 Some hosts and some file types you may not want to filter.
4215 <application>Privoxy</application> makes no distinctions between regular web
4216 pages and downloads done via your web browser if it is an html or text type
4222 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
4226 # A list of common file extensions that are likely to indicate raw text, and best
4228 /(.*/)?.*\.(pl|(s|p)?h|c(c|xx|pp)?|tcl|am|init?|cfg?|conf(ig)?|txt|rc|bat)$
4230 # Documentation should not need filtering (at least on some sites).
4235 Example of a simple <link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> action. Say you've
4236 seen an ad on your favourite page on example.com that you want to get rid of.
4237 You have right-clicked the image, selected <quote>copy image location</quote>
4238 and pasted the URL below while removing the leading http://, into a
4239 <literal>{ +block }</literal> section. Note that <literal>{ +handle-as-image
4240 }</literal> need not be specified, since all URLs ending in
4241 <literal>.gif</literal> will be tagged as images by the general rules as set
4242 in default.action anyway:
4247 { +<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
4248 www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.gif
4249 another.popular.site.net/more/junk/here/
4251 # Here we found one that is not in <application>Privoxy's</application> default blocked list:
4252 .adfactory.net</screen>
4256 To force URLs that tend to have ad images, but it is difficult for
4257 <application>Privoxy</application> to know this since the ultimate returned
4258 object is obscured for one reason or another, we can try to force these to be
4259 treated as images (and thus avoid <application>Privoxy's</application>
4260 <quote>BLOCKED</quote> banner page). Note that if what is returned by the
4261 server turns out NOT to be an image, then your browser typically will display
4262 a broken icon image. Use cautiously.
4268 # A shockwave ad, very annoying.
4276 Now you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine,
4277 but you were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you
4278 were again too lazy to give <link linkend="contact">feedback</link>, so
4279 you just used the <literal>fragile</literal> alias on the site, and
4280 -- <emphasis>whoa!</emphasis> -- it worked. The <literal>fragile</literal>
4281 aliases disables those actions that are most likely to break a site. Also,
4282 good for testing purposes to see if it is <application>Privoxy</application>
4283 that is causing the problem or not.
4289 .forbes.com</screen>
4293 You like the <quote>fun</quote> text replacements in <filename>default.filter</filename>,
4294 but it is disabled in the distributed actions file. (My colleagues on the team just
4295 don't have a sense of humour, that's why! ;-). So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
4296 update-safe config, once and for all:
4301 { +<link linkend="filter-fun">filter{fun}</link> }
4302 / # For ALL sites!</screen>
4306 Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions
4307 to the filters in <filename>default.action</filename> for things that
4308 really shouldn't be filtered, like code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since
4309 <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word, these exceptions
4310 won't be valid for the <quote>fun</quote> filtering specified here.
4314 You might also worry about how your favourite free websites are
4315 funded, and find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements
4316 to survive. So you might want to specifically allow banners for those
4317 sites that you feel provide value to you:
4329 Note that <literal>allow-ads</literal> has been aliased to
4330 <literal>-<link linkend="block">block</link></literal>,
4331 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-size">filter{banners-by-size}</link></literal>, and
4332 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-link">filter{banners-by-link}</link></literal> above.
4336 <filename>user.action</filename> is generally the best place to define
4337 exceptions and additions to the default policies of
4338 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some actions are safe to have their
4339 default policies set here though. So let's set a default policy to have a
4340 <quote>blank</quote> image as opposed to the checkerboard pattern for
4341 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> sites. <quote>/</quote> of course matches all URL
4347 { +<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker{blank}</link> }
4348 / # ALL sites</screen>
4354 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
4358 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
4360 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
4362 <sect1 id="filter-file">
4363 <title>The Filter File</title>
4366 All text substitutions that can be invoked through the
4367 <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> action
4368 must first be defined in the filter file, which is typically
4369 called <filename>default.filter</filename> and which can be
4370 selected through the <literal>
4371 <link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal> config
4376 Typical reasons for doing such substitutions are to eliminate
4377 common annoyances in HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows,
4378 exit consoles, crippled windows without navigation tools, the
4379 infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to suppress images with certain
4380 width and height attributes (standard banner sizes or web-bugs),
4381 or just to have fun. The possibilities are endless.
4385 Filtering works on any text-based document type, including plain
4386 text, HTML, JavaScript, CSS etc. (all <literal>text/*</literal>
4387 MIME types). Substitutions are made at the source level, so if
4388 you want to <quote>roll your own</quote> filters, you should be
4389 familiar with HTML syntax.
4393 Just like the <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, the
4394 filter file is organized in sections, which are called <emphasis>filters</emphasis>
4395 here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with the
4396 <emphasis>keyword</emphasis> <literal>FILTER:</literal>, followed by
4397 the filter's <emphasis>name</emphasis>, and a short (one line)
4398 <emphasis>description</emphasis> of what it does. Below that line
4399 come the <emphasis>jobs</emphasis>, i.e. lines that define the actual
4400 text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
4401 should describe what the filter <emphasis>eliminates</emphasis>. The
4402 comment is used in the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
4403 user interface</ulink>.
4407 Once a filter called <replaceable>name</replaceable> has been defined
4408 in the filter file, it can be invoked by using an action of the form
4409 +<literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>name</replaceable>}</literal>
4410 in any <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>.
