3 Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Privoxy Developers
5 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 1.111 2002/05/14 23:01:36 oes Exp $
7 The user manual gives users information on how to install, configure and use
10 Privoxy is a web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for protecting
11 privacy, filtering web page content, managing cookies, controlling access, and
12 removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a
13 very flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and
14 tastes. Privoxy has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user
17 Privoxy is based on Internet Junkbuster (tm).
19 You can find the latest version of the user manual at http://www.privoxy.org/
20 user-manual/. Please see the Contact section on how to contact the developers.
22 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
33 2.1.1. Red Hat, SuSE RPMs and Conectiva
36 2.1.4. Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX
41 2.2. Building from Source
44 4. Quickstart to Using Privoxy
47 5.1. RedHat, Conectiva and Debian
50 5.4. Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others
54 5.8. Command Line Options
56 6. Privoxy Configuration
58 6.1. Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser
59 6.2. Configuration Files Overview
61 7. The Main Configuration File
63 7.1. Configuration and Log File Locations
73 7.2. Local Set-up Documentation
83 7.3.2. single-threaded
85 7.4. Access Control and Security
89 7.4.3. enable-remote-toggle
90 7.4.4. enable-edit-actions
91 7.4.5. ACLs: permit-access and deny-access
97 7.5.2. forward-socks4 and forward-socks4a
98 7.5.3. Advanced Forwarding Examples
100 7.6. Windows GUI Options
104 8.1. Finding the Right Mix
106 8.3. How Actions are Applied to URLs
109 8.4.1. The Domain Pattern
110 8.4.2. The Path Pattern
116 8.5.3. crunch-incoming-cookies
117 8.5.4. crunch-outgoing-cookies
118 8.5.5. deanimate-gifs
119 8.5.6. downgrade-http-version
120 8.5.7. fast-redirects
122 8.5.9. handle-as-image
123 8.5.10. hide-forwarded-for-headers
124 8.5.11. hide-from-header
125 8.5.12. hide-referrer
126 8.5.13. hide-user-agent
128 8.5.15. limit-connect
129 8.5.16. prevent-compression
130 8.5.17. send-vanilla-wafer
132 8.5.19. session-cookies-only
133 8.5.20. set-image-blocker
137 8.7. Sample Actions Files
141 9.1. The +filter Action
144 11. Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests
148 11.3. Request new features
149 11.4. Report ads or other filter problems
152 12. Privoxy Copyright, License and History
160 14.1. Regular Expressions
161 14.2. Privoxy's Internal Pages
165 14.3. Chain of Events
166 14.4. Anatomy of an Action
170 This documentation is included with the current beta version of Privoxy,
171 v.2.9.15, and is mostly complete at this point. The most up to date reference
172 for the time being is still the comments in the source files and in the
173 individual configuration files. Development of version 3.0 is currently nearing
174 completion, and includes many significant changes and enhancements over earlier
175 versions. The target release date for stable v3.0 is "soon" ;-).
177 Since this is a beta version, not all new features are well tested. This
178 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with CVS
179 sources). And there may be bugs, though hopefully not many!
181 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
185 In addition to Internet Junkbuster's traditional features of ad and banner
186 blocking and cookie management, Privoxy provides new features, some of them
187 currently under development:
189 * Integrated browser based configuration and control utility at http://
190 config.privoxy.org/ (shortcut: http://p.p/). Browser-based tracing of rule
191 and filter effects. Remote toggling.
193 * Web page content filtering (removes banners based on size, invisible
194 "web-bugs", JavaScript and HTML annoyances, pop-up windows, etc.)
196 * Modularized configuration that allows for standard settings and user
197 settings to reside in separate files, so that installing updated actions
198 files won't overwrite individual user settings.
200 * HTTP/1.1 compliant (but not all optional 1.1 features are supported).
202 * Support for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions in the configuration files,
203 and generally a more sophisticated and flexible configuration syntax over
206 * Improved cookie management features (e.g. session based cookies).
210 * Bypass many click-tracking scripts (avoids script redirection).
212 * Multi-threaded (POSIX and native threads).
214 * User-customizable HTML templates for all proxy-generated pages (e.g.
217 * Auto-detection and re-reading of config file changes.
219 * Improved signal handling, and a true daemon mode (Unix).
221 * Every feature now controllable on a per-site or per-location basis,
222 configuration more powerful and versatile over-all.
224 * Many smaller new features added, limitations and bugs removed, and security
227 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
231 Privoxy is available both in convenient pre-compiled packages for a wide range
232 of operating systems, and as raw source code. For most users, we recommend
233 using the packages, which can be downloaded from our Privoxy Project Page.
235 Note: If you have a previous Junkbuster or Privoxy installation on your system,
236 you will need to remove it. On some platforms, this may be done for you as part
237 of their installation procedure. (See below for your platform). In any case be
238 sure to backup your old configuration if it is valuable to you. See the note to
239 upgraders section below.
241 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
245 How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
247 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
249 2.1.1. Red Hat, SuSE RPMs and Conectiva
251 RPMs can be installed with rpm -Uvh privoxy-2.9.15-1.rpm, and will use /etc/
252 privoxy for the location of configuration files.
254 Note that on Red Hat, Privoxy will not be automatically started on system boot.
255 You will need to enable that using chkconfig, ntsysv, or similar methods. Note
256 that SuSE will automatically start Privoxy in the boot process.
258 If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM: rpm
259 --rebuild privoxy-2.9.15-1.src.rpm;. This will use your locally installed
260 libraries and RPM version.
262 Also note that if you have a Junkbuster RPM installed on your system, you need
263 to remove it first, because the packages conflict. Otherwise, RPM will try to
264 remove Junkbuster automatically, before installing Privoxy.
266 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
272 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
276 Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through the installation
277 process. You will find the configuration files in the same directory as you
278 installed Privoxy in. We do not use the registry of Windows.
280 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
282 2.1.4. Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX
284 Create a new directory, cd to it, then unzip and untar the archive. For the
285 most part, you'll have to figure out where things go. FIXME.
287 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
291 First, make sure that no previous installations of Junkbuster and / or Privoxy
292 are left on your system. You can do this by
294 Then, just double-click the WarpIN self-installing archive, which will guide
295 you through the installation process. A shadow of the Privoxy executable will
296 be placed in your startup folder so it will start automatically whenever OS/2
299 The directory you choose to install Privoxy into will contain all of the
302 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
306 Unzip the downloaded package (you can either double-click on the file in the
307 finder, or on the desktop if you downloaded it there). Then, double-click on
308 the package installer icon and follow the installation process. Privoxy will be
309 installed in the subdirectory /Applications/Privoxy.app. Privoxy will set
310 itself up to start automatically on system bring-up via /System/Library/
311 StartupItems/Privoxy.
313 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
317 Copy and then unpack the lha archive to a suitable location. All necessary
318 files will be installed into Privoxy directory, including all configuration and
319 log files. To uninstall, just remove this directory.
