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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-version "2.9.15">
13 <!entity p-status "beta">
14 <!entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE">
15 <!entity % p-stable "IGNORE">
16 <!entity % p-text "IGNORE"> <!-- define we are not a text only doc -->
17 <!entity % p-doc "INCLUDE"> <!-- and we are a formal doc -->
18 <!entity % p-readme "IGNORE">
19 <!entity % p-config "IGNORE">
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22 <!entity % draft "IGNORE"> <!-- WIP -->
25 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml,v $
28 This file belongs into
29 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
31 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 1.115 2002/05/16 16:25:00 oes Exp $
33 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 Privoxy Developers <developers@privoxy.org>
36 ========================================================================
37 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
38 anything in this, or other Privoxy documentation.
39 ========================================================================
46 <title>Privoxy User Manual</title>
50 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
51 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
52 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001, 2002 by
53 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
57 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 1.115 2002/05/16 16:25:00 oes Exp $</pubdate>
61 Note: the following should generate a separate page, and a live link to it,
62 all nicely done. But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave
63 commented unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the
64 copyright/license declarations will be in their own sgml.
71 <holder>Privoxy Developers</holder>
74 <legalnotice id="legalnotice">
76 text goes here ........
88 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
89 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
90 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
96 The user manual gives users information on how to install, configure and use
98 url="http://www.privoxy.org/"><application>Privoxy</application></ulink>.
101 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
103 <!-- end privoxy.sgml -->
106 You can find the latest version of the user manual at <ulink
107 url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>.
108 Please see the <ulink url="contact.html">Contact section</ulink> on how to
109 contact the developers.
113 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
119 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
120 <sect1 label="1" id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
122 This documentation is included with the current &p-status; version of
123 <application>Privoxy</application>, v.&p-version;<![%p-not-stable;[,
124 and is mostly complete at this point. The most up to date reference for the
125 time being is still the comments in the source files and in the individual
126 configuration files. Development of version 3.0 is currently nearing
127 completion, and includes many significant changes and enhancements over
128 earlier versions. The target release date for
129 stable v3.0 is <quote>soon</quote> ;-)]]>.
132 <!-- include only in non-stable versions -->
135 Since this is a &p-status; version, not all new features are well tested. This
136 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with
137 CVS sources). And there <emphasis>may be</emphasis> bugs, though hopefully
142 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
143 <sect2 id="features"><title>Features</title>
145 In addition to <application>Internet Junkbuster's</application> traditional
146 features of ad and banner blocking and cookie management,
147 <application>Privoxy</application> provides new features<![%p-not-stable;[,
148 some of them currently under development]]>:
150 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml boilerplate here: -->
152 <!-- end boilerplate -->
157 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
160 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
161 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
164 <application>Privoxy</application> is available both in convenient pre-compiled
165 packages for a wide range of operating systems, and as raw source code.
166 For most users, we recommend using the packages, which can be downloaded from our
167 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Project
172 Note: If you have a previous <application>Junkbuster</application> or
173 <application>Privoxy</application> installation on your system, you
174 will need to remove it. On some platforms, this may be done for you as part
175 of their installation procedure. (See below for your platform). In any case
176 <emphasis>be sure to backup your old configuration if it is valuable to
177 you.</emphasis> See the <link linkend="upgradersnote">note to
178 upgraders</link> section below.
181 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
182 <sect2 id="installation-packages"><title>Binary Packages</title>
184 How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
187 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
188 <sect3 id="installation-pack-rpm"><title>Red Hat, SuSE RPMs and Conectiva</title>
191 RPMs can be installed with <literal>rpm -Uvh privoxy-&p-version;-1.rpm</literal>,
192 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location
193 of configuration files.
197 Note that on Red Hat, <application>Privoxy</application> will
198 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be automatically started on system boot. You will
199 need to enable that using <command>chkconfig</command>,
200 <command>ntsysv</command>, or similar methods. Note that SuSE will
201 automatically start Privoxy in the boot process.
205 If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM:
206 <literal>rpm --rebuild privoxy-&p-version;-1.src.rpm;</literal>. This
207 will use your locally installed libraries and RPM version.
211 Also note that if you have a <application>Junkbuster</application> RPM installed
212 on your system, you need to remove it first, because the packages conflict.
213 Otherwise, RPM will try to remove <application>Junkbuster</application>
214 automatically, before installing <application>Privoxy</application>.
218 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
219 <sect3 id="installation-deb"><title>Debian</title>
225 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
226 <sect3 id="installation-pack-win"><title>Windows</title>
229 Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through
230 the installation process. You will find the configuration files
231 in the same directory as you installed Privoxy in. We do not
232 use the registry of Windows.
236 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
237 <sect3 id="installation-pack-bintgz"><title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX</title>
240 Create a new directory, <literal>cd</literal> to it, then unzip and
241 untar the archive. For the most part, you'll have to figure out where
246 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
247 <sect3 id="installation-os2"><title>OS/2</title>
250 First, make sure that no previous installations of
251 <application>Junkbuster</application> and / or
252 <application>Privoxy</application> are left on your
253 system. You can do this by
257 Then, just double-click the WarpIN self-installing archive, which will
258 guide you through the installation process. A shadow of the
259 <application>Privoxy</application> executable will be placed in your
260 startup folder so it will start automatically whenever OS/2 starts.
264 The directory you choose to install <application>Privoxy</application>
265 into will contain all of the configuration files.
269 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
270 <sect3 id="installation-mac"><title>Max OSX</title>
272 Unzip the downloaded package (you can either double-click on the file
273 in the finder, or on the desktop if you downloaded it there). Then,
274 double-click on the package installer icon and follow the installation
276 <application>Privoxy</application> will be installed in the subdirectory
277 <literal>/Applications/Privoxy.app</literal>.
278 <application>Privoxy</application> will set itself up to start
279 automatically on system bring-up via
280 <literal>/System/Library/StartupItems/Privoxy</literal>.
284 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
285 <sect3 id="installation-amiga"><title>AmigaOS</title>
287 Copy and then unpack the <filename>lha</filename> archive to a suitable location.
288 All necessary files will be installed into <application>Privoxy</application>
289 directory, including all configuration and log files. To uninstall, just
290 remove this directory.
293 Start <application>Privoxy</application> (with RUN <>NIL:) in your
294 <filename>startnet</filename> script (AmiTCP), in
295 <filename>s:user-startup</filename> (RoadShow), as startup program in your
296 startup script (Genesis), or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx).
297 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically quit when you quit your
298 TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack may display that
299 <application>Privoxy</application> is still running).
304 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
305 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Building from Source</title>
308 The most convenient way to obtain the <application>Privoxy</application> sources
309 is to download the source tarball from our <ulink url="http://sf.net/projects/ijbswa/">project
314 If you like to live on the bleeding edge and are not afraid of using
315 possibly unstable development versions, you can check out the up-to-the-minute
316 version directly from <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=11118">the
317 CVS repository</ulink> or simply download <ulink
318 url="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/ijbswa-cvsroot.tar.gz">the nightly CVS
322 <!-- include buildsource.sgml boilerplate: -->
324 <!-- end boilerplate -->
330 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
332 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
333 <sect1 id="upgradersnote">
334 <title>Note to Upgraders</title>
336 There are very significant changes from earlier
337 <application>Junkbuster</application> versions to the current
338 <application>Privoxy</application>. The number, names, syntax, and
339 purposes of configuration files have substantially changed.
340 <application>Junkbuster 2.0.x</application> configuration
341 files will not migrate, <application>Junkbuster 2.9.x</application>
342 and <application>Privoxy</application> configurations will need to be
343 ported. The functionalities of the old <filename>blockfile</filename>,
344 <filename>cookiefile</filename> and <filename>imagelist</filename>
345 are now combined into the <link linkend="actions-file"><quote>actions
346 files</quote></link>.
347 <filename>default.action</filename>, is the main actions file. Local
348 exceptions should best be put into <filename>user.action</filename>.
351 A <link linkend="filter-file"><quote>filter file</quote></link> (typically
352 <filename>default.filter</filename>) is new as of <application>Privoxy
353 2.9.x</application>, and provides some of the new sophistication (explained
354 below). <filename>config</filename> is much the same as before.
357 If upgrading from a 2.0.x version, you will have to use the new config
358 files, and possibly adapt any personal rules from your older files.
359 When porting personal rules over from the old <filename>blockfile</filename>
360 to the new actions files, please note that even the pattern syntax has
361 changed. If upgrading from 2.9.x development versions, it is still
362 recommended to use the new configuration files.
365 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading:
373 The default listening port is now 8118 due to a conflict with another
379 Some installers may remove earlier versions completely. Save any
380 important configuration files!
385 <application>Privoxy</application> is controllable with a web browser
386 at the special URL: <ulink
387 url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
388 (Shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>). Many
389 aspects of configuration can be done here, including temporarily disabling
390 <application>Privoxy</application>.
395 The primary configuration files for cookie management, ad and banner
396 blocking, and many other aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
397 configuration are the <link linkend="actions-file">actions
398 files</link>. It is strongly recommended to become familiar with the new
399 actions concept below, before modifying these files. Locally defined rules
400 should go into <filename>user.action</filename>.
405 <!-- I think it is best to keep this somewhat vague, in case -->
406 <!-- the situation changes under our feet. -->
407 Some installers may not automatically start
408 <application>Privoxy</application> after installation.
416 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
417 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using <application>Privoxy</application></title>
423 If upgrading, from versions before 2.9.16, please back up any configuration
424 files. See the <link linkend="upgradersnote">Note to Upgraders</link> Section.
430 Install <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
431 linkend="installation">Installation Section</link> below for platform specific
438 Advanced users and those who want to offer <application>Privoxy</application>
439 service to more than just their local machine should check the <link
440 linkend="config">main config file</link>, especially the <link
441 linkend="access-control">security-relevant</link> options. These are
448 Start <application>Privoxy</application>, if the installation program has
449 not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
450 <link linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link>.
456 Set your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application> as HTTP and
457 HTTPS proxy by setting the proxy configuration for address of
458 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> and port <literal>8118</literal>.
459 (<application>Junkbuster</application> and earlier versions of
460 <application>Privoxy</application> used port 8000.) See the section <link
461 linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link> below
462 for more details on this.
468 Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad images.
474 A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for
475 most. There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
476 configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little
477 to no initial configuration is required in most cases.
480 See the <link linkend="configuration">Configuration section</link> for more
481 configuration options, and how to customize your installation.
482 <![%draft;[ You might also want to look at the <link
483 linkend="quickstart-ad-blocking">next section</link> for a quick
484 introduction to how <application>Privoxy</application> blocks ads and
491 If you experience ads that slipped through, innocent images that are
492 blocked, or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune
493 <application>Privoxy's</application> behaviour, take a look at the <link
494 linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>. As a quick start, you might
495 find the <link linkend="act-examples">richly commented examples</link>
496 helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files through the <ulink
497 url="http://config.privoxy.org">web-based user interface</ulink>. The
498 Appendix <quote><link linkend="actionsanat">Anatomy of an
499 Action</link></quote> has hints how to debug actions that
500 <quote>misbehave</quote>.
506 Please see the section <link linkend="contact">Contacting the
507 Developers</link> on how to report bugs or problems with websites or to get
514 Now enjoy surfing with enhanced comfort and privacy!
521 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
524 <sect2 id="quickstart-ad-blocking">
525 <title>Quickstart to Ad Blocking</title>
527 FIXME: This is unfinished. Do not publish yet!
530 Ad blocking is but one of <application>Privoxy's</application>
531 array of features. Many of these features are for the technically minded advanced
532 user. But, ad blocking is surely common ground for everybody.
535 This section will provide a quick overview of ad blocking so
536 you can get up to speed quickly without having to read the more extensive
537 information provided below, though this is highly recommeneded.
540 First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the
541 more aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block a few
542 things that were not intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want
543 extreme ad free browsing, be prepared to deal with more
544 <quote>problem</quote> sites, and to spend more time adjusting the
545 configuration to solve these unintended consequences.
548 Secondly, a quick note on <application>Privoxy's </application>
549 <quote>actions</quote>. <quote>Actions</quote> in this context, are
550 the directives we use to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to perform
551 some task relating to HTTP transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell
552 <application>Privoxy</application> to take some <quote>action</quote>. Each
553 action has a unique name and function. While there are many potential
554 <application>actions</application> in <application>Privoxy's</application>
555 arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking. <link
556 linkend="actions">Actions</link>, and <link linkend="actions-file">action
557 configuration files</link>, are explained in depth below.
560 Actions are specified in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
561 followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
562 can actually be URL type <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> that use
563 wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs.
566 When you connect to a website, the full path of the URL will either match one
567 of actions as defined in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
568 or not. If so, then <application>Privoxy</application> will perform the
569 action accordingly. If not, then nothing special happens. Futhermore, web
570 pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web browser will
571 display as it parses the original page's HTML content. An ad image for
572 instance, is just a URL embedded in the page somewhere. The image itself may
573 be on the same server, or a server somewhere else on the Internet. Complex
574 web pages will have many such embedded URLs.
578 The actions we need to know about for ad blocking are: <link
579 linkend="block">block</link>, <link
580 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link>, and <link
581 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link>.
589 <link linkend="block"><emphasis>block</emphasis></link> - this action stops
590 any contact between your browser and any URL patterns that match this
591 action's configuration. It can be used for blocking ads, but also anything
592 that is determined to be unwanted. By itself, it simply stops any
593 communication with the remote server. If this is the only action that
594 matches for a particular URL, then <application>Privoxy</application> will
595 display its own BLOCKED page to let you now what has happened.
601 <link linkend="handle-as-image"><emphasis>handle-as-image</emphasis></link> -
602 forces <application>Privoxy</application> to treat this URL as if it were
603 an image. <application>Privoxy</application> knows about common image
604 types (e.g. GIF), but there are many situations where this does not apply.
605 So we'll force it. This is particularly important for ad blocking, since
606 once we can treat it as an image, we can make more intelligent decisisions
607 on how to handle it. There are some limitations to this though. For
608 instance, you can't just force an image substituion for an entire HTML page
616 linkend="set-image-blocker"><emphasis>set-image-blocker</emphasis></link> -
617 tells <application>Privoxy</application> what to display in place of
618 an ad image that has hit a block rule. For this to come into play,
619 the URL must match a block action somewhere in the configuration.
620 <emphasis>And</emphasis>, it must also either be of a known image type, or
622 linkend="handle-as-image"><emphasis>handle-as-image</emphasis></link>
626 The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
630 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> - a checkboard pattern, so that an ad
631 replacement is obvious. This is the default.
636 <emphasis>blank</emphasis> - A very small empty GIF image is displayed.
637 This is the so-called <quote>invisible</quote> configuration option.
642 <emphasis>http://<URL></emphasis> - A redirect to any URL of the
656 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
659 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
661 <title>Starting <application>Privoxy</application></title>
663 Before launching <application>Privoxy</application> for the first time, you
664 will want to configure your browser(s) to use
665 <application>Privoxy</application> as a HTTP and HTTPS proxy. The default is
666 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions
667 used port 8000). This is the one configuration step that must be done!
671 With <application>Netscape</application> (and
672 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under <literal>Edit
673 -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Proxies -> HTTP Proxy</literal>.
674 For <application>Internet Explorer</application>: <literal>Tools ->
675 Internet Properties -> Connections -> LAN Setting</literal>. Then,
676 check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info (Address:
677 127.0.0.1, Port: 8118). Include if HTTPS proxy support too.
681 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
682 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. You
683 are now ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
684 <application>Privoxy</application>!
688 <application>Privoxy</application> is typically started by specifying the
689 main configuration file to be used on the command line. If no configuration
690 file is specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application>
691 will look for a file named <filename>config</filename> in the current
692 directory. Except on Win32 where it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>.
695 <sect2 id="start-redhatdebian">
696 <title>RedHat, Conectiva and Debian</title>
698 We use a script. Note that RedHat does not start Privoxy upon booting per
699 default. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its
700 main configuration file. FIXME: Debian??
704 # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
709 <sect2 id="start-suse">
712 We use a script. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename>
713 as its main configuration file. Note that SuSE starts Privoxy upon booting
723 <sect2 id="start-windows">
724 <title>Windows</title>
726 Click on the Privoxy Icon to start Privoxy. If no configuration file is
727 specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application> will look
728 for a file named <filename>config.txt</filename>. Note that Windows will
729 automatically start Privoxy upon booting you PC.
733 <sect2 id="start-unices">
734 <title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others</title>
736 Example Unix startup command:
740 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
745 <sect2 id="start-os2">
752 <sect2 id="start-macosx">
753 <title>MAX OSX</title>
760 <sect2 id="start-amigaos">
761 <title>AmigaOS</title>
770 See the section <link linkend="cmdoptions">Command line options</link> for
774 must find a better place for this paragraph
777 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
778 point. Most of the per site configuration is done in the
779 <ulink url="actions-file.html"><quote>actions</quote></ulink> files. These are
780 where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking, and other
781 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. There are several
782 such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.