4414 A filter header line for a filter called <quote>foo</quote> could look
4419 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"</screen>
4423 Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that
4424 define what text replacements the filter executes. They are specified
4425 in a syntax that imitates <ulink url="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</ulink>'s
4426 <literal>s///</literal> operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you
4427 will find this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the
4428 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/pcrs.3.html">PCRS man page</ulink>
4429 for the subtle differences to Perl behaviour. Most notably, the non-standard
4430 option letter <literal>U</literal> is supported, which turns the default
4431 to ungreedy matching.
4435 If you are new to regular expressions, you might want to take a look at
4436 the <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>, and
4437 see the <ulink url="http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perl.html">Perl
4439 <ulink url="http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perlop.html#s-PATTERN-REPLACEMENT-egimosx">the
4440 <literal>s///</literal> operator's syntax</ulink> and <ulink
4441 url="http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perlre.html">Perl-style regular
4442 expressions</ulink> in general.
4443 The below examples might also help to get you started.
4446 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
4448 <sect2><title>Filter File Tutorial</title>
4450 Now, let's complete our <quote>foo</quote> filter. We have already defined
4451 the heading, but the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace
4452 <quote>foo</quote> with <quote>bar</quote>, there is only one (trivial) job
4457 <screen>s/foo/bar/</screen>
4461 But wait! Didn't the comment say that <emphasis>all</emphasis> occurrences
4462 of <quote>foo</quote> should be replaced? Our current job will only take
4463 care of the first <quote>foo</quote> on each page. For global substitution,
4464 we'll need to add the <literal>g</literal> option:
4468 <screen>s/foo/bar/g</screen>
4472 Our complete filter now looks like this:
4475 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
4476 s/foo/bar/g</screen>
4480 Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see
4481 a filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
4482 abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
4488 FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
4490 # Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
4492 s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg</screen>
4496 Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses
4497 <literal>|</literal> as the delimiter instead of <literal>/</literal>, because
4498 the pattern contains a forward slash, which would otherwise have to be escaped
4499 by a backslash (<literal>\</literal>).
4503 Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <literal><script.*</literal>
4504 enclosed in parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and <literal>*</literal>
4505 means: <quote>Match an arbitrary number of the element left of myself</quote>, this
4506 matches <quote><script</quote>, followed by <emphasis>any</emphasis> text, i.e.
4507 it matches the whole page, from the start of the first <script> tag.
4511 That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: <literal>document\.referrer</literal>
4512 matches only the exact string <quote>document.referrer</quote>. The dot needed to
4513 be <emphasis>escaped</emphasis>, i.e. preceded by a backslash, to take away its
4514 special meaning as a joker, and make it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is:
4515 Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including,
4516 the text <quote>document.referrer</quote>, if <emphasis>both</emphasis> are present
4517 in the page (and appear in that order).
4521 But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in parentheses,
4522 is <literal>.*</script></literal>. You already know what <literal>.*</literal>
4523 means, so the whole pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script>
4524 tag in a page to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text
4525 <quote>document.referrer</quote> appears somewhere in between.
4529 This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the parentheses:
4530 The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed in parentheses, will be
4531 remembered and be available through the variables <literal>$1, $2, ...</literal> in
4532 the substitute. The <literal>U</literal> option switches to ungreedy matching, which means
4533 that the first <literal>.*</literal> in the pattern will only <quote>eat up</quote> all
4534 text in between <quote><script</quote> and the <emphasis>first</emphasis> occurrence
4535 of <quote>document.referrer</quote>, and that the second <literal>.*</literal> will
4536 only span the text up to the <emphasis>first</emphasis> <quote></script></quote>
4537 tag. Furthermore, the <literal>s</literal> option says that the match may span
4538 multiple lines in the page, and the <literal>g</literal> option again means that the
4539 substitution is global.
4543 So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
4544 <quote>document.referrer</quote>. Remember the parts of the script from
4545 (and including) the start tag up to (and excluding) the string
4546 <quote>document.referrer</quote> as <literal>$1</literal>, and the part following
4547 that string, up to and including the closing tag, as <literal>$2</literal>.
4551 Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
4552 lets look at the substitute: <literal>$1"Not Your Business!"$2</literal> is
4553 easy to read: The text remembered as <literal>$1</literal>, followed by
4554 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> (<emphasis>including</emphasis>
4555 the quotation marks!), followed by the text remembered as <literal>$2</literal>.
4556 This produces an exact copy of the original string, with the middle part
4557 (the <quote>document.referrer</quote>) replaced by <literal>"Not Your
4558 Business!"</literal>.
4562 The whole job now reads: Replace <quote>document.referrer</quote> by
4563 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> wherever it appears inside a
4564 <script> tag. Note that this job won't break JavaScript syntax,
4565 since both the original and the replacement are syntactically valid
4566 string objects. The script just won't have access to the referrer
4567 information anymore.
4571 We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but
4572 this time only point out the constructs of special interest:
4577 # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
4579 s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig</screen>
4583 <literal>\s</literal> stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline,
4584 carriage return, form feed), so that <literal>\s*</literal> means: <quote>zero
4585 or more whitespace</quote>. The <literal>?</literal> in <literal>.*?</literal>
4586 makes this matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the <literal>U</literal>
4587 option is not set). The <literal>['"]</literal> construct means: <quote>a single
4588 <emphasis>or</emphasis> a double quote</quote>. Finally, <literal>\1</literal> is
4589 a backreference to the first parenthesis just like <literal>$1</literal> above,
4590 with the difference that in the <emphasis>pattern</emphasis>, a backslash indicates
4591 a backreference, whereas in the <emphasis>substitute</emphasis>, it's the dollar.
4595 So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
4596 strings to the <quote>window.status</quote> object with a dummy assignment
4597 (using a variable name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with
4598 real variables in scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless
4599 descriptions are displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when
4600 you move your mouse over links.