321 Start Privoxy (with RUN <>NIL:) in your startnet script (AmiTCP), in s:
322 user-startup (RoadShow), as startup program in your startup script (Genesis),
323 or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx). Privoxy will automatically quit when
324 you quit your TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack
325 may display that Privoxy is still running).
327 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
329 2.2. Building from Source
331 The most convenient way to obtain the Privoxy sources is to download the source
332 tarball from our project page.
334 If you like to live on the bleeding edge and are not afraid of using possibly
335 unstable development versions, you can check out the up-to-the-minute version
336 directly from the CVS repository or simply download the nightly CVS tarball.
338 To build Privoxy from source, autoconf, GNU make (gmake), and, of course, a C
339 compiler like gcc are required.
341 When building from a source tarball (either release version or nightly CVS
342 tarball), first unpack the source:
344 tar xzvf privoxy-2.9.15-beta-src* [.tgz or .tar.gz]
345 cd privoxy-2.9.15-beta
347 For retrieving the current CVS sources, you'll need CVS installed. Note that
348 sources from CVS are development quality, and may not be stable, or well
349 tested. To download CVS source:
351 cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa login
352 cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa co current
355 This will create a directory named current/, which will contain the source
358 Then, in either case, to build from unpacked tarball or CVS source:
362 ./configure # (--help to see options)
363 make # (the make from gnu, gmake for *BSD)
365 make -n install # (to see where all the files will go)
366 make install # (to really install)
368 If you have gnu make, you can have the first four steps automatically done for
373 in the freshly downloaded or unpacked source directory.
375 For more detailed instructions on how to build Redhat and SuSE RPMs, Windows
376 self-extracting installers, building on platforms with special requirements
377 etc, please consult the developer manual.
379 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
383 There are very significant changes from earlier Junkbuster versions to the
384 current Privoxy. The number, names, syntax, and purposes of configuration files
385 have substantially changed. Junkbuster 2.0.x configuration files will not
386 migrate, Junkbuster 2.9.x and Privoxy configurations will need to be ported.
387 The functionalities of the old blockfile, cookiefile and imagelist are now
388 combined into the "actions files". default.action, is the main actions file.
389 Local exceptions should best be put into user.action.
391 A "filter file" (typically default.filter) is new as of Privoxy 2.9.x, and
392 provides some of the new sophistication (explained below). config is much the
395 If upgrading from a 2.0.x version, you will have to use the new config files,
396 and possibly adapt any personal rules from your older files. When porting
397 personal rules over from the old blockfile to the new actions files, please
398 note that even the pattern syntax has changed. If upgrading from 2.9.x
399 development versions, it is still recommended to use the new configuration
402 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading:
404 * The default listening port is now 8118 due to a conflict with another
407 * Some installers may remove earlier versions completely. Save any important
410 * Privoxy is controllable with a web browser at the special URL: http://
411 config.privoxy.org/ (Shortcut: http://p.p/). Many aspects of configuration
412 can be done here, including temporarily disabling Privoxy.
414 * The primary configuration file for cookie management, ad and banner
415 blocking, and many other aspects of Privoxy configuration is in the actions
416 files. It is strongly recommended to become familiar with the new actions
417 concept below, before modifying these files. Locally defined rules should
420 * Some installers may not automatically start Privoxy after installation.
422 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
424 4. Quickstart to Using Privoxy
426 * If upgrading, please back up any configuration files. See the Note to
429 * Install Privoxy. See the Installation Section for platform specific
432 * Start Privoxy, if the installation program has not done this already. See
433 the section Starting Privoxy.
435 * Set your browser to use Privoxy as HTTP and HTTPS proxy by setting the
436 proxy configuration for address of 127.0.0.1 and port 8118. (Junkbuster and
437 earlier versions of Privoxy used port 8000.) See the section Starting
440 * Flush your browser's caches, to remove any cached ad images.
442 * Enjoy surfing with enhanced comfort and privacy. You may want to customize
443 the user.action file to personalize your new browsing experience. See the
444 Configuration section for more configuration options, and how to further
445 customize your installation.
447 * If you experience problems with sites that "misbehave", see the Anatomy of
448 an Action section in the Appendix.
450 * Please see the section Contacting the Developers on how to report bugs or
451 problems with websites or to get help.
453 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
457 Before launching Privoxy for the first time, you will want to configure your
458 browser(s) to use Privoxy as a HTTP and HTTPS proxy. The default is 127.0.0.1
459 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions used port
460 8000). This is the one configuration step that must be done!
462 With Netscape (and Mozilla), this can be set under Edit -> Preferences ->
463 Advanced -> Proxies -> HTTP Proxy. For Internet Explorer: Tools -> Internet
464 Properties -> Connections -> LAN Setting. Then, check "Use Proxy" and fill in
465 the appropriate info (Address: 127.0.0.1, Port: 8118). Include if HTTPS proxy
468 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
469 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. You are
470 now ready to start enjoying the benefits of using Privoxy!
472 Privoxy is typically started by specifying the main configuration file to be
473 used on the command line. If no configuration file is specified on the command
474 line, Privoxy will look for a file named config in the current directory.
475 Except on Win32 where it will try config.txt.
477 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
479 5.1. RedHat, Conectiva and Debian
481 We use a script. Note that RedHat does not start Privoxy upon booting per
482 default. It will use the file /etc/privoxy/config as its main configuration
483 file. FIXME: Debian??
485 # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
487 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
491 We use a script. It will use the file /etc/privoxy/config as its main
492 configuration file. Note that SuSE starts Privoxy upon booting your PC.
496 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
500 Click on the Privoxy Icon to start Privoxy. If no configuration file is
501 specified on the command line, Privoxy will look for a file named config.txt.
502 Note that Windows will automatically start Privoxy upon booting you PC.
504 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
506 5.4. Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others
508 Example Unix startup command:
510 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
512 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
518 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
524 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
530 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
532 5.8. Command Line Options
534 Privoxy may be invoked with the following command-line options:
538 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
542 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
546 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group leader, and
547 don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
551 On startup, write the process ID to FILE. Delete the FILE on exit. Failure
552 to create or delete the FILE is non-fatal. If no FILE option is given, no
553 PID file will be used. Unix only.
555 * --user USER[.GROUP]
557 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of USER, and if
558 included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the privileges are not sufficient to do
563 If no configfile is included on the command line, Privoxy will look for a
564 file named "config" in the current directory (except on Win32 where it will
565 look for "config.txt" instead). Specify full path to avoid confusion. If no
566 config file is found, Privoxy will fail to start.
568 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
570 6. Privoxy Configuration
572 All Privoxy configuration is stored in text files. These files can be edited
573 with a text editor. Many important aspects of Privoxy can also be controlled
574 easily with a web browser.