786 You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites for which you may prefer
787 persistent cookies, and add these to your actions configuration as needed. By
788 default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser
789 session (aka <quote>session cookies</quote>), unless you add them to the
790 configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will need
791 to edit <filename>user.action</filename> (or through the web based interface)
792 and disable this feature. If you use more than one browser, it would make
793 more sense to let <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which
794 case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
798 Another feature where you will probably want to define exceptions for trusted
799 sites is the popup-killing (through the <ulink
800 url="actions-file.html#KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></ulink> and
802 url="actions-file.html#FILTER-POPUPS"><quote>+filter{popups}</quote></ulink>
803 actions), because your favorite shopping, banking, or leisure site may need
804 popups (explained below).
808 <application>Privoxy</application> is HTTP/1.1 compliant, but not all of
809 the optional 1.1 features are as yet supported. In the unlikely event that
810 you experience inexplicable problems with browsers that use HTTP/1.1 per default
811 (like <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.), you might
812 try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look under <literal>Edit ->
813 Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
814 Alternatively, set the <quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote> config option in
815 <filename>default.action</filename> which will downgrade your browser's HTTP
816 requests from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0 before processing them.
820 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
821 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
822 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
823 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote>
824 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
825 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
826 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
827 and then follow the link to <quote>View & Change the Current Configuration</quote>.
828 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
832 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
833 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
834 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
835 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
836 to a given URL. In addition to the actions file
837 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
838 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> (toggled) from this page.
842 If you encounter problems, try loading the page without
843 <application>Privoxy</application>. If that helps, enter the URL where
844 you have the problems into <ulink url="http://p.p/show-url-info">the browser
845 based rule tracing utility</ulink>. See which rules apply and why, and
846 then try turning them off for that site one after the other, until the problem
847 is gone. When you have found the culprit, you might want to turn the rest on
852 If the above paragraph sounds gibberish to you, you might want to <ulink
853 url="actions-file.html#ACTIONSFILE">read more about the actions concept</ulink>
854 or even dive deep into the <ulink url="appendix.html#ACTIONSANAT">Appendix
859 If you can't get rid of the problem at all, think you've found a bug in
860 Privoxy, want to propose a new feature or smarter rules, please see the
861 section <ulink url="contact.html"><quote>Contacting the
862 Developers</quote></ulink> below.
867 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
868 <sect2 id="cmdoptions">
869 <title>Command Line Options</title>
871 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
872 command-line options:
880 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
883 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
888 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
891 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
896 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
899 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
900 leader, and don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
905 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
909 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
910 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failure to create or delete the
911 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
912 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
917 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
921 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
922 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
923 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
928 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
931 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
932 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
933 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
934 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
935 full path to avoid confusion. If no config file is found,
936 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
947 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
950 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
951 <sect1 id="configuration"><title><application>Privoxy</application> Configuration</title>
953 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is stored
954 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
955 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
956 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
960 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
963 <title>Controlling <application>Privoxy</application> with Your Web Browser</title>
965 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface can be reached through the special
966 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
967 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
968 which is a built-in page and works without Internet access.
969 You will see the following section:
973 <!-- Needs to be put in a table and colorized -->
976 <bridgehead renderas="sect2">Privoxy Menu</bridgehead>
980 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View & change the current configuration</ulink>
983 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">View the source code version numbers</ulink>
986 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">View the request headers.</ulink>
989 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">Look up which actions apply to a URL and why</ulink>
992 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">Toggle Privoxy on or off</ulink>
1000 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
1001 <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, which is where the ad, banner,
1002 cookie, and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
1003 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
1004 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
1005 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
1009 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
1010 have problems with your current actions and filters. You can in fact use
1011 it as a test to see whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
1012 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
1013 to run as a proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e.
1014 <application>Privoxy</application> acts like a normal forwarding proxy. There
1015 is even a toggle <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklet</link> offered, so
1016 that you can toggle <application>Privoxy</application> with one click from
1022 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1027 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1029 <sect2 id="confoverview">
1030 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
1032 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
1033 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
1034 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
1035 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. <![%p-not-stable;[ The name
1036 and number of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
1037 subject to change as development progresses.]]>
1041 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though
1042 some settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the
1043 principle configuration files are:
1051 The <link linkend="config">main configuration file</link> is named <filename>config</filename>
1052 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
1053 on Windows. This is a required file.
1059 <filename>default.action</filename> (the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>)
1060 is used to define which <quote>actions</quote> relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups,
1061 content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default. It also defines many
1062 exceptions (both positive and negative) from this default set of actions that enable
1063 <application>Privoxy</application> to selectively eliminate the junk, and only the junk, on
1064 as many websites as possible.
1067 Multiple actions files may be defined in <filename>config</filename>. These
1068 are processed in the order they are defined. Local customizations and locally
1069 preferred exceptions to the default policies as defined in
1070 <filename>default.action</filename> (which you will most probably want
1071 to define sooner or later) are probably best applied in
1072 <filename>user.action</filename>, where you can preserve them across
1073 upgrades. <filename>standard.action</filename> is for
1074 <application>Privoxy's</application> internal use.
1077 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from
1079 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1081 url="http://p.p/show-status">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>) for the
1082 various actions files.
1088 <filename>default.filter</filename> (the <link linkend="filter-file">filter
1089 file</link>) can be used to re-write the raw page content, including
1090 viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript, and whatever else
1091 lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only pre-defined here;
1092 whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
1100 All files use the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a
1101 comment (the rest of the line will be ignored) and understand line continuation
1102 through placing a backslash ("<literal>\</literal>") as the very last character
1103 in a line. If the <literal>#</literal> is preceded by a backslash, it looses
1104 its special function. Placing a <literal>#</literal> in front of an otherwise
1105 valid configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
1110 The actions files and <filename>default.filter</filename>
1111 can use Perl style <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> for
1112 maximum flexibility.
1116 After making any changes, there is no need to restart
1117 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
1118 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> detects such changes
1119 automatically. Note, however, that it may take one or two additional
1120 requests for the change to take effect. When changing the listening address
1121 of <application>Privoxy</application>, these <quote>wake up</quote> requests
1122 must obviously be sent to the <emphasis>old</emphasis> listening address.
1127 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
1128 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
1129 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
1130 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
1136 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1139 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1142 <title>The Main Configuration File</title>
1145 Again, the main configuration file is named <filename>config</filename> on
1146 Linux/Unix/BSD and OS/2, and <filename>config.txt</filename> on Windows.
1147 Configuration lines consist of an initial keyword followed by a list of
1148 values, all separated by whitespace (any number of spaces or tabs). For
1156 <emphasis>confdir /etc/privoxy</emphasis></literallayout>
1162 Assigns the value <literal>/etc/privoxy</literal> to the option
1163 <literal>confdir</literal> and thus indicates that the configuration
1164 directory is named <quote>/etc/privoxy/</quote>.
1168 All options in the config file except for <literal>confdir</literal> and
1169 <literal>logdir</literal> are optional. Watch out in the below description
1170 for what happens if you leave them unset.
1174 The main config file controls all aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>'s
1175 operation that are not location dependent (i.e. they apply universally, no matter
1176 where you may be surfing).
1180 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1182 <sect2 id="conf-log-loc">
1183 <title>Configuration and Log File Locations</title>
1186 <application>Privoxy</application> can (and normally does) use a number of
1187 other files for additional configuration, help and logging.
1188 This section of the configuration file tells <application>Privoxy</application>
1189 where to find those other files.
1193 The user running Privoxy, must have read permission for all
1194 configuration files, and write permission to any files that would
1195 be modified, such as log files.
1198 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="confdir"><title>confdir</title>
1202 <term>Specifies:</term>
1204 <para>The directory where the other configuration files are located</para>
1208 <term>Type of value:</term>
1210 <para>Path name</para>
1214 <term>Default value:</term>
1216 <para>/etc/privoxy (Unix) <emphasis>or</emphasis> <application>Privoxy</application> installation dir (Windows) </para>
1220 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1222 <para><emphasis>Mandatory</emphasis></para>
1229 No trailing <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, please
1232 When development goes modular and multi-user, the blocker, filter, and
1233 per-user config will be stored in subdirectories of <quote>confdir</quote>.
1234 For now, the configuration directory structure is flat, except for
1235 <filename>confdir/templates</filename>, where the HTML templates for CGI
1236 output reside (e.g. <application>Privoxy's</application> 404 error page).
1244 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="logdir"><title>logdir</title>
1248 <term>Specifies:</term>
1251 The directory where all logging takes place (i.e. where <filename>logfile</filename> and
1252 <filename>jarfile</filename> are located)
1257 <term>Type of value:</term>
1259 <para>Path name</para>
1263 <term>Default value:</term>
1265 <para>/var/log/privoxy (Unix) <emphasis>or</emphasis> <application>Privoxy</application> installation dir (Windows) </para>
1269 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1271 <para><emphasis>Mandatory</emphasis></para>
1278 No trailing <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, please
1285 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="actionsfile"><title>
1288 <anchor id="default.action">
1289 <anchor id="standard.action">
1290 <anchor id="user.action">
1291 <!-- Note: slightly modified this section 04/28/02, hal. See NOTE. -->
1294 <term>Specifies:</term>
1297 The <link linkend="actions-file">actions file(s)</link> to use
1302 <term>Type of value:</term>
1304 <para>File name, relative to <literal>confdir</literal>, without the <literal>.action</literal> suffix</para>
1308 <term>Default values:</term>
1312 <msgtext><literallayout> standard # Internal purposes, no editing recommended</literallayout></msgtext>
1315 <msgtext><literallayout> default # Main actions file</literallayout></msgtext>
1318 <msgtext><literallayout> user # User customizations</literallayout></msgtext>
1324 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1327 No actions are taken at all. Simple neutral proxying.
1335 Multiple <literal>actionsfile</literal> lines are permitted, and are in fact recommended!
1338 The default values include standard.action, which is used for internal
1339 purposes and should be loaded, default.action, which is the
1340 <quote>main</quote> actions file maintained by the developers, and
1341 <filename>user.action</filename>, where you can make your personal additions.
1344 Actions files are where all the per site and per URL configuration is done for
1345 ad blocking, cookie management, privacy considerations, etc.
1346 There is no point in using <application>Privoxy</application> without at
1347 least one actions file.
1354 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filterfile"><title>filterfile</title>
1355 <anchor id="default.filter">
1358 <term>Specifies:</term>
1361 The <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link> to use
1366 <term>Type of value:</term>
1368 <para>File name, relative to <literal>confdir</literal></para>
1372 <term>Default value:</term>
1374 <para>default.filter (Unix) <emphasis>or</emphasis> default.filter.txt (Windows)</para>
1378 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1381 No textual content filtering takes place, i.e. all
1382 <literal>+<link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>}</literal>
1383 actions in the actions files are turned neutral.
1391 The <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link> contains content modification
1392 rules that use <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link>. These rules permit
1393 powerful changes on the content of Web pages, e.g., you could disable your favorite
1394 JavaScript annoyances, re-write the actual displayed text, or just have some
1395 fun replacing <quote>Microsoft</quote> with <quote>MicroSuck</quote> wherever
1396 it appears on a Web page.
1400 <literal>+<link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>}</literal>
1401 actions rely on the relevant filter (<replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>)
1402 to be defined in the filter file!
1405 A pre-defined filter file called <filename>default.filter</filename> that contains
1406 a bunch of handy filters for common problems is included in the distribution.
1407 See the section on the <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
1415 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="logfile"><title>logfile</title>
1419 <term>Specifies:</term>
1427 <term>Type of value:</term>
1429 <para>File name, relative to <literal>logdir</literal></para>
1433 <term>Default value:</term>
1435 <para>logfile (Unix) <emphasis>or</emphasis> privoxy.log (Windows)</para>
1439 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1442 No log file is used, all log messages go to the console (<literal>stderr</literal>).
1450 The windows version will additionally log to the console.
1453 The logfile is where all logging and error messages are written. The level
1454 of detail and number of messages are set with the <literal>debug</literal>
1455 option (see below). The logfile can be useful for tracking down a problem with
1456 <application>Privoxy</application> (e.g., it's not blocking an ad you
1457 think it should block) but in most cases you probably will never look at it.
1460 Your logfile will grow indefinitely, and you will probably want to
1461 periodically remove it. On Unix systems, you can do this with a cron job
1462 (see <quote>man cron</quote>). For Red Hat, a <command>logrotate</command>
1463 script has been included.
1466 On SuSE Linux systems, you can place a line like <quote>/var/log/privoxy.*
1467 +1024k 644 nobody.nogroup</quote> in <filename>/etc/logfiles</filename>, with
1468 the effect that cron.daily will automatically archive, gzip, and empty the
1469 log, when it exceeds 1M size.
1472 Any log files must be writable by whatever user <application>Privoxy</application>
1473 is being run as (default on UNIX, user id is <quote>privoxy</quote>).
1480 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="jarfile"><title>jarfile</title>
1484 <term>Specifies:</term>
1487 The file to store intercepted cookies in
1492 <term>Type of value:</term>
1494 <para>File name, relative to <literal>logdir</literal></para>
1498 <term>Default value:</term>
1500 <para>jarfile (Unix) <emphasis>or</emphasis> privoxy.jar (Windows)</para>
1504 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1507 Intercepted cookies are not stored at all.
1515 The jarfile may grow to ridiculous sizes over time.
1522 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="trustfile"><title>trustfile</title>
1525 <term>Specifies:</term>
1528 The trust file to use
1533 <term>Type of value:</term>
1535 <para>File name, relative to <literal>confdir</literal></para>
1539 <term>Default value:</term>
1541 <para><emphasis>Unset (commented out)</emphasis>. When activated: trust (Unix) <emphasis>or</emphasis> trust.txt (Windows)</para>
1545 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1548 The whole trust mechanism is turned off.
1556 The trust mechanism is an experimental feature for building white-lists and should
1557 be used with care. It is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> recommended for the casual user.
1560 If you specify a trust file, <application>Privoxy</application> will only allow
1561 access to sites that are named in the trustfile.
1562 You can also mark sites as trusted referrers (with <literal>+</literal>), with
1563 the effect that access to untrusted sites will be granted, if a link from a
1564 trusted referrer was used.
1565 The link target will then be added to the <quote>trustfile</quote>.
1566 Possible applications include limiting Internet access for children.
1569 If you use <literal>+</literal> operator in the trust file, it may grow considerably over time.
1577 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1581 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1583 <sect2 id="local-set-up">
1584 <title>Local Set-up Documentation</title>
1587 If you intend to operate <application>Privoxy</application> for more users
1588 than just yourself, it might be a good idea to let them know how to reach
1589 you, what you block and why you do that, your policies, etc.
1592 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="user-manual"><title>user-manual</title>
1595 <term>Specifies:</term>
1598 Location of the <application>Privoxy</application> User Manual.
1603 <term>Type of value:</term>
1605 <para>A fully qualified URI</para>
1609 <term>Default value:</term>
1611 <para><emphasis>Unset</emphasis></para>
1615 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1618 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/<replaceable class="parameter">version</replaceable>/user-manual/</ulink>
1619 will be used, where <replaceable class="parameter">version</replaceable> is the <application>Privoxy</application> version.
1627 The User Manual URI is used for help links from some of the internal CGI pages.
1628 The manual itself is normally packaged with the binary distributions, so you probably want
1629 to set this to a locally installed copy. For multi-user setups, you could provide a copy on
1630 a local webserver for all your users and use the corresponding URL here.
1636 Unix, in local filesystem:
1639 <screen>user-manual file:///usr/share/doc/privoxy-&p-version;/user-manual/</screen>
1642 Any platform, on local webserver (called <quote>local-webserver</quote>):
1645 <screen>user-manual http://local-webserver/privoxy-user-manual/</screen>
1649 If set, this option should be <emphasis>the first option in the config file</emphasis>, because
1650 it is used while the config file is being read.
1658 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="trust-info-url"><title>trust-info-url</title>
1662 <term>Specifies:</term>
1665 A URL to be displayed in the error page that users will see if access to an untrusted page is denied.
1670 <term>Type of value:</term>
1676 <term>Default value:</term>
1678 <para>Two example URL are provided</para>
1682 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1685 No links are displayed on the "untrusted" error page.
1693 The value of this option only matters if the experimental trust mechanism has been
1694 activated. (See <link linkend="trustfile"><emphasis>trustfile</emphasis></link> above.)
1697 If you use the trust mechanism, it is a good idea to write up some on-line
1698 documentation about your trust policy and to specify the URL(s) here.
1699 Use multiple times for multiple URLs.
1702 The URL(s) should be added to the trustfile as well, so users don't end up
1703 locked out from the information on why they were locked out in the first place!