4605 # Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
4607 s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU</screen>
4612 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">OnUnload
4613 event binding</ulink> in the HTML DOM was a <emphasis>CRIME</emphasis>.
4614 When I close a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta.
4615 This job replaces the <quote>onunload</quote> attribute in
4616 <quote><body></quote> tags with the dummy word <literal>never</literal>.
4617 Note that the <literal>i</literal> option makes the pattern matching
4618 case-insensitive. Also note that ungreedy matching alone doesn't always guarantee
4619 a minimal match: In the first parenthesis, we had to use <literal>[^>]*</literal>
4620 instead of <literal>.*</literal> to prevent the match from exceeding the
4621 <body> tag if it doesn't contain <quote>OnUnload</quote>, but the page's
4626 The last example is from the fun department:
4631 FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
4633 # Spice the daily news:
4635 s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig</screen>
4639 Note the <literal>(?!\.com)</literal> part (a so-called negative lookahead)
4640 in the job's pattern, which means: Don't match, if the string
4641 <quote>.com</quote> appears directly following <quote>microsoft</quote>
4642 in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being trashed, while
4643 still replacing the word everywhere else.
4648 # Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
4650 s* industry[ -]leading \
4652 | customer[ -]focused \
4653 | market[ -]driven \
4654 | award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
4655 | high[ -]performance \
4656 | solutions[ -]based \
4660 *<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
4665 The <literal>x</literal> option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for
4666 e.g. the liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
4675 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
4679 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4681 <sect1 id="templates">
4682 <title>Templates</title>
4684 All <application>Privoxy</application> built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the
4685 <ulink url="http://show-the-404-error.page"><quote>404 - No Such Domain</quote>
4686 error page</ulink>, the <ulink
4687 url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
4689 and all pages of its <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
4690 user interface</ulink>, are generated from <emphasis>templates</emphasis>.
4691 (<application>Privoxy</application> must be running for the above links to work as
4696 These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the <link linkend="confdir">configuration
4697 directory</link> called <filename>templates</filename>. On Unixish platforms,
4699 <ulink url="file:///etc/privoxy/templates/"><filename>/etc/privoxy/templates/</filename></ulink>.
4703 The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called symbols
4704 or exports), which <application>Privoxy</application> fills at run time. You can
4705 edit the templates with a normal text editor, should you want to customize them.
4706 (<emphasis>Not recommended for the casual user</emphasis>). Note that
4707 just like in configuration files, lines starting with <literal>#</literal> are
4708 ignored when the templates are filled in.
4712 The place-holders are of the form <literal>@name@</literal>, and you will
4713 find a list of available symbols, which vary from template to template,
4714 in the comments at the start of each file. Note that these comments are not
4715 always accurate, and that it's probably best to look at the existing HTML
4716 code to find out which symbols are supported and what they are filled in with.
4720 A special application of this substitution mechanism is to make whole
4721 blocks of HTML code disappear when a specific symbol is set. We use this
4722 for many purposes, one of them being to include the beta warning in all
4723 our user interface (CGI) pages when <application>Privoxy</application>
4724 in in an alpha or beta development stage:
4729 <!-- @if-unstable-start -->
4731 ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
4733 <!-- if-unstable-end@ --></screen>
4737 If the "unstable" symbol is set, everything in between and including
4738 <literal>@if-unstable-start</literal> and <literal>if-unstable-end@</literal>
4739 will disappear, leaving nothing but an empty comment:
4743 <screen><!-- --></screen>
4747 There's also an if-then-else construct and an <literal>#include</literal>
4748 mechanism, but you'll sure find out if you are inclined to edit the
4753 All templates refer to a style located at
4754 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet"><literal>http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet</literal></ulink>.
4755 This is, of course, locally served by <application>Privoxy</application>
4756 and the source for it can be found and edited in the
4757 <filename>cgi-style.css</filename> template.
4762 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
4766 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4768 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
4771 <!-- Include contacting.sgml boilerplate: -->
4773 <!-- end boilerplate -->
4777 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
4780 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4781 <sect1 id="copyright"><title><application>Privoxy</application> Copyright, License and History</title>
4783 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
4785 <!-- end copyright -->
4787 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4788 <sect2><title>License</title>
4789 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
4791 <!-- end copyright -->
4793 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
4796 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4798 <sect2 id="history"><title>History</title>
4799 <!-- Include history.sgml: -->
4801 <!-- end history -->
4804 <sect2 id="authors"><title>Authors</title>
4805 <!-- Include p-authors.sgml: -->
4807 <!-- end authors -->
4812 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
4815 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4816 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See Also</title>
4817 <!-- Include seealso.sgml: -->
4819 <!-- end seealso -->
4824 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4825 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
4828 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4830 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
4832 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl-style <quote>regular
4833 expressions</quote> in its <link linkend="actions-file">actions
4834 files</link> and <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>,
4835 through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> and
4836 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/">PCRS</ulink> libraries.
4840 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
4841 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
4842 introduction only. A full explanation would require a <ulink
4843 url="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/">book</ulink> ;-)
4847 Regular expressions provide a language to describe patterns that can be
4848 run against strings of characters (letter, numbers, etc), to see if they
4849 match the string or not. The patterns are themselves (sometimes complex)
4850 strings of literal characters, combined with wild-cards, and other special
4851 characters, called meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have
4852 special meanings and are used to build complex patterns to be matched against.
4853 Perl Compatible Regular Expressions are an especially convenient
4854 <quote>dialect</quote> of the regular expression language.