576 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
578 6.1. Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser
580 Privoxy's user interface can be reached through the special URL http://
581 config.privoxy.org/ (shortcut: http://p.p/), which is a built-in page and works
582 without Internet access. You will see the following section:
585 ? View & change the current configuration
586 ? View the source code version numbers
587 ? View the request headers.
588 ? Look up which actions apply to a URL and why
589 ? Toggle Privoxy on or off
592 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
593 actions files, which is where the ad, banner, cookie, and URL blocking magic is
594 configured as well as other advanced features of Privoxy. This is an easy way
595 to adjust various aspects of Privoxy configuration. The actions file, and other
596 configuration files, are explained in detail below.
598 "Toggle Privoxy On or Off" is handy for sites that might have problems with
599 your current actions and filters. You can in fact use it as a test to see
600 whether it is Privoxy causing the problem or not. Privoxy continues to run as a
601 proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e. Privoxy acts like a
602 normal forwarding proxy. There is even a toggle Bookmarklet offered, so that
603 you can toggle Privoxy with one click from your browser.
605 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
607 6.2. Configuration Files Overview
609 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in /etc/privoxy/
610 by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and AmigaOS these are all in the same
611 directory as the Privoxy executable. The name and number of configuration files
612 has changed from previous versions, and is subject to change as development
615 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though some
616 settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the principle
617 configuration files are:
619 * The main configuration file is named config on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and
620 AmigaOS and config.txt on Windows. This is a required file.
622 * default.action (the main actions file) is used to define which "actions"
623 relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups, content modification, cookie
624 handling etc should be applied by default. It also defines many exceptions
625 (both positive and negative) from this default set of actions that enable
626 Privoxy to selectively eliminate the junk, and only the junk, on as many
627 websites as possible.
629 Multiple actions files may be defined in config. These are processed in the
630 order they are defined. Local customizations and locally preferred
631 exceptions to the default policies as defined in default.action (which you
632 will most probably want to define sooner or later) are probably best
633 applied in user.action, where you can preserve them across upgrades.
634 standard.action is for Privoxy's internal use.
636 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from http://
637 config.privoxy.org/show-status (Shortcut: http://p.p/show-status) for the
638 various actions files.
640 * default.filter (the filter file) can be used to re-write the raw page
641 content, including viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript,
642 and whatever else lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only
643 pre-defined here; whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
645 All files use the "#" character to denote a comment (the rest of the line will
646 be ignored) and understand line continuation through placing a backslash ("\")
647 as the very last character in a line. If the # is preceded by a backslash, it
648 looses its special function. Placing a # in front of an otherwise valid
649 configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
652 The actions files and default.filter can use Perl style regular expressions for
655 After making any changes, there is no need to restart Privoxy in order for the
656 changes to take effect. Privoxy detects such changes automatically. Note,
657 however, that it may take one or two additional requests for the change to take
658 effect. When changing the listening address of Privoxy, these "wake up"
659 requests must obviously be sent to the old listening address.
661 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change. The
662 below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this. Also, what
663 constitutes a "default" setting, may change, so please check all your
664 configuration files on important issues.
666 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
668 7. The Main Configuration File
670 Again, the main configuration file is named config on Linux/Unix/BSD and OS/2,
671 and config.txt on Windows. Configuration lines consist of an initial keyword
672 followed by a list of values, all separated by whitespace (any number of spaces
673 or tabs). For example:
677 Assigns the value /etc/privoxy to the option confdir and thus indicates that
678 the configuration directory is named "/etc/privoxy/".
680 All options in the config file except for confdir and logdir are optional.
681 Watch out in the below description for what happens if you leave them unset.
683 The main config file controls all aspects of Privoxy's operation that are not
684 location dependent (i.e. they apply universally, no matter where you may be
687 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
689 7.1. Configuration and Log File Locations
691 Privoxy can (and normally does) use a number of other files for additional
692 configuration, help and logging. This section of the configuration file tells
693 Privoxy where to find those other files.
695 The user running Privoxy, must have read permission for all configuration
696 files, and write permission to any files that would be modified, such as log
699 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
705 The directory where the other configuration files are located
713 /etc/privoxy (Unix) or Privoxy installation dir (Windows)
721 No trailing "/", please
723 When development goes modular and multi-user, the blocker, filter, and
724 per-user config will be stored in subdirectories of "confdir". For now, the
725 configuration directory structure is flat, except for confdir/templates,
726 where the HTML templates for CGI output reside (e.g. Privoxy's 404 error
729 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
735 The directory where all logging takes place (i.e. where logfile and jarfile
744 /var/log/privoxy (Unix) or Privoxy installation dir (Windows)
752 No trailing "/", please
754 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
760 The actions file(s) to use
764 File name, relative to confdir, without the .action suffix
768 standard # Internal purposes, no editing recommended
770 default # Main actions file
772 user # User customizations
776 No actions are taken at all. Simple neutral proxying.
780 Multiple actionsfile lines are permitted, and are in fact recommended!
782 The default values include standard.action, which is used for internal
783 purposes and should be loaded, default.action, which is the "main" actions
784 file maintained by the developers, and user.action, where you can make your
787 Actions files are where all the per site and per URL configuration is done
788 for ad blocking, cookie management, privacy considerations, etc. There is
789 no point in using Privoxy without at least one actions file.
791 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
797 The filter file to use
801 File name, relative to confdir
805 default.filter (Unix) or default.filter.txt (Windows)
809 No textual content filtering takes place, i.e. all +filter{name} actions in
810 the actions files are turned neutral.
814 The "default.filter" file contains content modification rules that use
815 "regular expressions". These rules permit powerful changes on the content
816 of Web pages, e.g., you could disable your favorite JavaScript annoyances,
817 re-write the actual displayed text, or just have some fun replacing
818 "Microsoft" with "MicroSuck" wherever it appears on a Web page.
820 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
830 File name, relative to logdir
834 logfile (Unix) or privoxy.log (Windows)
838 No log file is used, all log messages go to the console (stderr).
842 The windows version will additionally log to the console.
844 The logfile is where all logging and error messages are written. The level
845 of detail and number of messages are set with the debug option (see below).
846 The logfile can be useful for tracking down a problem with Privoxy (e.g.,
847 it's not blocking an ad you think it should block) but in most cases you
848 probably will never look at it.
850 Your logfile will grow indefinitely, and you will probably want to
851 periodically remove it. On Unix systems, you can do this with a cron job
852 (see "man cron"). For Red Hat, a logrotate script has been included.
854 On SuSE Linux systems, you can place a line like "/var/log/privoxy.* +1024k
855 644 nobody.nogroup" in /etc/logfiles, with the effect that cron.daily will
856 automatically archive, gzip, and empty the log, when it exceeds 1M size.