1710 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="admin-address"><title>admin-address</title>
1714 <term>Specifies:</term>
1717 An email address to reach the proxy administrator.
1722 <term>Type of value:</term>
1724 <para>Email address</para>
1728 <term>Default value:</term>
1730 <para><emphasis>Unset</emphasis></para>
1734 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1737 No email address is displayed on error pages and the CGI user interface.
1745 If both <literal>admin-address</literal> and <literal>proxy-info-url</literal>
1746 are unset, the whole "Local Privoxy Support" box on all generated pages will
1754 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="proxy-info-url"><title>proxy-info-url</title>
1758 <term>Specifies:</term>
1761 A URL to documentation about the local <application>Privoxy</application> setup,
1762 configuration or policies.
1767 <term>Type of value:</term>
1773 <term>Default value:</term>
1775 <para><emphasis>Unset</emphasis></para>
1779 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1782 No link to local documentation is displayed on error pages and the CGI user interface.
1790 If both <literal>admin-address</literal> and <literal>proxy-info-url</literal>
1791 are unset, the whole "Local Privoxy Support" box on all generated pages will
1795 This URL shouldn't be blocked ;-)
1803 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1805 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1807 <sect2 id="debugging">
1808 <title>Debugging</title>
1811 These options are mainly useful when tracing a problem.
1812 Note that you might also want to invoke
1813 <application>Privoxy</application> with the <literal>--no-daemon</literal>
1814 command line option when debugging.
1817 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="debug"><title>debug</title>
1821 <term>Specifies:</term>
1824 Key values that determine what information gets logged to the
1825 <link linkend="logfile"><emphasis>logfile</emphasis></link>.
1830 <term>Type of value:</term>
1832 <para>Integer values</para>
1836 <term>Default value:</term>
1838 <para>12289 (i.e.: URLs plus informational and warning messages)</para>
1842 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1845 Nothing gets logged.
1853 The available debug levels are:
1857 debug 1 # show each GET/POST/CONNECT request
1858 debug 2 # show each connection status
1859 debug 4 # show I/O status
1860 debug 8 # show header parsing
1861 debug 16 # log all data into the logfile
1862 debug 32 # debug force feature
1863 debug 64 # debug regular expression filter
1864 debug 128 # debug fast redirects
1865 debug 256 # debug GIF de-animation
1866 debug 512 # Common Log Format
1867 debug 1024 # debug kill pop-ups
1868 debug 4096 # Startup banner and warnings.
1869 debug 8192 # Non-fatal errors
1873 To select multiple debug levels, you can either add them or use
1874 multiple <literal>debug</literal> lines.
1877 A debug level of 1 is informative because it will show you each request
1878 as it happens. <emphasis>1, 4096 and 8192 are highly recommended</emphasis>
1879 so that you will notice when things go wrong. The other levels are probably
1880 only of interest if you are hunting down a specific problem. They can produce
1881 a hell of an output (especially 16).
1885 The reporting of <emphasis>fatal</emphasis> errors (i.e. ones which crash
1886 <application>Privoxy</application>) is always on and cannot be disabled.
1889 If you want to use CLF (Common Log Format), you should set <quote>debug
1890 512</quote> <emphasis>ONLY</emphasis> and not enable anything else.
1897 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="single-threaded"><title>single-threaded</title>
1901 <term>Specifies:</term>
1904 Whether to run only one server thread
1909 <term>Type of value:</term>
1911 <para><emphasis>None</emphasis></para>
1915 <term>Default value:</term>
1917 <para><emphasis>Unset</emphasis></para>
1921 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1924 Multi-threaded (or, where unavailable: forked) operation, i.e. the ability to
1925 serve multiple requests simultaneously.
1933 This option is only there for debug purposes and you should never
1934 need to use it. <emphasis>It will drastically reduce performance.</emphasis>
1943 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1945 <sect2 id="access-control">
1946 <title>Access Control and Security</title>
1949 This section of the config file controls the security-relevant aspects
1950 of <application>Privoxy</application>'s configuration.
1953 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="listen-address"><title>listen-address</title>
1957 <term>Specifies:</term>
1960 The IP address and TCP port on which <application>Privoxy</application> will
1961 listen for client requests.
1966 <term>Type of value:</term>
1968 <para>[<replaceable class="parameter">IP-Address</replaceable>]:<replaceable class="parameter">Port</replaceable></para>
1973 <term>Default value:</term>
1975 <para>127.0.0.1:8118</para>
1979 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
1982 Bind to 127.0.0.1 (localhost), port 8118. This is suitable and recommended for
1983 home users who run <application>Privoxy</application> on the same machine as
1992 You will need to configure your browser(s) to this proxy address and port.
1995 If you already have another service running on port 8118, or if you want to
1996 serve requests from other machines (e.g. on your local network) as well, you
1997 will need to override the default.
2000 If you leave out the IP address, <application>Privoxy</application> will
2001 bind to all interfaces (addresses) on your machine and may become reachable
2002 from the Internet. In that case, consider using access control lists (ACL's)
2003 (see <quote>ACLs</quote> below), or a firewall.
2008 <term>Example:</term>
2011 Suppose you are running <application>Privoxy</application> on
2012 a machine which has the address 192.168.0.1 on your local private network
2013 (192.168.0.0) and has another outside connection with a different address.
2014 You want it to serve requests from inside only:
2018 listen-address 192.168.0.1:8118
2026 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="toggle"><title>toggle</title>
2030 <term>Specifies:</term>
2033 Initial state of "toggle" status
2038 <term>Type of value:</term>
2044 <term>Default value:</term>
2050 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
2053 Act as if toggled on
2061 If set to 0, <application>Privoxy</application> will start in
2062 <quote>toggled off</quote> mode, i.e. behave like a normal, content-neutral
2063 proxy where all ad blocking, filtering, etc are disabled. See
2064 <literal>enable-remote-toggle</literal> below. This is not really useful
2065 anymore, since toggling is much easier via <ulink
2066 url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">the web interface</ulink> than via
2067 editing the <filename>conf</filename> file.
2070 The windows version will only display the toggle icon in the system tray
2071 if this option is present.
2079 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="enable-remote-toggle"><title>enable-remote-toggle</title>
2082 <term>Specifies:</term>
2085 Whether or not the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">web-based toggle
2086 feature</ulink> may be used
2091 <term>Type of value:</term>
2097 <term>Default value:</term>
2103 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
2106 The web-based toggle feature is disabled.
2114 When toggled off, <application>Privoxy</application> acts like a normal,
2115 content-neutral proxy, i.e. it acts as if none of the actions applied to
2119 For the time being, access to the toggle feature can <emphasis>not</emphasis> be
2120 controlled separately by <quote>ACLs</quote> or HTTP authentication,
2121 so that everybody who can access <application>Privoxy</application> (see
2122 <quote>ACLs</quote> and <literal>listen-address</literal> above) can
2123 toggle it for all users. So this option is <emphasis>not recommended</emphasis>
2124 for multi-user environments with untrusted users.
2127 Note that you must have compiled <application>Privoxy</application> with
2128 support for this feature, otherwise this option has no effect.
2136 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="enable-edit-actions"><title>enable-edit-actions</title>
2139 <term>Specifies:</term>
2142 Whether or not the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">web-based actions
2143 file editor</ulink> may be used
2148 <term>Type of value:</term>
2154 <term>Default value:</term>
2160 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
2163 The web-based actions file editor is disabled.
2171 For the time being, access to the editor can <emphasis>not</emphasis> be
2172 controlled separately by <quote>ACLs</quote> or HTTP authentication,
2173 so that everybody who can access <application>Privoxy</application> (see
2174 <quote>ACLs</quote> and <literal>listen-address</literal> above) can
2175 modify its configuration for all users. So this option is <emphasis>not
2176 recommended</emphasis> for multi-user environments with untrusted users.
2179 Note that you must have compiled <application>Privoxy</application> with
2180 support for this feature, otherwise this option has no effect.
2187 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="acls"><title>
2188 ACLs: permit-access and deny-access</title>
2189 <anchor id="permit-acces">
2190 <anchor id="deny-acces">
2194 <term>Specifies:</term>
2197 Who can access what.
2202 <term>Type of value:</term>
2205 <replaceable class="parameter">src_addr</replaceable>[/<replaceable class="parameter">src_masklen</replaceable>]
2206 [<replaceable class="parameter">dst_addr</replaceable>[/<replaceable class="parameter">dst_masklen</replaceable>]]
2209 Where <replaceable class="parameter">src_addr</replaceable> and
2210 <replaceable class="parameter">dst_addr</replaceable> are IP addresses in dotted decimal notation or valid
2211 DNS names, and <replaceable class="parameter">src_masklen</replaceable> and
2212 <replaceable class="parameter">dst_masklen</replaceable> are subnet masks in CIDR notation, i.e. integer
2213 values from 2 to 30 representing the length (in bits) of the network address. The masks and the whole
2214 destination part are optional.
2219 <term>Default value:</term>
2221 <para><emphasis>Unset</emphasis></para>
2225 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
2228 Don't restrict access further than implied by <literal>listen-address</literal>
2236 Access controls are included at the request of ISPs and systems
2237 administrators, and <emphasis>are not usually needed by individual users</emphasis>.
2238 For a typical home user, it will normally suffice to ensure that
2239 <application>Privoxy</application> only listens on the localhost
2240 (127.0.0.1) or internal (home) network address by means of the
2241 <link linkend="listen-address"><emphasis>listen-address</emphasis></link>
2245 Please see the warnings in the FAQ that this proxy is not intended to be a substitute
2246 for a firewall or to encourage anyone to defer addressing basic security
2250 Multiple ACL lines are OK.
2251 If any ACLs are specified, then the <application>Privoxy</application>
2252 talks only to IP addresses that match at least one <literal>permit-access</literal> line
2253 and don't match any subsequent <literal>deny-access</literal> line. In other words, the
2254 last match wins, with the default being <literal>deny-access</literal>.
2257 If <application>Privoxy</application> is using a forwarder (see <literal>forward</literal> below)
2258 for a particular destination URL, the <replaceable class="parameter">dst_addr</replaceable>
2259 that is examined is the address of the forwarder and <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> the address
2260 of the ultimate target. This is necessary because it may be impossible for the local
2261 <application>Privoxy</application> to determine the IP address of the
2262 ultimate target (that's often what gateways are used for).
2265 You should prefer using IP addresses over DNS names, because the address lookups take
2266 time. All DNS names must resolve! You can <emphasis>not</emphasis> use domain patterns
2267 like <quote>*.org</quote> or partial domain names. If a DNS name resolves to multiple
2268 IP addresses, only the first one is used.
2271 Denying access to particular sites by ACL may have undesired side effects
2272 if the site in question is hosted on a machine which also hosts other sites.
2277 <term>Examples:</term>
2280 Explicitly define the default behavior if no ACL and
2281 <literal>listen-address</literal> are set: <quote>localhost</quote>
2282 is OK. The absence of a <replaceable class="parameter">dst_addr</replaceable> implies that
2283 <emphasis>all</emphasis> destination addresses are OK:
2287 permit-access localhost
2291 Allow any host on the same class C subnet as www.privoxy.org access to
2292 nothing but www.example.com:
2296 permit-access www.privoxy.org/24 www.example.com/32
2300 Allow access from any host on the 26-bit subnet 192.168.45.64 to anywhere,
2301 with the exception that 192.168.45.73 may not access www.dirty-stuff.example.com:
2305 permit-access 192.168.45.64/26
2306 deny-access 192.168.45.73 www.dirty-stuff.example.com
2314 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="buffer-limit"><title>buffer-limit</title>
2318 <term>Specifies:</term>
2321 Maximum size of the buffer for content filtering.
2326 <term>Type of value:</term>
2328 <para>Size in Kbytes</para>
2332 <term>Default value:</term>
2338 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
2341 Use a 4MB (4096 KB) limit.
2349 For content filtering, i.e. the <literal>+filter</literal> and
2350 <literal>+deanimate-gif</literal> actions, it is necessary that
2351 <application>Privoxy</application> buffers the entire document body.
2352 This can be potentially dangerous, since a server could just keep sending
2353 data indefinitely and wait for your RAM to exhaust -- with nasty consequences.
2357 When a document buffer size reaches the <literal>buffer-limit</literal>, it is
2358 flushed to the client unfiltered and no further attempt to
2359 filter the rest of the document is made. Remember that there may be multiple threads
2360 running, which might require up to <literal>buffer-limit</literal> Kbytes
2361 <emphasis>each</emphasis>, unless you have enabled <quote>single-threaded</quote>
2371 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2374 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2376 <sect2 id="forwarding">
2377 <title>Forwarding</title>
2380 This feature allows routing of HTTP requests through a chain of
2382 It can be used to better protect privacy and confidentiality when
2383 accessing specific domains by routing requests to those domains
2384 through an anonymous public proxy (see e.g. <ulink
2385 url="http://www.multiproxy.org/anon_list.htm">http://www.multiproxy.org/anon_list.htm</ulink>)
2386 Or to use a caching proxy to speed up browsing. Or chaining to a parent
2387 proxy may be necessary because the machine that <application>Privoxy</application>
2388 runs on has no direct Internet access.
2392 Also specified here are SOCKS proxies. <application>Privoxy</application>
2393 supports the SOCKS 4 and SOCKS 4A protocols.
2396 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="forward"><title>forward</title>
2399 <term>Specifies:</term>
2402 To which parent HTTP proxy specific requests should be routed.
2407 <term>Type of value:</term>
2410 <replaceable class="parameter">target_domain</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">port</replaceable>]
2411 <replaceable class="parameter">http_parent</replaceable>[/<replaceable class="parameter">port</replaceable>]
2414 Where <replaceable class="parameter">target_domain</replaceable> is a domain name pattern (see the
2415 chapter on domain matching in the <filename>default.action</filename> file),
2416 <replaceable class="parameter">http_parent</replaceable> is the address of the parent HTTP proxy
2417 as an IP addresses in dotted decimal notation or as a valid DNS name (or <quote>.</quote> to denote
2418 <quote>no forwarding</quote>, and the optional
2419 <replaceable class="parameter">port</replaceable> parameters are TCP ports, i.e. integer
2420 values from 1 to 64535
2425 <term>Default value:</term>
2427 <para><emphasis>Unset</emphasis></para>
2431 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
2434 Don't use parent HTTP proxies.
2442 If <replaceable class="parameter">http_parent</replaceable> is <quote>.</quote>, then requests are not
2443 forwarded to another HTTP proxy but are made directly to the web servers.
2446 Multiple lines are OK, they are checked in sequence, and the last match wins.
2451 <term>Examples:</term>
2454 Everything goes to an example anonymizing proxy, except SSL on port 443 (which it doesn't handle):
2458 forward .* anon-proxy.example.org:8080
2463 Everything goes to our example ISP's caching proxy, except for requests
2464 to that ISP's sites:
2468 forward .*. caching-proxy.example-isp.net:8000
2469 forward .example-isp.net .
2477 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="socks"><title>
2478 forward-socks4 and forward-socks4a</title>
2479 <anchor id="forward-socks4">
2480 <anchor id="forward-socks4a">
2484 <term>Specifies:</term>
2487 Through which SOCKS proxy (and to which parent HTTP proxy) specific requests should be routed.
2492 <term>Type of value:</term>
2495 <replaceable class="parameter">target_domain</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">port</replaceable>]
2496 <replaceable class="parameter">socks_proxy</replaceable>[/<replaceable class="parameter">port</replaceable>]
2497 <replaceable class="parameter">http_parent</replaceable>[/<replaceable class="parameter">port</replaceable>]
2500 Where <replaceable class="parameter">target_domain</replaceable> is a domain name pattern (see the
2501 chapter on domain matching in the <filename>default.action</filename> file),
2502 <replaceable class="parameter">http_parent</replaceable> and <replaceable class="parameter">socks_proxy</replaceable>
2503 are IP addresses in dotted decimal notation or valid DNS names (<replaceable class="parameter">http_parent</replaceable>
2504 may be <quote>.</quote> to denote <quote>no HTTP forwarding</quote>), and the optional
2505 <replaceable class="parameter">port</replaceable> parameters are TCP ports, i.e. integer values from 1 to 64535
2510 <term>Default value:</term>
2512 <para><emphasis>Unset</emphasis></para>
2516 <term>Effect if unset:</term>
2519 Don't use SOCKS proxies.
2527 Multiple lines are OK, they are checked in sequence, and the last match wins.
2530 The difference between <literal>forward-socks4</literal> and <literal>forward-socks4a</literal>
2531 is that in the SOCKS 4A protocol, the DNS resolution of the target hostname happens on the SOCKS
2532 server, while in SOCKS 4 it happens locally.
2535 If <replaceable class="parameter">http_parent</replaceable> is <quote>.</quote>, then requests are not
2536 forwarded to another HTTP proxy but are made (HTTP-wise) directly to the web servers, albeit through
2542 <term>Examples:</term>
2545 From the company example.com, direct connections are made to all
2546 <quote>internal</quote> domains, but everything outbound goes through
2547 their ISP's proxy by way of example.com's corporate SOCKS 4A gateway to
2552 forward-socks4a .*. socks-gw.example.com:1080 www-cache.example-isp.net:8080
2553 forward .example.com .