4858 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
4859 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
4860 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
4861 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
4862 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
4863 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
4864 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
4865 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
4869 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
4870 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
4871 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
4872 and then some examples:
4877 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
4878 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
4880 </simplelist></para>
4884 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
4887 </simplelist></para>
4891 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
4894 </simplelist></para>
4898 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
4901 </simplelist></para>
4905 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
4906 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
4907 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
4908 not as a special meta-character. Example: <quote>example\.com</quote>, makes
4909 sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded to its
4910 meta-character meaning of any single character).
4912 </simplelist></para>
4916 <emphasis>[]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
4917 any of the enclosed characters are encountered. For instance, <quote>[0-9]</quote>
4918 matches any numeric digit (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine
4919 this with <quote>+</quote> to match any digit one of more times: <quote>[0-9]+</quote>.
4921 </simplelist></para>
4925 <emphasis>()</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
4926 or multiple sub-expressions.
4928 </simplelist></para>
4932 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
4933 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
4934 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches. As an example:
4935 <quote>/(this|that) example/</quote> uses grouping and the bar character
4936 and would match either <quote>this example</quote> or <quote>that
4937 example</quote>, and nothing else.
4939 </simplelist></para>
4942 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
4943 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
4944 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
4945 be more illuminating:
4949 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
4950 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
4951 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
4952 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
4953 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
4954 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
4955 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
4956 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
4957 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
4958 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
4959 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
4960 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
4961 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
4962 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
4967 A now something a little more complex:
4971 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
4972 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
4973 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
4974 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
4975 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
4976 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
4977 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
4982 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
4983 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
4984 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
4985 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
4986 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
4987 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
4988 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
4989 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
4990 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
4991 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
4992 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
4993 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
4994 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
4995 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
4996 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
4997 changing our regular expression to:
4998 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
5003 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
5004 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
5005 <quote>[]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
5006 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
5007 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
5008 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
5009 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
5010 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
5011 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
5012 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
5013 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
5014 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
5015 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
5016 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
5017 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
5018 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
5019 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
5020 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
5021 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
5022 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
5023 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
5024 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
5025 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
5026 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
5027 in the expression anywhere).
5031 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
5032 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
5033 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
5034 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
5035 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
5040 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
5041 <ulink url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>
5045 For information on regular expression based substitutions and their applications
5046 in filters, please see the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file tutorial</link>
5051 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
5054 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5056 <title><application>Privoxy</application>'s Internal Pages</title>
5059 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
5060 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
5061 trap certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
5062 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
5063 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
5064 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
5065 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
5071 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
5072 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
5073 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
5074 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
5087 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
5091 There is a shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (But it
5092 doesn't provide a fall-back to a real page, in case the request is not
5093 sent through <application>Privoxy</application>)
5099 Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
5100 editing of actions files:
5104 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
5111 Show the source code version numbers:
5115 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">http://config.privoxy.org/show-version</ulink>
5122 Show the browser's request headers:
5126 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">http://config.privoxy.org/show-request</ulink>
5133 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
5137 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
5144 Toggle Privoxy on or off. In this case, <quote>Privoxy</quote> continues
5145 to run, but only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking place:
5149 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
5153 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
5157 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
5162 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
5171 These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
5175 <sect3 id="bookmarklets">
5176 <title>Bookmarklets</title>
5178 Below are some <quote>bookmarklets</quote> to allow you to easily access a
5179 <quote>mini</quote> version of some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
5180 special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer, but should work
5181 equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which support
5182 JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not by
5183 clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
5186 To save them, right-click the link and choose <quote>Add to Favorites</quote>
5187 (IE) or <quote>Add Bookmark</quote> (Netscape). You will get a warning that
5188 the bookmark <quote>may not be safe</quote> - just click OK. Then you can run the
5189 Bookmarklet directly from your favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access,
5190 you can put them on the <quote>Links</quote> bar (IE) or the <quote>Personal
5191 Toolbar</quote> (Netscape), and run them with a single click.
5200 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=enabled','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Enable</ulink>
5207 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=disabled','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Disable</ulink>
5214 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=toggle','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Toggle Privoxy</ulink> (Toggles between enabled and disabled)
5221 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y','ijbstatus','width=250,height=2,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy- View Status</ulink>
5227 <ulink url="javascript:w=Math.floor(screen.width/2);h=Math.floor(screen.height*0.9);void(window.open('http://www.privoxy.org/actions/index.php?url='+escape(location.href),'Feedback','screenx='+w+',width='+w+',height='+h+',scrollbars=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Submit Actions File Feedback</ulink>
5232 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info?url='+escape(location.href),'Why').focus());">Privoxy - Why?</ulink>
5239 Credit: The site which gave us the general idea for these bookmarklets is
5240 <ulink url="http://www.bookmarklets.com/">www.bookmarklets.com</ulink>. They
5241 have more information about bookmarklets.
5250 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5252 <title>Chain of Events</title>
5254 Let's take a quick look at the basic sequence of events when a web page is
5255 requested by your browser and <application>Privoxy</application> is on duty:
5262 First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send
5263 the request to <application>Privoxy</application>, which will in turn,
5264 relay the request to the remote web server after passing the following
5270 <application>Privoxy</application> traps any request for its own internal CGI
5271 pages (e.g http://p.p/) and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
5276 Next, <application>Privoxy</application> checks to see if the URL
5278 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link> patterns. If
5279 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be contacted.
5280 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>
5281 is then checked and if it does not match, an
5282 HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page is sent back. Otherwise, if it does match,
5283 an image is returned. The type of image depends on the setting of <link
5284 linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><quote>+set-image-blocker</quote></link>
5285 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
5290 Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the
5291 <filename>trust</filename> file, then that is done.