858 Any log files must be writable by whatever user Privoxy is being run as
859 (default on UNIX, user id is "privoxy").
861 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
867 The file to store intercepted cookies in
871 File name, relative to logdir
875 jarfile (Unix) or privoxy.jar (Windows)
879 Intercepted cookies are not stored at all.
883 The jarfile may grow to ridiculous sizes over time.
885 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
891 The trust file to use
895 File name, relative to confdir
899 Unset (commented out). When activated: trust (Unix) or trust.txt (Windows)
903 The whole trust mechanism is turned off.
907 The trust mechanism is an experimental feature for building white-lists and
908 should be used with care. It is NOT recommended for the casual user.
910 If you specify a trust file, Privoxy will only allow access to sites that
911 are named in the trustfile. You can also mark sites as trusted referrers
912 (with +), with the effect that access to untrusted sites will be granted,
913 if a link from a trusted referrer was used. The link target will then be
914 added to the "trustfile". Possible applications include limiting Internet
917 If you use + operator in the trust file, it may grow considerably over
920 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
922 7.2. Local Set-up Documentation
924 If you intend to operate Privoxy for more users than just yourself, it might be
925 a good idea to let them know how to reach you, what you block and why you do
926 that, your policies, etc.
928 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
934 Location of the Privoxy User Manual.
938 A fully qualified URI
946 http://www.privoxy.org/version/user-manual/ will be used, where version is
951 The User Manual URI is used for help links from some of the internal CGI
952 pages. The manual itself is normally packaged with the binary
953 distributions, so you probably want to set this to a locally installed
954 copy. For multi-user setups, you could provide a copy on a local webserver
955 for all your users and use the corresponding URL here.
959 Unix, in local filesystem:
961 user-manual file:///usr/share/doc/privoxy-2.9.15/user-manual/
963 Any platform, on local webserver (called "local-webserver"):
965 user-manual http://local-webserver/privoxy-user-manual/
967 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
969 |-----------------------------------------------------------------|
970 |If set, this option should be the first option in the config |
971 |file, because it is used while the config file is being read. |
972 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
974 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
976 7.2.2. trust-info-url
980 A URL to be displayed in the error page that users will see if access to an
981 untrusted page is denied.
989 Two example URL are provided
993 No links are displayed on the "untrusted" error page.
997 The value of this option only matters if the experimental trust mechanism
998 has been activated. (See trustfile above.)
1000 If you use the trust mechanism, it is a good idea to write up some on-line
1001 documentation about your trust policy and to specify the URL(s) here. Use
1002 multiple times for multiple URLs.
1004 The URL(s) should be added to the trustfile as well, so users don't end up
1005 locked out from the information on why they were locked out in the first
1008 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1010 7.2.3. admin-address
1014 An email address to reach the proxy administrator.
1026 No email address is displayed on error pages and the CGI user interface.
1030 If both admin-address and proxy-info-url are unset, the whole "Local
1031 Privoxy Support" box on all generated pages will not be shown.
1033 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1035 7.2.4. proxy-info-url
1039 A URL to documentation about the local Privoxy setup, configuration or
1052 No link to local documentation is displayed on error pages and the CGI user
1057 If both admin-address and proxy-info-url are unset, the whole "Local
1058 Privoxy Support" box on all generated pages will not be shown.
1060 This URL shouldn't be blocked ;-)
1062 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1066 These options are mainly useful when tracing a problem. Note that you might
1067 also want to invoke Privoxy with the --no-daemon command line option when
1070 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1076 Key values that determine what information gets logged to the logfile.
1084 12289 (i.e.: URLs plus informational and warning messages)
1088 Nothing gets logged.
1092 The available debug levels are:
1094 debug 1 # show each GET/POST/CONNECT request
1095 debug 2 # show each connection status
1096 debug 4 # show I/O status
1097 debug 8 # show header parsing
1098 debug 16 # log all data into the logfile
1099 debug 32 # debug force feature
1100 debug 64 # debug regular expression filter
1101 debug 128 # debug fast redirects
1102 debug 256 # debug GIF de-animation
1103 debug 512 # Common Log Format
1104 debug 1024 # debug kill pop-ups
1105 debug 4096 # Startup banner and warnings.
1106 debug 8192 # Non-fatal errors
1108 To select multiple debug levels, you can either add them or use multiple
1111 A debug level of 1 is informative because it will show you each request as
1112 it happens. 1, 4096 and 8192 are highly recommended so that you will notice
1113 when things go wrong. The other levels are probably only of interest if you
1114 are hunting down a specific problem. They can produce a hell of an output
1117 The reporting of fatal errors (i.e. ones which crash Privoxy) is always on
1118 and cannot be disabled.
1120 If you want to use CLF (Common Log Format), you should set "debug 512" ONLY
1121 and not enable anything else.
1123 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1125 7.3.2. single-threaded
1129 Whether to run only one server thread
1141 Multi-threaded (or, where unavailable: forked) operation, i.e. the ability
1142 to serve multiple requests simultaneously.
1146 This option is only there for debug purposes and you should never need to
1147 use it. It will drastically reduce performance.
1149 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1151 7.4. Access Control and Security
1153 This section of the config file controls the security-relevant aspects of
1154 Privoxy's configuration.
1156 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1158 7.4.1. listen-address
1162 The IP address and TCP port on which Privoxy will listen for client
1175 Bind to 127.0.0.1 (localhost), port 8118. This is suitable and recommended
1176 for home users who run Privoxy on the same machine as their browser.
1180 You will need to configure your browser(s) to this proxy address and port.
1182 If you already have another service running on port 8118, or if you want to
1183 serve requests from other machines (e.g. on your local network) as well,
1184 you will need to override the default.
1186 If you leave out the IP address, Privoxy will bind to all interfaces
1187 (addresses) on your machine and may become reachable from the Internet. In
1188 that case, consider using access control lists (ACL's) (see "ACLs" below),
1193 Suppose you are running Privoxy on a machine which has the address
1194 192.168.0.1 on your local private network (192.168.0.0) and has another
1195 outside connection with a different address. You want it to serve requests
1198 listen-address 192.168.0.1:8118
1200 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1206 Initial state of "toggle" status
1218 Act as if toggled on
1222 If set to 0, Privoxy will start in "toggled off" mode, i.e. behave like a
1223 normal, content-neutral proxy where all ad blocking, filtering, etc are
1224 disabled. See enable-remote-toggle below. This is not really useful
1225 anymore, since toggling is much easier via the web interface than via
1226 editing the conf file.
1228 The windows version will only display the toggle icon in the system tray if
1229 this option is present.
1231 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1233 7.4.3. enable-remote-toggle
1237 Whether or not the web-based toggle feature may be used
1249 The web-based toggle feature is disabled.
1253 When toggled off, Privoxy acts like a normal, content-neutral proxy, i.e.
1254 it acts as if none of the actions applied to any URL.