2557 A rule that uses a SOCKS 4 gateway for all destinations but no HTTP parent looks like this:
2561 forward-socks4 .*. socks-gw.example.com:1080 .
2569 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="advanced-forwarding-examples"><title>Advanced Forwarding Examples</title>
2572 If you have links to multiple ISPs that provide various special content
2573 only to their subscribers, you can configure multiple <application>Privoxies</application>
2574 which have connections to the respective ISPs to act as forwarders to each other, so that
2575 <emphasis>your</emphasis> users can see the internal content of all ISPs.
2579 Assume that host-a has a PPP connection to isp-a.net. And host-b has a PPP connection to
2580 isp-b.net. Both run <application>Privoxy</application>. Their forwarding
2581 configuration can look like this:
2591 forward .isp-b.net host-b:8118
2602 forward .isp-a.net host-a:8118
2607 Now, your users can set their browser's proxy to use either
2608 host-a or host-b and be able to browse the internal content
2609 of both isp-a and isp-b.
2613 If you intend to chain <application>Privoxy</application> and
2614 <application>squid</application> locally, then chain as
2615 <literal>browser -> squid -> privoxy</literal> is the recommended way.
2619 Assuming that <application>Privoxy</application> and <application>squid</application>
2620 run on the same box, your squid configuration could then look like this:
2625 # Define Privoxy as parent proxy (without ICP)
2626 cache_peer 127.0.0.1 parent 8118 7 no-query
2628 # Define ACL for protocol FTP
2631 # Do not forward FTP requests to Privoxy
2632 always_direct allow ftp
2634 # Forward all the rest to Privoxy
2635 never_direct allow all</screen>
2639 You would then need to change your browser's proxy settings to <application>squid</application>'s address and port.
2640 Squid normally uses port 3128. If unsure consult <literal>http_port</literal> in <filename>squid.conf</filename>.
2647 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2650 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2652 <sect2 id="windows-gui">
2653 <title>Windows GUI Options</title>
2655 <application>Privoxy</application> has a number of options specific to the
2656 Windows GUI interface:
2659 <anchor id="activity-animation">
2661 If <quote>activity-animation</quote> is set to 1, the
2662 <application>Privoxy</application> icon will animate when
2663 <quote>Privoxy</quote> is active. To turn off, set to 0.
2670 <emphasis>activity-animation 1</emphasis>
2676 <anchor id="log-messages">
2678 If <quote>log-messages</quote> is set to 1,
2679 <application>Privoxy</application> will log messages to the console
2687 <emphasis>log-messages 1</emphasis>
2693 <anchor id="log-buffer-size">
2695 If <quote>log-buffer-size</quote> is set to 1, the size of the log buffer,
2696 i.e. the amount of memory used for the log messages displayed in the
2697 console window, will be limited to <quote>log-max-lines</quote> (see below).
2701 Warning: Setting this to 0 will result in the buffer to grow infinitely and
2702 eat up all your memory!
2709 <emphasis>log-buffer-size 1</emphasis>
2715 <anchor id="log-max-lines">
2717 <application>log-max-lines</application> is the maximum number of lines held
2718 in the log buffer. See above.
2725 <emphasis>log-max-lines 200</emphasis>
2731 <anchor id="log-highlight-messages">
2733 If <quote>log-highlight-messages</quote> is set to 1,
2734 <application>Privoxy</application> will highlight portions of the log
2735 messages with a bold-faced font:
2742 <emphasis>log-highlight-messages 1</emphasis>
2748 <anchor id="log-font-name">
2750 The font used in the console window:
2757 <emphasis>log-font-name Comic Sans MS</emphasis>
2763 <anchor id="log-font-size">
2765 Font size used in the console window:
2772 <emphasis>log-font-size 8</emphasis>
2778 <anchor id="show-on-task-bar">
2780 <quote>show-on-task-bar</quote> controls whether or not
2781 <application>Privoxy</application> will appear as a button on the Task bar
2789 <emphasis>show-on-task-bar 0</emphasis>
2795 <anchor id="close-button-minimizes">
2797 If <quote>close-button-minimizes</quote> is set to 1, the Windows close
2798 button will minimize <application>Privoxy</application> instead of closing
2799 the program (close with the exit option on the File menu).
2806 <emphasis>close-button-minimizes 1</emphasis>
2812 <anchor id="hide-console">
2814 The <quote>hide-console</quote> option is specific to the MS-Win console
2815 version of <application>Privoxy</application>. If this option is used,
2816 <application>Privoxy</application> will disconnect from and hide the
2824 #<emphasis>hide-console</emphasis>
2833 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2837 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
2839 <sect1 id="actions-file"><title>Actions Files</title>
2842 The actions files are used to define what actions
2843 <application>Privoxy</application> takes for which URLs, and thus determine
2844 how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
2845 transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof). There
2846 are three such files included with <application>Privoxy</application> (as of
2847 version 2.9.15), with differing purposes:
2854 <filename>default.action</filename> - is the primary action file
2855 that sets the initial values for all actions. It is intended to
2856 provide a base level of functionality for
2857 <application>Privoxy's</application> array of features. So it is
2858 a set of broad rules that should work reasonably well for users everywhere.
2859 This is the file that the developers are keeping updated, and making
2865 <filename>user.action</filename> - is intended to be for local site
2866 preferences and exceptions. As an example, if your ISP or your bank
2867 has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
2868 thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
2873 <filename>standard.action</filename> - is used by the web based editor,
2874 to set various pre-defined sets of rules for the default actions section
2875 in <filename>default.action</filename>. These have increasing levels of
2876 aggressiveness <emphasis>and have no influence on your browsing unless
2877 you select them explicitly in the editor</emphasis>. It is not recommend
2885 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
2886 file, and are processed in the order they are defined. The content of these
2887 can all be viewed and edited from <ulink
2888 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2892 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use
2893 <quote>aliases</quote> in an actions file, you have to place the (optional)
2894 <link linkend="aliases">alias section</link> at the top of that file.
2895 Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally to all
2896 sites and pages (be <emphasis>very careful</emphasis> with using such a
2897 universal set in <filename>user.action</filename> or any other actions file after
2898 <filename>default.action</filename>, because it will override the result
2899 from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
2900 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard
2901 <filename>user.action</filename> as an appendix to <filename>default.action</filename>,
2902 with the advantage that is a separate file, which makes preserving your
2903 personal settings across <application>Privoxy</application> upgrades easier.
2907 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
2908 just some obnoxious URL that you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
2909 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
2910 written to disk), content can be modified, JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
2911 fooled, and much more. See below for a <link linkend="actions">complete list
2915 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2917 <title>Finding the Right Mix</title>
2919 Note that some <link linkend="actions">actions</link>, like cookie suppression
2920 or script disabling, may render some sites unusable that rely on these
2921 techniques to work properly. Finding the right mix of actions is not always easy and
2922 certainly a matter of personal taste. In general, it can be said that the more
2923 <quote>aggressive</quote> your default settings (in the top section of the
2924 actions file) are, the more exceptions for <quote>trusted</quote> sites you
2925 will have to make later. If, for example, you want to kill popup windows per
2926 default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for sites that you
2927 regularly use and that require popups for actually useful content, like maybe
2928 your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
2932 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
2933 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
2934 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
2935 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again :).
2939 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2941 <title>How to Edit</title>
2943 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by
2944 using our browser-based editor, which can be reached from <ulink
2945 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2946 The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single feature on a
2947 per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults like
2948 <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> or <quote>Advanced</quote>.
2952 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
2953 the actions files. Look at <filename>default.action</filename> which is richly
2959 <sect2 id="actions-apply">
2960 <title>How Actions are Applied to URLs</title>
2962 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections,
2963 like the <quote><link linkend="aliases">alias</link></quote> sections which will be discussed later. For now
2964 let's concentrate on regular sections: They have a heading line (often split
2965 up to multiple lines for readability) which consist of a list of actions,
2966 separated by whitespace and enclosed in curly braces. Below that, there
2967 is a list of URL patterns, each on a separate line.
2971 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
2972 compared to all patterns in each action file file. Every time it matches, the list of
2973 applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated, using the heading
2974 of the section in which the pattern is located. If multiple matches for
2975 the same URL set the same action differently, the last match wins. If not,
2976 the effects are aggregated (e.g. a URL might match both the
2977 <ulink url="actions-file.html#HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></ulink>
2978 and <ulink url="actions-file.html#BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></ulink> actions).
2983 You can trace this process for any given URL by visiting <ulink
2984 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>.
2988 More detail on this is provided in the Appendix, <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">
2989 Anatomy of an Action</link>.
2993 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2994 <sect2 id="af-patterns">
2995 <title>Patterns</title>
2997 Generally, a pattern has the form <literal><domain>/<path></literal>,
2998 where both the <literal><domain></literal> and <literal><path></literal>
2999 are optional. (This is why the pattern <literal>/</literal> matches all URLs).
3004 <term><literal>www.example.com/</literal></term>
3007 is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
3008 regardless of which document on that server is requested.
3013 <term><literal>www.example.com</literal></term>
3016 means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing <literal>/</literal> may
3022 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html</literal></term>
3025 matches only the single document <literal>/index.html</literal>
3026 on <literal>www.example.com</literal>.
3031 <term><literal>/index.html</literal></term>
3034 matches the document <literal>/index.html</literal>, regardless of the domain,
3035 i.e. on <emphasis>any</emphasis> web server.
3040 <term><literal>index.html</literal></term>
3043 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
3044 there is no top-level domain called <literal>.html</literal>.
3051 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3052 <sect3><title>The Domain Pattern</title>
3055 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
3056 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
3062 <term><literal>.example.com</literal></term>
3065 matches any domain that <emphasis>ENDS</emphasis> in
3066 <literal>.example.com</literal>
3071 <term><literal>www.</literal></term>
3074 matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
3075 <literal>www.</literal>
3080 <term><literal>.example.</literal></term>
3083 matches any domain that <emphasis>CONTAINS</emphasis> <literal>.example.</literal>
3084 (Correctly speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains <literal>example</literal> as a domain.)
3091 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
3092 themselves. They work pretty similar to shell wild-cards: <quote>*</quote>
3093 stands for zero or more arbitrary characters, <quote>?</quote> stands for
3094 any single character, you can define character classes in square
3095 brackets and all of that can be freely mixed:
3100 <term><literal>ad*.example.com</literal></term>
3103 matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
3104 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>
3109 <term><literal>*ad*.example.com</literal></term>
3112 matches all of the above, and then some.
3117 <term><literal>.?pix.com</literal></term>
3120 matches <literal>www.ipix.com</literal>,
3121 <literal>pictures.epix.com</literal>, <literal>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</literal> etc.
3126 <term><literal>www[1-9a-ez].example.c*</literal></term>
3129 matches <literal>www1.example.com</literal>,
3130 <literal>www4.example.cc</literal>, <literal>wwwd.example.cy</literal>,
3131 <literal>wwwz.example.com</literal> etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
3132 <literal>wwww.example.com</literal>.
3140 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3143 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3144 <sect3><title>The Path Pattern</title>
3147 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl compatible regular expressions
3148 (through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> library) for
3153 There is an <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link> with a brief quick-start into regular
3154 expressions, and full (very technical) documentation on PCRE regex syntax is available on-line
3155 at <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/man.txt">http://www.pcre.org/man.txt</ulink>.
3156 You might also find the Perl man page on regular expressions (<literal>man perlre</literal>)
3157 useful, which is available on-line at <ulink
3158 url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>.
3162 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the <quote>/</quote>,
3163 i.e. it matches as if it would start with a <quote>^</quote> (regular expression speak
3164 for the beginning of a line).
3168 Please also note that matching in the path is case
3169 <emphasis>INSENSITIVE</emphasis> by default, but you can switch to case
3170 sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
3171 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch:
3172 <literal>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</literal> will match only
3173 documents whose path starts with <literal>PaTtErN</literal> in
3174 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
3180 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3183 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3185 <sect2 id="actions">
3186 <title>Actions</title>
3188 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
3189 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a
3190 <quote>+</quote>, and turned off if preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. So a
3191 <literal>+action</literal> means <quote>do that action</quote>, e.g.
3192 <literal>+block</literal> means <quote>please block URLs that match the
3193 following patterns</quote>, and <literal>-block</literal> means <quote>don't
3194 block URLs that match the following patterns, even if <literal>+block</literal>
3195 previously applied.</quote>
3200 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
3201 separated by whitespace, like in
3202 <literal>{+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}}</literal>,
3203 followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which they apply.
3204 Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up a section
3205 of the actions file.
3209 There are three classes of actions:
3216 Boolean, i.e the action can only be <quote>enabled</quote> or
3217 <quote>disabled</quote>. Syntax:
3221 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # enable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
3222 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable></screen>
3225 Example: <literal>+block</literal>
3232 Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of action.
3237 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and set parameter to <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>,
3238 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
3239 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action. The parameter can be omitted</screen>
3242 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized action,
3243 the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are simply ignored.
3246 Example: <literal>+hide-user-agent{ Mozilla 1.0 }</literal>
3252 Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions,
3253 but they behave differently: If the action applies multiple times to the
3254 same URL, but with different parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> the parameters
3255 from <emphasis>all</emphasis> matches are remembered. This is used for actions
3256 that can be executed for the same request repeatedly, like adding multiple
3257 headers, or filtering through multiple filters. Syntax:
3261 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and add <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> to the list of parameters
3262 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # remove the parameter <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> from the list of parameters
3263 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
3264 <replaceable class="parameter">-name</replaceable> # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list</screen>
3267 Examples: <literal>+add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text}</literal> and
3268 <literal>+filter{html-annoyances}</literal>
3276 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no <quote>actions</quote> are
3277 taken. So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
3278 normal, non-blocking, non-anonymizing proxy. You must specifically enable the
3279 privacy and blocking features you need (although the provided default actions
3280 files will give a good starting point).
3284 Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. So exceptions
3285 to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
3286 in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files). For
3287 multi-valued actions, the actions are applied in the order they are specified.
3288 Actions files are processed in the order they are defined in
3289 <filename>config</filename> (the default installation has three actions
3290 files). It also quite possible for any given URL pattern to match more than
3291 one pattern and thus more than one set of actions!
3294 <!-- start actions listing -->
3296 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> actions are:
3300 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
3301 <!-- Please note the below defined actions use id's that are -->
3302 <!-- probably linked from other places, so please don't change. -->
3304 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
3307 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3309 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="add-header">
3310 <title><emphasis>add-header</emphasis></title>
3314 <term>Typical use:</term>
3316 <para>Confuse log analysis, custom applications</para>
3321 <term>Effect:</term>
3324 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
3331 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3333 <para>Multi-value.</para>
3338 <term>Parameter:</term>
3341 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not checked.
3342 It is recommended that you use the <quote><literal>X-</literal></quote> prefix
3352 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
3353 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
3354 <quote>HTTP headers</quote> are, you definitely don't need to worry about this
3361 <term>Example usage:</term>
3364 <screen>+add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}</screen>
3372 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3373 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="block">
3374 <title><emphasis>block</emphasis></title>
3378 <term>Typical use:</term>
3380 <para>Block ads or other obnoxious content</para>
3385 <term>Effect:</term>
3388 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the requests are not
3389 forwarded to the remote server, but answered locally with a substitute page or image,
3390 as determined by the <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>
3391 and <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> actions.
3398 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3400 <para>Boolean.</para>
3405 <term>Parameter:</term>
3415 <application>Privoxy</application> sends a special <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page
3416 for requests to blocked pages. This page contains links to find out why the request
3417 was blocked, and a click-through to the blocked content (the latter only if compiled with the
3418 force feature enabled). The <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page adapts to the available
3419 screen space -- it displays full-blown if space allows, or miniaturized and text-only
3420 if loaded into a small frame or window. If you are using <application>Privoxy</application>
3421 right now, you can take a look at the
3422 <ulink url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
3426 A very important exception occurs if <emphasis>both</emphasis>
3427 <literal>block</literal> and <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
3428 apply to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
3429 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
3430 (see below) also applies, the type of image will be determined by its parameter,
3431 if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is sent.
3434 It is important to understand this process, in order
3435 to understand how <application>Privoxy</application> deals with
3436 ads and other unwanted content.
3439 The <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
3440 action can perform a very similar task, by <quote>blocking</quote>
3441 banner images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
3442 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
3443 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse the two.
3449 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3452 <screen>{+block} # Block and replace with "blocked" page
3453 .nasty-stuff.example.com
3455 {+block +handle-as-image} # Block and replace with image
3466 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3467 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-incoming-cookies">
3468 <title><emphasis>crunch-incoming-cookies</emphasis></title>
3472 <term>Typical use:</term>
3475 Prevent the web server from setting any cookies on your system
3481 <term>Effect:</term>
3484 Deletes any <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from server replies.
3491 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3493 <para>Boolean.</para>
3498 <term>Parameter:</term>
3510 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> cookies. For
3511 <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> cookies, use
3512 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>.