5296 If the URL pattern matches the <link
5297 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link> action,
5298 it is then processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
5303 Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
5304 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. <link
5305 linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT"><quote>+hide-user-agent</quote></link>,
5306 etc.), headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and
5312 Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web page and related
5318 First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
5319 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
5320 filtered as determined by the
5321 <link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES"><quote>+crunch-incoming-cookies</quote></link>,
5322 <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>,
5323 and <link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION"><quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote></link>
5329 If the <link linkend="KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></link>
5330 action applies, and it is an HTML or JavaScript document, the popup-code in the
5331 response is filtered on-the-fly as it is received.
5336 If a <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>
5338 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
5339 action applies (and the document type fits the action), the rest of the page is
5340 read into memory (up to a configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from
5341 <filename>default.filter</filename>) are processed against the buffered
5342 content. Filters are applied in the order they are specified in the
5343 <filename>default.filter</filename> file. Animated GIFs, if present, are
5344 reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
5345 setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by
5346 <application>Privoxy</application> back to your browser.
5349 If neither <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>
5351 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
5352 matches, then <application>Privoxy</application> passes the raw data through
5353 to the client browser as it becomes available.
5358 As the browser receives the now (probably filtered) page content, it
5359 reads and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page
5360 source, e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
5361 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a new
5362 request. And each such request is in turn processed as above. Note that a
5363 complex web page may have many such embedded URLs.
5373 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5374 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
5375 <title>Anatomy of an Action</title>
5378 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies
5379 <link linkend="ACTIONS">actions</link> and <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>
5380 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so
5381 easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to
5382 <emphasis>see</emphasis> just what <application>Privoxy</application> is
5383 doing. Especially, if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing
5384 is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to look at
5385 the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
5386 <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> whose consequences are not
5391 One quick test to see if <application>Privoxy</application> is causing a problem
5392 or not, is to disable it temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting
5393 step. See <link linkend="bookmarklets">the Bookmarklets</link> section on a quick
5394 and easy way to do this (be sure to flush caches afterward!). Looking at the
5395 logs is a good idea too.
5399 <application>Privoxy</application> also provides the
5400 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
5401 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
5402 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
5406 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
5407 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
5408 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
5409 help with filtering effects (i.e. the <link
5410 linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action) from
5411 the <filename>default.filter</filename> file since this is handled very
5412 differently and not so easy to trap! It also will not tell you about any other
5413 URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are testing. For instance, images
5414 such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw page source of HTML pages. So
5415 you will only get info for the actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area
5416 -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you
5417 will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View
5418 Page Source</quote> option for this. Or right click on the ad, and grab the
5423 Let's try an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
5424 and look at it one section at a time:
5429 Matches for http://google.com:
5431 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
5435 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
5436 -crunch-incoming-cookies
5437 +deanimate-gifs{last}
5438 -downgrade-http-version
5442 -filter{shockwave-flash}
5443 -filter{crude-parental}
5444 +filter{html-annoyances}
5445 +filter{js-annoyances}
5446 +filter{content-cookies}
5448 +filter{refresh-tags}
5450 +filter{banners-by-size}
5451 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
5452 +hide-from-header{block}
5453 +hide-referer{forge}
5458 +prevent-compression
5461 +session-cookies-only
5462 +set-image-blocker{pattern} }
5465 { -session-cookies-only }
5471 In file: user.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
5472 (no matches in this file)
5477 This tells us how we have defined our
5478 <link linkend="ACTIONS"><quote>actions</quote></link>, and
5479 which ones match for our example, <quote>google.com</quote>. The first listing
5480 is any matches for the <filename>standard.action</filename> file. No hits at
5481 all here on <quote>standard</quote>. Then next is <quote>default</quote>, or
5482 our <filename>default.action</filename> file. The large, multi-line listing,
5483 is how the actions are set to match for all URLs, i.e. our default settings.
5484 If you look at your <quote>actions</quote> file, this would be the section
5485 just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section near the top. This will apply to
5486 all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end of the listing
5487 -- <quote>/</quote>.
5491 But we can define additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
5492 rules, and then list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions would
5493 apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit matches for
5494 <quote>.google.com</quote>. The first is negating our previous cookie setting,
5496 linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>
5497 (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent cookies for google. The
5498 second turns <emphasis>off</emphasis> any
5500 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link>
5501 action, allowing this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading
5502 dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will match any hosts and
5503 sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
5504 <quote>www.google.com</quote>. So, apparently, we have these two actions
5505 defined somewhere in the lower part of our <filename>default.action</filename>
5506 file, and <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced somewhere in these latter
5511 Then, for our <filename>user.action</filename> file, we again have no hits.
5515 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
5516 <application>Privoxy</application> is applying all its <quote>actions</quote>
5517 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
5528 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
5529 -crunch-incoming-cookies
5530 +deanimate-gifs{last}
5531 -downgrade-http-version
5535 -filter{shockwave-flash}
5536 -filter{crude-parental}
5537 +filter{html-annoyances}
5538 +filter{js-annoyances}
5539 +filter{content-cookies}
5541 +filter{refresh-tags}
5543 +filter{banners-by-size}
5544 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
5545 +hide-from-header{block}
5546 +hide-referer{forge}
5551 +prevent-compression
5554 -session-cookies-only
5555 +set-image-blocker{pattern}
5560 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
5561 <quote>fast-redirects</quote> and <quote>session-cookies-only</quote>.