1256 For the time being, access to the toggle feature can not be controlled
1257 separately by "ACLs" or HTTP authentication, so that everybody who can
1258 access Privoxy (see "ACLs" and listen-address above) can toggle it for all
1259 users. So this option is not recommended for multi-user environments with
1262 Note that you must have compiled Privoxy with support for this feature,
1263 otherwise this option has no effect.
1265 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1267 7.4.4. enable-edit-actions
1271 Whether or not the web-based actions file editor may be used
1283 The web-based actions file editor is disabled.
1287 For the time being, access to the editor can not be controlled separately
1288 by "ACLs" or HTTP authentication, so that everybody who can access Privoxy
1289 (see "ACLs" and listen-address above) can modify its configuration for all
1290 users. So this option is not recommended for multi-user environments with
1293 Note that you must have compiled Privoxy with support for this feature,
1294 otherwise this option has no effect.
1296 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1298 7.4.5. ACLs: permit-access and deny-access
1302 Who can access what.
1306 src_addr[/src_masklen] [dst_addr[/dst_masklen]]
1308 Where src_addr and dst_addr are IP addresses in dotted decimal notation or
1309 valid DNS names, and src_masklen and dst_masklen are subnet masks in CIDR
1310 notation, i.e. integer values from 2 to 30 representing the length (in
1311 bits) of the network address. The masks and the whole destination part are
1320 Don't restrict access further than implied by listen-address
1324 Access controls are included at the request of ISPs and systems
1325 administrators, and are not usually needed by individual users. For a
1326 typical home user, it will normally suffice to ensure that Privoxy only
1327 listens on the localhost (127.0.0.1) or internal (home) network address by
1328 means of the listen-address option.
1330 Please see the warnings in the FAQ that this proxy is not intended to be a
1331 substitute for a firewall or to encourage anyone to defer addressing basic
1332 security weaknesses.
1334 Multiple ACL lines are OK. If any ACLs are specified, then the Privoxy
1335 talks only to IP addresses that match at least one permit-access line and
1336 don't match any subsequent deny-access line. In other words, the last match
1337 wins, with the default being deny-access.
1339 If Privoxy is using a forwarder (see forward below) for a particular
1340 destination URL, the dst_addr that is examined is the address of the
1341 forwarder and NOT the address of the ultimate target. This is necessary
1342 because it may be impossible for the local Privoxy to determine the IP
1343 address of the ultimate target (that's often what gateways are used for).
1345 You should prefer using IP addresses over DNS names, because the address
1346 lookups take time. All DNS names must resolve! You can not use domain
1347 patterns like "*.org" or partial domain names. If a DNS name resolves to
1348 multiple IP addresses, only the first one is used.
1350 Denying access to particular sites by ACL may have undesired side effects
1351 if the site in question is hosted on a machine which also hosts other
1356 Explicitly define the default behavior if no ACL and listen-address are
1357 set: "localhost" is OK. The absence of a dst_addr implies that all
1358 destination addresses are OK:
1360 permit-access localhost
1362 Allow any host on the same class C subnet as www.privoxy.org access to
1363 nothing but www.example.com:
1365 permit-access www.privoxy.org/24 www.example.com/32
1367 Allow access from any host on the 26-bit subnet 192.168.45.64 to anywhere,
1368 with the exception that 192.168.45.73 may not access
1369 www.dirty-stuff.example.com:
1371 permit-access 192.168.45.64/26
1372 deny-access 192.168.45.73 www.dirty-stuff.example.com
1374 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1380 Maximum size of the buffer for content filtering.
1392 Use a 4MB (4096 KB) limit.
1396 For content filtering, i.e. the +filter and +deanimate-gif actions, it is
1397 necessary that Privoxy buffers the entire document body. This can be
1398 potentially dangerous, since a server could just keep sending data
1399 indefinitely and wait for your RAM to exhaust -- with nasty consequences.
1402 When a document buffer size reaches the buffer-limit, it is flushed to the
1403 client unfiltered and no further attempt to filter the rest of the document
1404 is made. Remember that there may be multiple threads running, which might
1405 require up to buffer-limit Kbytes each, unless you have enabled
1406 "single-threaded" above.
1408 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1412 This feature allows routing of HTTP requests through a chain of multiple
1413 proxies. It can be used to better protect privacy and confidentiality when
1414 accessing specific domains by routing requests to those domains through an
1415 anonymous public proxy (see e.g. http://www.multiproxy.org/anon_list.htm) Or to
1416 use a caching proxy to speed up browsing. Or chaining to a parent proxy may be
1417 necessary because the machine that Privoxy runs on has no direct Internet
1420 Also specified here are SOCKS proxies. Privoxy supports the SOCKS 4 and SOCKS
1423 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1429 To which parent HTTP proxy specific requests should be routed.
1433 target_domain[:port] http_parent[/port]
1435 Where target_domain is a domain name pattern (see the chapter on domain
1436 matching in the default.action file), http_parent is the address of the
1437 parent HTTP proxy as an IP addresses in dotted decimal notation or as a
1438 valid DNS name (or "." to denote "no forwarding", and the optional port
1439 parameters are TCP ports, i.e. integer values from 1 to 64535
1447 Don't use parent HTTP proxies.
1451 If http_parent is ".", then requests are not forwarded to another HTTP
1452 proxy but are made directly to the web servers.
1454 Multiple lines are OK, they are checked in sequence, and the last match
1459 Everything goes to an example anonymizing proxy, except SSL on port 443
1460 (which it doesn't handle):
1462 forward .* anon-proxy.example.org:8080
1465 Everything goes to our example ISP's caching proxy, except for requests to
1468 forward .*. caching-proxy.example-isp.net:8000
1469 forward .example-isp.net .
1471 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1473 7.5.2. forward-socks4 and forward-socks4a
1477 Through which SOCKS proxy (and to which parent HTTP proxy) specific
1478 requests should be routed.
1482 target_domain[:port] socks_proxy[/port] http_parent[/port]
1484 Where target_domain is a domain name pattern (see the chapter on domain
1485 matching in the default.action file), http_parent and socks_proxy are IP
1486 addresses in dotted decimal notation or valid DNS names (http_parent may be
1487 "." to denote "no HTTP forwarding"), and the optional port parameters are
1488 TCP ports, i.e. integer values from 1 to 64535
1496 Don't use SOCKS proxies.
1500 Multiple lines are OK, they are checked in sequence, and the last match
1503 The difference between forward-socks4 and forward-socks4a is that in the
1504 SOCKS 4A protocol, the DNS resolution of the target hostname happens on the
1505 SOCKS server, while in SOCKS 4 it happens locally.
1507 If http_parent is ".", then requests are not forwarded to another HTTP
1508 proxy but are made (HTTP-wise) directly to the web servers, albeit through
1513 From the company example.com, direct connections are made to all "internal"
1514 domains, but everything outbound goes through their ISP's proxy by way of
1515 example.com's corporate SOCKS 4A gateway to the Internet.