3513 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable cookies completely.
3516 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3517 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3518 since it would prevent the session cookies from being set.
3524 <term>Example usage:</term>
3527 <screen>+crunch-incoming-cookies</screen>
3535 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3536 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-outgoing-cookies">
3537 <title><emphasis>crunch-outgoing-cookies</emphasis></title>
3541 <term>Typical use:</term>
3544 Prevent the web server from reading any cookies from your system
3550 <term>Effect:</term>
3553 Deletes any <quote>Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from client requests.
3560 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3562 <para>Boolean.</para>
3567 <term>Parameter:</term>
3579 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> cookies. For
3580 <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> cookies, use
3581 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>.
3582 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable cookies completely.
3585 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3586 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3587 since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
3593 <term>Example usage:</term>
3596 <screen>+crunch-outgoing-cookies</screen>
3605 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3606 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="deanimate-gifs">
3607 <title><emphasis>deanimate-gifs</emphasis></title>
3611 <term>Typical use:</term>
3613 <para>Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.</para>
3618 <term>Effect:</term>
3621 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
3628 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3630 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3635 <term>Parameter:</term>
3638 <quote>last</quote> or <quote>first</quote>
3647 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
3648 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
3649 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last
3650 frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
3651 most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
3652 last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
3655 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
3656 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
3663 <term>Example usage:</term>
3666 <screen>+deanimate-gifs{last}</screen>
3673 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3674 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="downgrade-http-version">
3675 <title><emphasis>downgrade-http-version</emphasis></title>
3679 <term>Typical use:</term>
3681 <para>Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1</para>
3686 <term>Effect:</term>
3689 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
3696 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3698 <para>Boolean.</para>
3703 <term>Parameter:</term>
3715 This is a left-over from the time when <application>Privoxy</application>
3716 didn't support important HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the
3717 unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server
3718 out there. Not all (optional) HTTP/1.1 features are supported yet, so there
3719 is a chance you might need this action.
3725 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3728 <screen>{+downgrade-http-version}
3729 problem-host.example.com</screen>
3737 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3738 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="fast-redirects">
3739 <title><emphasis>fast-redirects</emphasis></title>
3743 <term>Typical use:</term>
3745 <para>Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links</para>
3750 <term>Effect:</term>
3753 Cut off all but the last valid URL from requests.
3760 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3762 <para>Boolean.</para>
3767 <term>Parameter:</term>
3779 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
3780 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
3781 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
3782 resulting from this scheme typically look like:
3783 <emphasis>http://some.place/click-tracker.cgi?target=http://some.where.else</emphasis>.
3786 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
3787 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
3788 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
3789 to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
3790 browser ask the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
3794 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
3795 It is likely to break some sites. You should expect to need possibly
3796 many exceptions to this action, if it is enabled by default in
3797 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some sites just don't work without
3804 <term>Example usage:</term>
3807 <screen>{+fast-redirects}</screen>
3816 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3817 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter">
3818 <title><emphasis>filter</emphasis></title>
3822 <term>Typical use:</term>
3824 <para>Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size), do fun text replacements, etc.</para>
3829 <term>Effect:</term>
3832 Text documents, including HTML and JavaScript, to which this action applies, are filtered on-the-fly
3833 through the specified regular expression based substitutions.
3840 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3842 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3847 <term>Parameter:</term>
3850 The name of a filter, as defined in the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>
3851 (typically <filename>default.filter</filename>, set by the
3852 <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
3853 option in the <link linkend="config">config file</link>)
3862 For your convenience, there are a bunch of pre-defined filters available
3863 in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the example below for
3867 This is potentially a very powerful feature! But <quote>rolling your own</quote>
3868 filters requires a knowledge of regular expressions and HTML.
3871 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
3872 slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
3873 passed the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way
3874 since the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more
3875 noticeable on slower connections.
3878 At this time, <application>Privoxy</application> cannot (yet!) uncompress compressed
3879 documents. If you want filtering to work on all documents, even those that
3880 would normally be sent compressed, use the
3881 <literal><link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link></literal>
3882 action in conjunction with <literal>filter</literal>.
3885 Filtering can achieve some of the effects as the
3886 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
3887 action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners.
3890 <link linkend="contact">Feedback</link> with suggestions for new or improved filters is particularly
3897 <term>Example usage (with filters from the distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file):</term>
3900 <anchor id="filter-html-annoyances">
3901 <screen>+filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse.</screen>
3904 <anchor id="filter-js-annoyances">
3905 <screen>+filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse</screen>
3908 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-size">
3909 <screen>+filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size (<emphasis>very</emphasis> efficient!)</screen>
3912 <anchor id="filter-content-cookies">
3913 <screen>+filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come sneaking in the HTML or JS content</screen>
3916 <anchor id="filter-popups">
3917 <screen>+filter{popups} # Kill all popups in JS and HTML</screen>
3920 <anchor id="filter-webbugs">
3921 <screen>+filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)</screen>
3924 <anchor id="filter-fun">
3925 <screen>+filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!</screen>
3928 <anchor id="filter-frameset-borders">
3929 <screen>+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizeable</screen>
3932 <anchor id="filter-refresh-tags">
3933 <screen>+filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups)</screen>
3936 <anchor id="filter-nimda">
3937 <screen>+filter{nimda} # Remove Nimda (virus) code.</screen>
3940 <anchor id="filter-shockwave-flash">
3941 <screen>+filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects</screen>
3944 <anchor id="filter-crude-parental">
3945 <screen>+filter{crude-parental} # Kill all web pages that contain the words "sex" or "warez"</screen>
3953 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3954 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-image">
3955 <title><emphasis>handle-as-image</emphasis></title>
3959 <term>Typical use:</term>
3961 <para>Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images <emphasis>if they get blocked</emphasis>)</para>
3966 <term>Effect:</term>
3969 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
3970 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
3971 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
3972 page, or a replacement image (as determined by the <literal><link
3973 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> action) will be sent to the
3974 client as a substitute for the blocked content.
3981 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3983 <para>Boolean.</para>
3988 <term>Parameter:</term>
4000 The below generic example section is actually part of <filename>default.action</filename>.
4001 It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
4005 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
4006 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
4007 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
4010 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (inline) ad
4011 frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
4012 Forcing <literal>handle-as-image</literal> in this situation will not replace the
4013 ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
4019 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
4022 <screen># Generic image extensions:
4025 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
4027 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
4028 # blocked as images:
4030 {+block +handle-as-image}
4031 some.nasty-banner-server.com/junk.cgi?output=trash
4033 # Banner source! Who cares if they also have non-image content?
4043 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4044 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-forwarded-for-headers">
4045 <title><emphasis>hide-forwarded-for-headers</emphasis></title>
4049 <term>Typical use:</term>
4051 <para>Improve privacy by hiding the true source of the request</para>
4056 <term>Effect:</term>
4059 Deletes any existing <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> HTTP header from client requests,
4060 and prevents adding a new one.
4067 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4069 <para>Boolean.</para>
4074 <term>Parameter:</term>
4086 It is fairly safe to leave this on.
4089 This action is scheduled for improvement: It should be able to generate forged
4090 <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> headers using random IP addresses from a specified network,
4091 to make successive requests from the same client look like requests from a pool of different
4092 users sharing the same proxy.
4098 <term>Example usage:</term>
4101 <screen>+hide-forwarded-for-headers</screen>
4109 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4110 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-from-header">
4111 <title><emphasis>hide-from-header</emphasis></title>
4115 <term>Typical use:</term>
4117 <para>Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address</para>
4122 <term>Effect:</term>
4125 Deletes any existing <quote>From:</quote> HTTP header, or replaces it with the
4133 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4135 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4140 <term>Parameter:</term>
4143 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4152 The keyword <quote>block</quote> will completely remove the header
4153 (not to be confused with the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
4157 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
4158 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
4159 is actually used by a real person.
4162 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send
4163 <quote>From:</quote> headers anymore.
4169 <term>Example usage:</term>
4172 <screen>+hide-from-header{block}</screen> or
4173 <screen>+hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}</screen>
4181 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4182 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-referrer">
4183 <title><emphasis>hide-referrer</emphasis></title>
4184 <anchor id="hide-referer">
4187 <term>Typical use:</term>
4189 <para>Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site</para>
4194 <term>Effect:</term>
4197 Deletes the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) HTTP header from the client request,
4198 or replaces it with a forged one.
4205 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4207 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4212 <term>Parameter:</term>
4216 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header completely.</para>
4219 <para><quote>forge</quote> to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are talking to.</para>
4222 <para>Any other string to set a user defined referrer.</para>
4232 <quote>forge</quote> is the preferred option here, since some servers will
4233 not send images back otherwise, in an attempt to prevent their valuable
4234 content from being embedded elsewhere (and hence, without being surrounded
4235 by <emphasis>their</emphasis> banners).
4238 <literal>hide-referer</literal> is an alternate spelling of
4239 <literal>hide-referrer</literal> and the two can be can be freely
4240 substituted with each other. (<quote>referrer</quote> is the
4241 correct English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it
4242 requires it to be spelled as <quote>referer</quote>.)
4248 <term>Example usage:</term>
4251 <screen>+hide-referrer{forge}</screen> or
4252 <screen>+hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}</screen>
4260 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4261 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-user-agent">
4262 <title><emphasis>hide-user-agent</emphasis></title>
4266 <term>Typical use:</term>
4268 <para>Conceal your type of browser and client operating system</para>
4273 <term>Effect:</term>
4276 Replaces the value of the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> HTTP header
4277 in client requests with the specified value.
4284 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4286 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4291 <term>Parameter:</term>
4294 Any user-defined string.
4304 This breaks many web sites that depend on looking at this header in order
4305 to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
4306 way, is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> a <ulink
4307 url="http://www.javascriptkit.com/javaindex.shtml">smart way to do
4312 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
4313 browsers will access the same <application>Privoxy</application> is
4314 <emphasis>not recommended</emphasis>. In single-user, single-browser
4315 setups, you might use it to delete your OS version information from
4316 the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known bugs for your
4317 OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to access
4318 sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
4319 reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not
4320 let <application>Mozilla</application> enter, yet forging to a
4321 <application>Netscape 6.1</application> user-agent works just fine.
4322 (Must be just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
4325 This action is scheduled for improvement.
4331 <term>Example usage:</term>
4334 <screen>+hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}</screen>
4342 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4343 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="kill-popups">
4344 <title><emphasis>kill-popups<anchor id="kill-popup"></emphasis></title>
4348 <term>Typical use:</term>
4350 <para>Eliminate those annoying pop-up windows</para>
4355 <term>Effect:</term>
4358 While loading the document, replace JavaScript code that opens
4359 pop-up windows with (syntactically neutral) dummy code on the fly.
4366 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4368 <para>Boolean.</para>
4373 <term>Parameter:</term>
4385 This action is easily confused with the built-in, hardwired <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
4386 action, but there are important differences: For <literal>kill-popups</literal>,
4387 the document need not be buffered, so it can be incrementally rendered while
4388 downloading. But <literal>kill-popups</literal> doesn't catch as many pop-ups as
4390 linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>popups</replaceable>}</literal>
4394 Think of it as a fast and efficient replacement for a filter that you
4395 can use if you don't want any filtering at all. Note that it doesn't make
4396 sense to combine it with any <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> action,
4397 since as soon as one <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> applies,
4398 the whole document needs to be buffered anyway, which destroys the advantage of
4399 the <literal>kill-popups</literal> action over its filter equivalent.
4402 Killing all pop-ups is a dangerous business. Many shops and banks rely on
4403 pop-ups to display forms, shopping carts etc, and killing only the unwanted pop-ups
4404 would require artificial intelligence in <application>Privoxy</application>.
4405 If the only kind of pop-ups that you want to kill are exit consoles (those
4406 <emphasis>really nasty</emphasis> windows that appear when you close an other
4407 one), you might want to use
4409 linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>js-annoyances</replaceable>}</literal>
4415 An alternate spelling is <literal>+kill-popup</literal>, which is
4423 <term>Example usage:</term>
4425 <para><screen>+kill-popups</screen></para>
4432 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4433 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="limit-connect">
4434 <title><emphasis>limit-connect</emphasis></title>
4438 <term>Typical use:</term>
4440 <para>Prevent abuse of <application>Privoxy</application> as a TCP proxy relay</para>
4445 <term>Effect:</term>
4448 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
4455 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4457 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4462 <term>Parameter:</term>
4465 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
4466 defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
4475 By default, i.e. if no <literal>limit-connect</literal> action applies,
4476 <application>Privoxy</application> only allows HTTP CONNECT
4477 requests to port 443 (the standard, secure HTTPS port). Use
4478 <literal>limit-connect</literal> if more fine-grained control is desired
4479 for some or all destinations.
4482 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
4483 (<quote>https://</quote> URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
4484 the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
4485 short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
4486 This can be a big security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can be
4487 abused as TCP relays very easily.
4490 If you don't know what any of this means, there probably is no reason to
4491 change this one, since the default is already very restrictive.
4497 <term>Example usages:</term>
4499 <!-- I had trouble getting the spacing to look right in my browser -->
4500 <!-- I probably have the wrong font setup, bollocks. -->
4501 <!-- Apparently the emphasis tag uses a proportional font no matter what -->
4503 <screen>+limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need not be specified.
4504 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
4505 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
4506 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK (gaping security hole!)</screen>
4513 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4514 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="prevent-compression">
4515 <title><emphasis>prevent-compression</emphasis></title>
4519 <term>Typical use:</term>
4522 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
4523 passed through <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>s
4529 <term>Effect:</term>
4532 Adds a header to the request that asks for uncompressed transfer.
4539 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4541 <para>Boolean.</para>
4546 <term>Parameter:</term>
4558 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
4559 is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But for the <literal><link
4560 linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>, <literal><link linkend="deanimate-gifs">deanimate-gifs</link></literal>
4561 and <literal><link linkend="kill-popups">kill-popups</link></literal> actions to work,
4562 <application>Privoxy</application> needs access to the uncompressed data.
4563 Unfortunately, <application>Privoxy</application> can't yet(!) uncompress, filter, and
4564 re-compress the content on the fly. So if you want to ensure that all websites, including
4565 those that normally compress, can be filtered, you need to use this action.
4568 This will slow down transfers from those websites, though. If you use any of the above-mentioned
4569 actions, you will typically want to use <literal>prevent-compression</literal> in conjunction
4573 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
4574 documents correctly (they send an empty document body). If you use <literal>prevent-compression</literal>
4575 per default, you'll have to add exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
4581 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
4584 <screen># Set default:
4586 {+prevent-compression}
4589 # Make exceptions for ill sites:
4591 {-prevent-compression}
4593 www.pclinuxonline.com</screen>
4602 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4603 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-vanilla-wafer">
4604 <title><emphasis>send-vanilla-wafer</emphasis></title>
4608 <term>Typical use:</term>
4611 Feed log analysis scripts with useless data.
4617 <term>Effect:</term>
4620 Sends a cookie with each request stating that you do not accept any copyright
4621 on cookies sent to you, and asking the site operator not to track you.
4628 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4630 <para>Boolean.</para>
4635 <term>Parameter:</term>
4647 The vanilla wafer is a (relatively) unique header and could conceivably be used to track you.
4650 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
4656 <term>Example usage:</term>
4659 <screen>+send-vanilla-wafer</screen>
4668 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4669 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-wafer">
4670 <title><emphasis>send-wafer</emphasis></title>
4674 <term>Typical use:</term>
4677 Send custom cookies or feed log analysis scripts with even more useless data.
4683 <term>Effect:</term>
4686 Sends a custom, user-defined cookie with each request.
4693 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4695 <para>Multi-value.</para>
4700 <term>Parameter:</term>
4703 A string of the form <quote><replaceable class="option">name</replaceable>=<replaceable
4704 class="parameter">value</replaceable></quote>.
4713 Being multi-valued, multiple instances of this action can apply to the same request,
4714 resulting in multiple cookies being sent.
4717 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
4722 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4725 <screen>{+send-wafer{UsingPrivoxy=true}}
4726 my-internal-testing-server.void</screen>
4734 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4735 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="session-cookies-only">
4736 <title><emphasis>session-cookies-only</emphasis></title>
4740 <term>Typical use:</term>
4743 Allow only temporary <quote>session</quote> cookies (for the current browser session <emphasis>only</emphasis>).
4749 <term>Effect:</term>
4752 Deletes the <quote>expires</quote> field from <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> server headers.
4753 Most browsers will not store such cookies permanently and forget them in between sessions.
4760 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4762 <para>Boolean.</para>
4767 <term>Parameter:</term>
4779 This is less strict than <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> /
4780 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal> and allows you to browse
4781 websites that insist or rely on setting cookies, without compromising your privacy too badly.