5565 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
5571 { +block +handle-as-image }
5574 { +block +handle-as-image }
5577 { +block +handle-as-image }
5583 We'll just show the interesting part here, the explicit matches. It is
5584 matched three different times. Each as an <quote>+block +handle-as-image</quote>,
5585 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
5586 <quote>+imageblock</quote>. (<link
5587 linkend="ALIASES"><quote>Aliases</quote></link> are defined in
5588 the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
5593 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
5594 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
5595 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
5596 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
5597 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
5598 is done here -- as both a <link
5599 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link>
5600 <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
5602 linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>.
5603 The custom alias <quote>+imageblock</quote> just simplifies the process and make
5608 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
5609 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
5615 Matches for http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
5617 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
5621 -crunch-incoming-cookies
5622 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
5624 -downgrade-http-version
5626 +filter{html-annoyances}
5627 +filter{js-annoyances}
5628 +filter{kill-popups}
5631 +filter{banners-by-size}
5634 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
5635 +hide-from-header{block}
5636 +hide-referer{forge}
5640 +prevent-compression
5643 +session-cookies-only
5644 +set-image-blocker{blank} }
5647 { +block +handle-as-image }
5653 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote>! But
5654 we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the blank page. We could
5655 now add a new action below this that explicitly does <emphasis>not</emphasis>
5656 block (<quote>{-block}</quote>) paths with <quote>adsl</quote>. There are
5657 various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
5669 Now the page displays ;-) Be sure to flush your browser's caches when
5670 making such changes. Or, try using <literal>Shift+Reload</literal>.
5674 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
5681 { +block +handle-as-image }
5687 That actually was very telling and pointed us quickly to where the problem
5688 was. If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default
5689 rules in the first section is causing the problem. This would require some
5690 guesswork, and maybe a little trial and error to isolate the offending rule.
5691 One likely cause would be one of the <quote>{+filter}</quote> actions. These
5692 tend to be harder to troubleshoot. Try adding the URL for the site to one of
5693 aliases that turn off <quote>+filter</quote>:
5701 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
5709 <quote>{shop}</quote> is an <quote>alias</quote> that expands to
5710 <quote>{ -filter -session-cookies-only }</quote>.
5711 Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
5724 This would turn off all filtering for that site. This would probably be most
5725 appropriately put in <filename>user.action</filename>, for local site
5730 Images that are inexplicably being blocked, may well be hitting the
5731 <quote>+filter{banners-by-size}</quote> rule, which assumes
5732 that images of certain sizes are ad banners (works well most of the time
5733 since these tend to be standardized).
5737 <quote>{fragile}</quote> is an alias that disables most actions. This can be
5738 used as a last resort for problem sites. Remember to flush caches! If this
5739 still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining actions one by
5740 one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
5749 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
5750 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
5751 Public License as published by the Free Software
5752 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
5753 your option) any later version.
5755 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
5756 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
5757 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
5758 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
5759 License for more details.
5761 The GNU General Public License should be included with
5762 this file. If not, you can view it at
5763 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
5764 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59
5765 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
5767 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
5768 Revision 2.8 2002/10/21 02:46:09 hal9
5769 Port changes to user.action examples section from 3.0.
5771 Revision 2.7 2002/10/12 01:14:42 hal9
5772 Updates for demoronizer filter, Radical profile, and the srvany.exe/icon
5775 Revision 2.6 2002/10/10 04:10:38 hal9
5776 s/Advanced/Radical/ for standard.action change.
5778 Revision 2.5 2002/10/10 03:50:38 hal9
5779 Update cookie sections for pre-existing condition, and content cookies not
5780 effected by session-cookies setting.
5782 Revision 2.4 2002/09/26 05:58:07 hal9
5783 Change development status from working on 3.0 to 3.2.
5785 Revision 2.3 2002/09/26 00:12:17 hal9
5786 Additional notes on Privoxy patterns, and filtering vs SSL.
5788 Revision 2.2 2002/09/05 05:45:30 hal9
5789 Syncing with 3.0. This should be it for doc sources. Not all builds tested
5790 yet. No new content, just catching up.
5792 Revision 1.123.2.18 2002/08/22 23:47:58 hal9
5793 Add 'Documentation' to Privoxy Menu shot in Configuration section to match
5796 Revision 1.123.2.17 2002/08/18 01:13:05 hal9
5797 Spell checked (only one typo this time!).
5799 Revision 1.123.2.16 2002/08/09 19:20:54 david__schmidt
5800 Update to Mac OSX startup script name
5802 Revision 1.123.2.15 2002/08/07 17:32:11 oes
5803 Converted some internal links from ulink to link for PDF creation; no content changed
5805 Revision 1.123.2.14 2002/08/06 09:16:13 oes
5806 Nits re: actions file download
5808 Revision 1.123.2.13 2002/08/02 18:23:19 g_sauthoff
5809 Just 2 small corrections to the Gentoo sections
5811 Revision 1.123.2.12 2002/08/02 18:17:21 g_sauthoff
5812 Added 2 Gentoo sections
5814 Revision 1.123.2.11 2002/07/26 15:20:31 oes
5815 - Added version info to title
5816 - Added info on new filters
5817 - Revised parts of the filter file tutorial
5818 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
5820 Revision 1.123.2.10 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
5821 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
5823 Revision 1.123.2.9 2002/07/11 03:40:28 david__schmidt
5825 Updated Mac OSX sections due to installation location change
5827 Revision 1.123.2.8 2002/06/09 16:36:32 hal9
5828 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
5830 Revision 1.123.2.7 2002/06/09 00:29:34 hal9
5831 Touch ups on filtering, in actions section and Anatomy.
5833 Revision 1.123.2.6 2002/06/06 23:11:03 hal9
5834 Fix broken link. Linkchecked all docs.
5836 Revision 1.123.2.5 2002/05/29 02:01:02 hal9
5837 This is break out of the entire config section from u-m, so it can
5838 eventually be used to generate the comments, etc in the main config file
5839 so that these are in sync with each other.