1517 forward-socks4a .*. socks-gw.example.com:1080 www-cache.example-isp.net:8080
1518 forward .example.com .
1520 A rule that uses a SOCKS 4 gateway for all destinations but no HTTP parent
1523 forward-socks4 .*. socks-gw.example.com:1080 .
1525 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1527 7.5.3. Advanced Forwarding Examples
1529 If you have links to multiple ISPs that provide various special content only to
1530 their subscribers, you can configure multiple Privoxies which have connections
1531 to the respective ISPs to act as forwarders to each other, so that your users
1532 can see the internal content of all ISPs.
1534 Assume that host-a has a PPP connection to isp-a.net. And host-b has a PPP
1535 connection to isp-b.net. Both run Privoxy. Their forwarding configuration can
1541 forward .isp-b.net host-b:8118
1546 forward .isp-a.net host-a:8118
1548 Now, your users can set their browser's proxy to use either host-a or host-b
1549 and be able to browse the internal content of both isp-a and isp-b.
1551 If you intend to chain Privoxy and squid locally, then chain as browser ->
1552 squid -> privoxy is the recommended way.
1554 Assuming that Privoxy and squid run on the same box, your squid configuration
1555 could then look like this:
1557 # Define Privoxy as parent proxy (without ICP)
1558 cache_peer 127.0.0.1 parent 8118 7 no-query
1560 # Define ACL for protocol FTP
1563 # Do not forward FTP requests to Privoxy
1564 always_direct allow ftp
1566 # Forward all the rest to Privoxy
1567 never_direct allow all
1569 You would then need to change your browser's proxy settings to squid's address
1570 and port. Squid normally uses port 3128. If unsure consult http_port in
1573 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1575 7.6. Windows GUI Options
1577 Privoxy has a number of options specific to the Windows GUI interface:
1579 If "activity-animation" is set to 1, the Privoxy icon will animate when
1580 "Privoxy" is active. To turn off, set to 0.
1582 activity-animation 1
1585 If "log-messages" is set to 1, Privoxy will log messages to the console window:
1590 If "log-buffer-size" is set to 1, the size of the log buffer, i.e. the amount
1591 of memory used for the log messages displayed in the console window, will be
1592 limited to "log-max-lines" (see below).
1594 Warning: Setting this to 0 will result in the buffer to grow infinitely and eat
1600 log-max-lines is the maximum number of lines held in the log buffer. See above.
1605 If "log-highlight-messages" is set to 1, Privoxy will highlight portions of the
1606 log messages with a bold-faced font:
1608 log-highlight-messages 1
1611 The font used in the console window:
1613 log-font-name Comic Sans MS
1616 Font size used in the console window:
1621 "show-on-task-bar" controls whether or not Privoxy will appear as a button on
1622 the Task bar when minimized:
1627 If "close-button-minimizes" is set to 1, the Windows close button will minimize
1628 Privoxy instead of closing the program (close with the exit option on the File
1631 close-button-minimizes 1
1634 The "hide-console" option is specific to the MS-Win console version of Privoxy.
1635 If this option is used, Privoxy will disconnect from and hide the command
1641 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1645 The actions files are used to define what actions Privoxy takes for which URLs,
1646 and thus determine how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP
1647 content and transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts
1648 thereof). There are three such files included with Privoxy (as of version
1649 2.9.15), with differing purposes:
1651 * standard.action - is used by the web based editor, to set various
1652 pre-defined sets of rules for the default actions section in
1653 default.action. These have increasing levels of aggressiveness and have no
1654 influence on your browsing unless you select them explicitly in the editor.
1655 It is not recommend to edit this file.
1657 * default.action - is the primary action file that sets the initial values
1658 for all actions. It is intended to provide a base level of functionality
1659 for Privoxy's array of features. So it is a set of broad rules that should
1660 work reasonably well for users everywhere. This is the file that the
1661 developers are keeping updated, and making available to users.
1663 * user.action - is intended to be for local site preferences and exceptions.
1664 As an example, if your ISP or your bank has specific requirements, and need
1665 special handling, this kind of thing should go here. This file will not be
1668 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
1669 file, and are processed in the order they are defined. The content of these can
1670 all be viewed and edited from http://config.privoxy.org/show-status.
1672 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use "aliases"
1673 in an actions file, you have to place the (optional) alias section at the top
1674 of that file. Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally
1675 to all sites and pages (be very careful with using such a universal set in
1676 user.action or any other actions file after default.action, because it will
1677 override the result from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
1678 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard user.action as an
1679 appendix to default.action, with the advantage that is a separate file, which
1680 makes preserving your personal settings across Privoxy upgrades easier.
1682 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or just
1683 some obnoxious URL that you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted or
1684 rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not written
1685 to disk), content can be modified, JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking fooled, and
1686 much more. See below for a complete list of actions.
1688 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1690 8.1. Finding the Right Mix
1692 Note that some actions, like cookie suppression or script disabling, may render
1693 some sites unusable that rely on these techniques to work properly. Finding the
1694 right mix of actions is not always easy and certainly a matter of personal
1695 taste. In general, it can be said that the more "aggressive" your default
1696 settings (in the top section of the actions file) are, the more exceptions for
1697 "trusted" sites you will have to make later. If, for example, you want to kill
1698 popup windows per default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for
1699 sites that you regularly use and that require popups for actually useful
1700 content, like maybe your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
1702 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
1703 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
1704 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
1705 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again
1708 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1712 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by using our
1713 browser-based editor, which can be reached from http://config.privoxy.org/
1714 show-status. The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single
1715 feature on a per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults
1716 like "Cautious", "Medium" or "Advanced".
1718 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit
1719 the the actions files. Look at default.action which is richly commented.
1721 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1723 8.3. How Actions are Applied to URLs
1725 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections, like the "
1726 alias" sections which will be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on
1727 regular sections: They have a heading line (often split up to multiple lines
1728 for readability) which consist of a list of actions, separated by whitespace
1729 and enclosed in curly braces. Below that, there is a list of URL patterns, each
1732 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
1733 compared to all patterns in each action file file. Every time it matches, the
1734 list of applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated, using the
1735 heading of the section in which the pattern is located. If multiple matches for
1736 the same URL set the same action differently, the last match wins. If not, the
1737 effects are aggregated (e.g. a URL might match both the "+handle-as-image" and
1740 You can trace this process for any given URL by visiting http://
1741 config.privoxy.org/show-url-info.