4784 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed by
4785 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal> and will forget about them between sessions.
4786 This makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
4787 that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
4788 sites, and is the recommended setting.
4791 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>
4792 together with <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> or
4793 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>. If you do, cookies
4794 will be plainly killed.
4797 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an <quote>expires</quote>
4798 field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out to be sure.
4804 <term>Example usage:</term>
4807 <screen>+session-cookies-only</screen>
4815 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4816 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="set-image-blocker">
4817 <title><emphasis>set-image-blocker</emphasis></title>
4821 <term>Typical use:</term>
4823 <para>Choose the replacement for blocked images</para>
4828 <term>Effect:</term>
4831 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If <emphasis>both</emphasis>
4832 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><link
4833 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> <emphasis>also</emphasis>
4834 apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an image,
4835 <emphasis>then</emphasis> the parameter of this action decides what will be
4836 sent as a replacement.
4843 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4845 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4850 <term>Parameter:</term>
4855 <quote>pattern</quote> to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is visually
4856 decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners were busted.
4861 <quote>blank</quote> to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners disappear
4862 completely, but makes it hard to detect where <application>Privoxy</application> has blocked
4863 images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if <application>Privoxy</application>
4864 has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
4869 <quote><replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable></quote> to
4870 send a redirect to <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>. You can redirect
4871 to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem (via <quote>file:///</quote> URL).
4874 A good application of redirects is to use special <application>Privoxy</application>-built-in
4875 URLs, which send the built-in images, as <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>.
4876 This has the same visual effect as specifying <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote> in
4877 the first place, but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of requesting
4878 it over and over again.
4889 The URLs for the built-in images are <quote>http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=<replaceable
4890 class="parameter">type</replaceable></quote>, where <replaceable class="parameter">type</replaceable> is
4891 either <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote>.
4894 There is a third (advanced) type, called <quote>auto</quote>. It is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> to be
4895 used in <literal>set-image-blocker</literal>, but meant for use from <link linkend="filter-file">filters</link>.
4896 Auto will select the type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an image.
4902 <term>Example usage:</term>
4908 <screen>+set-image-blocker{pattern}</screen>
4911 Redirect to the BSD devil:
4914 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}</screen>
4917 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
4920 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}</screen>
4928 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4930 <title>Summary</title>
4932 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
4933 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
4934 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
4935 content, and other criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard
4936 and fast rules for all sites. See the <link
4937 linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link> for a brief example on troubleshooting
4943 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4944 <sect2 id="aliases">
4945 <title>Aliases</title>
4947 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
4948 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other actions.
4949 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
4950 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab,
4952 <quote>{</quote> and <quote>}</quote>, but we <emphasis>strongly
4953 recommend</emphasis> that you only use <quote>a</quote> to <quote>z</quote>,
4954 <quote>0</quote> to <quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and <quote>-</quote>.
4955 Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start with a
4956 <quote>+</quote> or <quote>-</quote> sign, since they are merely textually
4960 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they <emphasis>must be
4961 defined in a special section at the top of the file!</emphasis>
4962 And there can only be one such section per actions file. Each actions file may
4963 have its own alias section, and the aliases defined in it are only visible
4967 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
4968 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
4969 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called
4970 <quote>shop</quote>, you can later change your policy on shops in
4971 <emphasis>one</emphasis> place, and your changes will take effect everywhere
4972 in the actions file where the <quote>shop</quote> alias is used. Calling aliases
4973 by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
4976 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though:
4977 <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in web-based action file
4978 editor honors aliases when reading the actions files, but it expands
4979 them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are of course preserved,
4980 but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
4982 This is likely to change in future versions of <application>Privoxy</application>.
4986 Now let's define some aliases...
4991 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
4993 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
4994 # must be at the top of the actions file!
4998 # These aliases just save typing later:
4999 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5001 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
5002 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
5003 block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
5004 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
5006 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5007 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5009 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referer -kill-popups
5010 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -filter{popups} -kill-popups
5012 # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
5014 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
5015 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies</screen>
5019 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
5020 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
5021 up for the <quote>/</quote> pattern):
5026 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
5027 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
5030 .office.microsoft.com
5031 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
5035 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
5039 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
5042 # These shops require pop-ups:
5044 {shop -kill-popups -filter{popups}}
5046 .overclockers.co.uk</screen>
5050 Aliases like <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote> are often used for
5051 <quote>problem</quote> sites that require some actions to be disabled
5052 in order to function properly.
5056 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5057 <sect2 id="act-examples">
5058 <title>Actions Files Tutorial</title>
5060 The above chapters have shown <link linkend="actions-file">which actions files
5061 there are and how they are organized</link>, how actions are <link
5062 linkend="actions">specified</link> and <link linkend="actions-apply">applied
5063 to URLs</link>, how <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> work, and how to
5064 define and use <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link>. Now, let's look at an
5065 example <filename>default.action</filename> and <filename>user.action</filename>
5066 file and see how all these pieces come together:
5069 <sect3><title>default.action</title>
5072 Every config file should start with a short comment stating its purpose:
5076 <screen># Sample default.action file <developers@privoxy.org></screen>
5080 Then, since this is the <filename>default.action</filename> file, the
5081 first section is a special section for internal use that you needn't
5082 change or worry about:
5087 ##########################################################################
5088 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
5089 ##########################################################################
5092 for-privoxy-version=3.0</screen>
5096 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
5097 section from the above <link linkend="aliases">chapter on aliases</link>,
5098 that also explains why and how aliases are used:
5103 ##########################################################################
5105 ##########################################################################
5108 # These aliases just save typing later:
5109 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5111 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
5112 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
5113 block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
5114 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
5116 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5117 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5119 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referer -kill-popups
5120 shop = mercy-for-cookies -filter{popups} -kill-popups</screen>
5124 Now come the regular sections, i.e. sets of actions, accompanied
5125 by URL patterns to which they apply. Remember <emphasis>all actions
5126 are disabled when matching starts</emphasis>, so we have to explicitly
5127 enable the ones we want.
5131 The first regular section is probably the most important. It has only
5132 one pattern, <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, but this pattern
5133 <link linkend="af-patterns">matches all URLs.</link>. Therefore, the
5134 set of actions used in this <quote>default</quote> section <emphasis>will
5135 be applied to all requests as a start</emphasis>. It can be partly or
5136 wholly overridden by later matches further down this file, or in user.action,
5137 but it will still be largely responsible for your overall browsing
5142 Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
5143 no real need to disable any actions here, but we will do that nonetheless,
5144 to have a complete listing for your reference. (Remember: A <quote>+</quote>
5145 preceding the action name enables the action, a <quote>-</quote> disables!).
5146 Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
5147 multiple lines with line continuation.
5152 ##########################################################################
5153 # "Defaults" section:
5154 ##########################################################################
5156 -<link linkend="ADD-HEADER">add-header</link> \
5157 -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> \
5158 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> \
5159 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link> \
5160 +<link linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</link> \
5161 -<link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION">downgrade-http-version</link> \
5162 +<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> \
5163 +<link linkend="FILTER-HTML-ANNOYANCES">filter{html-annoyances}</link> \
5164 +<link linkend="FILTER-JS-ANNOYANCES">filter{js-annoyances}</link> \
5165 -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link> \
5166 +<link linkend="FILTER-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link> \
5167 +<link linkend="FILTER-WEBBUGS">filter{webbugs}</link> \
5168 -<link linkend="FILTER-REFRESH-TAGS">filter{refresh-tags}</link> \
5169 -<link linkend="FILTER-FUN">filter{fun}</link> \
5170 +<link linkend="FILTER-NIMDA">filter{nimda}</link> \
5171 +<link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE">filter{banners-by-size}</link> \
5172 -<link linkend="FILTER-SHOCKWAVE-FLASH">filter{shockwave-flash}</link> \
5173 -<link linkend="FILTER-CRUDE-PARENTAL">filter{crude-parental}</link> \
5174 -<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> \
5175 +<link linkend="HIDE-FORWARDED-FOR-HEADERS">hide-forwarded-for-headers</link> \
5176 +<link linkend="HIDE-FROM-HEADER">hide-from-header{block}</link> \
5177 +<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer{forge}</link> \
5178 -<link linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT">hide-user-agent</link> \
5179 -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> \
5180 -<link linkend="LIMIT-CONNECT">limit-connect</link> \
5181 +<link linkend="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link> \
5182 -<link linkend="SEND-VANILLA-WAFER">send-vanilla-wafer</link> \
5183 -<link linkend="SEND-WAFER">send-wafer</link> \
5184 +<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> \
5185 +<link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER">set-image-blocker{pattern}</link> \
5187 / # forward slash will match *all* potential URL patterns.</screen>
5191 The default behavior is now set. Note that some actions, like not hiding
5192 the user agent, are part of a <quote>general policy</quote> that applies
5193 universally and won't get any exceptions defined later. Other choices,
5194 like not blocking (which is <emphasis>understandably</emphasis> the
5195 default!) need exceptions, i.e. we need to specify explicitly what we
5196 want to block in later sections.
5197 We will also want to make exceptions from our general pop-up-killing,
5198 and use our defined aliases for that.
5202 The first of our specialized sections is concerned with <quote>fragile</quote>
5203 sites, i.e. sites that require minimum interference, because they are either
5204 very complex or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that
5205 make them unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will simply use
5206 our pre-defined <literal>fragile</literal> alias instead of stating the list
5207 of actions explicitly:
5212 ##########################################################################
5213 # Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
5214 ##########################################################################
5216 # "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
5219 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
5220 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com</screen>
5224 Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically
5225 require cookies to log in, and pop-up windows for shopping
5226 carts or item details. Again, we'll use a pre-defined alias:
5235 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
5237 .scan.co.uk</screen>
5241 Then, there are sites which rely on pop-up windows (yuck!) to work.
5242 Since we made pop-up-killing our default above, we need to make exceptions
5243 now. <ulink url="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla</ulink> users, who
5244 can turn on smart handling of unwanted pop-ups in their browsers, can
5246 -<literal><link linkend="FILTER-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link></literal> (and
5247 -<literal><link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link></literal>) above
5248 and hence don't need this section. Anyway, disabling an already disabled
5249 action doesn't hurt, so we'll define our exceptions regardless of what was
5250 chosen in the defaults section:
5255 # These sites require pop-ups too :(
5257 { -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link> }
5260 .deutsche-bank-24.de</screen>
5264 The <literal><link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link></literal>
5265 action, which we enabled per default above, breaks some sites. So disable
5266 it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
5271 { -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> }
5275 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
5276 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
5277 .nytimes.com</screen>
5281 It is important that <application>Privoxy</application> knows which
5282 URLs belong to images, so that <emphasis>if</emphasis> they are to
5283 be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
5284 Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it
5285 would destroy the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it
5286 would feed the advertisers (in terms of money <emphasis>and</emphasis>
5287 information). We can mark any URL as an image with the <literal><link
5288 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action,
5289 and marking all URLs that end in a known image file extension is a
5295 ##########################################################################
5297 ##########################################################################
5299 # Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
5300 # blocked further down this file:
5302 { +<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> }
5303 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$</screen>
5307 And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to
5308 generate the banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the
5309 request is for an image. Hence we block them <emphasis>and</emphasis>
5310 mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
5311 <literal>block-as-image</literal> alias defined above. (We could of
5312 course just as well use <literal>+<link linkend="block">block</link>
5313 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> here.)
5314 Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
5315 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
5316 action. Since all URLs have matched the default section with its
5317 <literal>+<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link>{pattern}</literal>
5318 action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:
5323 # Known ad generators:
5328 .ad.*.doubleclick.net
5329 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
5330 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
5337 One of the most important jobs of <application>Privoxy</application>
5338 is to block banners. A huge bunch of them are already <quote>blocked</quote>
5339 by the <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{banners-by-size}</literal>
5340 action, which we enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner
5341 images from the pages while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request
5342 them anymore, and hence they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally
5343 doesn't catch all banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we
5344 need a comprehensive list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the
5345 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action to them.
5348 First comes a bunch of generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
5349 matching typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes
5350 a list of individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here
5351 to keep the example short:
5356 ##########################################################################
5357 # Block these fine banners:
5358 ##########################################################################
5359 { <link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link> }
5367 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
5368 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
5370 # Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
5372 .hitbox.com</screen>
5376 You wouldn't believe how many advertisers actually call their banner
5377 servers ads.<replaceable>company</replaceable>.com, or call the directory
5378 in which the banners are stored simply <quote>banners</quote>. So the above
5379 generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
5382 But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want
5383 to block. The pattern <literal>.*ads.</literal> e.g. catches
5384 <quote>nasty-<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.nasty-corp.com</quote> as intended,
5385 but also <quote>downlo<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.sourcefroge.net</quote> or
5386 <quote><emphasis>ads</emphasis>l.some-provider.net.</quote> So here come some
5387 well-known exceptions to the <literal>+<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
5391 Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
5392 <quote>downloads.sourcefroge.net</quote>: Initially, all actions are deactivated,
5393 so it wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the
5394 URL, but just deactivates the <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
5395 action once again. Then it matches <literal>.*ads.</literal>, an exception to the
5396 general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
5397 <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link></literal> applies. And now, it'll match
5398 <literal>.*loads.</literal>, where <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">-block</link></literal>
5399 applies, so (unless it matches <emphasis>again</emphasis> further down) it ends up
5400 with no <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal> action applying.
5405 ##########################################################################
5406 # Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
5407 ##########################################################################
5411 { -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
5412 adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
5413 adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
5414 ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
5415 .edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
5416 .*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
5424 www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
5425 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv</screen>
5429 Filtering source code can have nasty side effects,
5430 so make an exception for our friends at sourceforge.net,
5431 and all paths with <quote>cvs</quote> in them. Note that
5432 <literal>-<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link></literal>
5433 disables <emphasis>all</emphasis> filters in one fell swoop!
5438 # Don't filter code!
5440 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
5442 .sourceforge.net</screen>
5446 The actual <filename>default.action</filename> is of course more
5447 comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
5452 <sect3><title>user.action</title>
5455 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies,
5456 which would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now,
5457 you'd maybe want to be more specific and have customized rules that
5458 are more suitable to your personal habits and preferences. These would
5459 be for narrowly defined situations like your ISP or your bank, and should
5460 be placed in <filename>user.action</filename>, which is parsed after all other
5461 actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any previously
5462 defined actions. <filename>user.action</filename> is also a
5463 <emphasis>safe</emphasis> place for your personal settings, since
5464 <filename>default.action</filename> is actively maintained by the
5465 <application>Privoxy</application> developers and you'll probably want
5466 to install updated versions from time to time.
5470 So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
5471 <filename>user.action</filename>:
5475 <!-- brief sample user.action here -->
5479 # My user.action file. <fred@foobar.com></screen>
5483 As <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link> are local to the actions
5484 file that they are defined in, you can't use the ones from
5485 <filename>default.action</filename>, unless you repeat them here:
5490 # (Re-)define aliases for this file:
5493 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
5494 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
5495 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referer -kill-popups
5496 shop = mercy-for-cookies -filter{popups} -kill-popups
5497 allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} # (see below)</screen>
5502 Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and
5503 you don't want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like
5504 to allow persistent cookies for these sites. The
5505 <literal>mercy-for-cookies</literal> alias defined above does exactly
5506 that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and
5507 processing of cookies to make them temporary.
5512 { mercy-for-cookies }
5517 .redhat.com</screen>
5521 Your bank needs popups and is allergic to some filter, but you don't
5522 know which, so you disable them all:
5527 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> }
5528 .your-home-banking-site.com</screen>
5532 While browsing the web with <application>Privoxy</application> you
5533 noticed some ads that sneaked through, but you were too lazy to
5534 report them through our fine and easy <link linkend="contact">feedback</link>
5535 system, so you have added them here:
5540 { +<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
5541 www.a-popular-site.com/some/unobvious/path
5542 another.popular.site.net/more/junk/here/</screen>
5546 Note that, assuming the banners in the above example have regular image
5547 extensions (most do),
5548 <literal>+<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link></literal>
5549 need not be specified, since all URLs ending in these extensions will
5550 already have been tagged as images in the relevant section of
5551 <filename>default.action</filename> by now.
5555 Then you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine,
5556 but you were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you
5557 were again too lazy to give <link linkend="contact">feedback</link>, so
5558 you just used the <literal>fragile</literal> alias on the site, and
5559 -- whoa! -- it worked:
5565 .forbes.com</screen>
5569 You like the <quote>fun</quote> text replacements in <filename>default.filter</filename>,
5570 but it is disabled in the distributed actions file. (My colleagues on the team just
5571 don't have a sense of humour, that's why! ;-). So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
5572 update-safe config, once and for all:
5577 { +<link linkend="filter-fun">filter{fun}</link> }
5578 / # For ALL sites!</screen>
5582 Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions
5583 to the filters in <filename>default.action</filename> for things that
5584 really shouldn't be filtered, like code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since
5585 <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word, these exceptions
5586 won't be valid for the <quote>fun</quote> filtering specified here.