5841 Revision 1.123.2.4 2002/05/27 03:28:45 hal9
5842 Ooops missed something from David.
5844 Revision 1.123.2.3 2002/05/27 03:23:17 hal9
5845 Fix FIXMEs for OS2 and OSX startup. Fix Redhat typos (should be Red Hat).
5846 That's a wrap, I think.
5848 Revision 1.123.2.2 2002/05/26 19:02:09 hal9
5849 Move Amiga stuff around to take of FIXME in start up section.
5851 Revision 1.123.2.1 2002/05/26 17:04:25 hal9
5852 -Spellcheck, very minor edits, and sync across branches
5854 Revision 1.123 2002/05/24 23:19:23 hal9
5855 Include new image (Proxy setup). More fun with guibutton.
5856 Minor corrections/clarifications here and there.
5858 Revision 1.122 2002/05/24 13:24:08 oes
5859 Added Bookmarklet for one-click pre-filled access to show-url-info
5861 Revision 1.121 2002/05/23 23:20:17 oes
5862 - Changed more (all?) references to actions to the
5863 <literal><link> style.
5864 - Small fixes in the actions chapter
5865 - Small clarifications in the quickstart to ad blocking
5866 - Removed <emphasis> from <title>s since the new doc CSS
5867 renders them red (bad in TOC).
5869 Revision 1.120 2002/05/23 19:16:43 roro
5870 Correct Debian specials (installation and startup).
5872 Revision 1.119 2002/05/22 17:17:05 oes
5875 Revision 1.118 2002/05/21 04:54:55 hal9
5876 -New Section: Quickstart to Ad Blocking
5877 -Reformat Actions Anatomy to match new CGI layout
5879 Revision 1.117 2002/05/17 13:56:16 oes
5880 - Reworked & extended Templates chapter
5881 - Small changes to Regex appendix
5882 - #included authors.sgml into (C) and hist chapter
5884 Revision 1.116 2002/05/17 03:23:46 hal9
5885 Fixing merge conflict in Quickstart section.
5887 Revision 1.115 2002/05/16 16:25:00 oes
5888 Extended the Filter File chapter & minor fixes
5890 Revision 1.114 2002/05/16 09:42:50 oes
5891 More ulink->link, added some hints to Quickstart section
5893 Revision 1.113 2002/05/15 21:07:25 oes
5894 Extended and further commented the example actions files
5896 Revision 1.112 2002/05/15 03:57:14 hal9
5897 Spell check. A few minor edits here and there for better syntax and
5900 Revision 1.111 2002/05/14 23:01:36 oes
5903 Revision 1.110 2002/05/14 19:10:45 oes
5904 Restored alphabetical order of actions
5906 Revision 1.109 2002/05/14 17:23:11 oes
5907 Renamed the prevent-*-cookies actions, extended aliases section and moved it before the example AFs
5909 Revision 1.108 2002/05/14 15:29:12 oes
5910 Completed proofreading the actions chapter
5912 Revision 1.107 2002/05/12 03:20:41 hal9
5913 Small clarifications for 127.0.0.1 vs localhost for listen-address since this
5914 apparently an important distinction for some OS's.
5916 Revision 1.106 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
5917 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
5918 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
5919 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
5921 Revision 1.105 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
5922 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
5924 Revision 1.104 2002/05/04 08:44:45 swa
5927 Revision 1.103 2002/05/04 00:40:53 hal9
5928 -Remove the TOC first page kludge. It's fixed proper now in ldp.dsl.in.
5929 -Some minor additions to Quickstart.
5931 Revision 1.102 2002/05/03 17:46:00 oes
5932 Further proofread & reactivated short build instructions
5934 Revision 1.101 2002/05/03 03:58:30 hal9
5935 Move the user-manual config directive to top of section. Add note about
5936 Privoxy needing read permissions for configs, and write for logs.
5938 Revision 1.100 2002/04/29 03:05:55 hal9
5939 Add clarification on differences of new actions files.
5941 Revision 1.99 2002/04/28 16:59:05 swa
5942 more structure in starting section
5944 Revision 1.98 2002/04/28 05:43:59 hal9
5945 This is the break up of configuration.html into multiple files. This
5946 will probably break links elsewhere :(
5948 Revision 1.97 2002/04/27 21:04:42 hal9
5949 -Rewrite of Actions File example.
5950 -Add section for user-manual directive in config.
5952 Revision 1.96 2002/04/27 05:32:00 hal9
5953 -Add short section to Filter Files to tie in with +filter action.
5954 -Start rewrite of examples in Actions Examples (not finished).
5956 Revision 1.95 2002/04/26 17:23:29 swa
5957 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
5959 Revision 1.94 2002/04/26 05:24:36 hal9
5960 -Add most of Andreas suggestions to Chain of Events section.
5961 -A few other minor corrections and touch up.