1743 More detail on this is provided in the Appendix, Anatomy of an Action.
1745 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1749 Generally, a pattern has the form <domain>/<path>, where both the <domain> and
1750 <path> are optional. (This is why the pattern / matches all URLs).
1754 is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to www.example.com,
1755 regardless of which document on that server is requested.
1759 means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing / may be
1762 www.example.com/index.html
1764 matches only the single document /index.html on www.example.com.
1768 matches the document /index.html, regardless of the domain, i.e. on any web
1773 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and there
1774 is no top-level domain called .html.
1776 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1778 8.4.1. The Domain Pattern
1780 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the domain
1781 starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end. For example:
1785 matches any domain that ENDS in .example.com
1789 matches any domain that STARTS with www.
1793 matches any domain that CONTAINS .example. (Correctly speaking: It matches
1794 any FQDN that contains example as a domain.)
1796 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
1797 themselves. They work pretty similar to shell wild-cards: "*" stands for zero
1798 or more arbitrary characters, "?" stands for any single character, you can
1799 define character classes in square brackets and all of that can be freely
1804 matches "adserver.example.com", "ads.example.com", etc but not
1809 matches all of the above, and then some.
1813 matches www.ipix.com, pictures.epix.com, a.b.c.d.e.upix.com etc.
1815 www[1-9a-ez].example.c*
1817 matches www1.example.com, www4.example.cc, wwwd.example.cy,
1818 wwwz.example.com etc., but not wwww.example.com.
1820 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1822 8.4.2. The Path Pattern
1824 Privoxy uses Perl compatible regular expressions (through the PCRE library) for
1827 There is an Appendix with a brief quick-start into regular expressions, and
1828 full (very technical) documentation on PCRE regex syntax is available on-line
1829 at http://www.pcre.org/man.txt. You might also find the Perl man page on
1830 regular expressions (man perlre) useful, which is available on-line at http://
1831 www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html.
1833 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the "/", i.e. it
1834 matches as if it would start with a "^" (regular expression speak for the
1835 beginning of a line).
1837 Please also note that matching in the path is case INSENSITIVE by default, but
1838 you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the "(?
1839 -i)" switch: www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.* will match only documents whose
1840 path starts with PaTtErN in exactly this capitalization.
1842 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1846 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
1847 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a "+", and
1848 turned off if preceded with a "-". So a +action means "do that action", e.g.
1849 +block means "please block URLs that match the following patterns", and -block
1850 means "don't block URLs that match the following patterns, even if +block
1851 previously applied."
1853 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces
1854 and separated by whitespace, like in {+some-action -some-other-action
1855 {some-parameter}}, followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which
1856 they apply. Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up
1857 a section of the actions file.
1859 There are three classes of actions:
1861 * Boolean, i.e the action can only be "enabled" or "disabled". Syntax:
1863 +name # enable action name
1864 -name # disable action name
1868 * Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of
1871 +name{param} # enable action and set parameter to param,
1872 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
1873 -name # disable action. The parameter can be omitted
1875 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized
1876 action, the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are
1879 Example: +hide-user-agent{ Mozilla 1.0 }
1881 * Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions, but they behave
1882 differently: If the action applies multiple times to the same URL, but with
1883 different parameters, all the parameters from all matches are remembered.
1884 This is used for actions that can be executed for the same request
1885 repeatedly, like adding multiple headers, or filtering through multiple
1888 +name{param} # enable action and add param to the list of parameters
1889 -name{param} # remove the parameter param from the list of parameters
1890 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
1891 -name # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list
1893 Examples: +add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text} and +filter{html-annoyances}
1895 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no "actions" are taken. So in this
1896 case Privoxy would just be a normal, non-blocking, non-anonymizing proxy. You
1897 must specifically enable the privacy and blocking features you need (although
1898 the provided default actions files will give a good starting point).
1900 Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. So exceptions to any rules
1901 you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or in a file that is
1902 processed later when using multiple actions files). For multi-valued actions,
1903 the actions are applied in the order they are specified. Actions files are
1904 processed in the order they are defined in config (the default installation has
1905 three actions files). It also quite possible for any given URL pattern to match
1906 more than one pattern and thus more than one set of actions!
1908 The list of valid Privoxy actions are:
1910 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1916 Confuse log analysis, custom applications
1920 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
1928 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not
1929 checked. It is recommended that you use the "X-" prefix for custom headers.
1933 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
1934 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
1935 "HTTP headers" are, you definitely don't need to worry about this one.
1939 +add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}
1941 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1947 Block ads or other obnoxious content
1951 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the
1952 requests are not forwarded to the remote server, but answered locally with
1953 a substitute page or image, as determined by the handle-as-image and
1954 set-image-blocker actions.
1966 Privoxy sends a special "BLOCKED" page for requests to blocked pages. This
1967 page contains links to find out why the request was blocked, and a
1968 click-through to the blocked content (the latter only if compiled with the
1969 force feature enabled). The "BLOCKED" page adapts to the available screen
1970 space -- it displays full-blown if space allows, or miniaturized and
1971 text-only if loaded into a small frame or window. If you are using Privoxy
1972 right now, you can take a look at the "BLOCKED" page.
1974 A very important exception occurs if both block and handle-as-image, apply
1975 to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
1976 set-image-blocker (see below) also applies, the type of image will be
1977 determined by its parameter, if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is
1980 It is important to understand this process, in order to understand how
1981 Privoxy deals with ads and other unwanted content.
1983 The filter action can perform a very similar task, by "blocking" banner
1984 images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
1985 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
1986 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse
1989 Example usage (section):
1991 {+block} # Block and replace with "blocked" page
1992 .nasty-stuff.example.com
1994 {+block +handle-as-image} # Block and replace with image
1998 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2000 8.5.3. crunch-incoming-cookies
2004 Prevent the web server from setting any cookies on your system
2008 Deletes any "Set-Cookie:" HTTP headers from server replies.
2020 This action is only concerned with incoming cookies. For outgoing cookies,
2021 use crunch-outgoing-cookies. Use both to disable cookies completely.
2023 It makes no sense at all to use this action in conjunction with the
2024 session-cookies-only action, since it would prevent the session cookies
2029 +crunch-incoming-cookies
2031 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2033 8.5.4. crunch-outgoing-cookies
2037 Prevent the web server from reading any cookies from your system
2041 Deletes any "Cookie:" HTTP headers from client requests.
2053 This action is only concerned with outgoing cookies. For incoming cookies,
2054 use crunch-incoming-cookies. Use both to disable cookies completely.
2056 It makes no sense at all to use this action in conjunction with the
2057 session-cookies-only action, since it would prevent the session cookies
2062 +crunch-outgoing-cookies
2064 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2066 8.5.5. deanimate-gifs
2070 Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.