5590 Finally, you might think about how your favourite free websites are
5591 funded, and find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements
5592 to survive. So you might want to specifically allow banners for those
5593 sites that you feel provide value to you:
5605 Note that <literal>allow-ads</literal> has been aliased to
5606 <literal>-<link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
5607 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-size">filter{banners-by-size}</link></literal>
5613 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
5617 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
5619 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
5621 <sect1 id="filter-file">
5622 <title>The Filter File</title>
5625 All text substitutions that can be invoked through the
5626 <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> action
5627 must first be defined in the filter file, which is typically
5628 called <filename>default.filter</filename> and which can be
5629 selected through the <literal>
5630 <link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal> config
5635 Typical reasons for doing such substitutions are to eliminate
5636 common annoyances in HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows,
5637 exit consoles, crippled windows without navigation tools, the
5638 infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to suppress images with certain
5639 width and height attributes (standard banner sizes or web-bugs),
5640 or just to have fun. The possibilities are endless.
5644 Filtering works on any text-based document type, including plain
5645 text, HTML, JavaScript, CSS etc. (all <literal>text/*</literal>
5646 MIME types). Substitutions are made at the source level, so if
5647 you want to <quote>roll your own</quote> filters, you should be
5648 familiar with HTML syntax.
5652 Just like the <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, the
5653 filter file is organized in sections, which are called <emphasis>filters</emphasis>
5654 here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with the
5655 <emphasis>keyword</emphasis> <literal>FILTER:</literal>, followed by
5656 the filter's <emphasis>name</emphasis>, and a short (one line)
5657 <emphasis>description</emphasis> of what it does. Below that line
5658 come the <emphasis>jobs</emphasis>, i.e. lines that define the actual
5659 text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
5660 should describe what the filter <emphasis>eliminates</emphasis>. The
5661 comment is used in the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
5662 user interface</ulink>.
5666 Once a filter called <replaceable>name</replaceable> has been defined
5667 in the filter file, it can be invoked by using an action of the form
5668 +<literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>name</replaceable>}</literal>
5669 in any <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>.
5673 A filter header line for a filter called <quote>foo</quote> could look
5678 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"</screen>
5682 Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that
5683 define what text replacements the filter executes. They are specified
5684 in a syntax that imitates <ulink url="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</ulink>'s
5685 <literal>s///</literal> operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you
5686 will find this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the
5687 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/pcrs.1.html">PCRS man page</ulink>
5688 for the subtle differences to Perl behaviour. Most notably, the non-standard
5689 option letter <literal>U</literal> is supported, which turns the default
5690 to ungreedy matching.
5694 If you are new to regular expressions, you might want to take a look at
5695 the <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>, and
5696 see the <ulink url="http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perl.html">Perl
5698 <ulink url="http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perlop.html#s-PATTERN-REPLACEMENT-egimosx">the
5699 <literal>s///</literal> operator's syntax</ulink> and <ulink
5700 url="http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perlre.html">Perl-style regular
5701 expressions</ulink> in general.
5702 The below examples might also help to get you started.
5705 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
5707 <sect2><title>Filter File Tutorial</title>
5709 Now, let's complete our <quote>foo</quote> filter. We have already defined
5710 the heading, but the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace
5711 <quote>foo</quote> with <quote>bar</quote>, there is only one (trivial) job
5716 <screen>s/foo/bar/</screen>
5720 But wait! Didn't the comment say that <emphasis>all</emphasis> occurrences
5721 of <quote>foo</quote> should be replaced? Our current job will only take
5722 care of the first <quote>foo</quote> on each page. For global substitution,
5723 we'll need to add the <literal>g</literal> option:
5727 <screen>s/foo/bar/g</screen>
5731 Our complete filter now looks like this:
5734 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
5735 s/foo/bar/g</screen>
5739 Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see
5740 a filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
5741 abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
5747 FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
5749 # Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
5751 s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg</screen>
5755 Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses
5756 <literal>|</literal> as the delimiter instead of <literal>/</literal>, because
5757 the pattern contains a forward slash, which would otherwise have to be escaped
5758 by a backslash (<literal>\</literal>).
5762 Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <literal><script.*</literal>
5763 enclosed in parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and <literal>*</literal>
5764 means: <quote>Match an arbitrary number of the element left of myself</quote>, this
5765 matches <quote><script</quote>, followed by <emphasis>any</emphasis> text, i.e.
5766 it matches the whole page, from the start of the first <script> tag.
5770 That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: <literal>document\.referrer</literal>
5771 matches only the exact string <quote>document.referrer</quote>. The dot needed to
5772 be <emphasis>escaped</emphasis>, i.e. preceded by a backslash, to take away its
5773 special meaning as a joker, and make it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is:
5774 Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including,
5775 the text <quote>document.referrer</quote>, if <emphasis>both</emphasis> are present
5776 in the page (and appear in that order).
5780 But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in parentheses,
5781 is <literal>.*</script></literal>. You already know what <literal>.*</literal>
5782 means, so the whole pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script>
5783 tag in a page to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text
5784 <quote>document.referrer</quote> appears somewhere in between.
5788 This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the parentheses:
5789 The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed in parentheses, will be
5790 remembered and be available through the variables <literal>$1, $2, ...</literal> in
5791 the substitute. The <literal>U</literal> option switches to ungreedy matching, which means
5792 that the first <literal>.*</literal> in the pattern will only <quote>eat up</quote> all
5793 text in between <quote><script</quote> and the <emphasis>first</emphasis> occurrence
5794 of <quote>document.referrer</quote>, and that the second <literal>.*</literal> will
5795 only span the text up to the <emphasis>first</emphasis> <quote></script></quote>
5796 tag. Furthermore, the <literal>s</literal> option says that the match may span
5797 multiple lines in the page, and the <literal>g</literal> option again means that the
5798 substitution is global.
5802 So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
5803 <quote>document.referrer</quote>. Remember the parts of the script from
5804 (and including) the start tag up to (and excluding) the string
5805 <quote>document.referrer</quote> as <literal>$1</literal>, and the part following
5806 that string, up to and including the closing tag, as <literal>$2</literal>.
5810 Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
5811 lets look at the substitute: <literal>$1"Not Your Business!"$2</literal> is
5812 easy to read: The text remembered as <literal>$1</literal>, followed by
5813 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> (<emphasis>including</emphasis>
5814 the quotation marks!), followed by the text remembered as <literal>$2</literal>.
5815 This produces an exact copy of the original string, with the middle part
5816 (the <quote>document.referrer</quote>) replaced by <literal>"Not Your
5817 Business!"</literal>.
5821 The whole job now reads: Replace <quote>document.referrer</quote> by
5822 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> wherever it appears inside a
5823 <script> tag. Note that this job won't break JavaScript syntax,
5824 since both the original and the replacement are syntactically valid
5825 string objects. The script just won't have access to the referrer
5826 information anymore.
5830 We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but
5831 this time only point out the constructs of special interest:
5836 # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
5838 s/window\.status\s*=\s*['"].*?['"]/dUmMy=1/ig</screen>
5842 <literal>\s</literal> stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline,
5843 carriage return, form feed), so that <literal>\s*</literal> means: <quote>zero
5844 or more whitespace</quote>. The <literal>?</literal> in <literal>.*?</literal>
5845 makes this matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the <literal>U</literal>
5846 option is not set). The <literal>['"]</literal> construct means: <quote>a single
5847 <emphasis>or</emphasis> a double quote</quote>.
5851 So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
5852 strings to the <quote>window.status</quote> object with a dummy assignment
5853 (using a variable name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with
5854 real variables in scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless
5855 descriptions are displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when
5856 you move your mouse over links.
5861 # Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
5863 s/(<body .*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU</screen>
5868 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">OnUnload
5869 event binding</ulink> in the HTML DOM was a <emphasis>CRIME</emphasis>.
5870 When I close a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta.
5871 This job replaces the <quote>onunload</quote> attribute in
5872 <quote><body></quote> tags with the dummy word <literal>never</literal>.
5873 Note that the <literal>i</literal> option makes the pattern matching
5878 The last example is from the fun department:
5883 FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
5885 # Spice the daily news:
5887 s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig</screen>
5891 Note the <literal>(?!\.com)</literal> part (a so-called negative lookahead)
5892 in the job's pattern, which means: Don't match, if the string
5893 <quote>.com</quote> appears directly following <quote>microsoft</quote>
5894 in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being messed, while
5895 still replacing the word everywhere else.
5900 # Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
5902 s* industry[ -]leading \
5904 | award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
5905 | high[ -]performance \
5906 | solutions[ -]based \
5910 *<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
5915 The <literal>x</literal> option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for
5916 e.g. the liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
5925 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
5929 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5931 <sect1 id="templates">
5932 <title>Templates</title>
5934 When <application>Privoxy</application> displays one of its internal
5935 pages, such as a <ulink url="http://bogus_404_page.com">404 Not Found error page</ulink>
5936 (<application>Privoxy</application> must be running for link to work as
5937 intended), it uses the appropriate template. On Linux, BSD, and Unix, these
5938 are located in <filename>/etc/privoxy/templates</filename> by default. These
5939 may be customized, if desired. <filename>cgi-style.css</filename> is used to
5940 control the HTML attributes (fonts, etc).
5945 url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html">Blocked
5946 </ulink> (<application>Privoxy</application> needs to be running for page to
5947 display) banner page with the bright red top banner, is called just
5948 <quote><filename>blocked</filename></quote>. This may be customized or
5949 replaced with something else if desired (not recommended for the casual
5955 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
5959 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5961 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
5964 <!-- Include contacting.sgml boilerplate: -->
5966 <!-- end boilerplate -->
5970 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
5973 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5974 <sect1 id="copyright"><title><application>Privoxy</application> Copyright, License and History</title>
5976 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
5978 <!-- end copyright -->
5980 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5981 <sect2><title>License</title>
5982 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
5984 <!-- end copyright -->
5986 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
5989 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5991 <sect2 id="history"><title>History</title>
5992 <!-- Include history.sgml: -->
5994 <!-- end history -->
5998 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6001 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6002 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See Also</title>
6003 <!-- Include seealso.sgml: -->
6005 <!-- end seealso -->
6010 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6011 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
6014 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6016 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
6018 <application>Privoxy</application> can use <quote>regular expressions</quote>
6019 in various config files. Assuming support for <quote>pcre</quote> (Perl
6020 Compatible Regular Expressions) is compiled in, which is the default. Such
6021 configuration directives do not require regular expressions, but they can be
6022 used to increase flexibility by matching a pattern with wild-cards against
6027 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
6028 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
6029 introduction only. A full explanation would require a book ;-)
6033 <quote>Regular expressions</quote> is a way of matching one character
6034 expression against another to see if it matches or not. One of the
6035 <quote>expressions</quote> is a literal string of readable characters
6036 (letter, numbers, etc), and the other is a complex string of literal
6037 characters combined with wild-cards, and other special characters, called
6038 meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have special meanings and
6039 are used to build the complex pattern to be matched against. Perl Compatible
6040 Regular Expressions is an enhanced form of the regular expression language
6041 with backward compatibility.
6045 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
6046 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
6047 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
6048 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
6049 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
6050 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
6051 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
6052 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
6056 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
6057 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
6058 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
6059 and then some examples:
6064 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
6065 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
6067 </simplelist></para>
6071 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
6074 </simplelist></para>
6078 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
6081 </simplelist></para>
6085 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
6088 </simplelist></para>
6092 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
6093 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
6094 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
6095 not as a special meta-character. Example: <quote>example\.com</quote>, makes
6096 sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded to its
6097 meta-character meaning of any single character).
6099 </simplelist></para>
6103 <emphasis>[]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
6104 any of the enclosed characters are encountered. For instance, <quote>[0-9]</quote>
6105 matches any numeric digit (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine
6106 this with <quote>+</quote> to match any digit one of more times: <quote>[0-9]+</quote>.
6108 </simplelist></para>
6112 <emphasis>()</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
6113 or multiple sub-expressions.
6115 </simplelist></para>
6119 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
6120 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
6121 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches. As an example:
6122 <quote>/(this|that) example/</quote> uses grouping and the bar character
6123 and would match either <quote>this example</quote> or <quote>that
6124 example</quote>, and nothing else.
6126 </simplelist></para>
6130 <emphasis>s/string1/string2/g</emphasis> - This is used to rewrite strings of text.
6131 <quote>string1</quote> is replaced by <quote>string2</quote> in this
6132 example. There must of course be a match on <quote>string1</quote> first.
6134 </simplelist></para>
6137 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
6138 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
6139 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
6140 be more illuminating:
6144 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
6145 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
6146 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
6147 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
6148 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
6149 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
6150 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
6151 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
6152 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
6153 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
6154 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
6155 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
6156 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
6157 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
6162 A now something a little more complex:
6166 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
6167 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
6168 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
6169 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
6170 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
6171 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
6172 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
6177 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
6178 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
6179 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
6180 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
6181 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
6182 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
6183 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
6184 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
6185 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
6186 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
6187 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
6188 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
6189 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
6190 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
6191 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
6192 changing our regular expression to:
6193 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
6198 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
6199 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
6200 <quote>[]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
6201 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
6202 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
6203 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
6204 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
6205 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
6206 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
6207 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
6208 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
6209 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
6210 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
6211 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
6212 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
6213 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
6214 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
6215 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
6216 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
6217 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
6218 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
6219 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
6220 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
6221 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
6222 in the expression anywhere).
6226 <emphasis><literal>s/microsoft(?!.com)/MicroSuck/i</literal></emphasis> - This is
6227 a substitution. <quote>MicroSuck</quote> will replace any occurrence of
6228 <quote>microsoft</quote>. The <quote>i</quote> at the end of the expression
6229 means ignore case. The <quote>(?!.com)</quote> means
6230 the match should fail if <quote>microsoft</quote> is followed by
6231 <quote>.com</quote>. In other words, this acts like a <quote>NOT</quote>
6232 modifier. In case this is a hyperlink, we don't want to break it ;-).
6236 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
6237 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
6238 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
6239 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
6240 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
6245 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
6246 <ulink url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>
6251 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6254 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6256 <title><application>Privoxy</application>'s Internal Pages</title>
6259 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
6260 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
6261 trap certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
6262 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
6263 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
6264 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
6265 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
6271 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
6272 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
6273 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
6274 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
6287 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
6291 Alternately, this may be reached at <ulink
6292 url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>, but this
6293 variation may not work as reliably as the above in some configurations.
6299 Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
6300 editing of actions files:
6304 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
6311 Show the source code version numbers:
6315 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">http://config.privoxy.org/show-version</ulink>
6322 Show the browser's request headers:
6326 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">http://config.privoxy.org/show-request</ulink>
6333 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
6337 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
6344 Toggle Privoxy on or off. In this case, <quote>Privoxy</quote> continues
6345 to run, but only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking place:
6349 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
6353 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
6357 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
6362 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
6371 These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
6375 <sect3 id="bookmarklets">
6376 <title>Bookmarklets</title>
6378 Below are some <quote>bookmarklets</quote> to allow you to easily access a
6379 <quote>mini</quote> version of some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
6380 special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer, but should work
6381 equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which support
6382 JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not by
6383 clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
6386 To save them, right-click the link and choose <quote>Add to Favorites</quote>
6387 (IE) or <quote>Add Bookmark</quote> (Netscape). You will get a warning that
6388 the bookmark <quote>may not be safe</quote> - just click OK. Then you can run the
6389 Bookmarklet directly from your favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access,
6390 you can put them on the <quote>Links</quote> bar (IE) or the <quote>Personal
6391 Toolbar</quote> (Netscape), and run them with a single click.
6400 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>
6407 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>
6414 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)
6421 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>
6427 <ulink url="javascript:w=Math.floor(screen.width/2);h=Math.floor(screen.height*0.9);void(window.open('http://www.privoxy.org/actions','Feedback','screenx='+w+',width='+w+',height='+h+',scrollbars=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Submit Filter Feedback</ulink>
6437 Credit: The site which gave me the general idea for these bookmarklets is
6438 <ulink url="http://www.bookmarklets.com">www.bookmarklets.com</ulink>. They
6439 have more information about bookmarklets.
6448 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6450 <title>Chain of Events</title>
6452 Let's take a quick look at the basic sequence of events when a web page is
6453 requested by your browser and <application>Privoxy</application> is on duty:
6460 First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send
6461 the request to <application>Privoxy</application>, which will in turn,
6462 relay the request to the remote web server after passing the following
6468 <application>Privoxy</application> traps any request for its own internal CGI
6469 pages (e.g http://p.p/) and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
6474 Next, <application>Privoxy</application> checks to see if the URL
6476 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link> patterns. If
6477 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be contacted.
6478 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>
6479 is then checked and if it does not match, an
6480 HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page is sent back. Otherwise, if it does match,
6481 an image is returned. The type of image depends on the setting of <link
6482 linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><quote>+set-image-blocker</quote></link>
6483 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
6488 Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the
6489 <filename>trust</filename> file, then that is done.