5963 Revision 1.92 2002/04/25 18:55:13 hal9
5964 More catchups on new actions files, and new actions names.
5965 Other assorted cleanups, and minor modifications.
5967 Revision 1.91 2002/04/24 02:39:31 hal9
5968 Add 'Chain of Events' section.
5970 Revision 1.90 2002/04/23 21:41:25 hal9
5971 Linuxconf is deprecated on RH, substitute chkconfig.
5973 Revision 1.89 2002/04/23 21:05:28 oes
5974 Added hint for startup on Red Hat
5976 Revision 1.88 2002/04/23 05:37:54 hal9
5977 Add AmigaOS install stuff.
5979 Revision 1.87 2002/04/23 02:53:15 david__schmidt
5980 Updated OSX installation section
5981 Added a few English tweaks here an there
5983 Revision 1.86 2002/04/21 01:46:32 hal9
5984 Re-write actions section.
5986 Revision 1.85 2002/04/18 21:23:23 hal9
5987 Fix ugly typo (mine).
5989 Revision 1.84 2002/04/18 21:17:13 hal9
5990 Spell Redhat correctly (ie Red Hat). A few minor grammar corrections.
5992 Revision 1.83 2002/04/18 18:21:12 oes
5993 Added RPM install detail
5995 Revision 1.82 2002/04/18 12:04:50 oes
5998 Revision 1.81 2002/04/18 11:50:24 oes
5999 Extended Install section - needs fixing by packagers
6001 Revision 1.80 2002/04/18 10:45:19 oes
6002 Moved text to buildsource.sgml, renamed some filters, details
6004 Revision 1.79 2002/04/18 03:18:06 hal9
6005 Spellcheck, and minor touchups.
6007 Revision 1.78 2002/04/17 18:04:16 oes
6010 Revision 1.77 2002/04/17 13:51:23 oes
6011 Proofreading, part one
6013 Revision 1.76 2002/04/16 04:25:51 hal9
6014 -Added 'Note to Upgraders' and re-ordered the 'Quickstart' section.
6015 -Note about proxy may need requests to re-read config files.
6017 Revision 1.75 2002/04/12 02:08:48 david__schmidt
6018 Remove OS/2 building info... it is already in the developer-manual
6020 Revision 1.74 2002/04/11 00:54:38 hal9
6021 Add small section on submitting actions.
6023 Revision 1.73 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
6026 Revision 1.72 2002/04/10 04:06:19 hal9
6027 Added actions feedback to Bookmarklets section
6029 Revision 1.71 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
6030 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
6032 Revision 1.70 2002/04/08 20:53:56 swa
6035 Revision 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9
6036 -Add privoxy-man-page.sgml, for man page.
6037 -Add authors.sgml for AUTHORS (and p-authors.sgml)
6038 -Reworked various aspects of various docs.
6039 -Added additional comments to sub-docs.
6041 Revision 1.68 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
6042 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
6044 Revision 1.67 2002/04/04 17:27:57 swa
6045 more single file to be included at multiple points. make maintaining easier
6047 Revision 1.66 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
6048 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
6049 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
6050 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
6051 eventually be set by Makefile.
6052 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
6054 Revision 1.65 2002/04/03 19:52:07 swa
6055 enhance squid section due to user suggestion
6057 Revision 1.64 2002/04/03 03:53:43 hal9
6058 A few minor bug fixes, and touch ups. Ready for review.
6060 Revision 1.63 2002/04/01 16:24:49 hal9
6061 Define entities to include boilerplate text. See doc/source/*.
6063 Revision 1.62 2002/03/30 04:15:53 hal9
6064 - Fix privoxy.org/config links.
6065 - Paste in Bookmarklets from Toggle page.
6066 - Move Quickstart nearer top, and minor rework.
6068 Revision 1.61 2002/03/29 01:31:08 hal9
6071 Revision 1.60 2002/03/27 01:57:34 hal9
6072 Added more to Anatomy section.
6074 Revision 1.59 2002/03/27 00:54:33 hal9
6075 Touch up intro for new name.
6077 Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
6078 we have a new homepage!
6080 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
6081 A few minor catch ups with name change.
6083 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
6084 configure needs to be generated.
6086 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
6087 we are too lazy to make a block-built
6088 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
6090 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
6091 name change related issue.
6093 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
6094 name change. changed filenames.
6096 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
6099 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
6100 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
6101 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
6102 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
6103 comments and remarks to history untouched.
6105 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
6108 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
6109 New section in Appendix.
6111 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
6112 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
6114 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
6115 correct feedback channels
6117 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
6118 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
6120 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
6123 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
6124 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
6126 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
6127 Added imageblock{pattern}.
6129 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
6132 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
6133 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
6135 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
6136 provide correct feedback channels
6138 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
6139 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
6141 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
6142 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
6144 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
6145 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
6147 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
6148 Add new - - user option.
6150 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
6151 Added section on command line options.
6153 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
6154 Changed default port to 8118
6156 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
6157 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
6159 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
6160 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
6161 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
6164 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
6167 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
6168 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
6170 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
6171 Update OS/2 build section
6173 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
6174 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
6175 will work - no other changes are needed.
6177 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
6178 Added a very short section on Templates
6180 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
6181 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
6183 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
6184 Touch ups for *.action files.
6186 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
6189 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
6190 Updates for recent changes.
6192 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
6193 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
6195 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
6196 Correct 2 minor errors
6198 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
6199 *** empty log message ***
6201 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
6202 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
6204 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
6205 wrong url in documentation
6207 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
6208 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
6210 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
6213 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
6216 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
6219 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
6220 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
6222 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
6223 Some additions, and re-arranging.
6225 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
6228 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
6229 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
6231 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
6234 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
6235 source files for junkbuster documentation
6237 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
6238 first proposal of a structure.
6240 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
6241 docs should have an author.
6243 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
6244 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.
projects / privoxy.git / blob