6494 If the URL pattern matches the <link
6495 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link> action,
6496 it is then processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
6501 Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
6502 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. <link
6503 linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT"><quote>+hide-user-agent</quote></link>,
6504 etc.), headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and
6510 Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web page and related
6516 First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
6517 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
6518 filtered as deterimed by the
6519 <link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES"><quote>+crunch-incoming-cookies</quote></link>,
6520 <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>,
6521 and <link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION"><quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote></link>
6527 If the <link linkend="KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></link>
6528 action applies, and it is an HTML or JavaScript document, the popup-code in the
6529 response is filtered on-the-fly as it is received.
6534 If a <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>
6536 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
6537 action applies (and the document type fits the action), the rest of the page is
6538 read into memory (up to a configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from
6539 <filename>default.filter</filename>) are processed against the buffered
6540 content. Filters are applied in the order they are specified in the
6541 <filename>default.filter</filename> file. Animated GIFs, if present, are
6542 reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
6543 setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by
6544 <application>Privoxy</application> back to your browser.
6547 If neither <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>
6549 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
6550 matches, then <application>Privoxy</application> passes the raw data through
6551 to the client browser as it becomes available.
6556 As the browser receives the now (probably filtered) page content, it
6557 reads and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page
6558 source, e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
6559 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a new
6560 request. And each such request is in turn processed as above. Note that a
6561 complex web page may have many such embedded URLs.
6571 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6572 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
6573 <title>Anatomy of an Action</title>
6576 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies
6577 <link linkend="ACTIONS"><quote>actions</quote></link>
6578 and <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>filters</quote></link>
6579 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so
6580 easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to
6581 <emphasis>see</emphasis> just what <application>Privoxy</application> is
6582 doing. Especially, if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing
6583 is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to look at
6584 the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
6585 <quote>regular expressions</quote> whose consequences are not always
6590 One quick test to see if <application>Privoxy</application> is causing a problem
6591 or not, is to disable it temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting
6592 step. See <link linkend="bookmarklets">the Bookmarklets</link> section on a quick
6593 and easy way to do this (be sure to flush caches afterward!).
6597 <application>Privoxy</application> also provides the
6598 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
6599 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
6600 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
6604 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
6605 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
6606 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
6607 help with filtering effects (i.e. the <link
6608 linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action) from
6609 the <filename>default.filter</filename> file since this is handled very
6610 differently and not so easy to trap! It also will not tell you about any other
6611 URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are testing. For instance, images
6612 such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw page source of HTML pages. So
6613 you will only get info for the actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area
6614 -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you
6615 will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View
6616 Page Source</quote> option for this. Or right click on the ad, and grab the
6621 Let's try an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
6622 and look at it one section at a time:
6627 Matches for http://google.com:
6629 --- File standard ---
6630 (no matches in this file)
6632 --- File default ---
6634 { -add-header -block +deanimate-gifs{last} -downgrade-http-version +fast-redirects
6635 -filter{popups} -filter{fun} -filter{shockwave-flash} -filter{crude-parental}
6636 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{content-cookies}
6637 +filter{webbugs} +filter{refresh-tags} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size}
6638 +hide-forwarded-for-headers +hide-from-header{block} +hide-referer{forge}
6639 -hide-user-agent -handle-as-image +set-image-blocker{pattern} -limit-connect
6640 +prevent-compression +session-cookies-only -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6641 -crunch-incoming-cookies -kill-popups -send-vanilla-wafer -send-wafer }
6644 { -session-cookies-only }
6651 (no matches in this file)
6656 This tells us how we have defined our
6657 <link linkend="ACTIONS"><quote>actions</quote></link>, and
6658 which ones match for our example, <quote>google.com</quote>. The first listing
6659 is any matches for the <filename>standard.action</filename> file. No hits at
6660 all here on <quote>standard</quote>. Then next is <quote>default</quote>, or
6661 our <filename>default.action</filename> file. The large, multi-line listing,
6662 is how the actions are set to match for all URLs, i.e. our default settings.
6663 If you look at your <quote>actions</quote> file, this would be the section
6664 just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section near the top. This will apply to
6665 all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end of the listing
6666 -- <quote>/</quote>.
6670 But we can define additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
6671 rules, and then list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions would
6672 apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit matches for
6673 <quote>.google.com</quote>. The first is negating our previous cookie setting,
6675 linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>
6676 (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent cookies for google. The
6677 second turns <emphasis>off</emphasis> any
6679 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link>
6680 action, allowing this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading
6681 dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will match any hosts and
6682 sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
6683 <quote>www.google.com</quote>. So, apparently, we have these two actions
6684 defined somewhere in the lower part of our <filename>default.action</filename>
6685 file, and <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced somewhere in these latter
6690 Then, for our <filename>user.action</filename> file, we again have no hits.
6694 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
6695 <application>Privoxy</application> is applying all its <quote>actions</quote>
6696 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
6704 -add-header -block +deanimate-gifs{last} -downgrade-http-version -fast-redirects
6705 -filter{popups} -filter{fun} -filter{shockwave-flash} -filter{crude-parental}
6706 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{content-cookies}
6707 +filter{webbugs} +filter{refresh-tags} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size}
6708 +hide-forwarded-for-headers +hide-from-header{block} +hide-referer{forge}
6709 -hide-user-agent -handle-as-image +set-image-blocker{pattern} -limit-connect
6710 +prevent-compression -session-cookies-only -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6711 -crunch-incoming-cookies -kill-popups -send-vanilla-wafer -send-wafer
6716 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
6717 <quote>fast-redirects</quote> and <quote>session-cookies-only</quote>.
6721 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
6727 { +block +handle-as-image }
6730 { +block +handle-as-image }
6733 { +block +handle-as-image }
6739 We'll just show the interesting part here, the explicit matches. It is
6740 matched three different times. Each as an <quote>+block +handle-as-image</quote>,
6741 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
6742 <quote>+imageblock</quote>. (<link
6743 linkend="ALIASES"><quote>Aliases</quote></link> are defined in
6744 the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
6749 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
6750 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
6751 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
6752 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
6753 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
6754 is done here -- as both a <link
6755 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link>
6756 <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
6758 linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>.
6759 The custom alias <quote>+imageblock</quote> just simplifies the process and make
6764 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
6765 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm...
6771 Matches for http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
6773 { -add-header -block +deanimate-gifs -downgrade-http-version +fast-redirects
6774 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{kill-popups}
6775 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size} +filter{hal}
6776 +filter{fun} +hide-forwarded-for-headers +hide-from-header{block}
6777 +hide-referer{forge} -hide-user-agent -handle-as-image +set-image-blocker{blank}
6778 +prevent-compression +session-cookies-only -crunch-incoming-cookies
6779 -crunch-outgoing-cookies +kill-popups -send-vanilla-wafer -send-wafer }
6782 { +block +handle-as-image }
6788 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote>! But
6789 we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the blank page. We could
6790 now add a new action below this that explicitly does <emphasis>not</emphasis>
6791 block (<quote>{-block}</quote>) paths with <quote>adsl</quote>. There are
6792 various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
6804 Now the page displays ;-) Be sure to flush your browser's caches when
6805 making such changes. Or, try using <literal>Shift+Reload</literal>.
6809 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
6816 { +block +handle-as-image }
6822 That actually was very telling and pointed us quickly to where the problem
6823 was. If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default
6824 rules in the first section is causing the problem. This would require some
6825 guesswork, and maybe a little trial and error to isolate the offending rule.
6826 One likely cause would be one of the <quote>{+filter}</quote> actions. Try
6827 adding the URL for the site to one of aliases that turn off <quote>+filter</quote>:
6835 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
6843 <quote>{shop}</quote> is an <quote>alias</quote> that expands to
6844 <quote>{ -filter -session-cookies-only }</quote>.
6845 Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
6858 This would probably be most appropriately put in <filename>user.action</filename>,
6859 for local site exceptions.
6863 <quote>{fragile}</quote> is an alias that disables most actions. This can be
6864 used as a last resort for problem sites. Remember to flush caches! If this
6865 still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining actions one by
6866 one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
6875 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
6876 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
6877 Public License as published by the Free Software
6878 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
6879 your option) any later version.
6881 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
6882 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
6883 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
6884 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
6885 License for more details.
6887 The GNU General Public License should be included with
6888 this file. If not, you can view it at
6889 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
6890 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59
6891 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
6893 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
6894 Revision 1.115 2002/05/16 16:25:00 oes
6895 Extended the Filter File chapter & minor fixes
6897 Revision 1.114 2002/05/16 09:42:50 oes
6898 More ulink->link, added some hints to Quickstart section
6900 Revision 1.113 2002/05/15 21:07:25 oes
6901 Extended and further commented the example actions files
6903 Revision 1.112 2002/05/15 03:57:14 hal9
6904 Spell check. A few minor edits here and there for better syntax and
6907 Revision 1.111 2002/05/14 23:01:36 oes
6910 Revision 1.110 2002/05/14 19:10:45 oes
6911 Restored alphabetical order of actions
6913 Revision 1.109 2002/05/14 17:23:11 oes
6914 Renamed the prevent-*-cookies actions, extended aliases section and moved it before the example AFs
6916 Revision 1.108 2002/05/14 15:29:12 oes
6917 Completed proofreading the actions chapter
6919 Revision 1.107 2002/05/12 03:20:41 hal9
6920 Small clarifications for 127.0.0.1 vs localhost for listen-address since this
6921 apparently an important distinction for some OS's.
6923 Revision 1.106 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
6924 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
6925 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
6926 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
6928 Revision 1.105 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
6929 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
6931 Revision 1.104 2002/05/04 08:44:45 swa
6934 Revision 1.103 2002/05/04 00:40:53 hal9
6935 -Remove the TOC first page kludge. It's fixed proper now in ldp.dsl.in.
6936 -Some minor additions to Quickstart.
6938 Revision 1.102 2002/05/03 17:46:00 oes
6939 Further proofread & reactivated short build instructions
6941 Revision 1.101 2002/05/03 03:58:30 hal9
6942 Move the user-manual config directive to top of section. Add note about
6943 Privoxy needing read permissions for configs, and write for logs.
6945 Revision 1.100 2002/04/29 03:05:55 hal9
6946 Add clarification on differences of new actions files.
6948 Revision 1.99 2002/04/28 16:59:05 swa
6949 more structure in starting section
6951 Revision 1.98 2002/04/28 05:43:59 hal9
6952 This is the break up of configuration.html into multiple files. This
6953 will probably break links elsewhere :(
6955 Revision 1.97 2002/04/27 21:04:42 hal9
6956 -Rewrite of Actions File example.
6957 -Add section for user-manual directive in config.
6959 Revision 1.96 2002/04/27 05:32:00 hal9
6960 -Add short section to Filter Files to tie in with +filter action.
6961 -Start rewrite of examples in Actions Examples (not finished).
6963 Revision 1.95 2002/04/26 17:23:29 swa
6964 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
6966 Revision 1.94 2002/04/26 05:24:36 hal9
6967 -Add most of Andreas suggestions to Chain of Events section.
6968 -A few other minor corrections and touch up.
6970 Revision 1.92 2002/04/25 18:55:13 hal9
6971 More catchups on new actions files, and new actions names.
6972 Other assorted cleanups, and minor modifications.
6974 Revision 1.91 2002/04/24 02:39:31 hal9
6975 Add 'Chain of Events' section.
6977 Revision 1.90 2002/04/23 21:41:25 hal9
6978 Linuxconf is deprecated on RH, substitute chkconfig.
6980 Revision 1.89 2002/04/23 21:05:28 oes
6981 Added hint for startup on Red Hat
6983 Revision 1.88 2002/04/23 05:37:54 hal9
6984 Add AmigaOS install stuff.
6986 Revision 1.87 2002/04/23 02:53:15 david__schmidt
6987 Updated OSX installation section
6988 Added a few English tweaks here an there
6990 Revision 1.86 2002/04/21 01:46:32 hal9
6991 Re-write actions section.
6993 Revision 1.85 2002/04/18 21:23:23 hal9
6994 Fix ugly typo (mine).
6996 Revision 1.84 2002/04/18 21:17:13 hal9
6997 Spell Redhat correctly (ie Red Hat). A few minor grammar corrections.
6999 Revision 1.83 2002/04/18 18:21:12 oes
7000 Added RPM install detail
7002 Revision 1.82 2002/04/18 12:04:50 oes
7005 Revision 1.81 2002/04/18 11:50:24 oes
7006 Extended Install section - needs fixing by packagers
7008 Revision 1.80 2002/04/18 10:45:19 oes
7009 Moved text to buildsource.sgml, renamed some filters, details
7011 Revision 1.79 2002/04/18 03:18:06 hal9
7012 Spellcheck, and minor touchups.
7014 Revision 1.78 2002/04/17 18:04:16 oes
7017 Revision 1.77 2002/04/17 13:51:23 oes
7018 Proofreading, part one
7020 Revision 1.76 2002/04/16 04:25:51 hal9
7021 -Added 'Note to Upgraders' and re-ordered the 'Quickstart' section.
7022 -Note about proxy may need requests to re-read config files.
7024 Revision 1.75 2002/04/12 02:08:48 david__schmidt
7025 Remove OS/2 building info... it is already in the developer-manual
7027 Revision 1.74 2002/04/11 00:54:38 hal9
7028 Add small section on submitting actions.
7030 Revision 1.73 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
7033 Revision 1.72 2002/04/10 04:06:19 hal9
7034 Added actions feedback to Bookmarklets section
7036 Revision 1.71 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
7037 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
7039 Revision 1.70 2002/04/08 20:53:56 swa
7042 Revision 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9
7043 -Add privoxy-man-page.sgml, for man page.
7044 -Add authors.sgml for AUTHORS (and p-authors.sgml)
7045 -Reworked various aspects of various docs.
7046 -Added additional comments to sub-docs.
7048 Revision 1.68 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
7049 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
7051 Revision 1.67 2002/04/04 17:27:57 swa
7052 more single file to be included at multiple points. make maintaining easier
7054 Revision 1.66 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
7055 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
7056 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
7057 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
7058 eventually be set by Makefile.
7059 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
7061 Revision 1.65 2002/04/03 19:52:07 swa
7062 enhance squid section due to user suggestion
7064 Revision 1.64 2002/04/03 03:53:43 hal9
7065 A few minor bug fixes, and touch ups. Ready for review.
7067 Revision 1.63 2002/04/01 16:24:49 hal9
7068 Define entities to include boilerplate text. See doc/source/*.
7070 Revision 1.62 2002/03/30 04:15:53 hal9
7071 - Fix privoxy.org/config links.
7072 - Paste in Bookmarklets from Toggle page.
7073 - Move Quickstart nearer top, and minor rework.
7075 Revision 1.61 2002/03/29 01:31:08 hal9
7078 Revision 1.60 2002/03/27 01:57:34 hal9
7079 Added more to Anatomy section.
7081 Revision 1.59 2002/03/27 00:54:33 hal9
7082 Touch up intro for new name.
7084 Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
7085 we have a new homepage!
7087 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
7088 A few minor catch ups with name change.
7090 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
7091 configure needs to be generated.
7093 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
7094 we are too lazy to make a block-built
7095 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
7097 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
7098 name change related issue.
7100 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
7101 name change. changed filenames.
7103 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
7106 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
7107 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
7108 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
7109 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
7110 comments and remarks to history untouched.
7112 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
7115 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
7116 New section in Appendix.
7118 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
7119 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
7121 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
7122 correct feedback channels
7124 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
7125 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
7127 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
7130 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
7131 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
7133 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
7134 Added imageblock{pattern}.
7136 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
7139 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
7140 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
7142 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
7143 provide correct feedback channels
7145 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
7146 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
7148 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
7149 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
7151 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
7152 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
7154 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
7155 Add new - - user option.
7157 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
7158 Added section on command line options.
7160 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
7161 Changed default port to 8118
7163 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
7164 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
7166 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
7167 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
7168 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
7171 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
7174 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
7175 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
7177 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
7178 Update OS/2 build section
7180 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
7181 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
7182 will work - no other changes are needed.
7184 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
7185 Added a very short section on Templates
7187 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
7188 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
7190 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
7191 Touch ups for *.action files.
7193 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
7196 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
7197 Updates for recent changes.
7199 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
7200 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
7202 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
7203 Correct 2 minor errors
7205 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
7206 *** empty log message ***
7208 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
7209 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
7211 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
7212 wrong url in documentation
7214 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
7215 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
7217 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
7220 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
7223 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
7226 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
7227 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
7229 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
7230 Some additions, and re-arranging.
7232 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
7235 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
7236 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
7238 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
7241 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
7242 source files for junkbuster documentation
7244 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
7245 first proposal of a structure.
7247 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
7248 docs should have an author.
7250 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
7251 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.
projects / privoxy.git / blob