2074 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
2086 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
2087 the option "first" is given, the first frame of the animation is used as
2088 the replacement. If "last" is given, the last frame of the animation is
2089 used instead, which probably makes more sense for most banner animations,
2090 but also has the risk of not showing the entire last frame (if it is only a
2091 delta to an earlier frame).
2093 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
2094 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
2099 +deanimate-gifs{last}
2101 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2103 8.5.6. downgrade-http-version
2107 Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1
2111 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
2123 This is a left-over from the time when Privoxy didn't support important
2124 HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the unlikely case that you
2125 experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server out there. Not all
2126 (optional) HTTP/1.1 features are supported yet, so there is a chance you
2127 might need this action.
2129 Example usage (section):
2131 {+downgrade-http-version}
2132 problem-host.example.com
2134 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2136 8.5.7. fast-redirects
2140 Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links
2144 Cut off all but the last valid URL from requests.
2156 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
2157 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
2158 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs resulting
2159 from this scheme typically look like: http://some.place/click-tracker.cgi?
2160 target=http://some.where.else.
2162 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
2163 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
2164 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go to.
2165 Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your browser
2166 ask the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds the
2169 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
2170 It is likely to break some sites. You should expect to need possibly many
2171 exceptions to this action, if it is enabled by default in default.action.
2172 Some sites just don't work without it.
2178 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2184 Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
2185 do fun text replacements, etc.
2189 Text documents, including HTML and JavaScript, to which this action
2190 applies, are filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular expression
2191 based substitutions.
2199 The name of a filter, as defined in the filter file (typically
2200 default.filter, set by the filterfile option in the config file)
2204 For your convenience, there are a bunch of pre-defined filters available in
2205 the distribution filter file that you can use. See the example below for a
2208 This is potentially a very powerful feature! But "rolling your own" filters
2209 requires a knowledge of regular expressions and HTML.
2211 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to slow
2212 down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has passed
2213 the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way since the
2214 page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more noticeable
2215 on slower connections.
2217 At this time, Privoxy cannot (yet!) uncompress compressed documents. If you
2218 want filtering to work on all documents, even those that would normally be
2219 sent compressed, use the prevent-compression action in conjunction with
2222 Filtering can achieve some of the effects as the block action, i.e. it can
2223 be used to block ads and banners.
2225 Feedback with suggestions for new or improved filters is particularly
2228 Example usage (with filters from the distribution default.filter file):
2230 +filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse.
2232 +filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
2234 +filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size (very efficient!)
2236 +filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come sneaking in the HTML or JS content
2238 +filter{popups} # Kill all popups in JS and HTML
2240 +filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)
2242 +filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!
2244 +filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizeable
2246 +filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups)
2248 +filter{nimda} # Remove Nimda (virus) code.
2250 +filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects
2252 +filter{crude-parental} # Kill all web pages that contain the words "sex" or "warez"
2254 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2256 8.5.9. handle-as-image
2260 Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images if they
2265 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as
2266 images. If the block action also applies, the presence or absence of this
2267 mark decides whether an HTML "blocked" page, or a replacement image (as
2268 determined by the set-image-blocker action) will be sent to the client as a
2269 substitute for the blocked content.
2281 The below generic example section is actually part of default.action. It
2282 marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and
2283 should be left intact.
2285 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in
2286 conjunction with block, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
2287 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
2289 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For
2290 instance, (inline) ad frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't
2291 display properly. Forcing handle-as-image in this situation will not
2292 replace the ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
2294 Example usage (sections):
2296 # Generic image extensions:
2299 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
2301 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
2302 # blocked as images:
2304 {+block +handle-as-image}
2305 some.nasty-banner-server.com/junk.cgi?output=trash
2307 # Banner source! Who cares if they also have non-image content?
2310 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2312 8.5.10. hide-forwarded-for-headers
2316 Improve privacy by hiding the true source of the request
2320 Deletes any existing "X-Forwarded-for:" HTTP header from client requests,
2321 and prevents adding a new one.
2333 It is fairly safe to leave this on.
2335 This action is scheduled for improvement: It should be able to generate
2336 forged "X-Forwarded-for:" headers using random IP addresses from a
2337 specified network, to make successive requests from the same client look
2338 like requests from a pool of different users sharing the same proxy.
2342 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
2344 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2346 8.5.11. hide-from-header
2350 Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address
2354 Deletes any existing "From:" HTTP header, or replaces it with the specified
2363 Keyword: "block", or any user defined value.
2367 The keyword "block" will completely remove the header (not to be confused
2368 with the block action).
2370 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
2371 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
2372 is actually used by a real person.
2374 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send "From:"
2379 +hide-from-header{block}
2383 +hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}
2385 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2387 8.5.12. hide-referrer
2391 Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site
2395 Deletes the "Referer:" (sic) HTTP header from the client request, or
2396 replaces it with a forged one.
2404 + "block" to delete the header completely.
2406 + "forge" to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are
2409 + Any other string to set a user defined referrer.
2413 "forge" is the preferred option here, since some servers will not send
2414 images back otherwise, in an attempt to prevent their valuable content from
2415 being embedded elsewhere (and hence, without being surrounded by their
2418 hide-referer is an alternate spelling of hide-referrer and the two can be
2419 can be freely substituted with each other. ("referrer" is the correct
2420 English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it requires it
2421 to be spelled as "referer".)
2425 +hide-referrer{forge}
2429 +hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}
2431 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2433 8.5.13. hide-user-agent
2437 Conceal your type of browser and client operating system
2441 Replaces the value of the "User-Agent:" HTTP header in client requests with
2442 the specified value.
2450 Any user-defined string.
2454 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
2456 |-----------------------------------------------------------------|
2457 |This breaks many web sites that depend on looking at this header |
2458 |in order to customize their content for different browsers |
2459 |(which, by the way, is NOT a smart way to do that!). |
2460 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
2462 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
2463 browsers will access the same Privoxy is not recommended. In single-user,
2464 single-browser setups, you might use it to delete your OS version
2465 information from the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known
2466 bugs for your OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to
2467 access sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
2468 reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not let Mozilla
2469 enter, yet forging to a Netscape 6.1 user-agent works just fine. (Must be
2470 just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
2472 This action is scheduled for improvement.
2476 +hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}
2478 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2484 Eliminate those annoying pop-up windows
2488 While loading the document, replace JavaScript code that opens pop-up
2489 windows with (syntactically neutral) dummy code on the fly.
2501 This action is easily confused with the built-in, hardwired filter action,
2502 but there are important differences: For kill-popups, the document need not
2503 be buffered, so it can be incrementally rendered while downloading. But
2504 kill-popups doesn't catch as many pop-ups as filter{popups} does.
2506 Think of it as a fast and efficient replacement for a filter that you can
2507 use if you don't want any filtering at all. Note that it doesn't make sense
2508 to combine it with any filter action, since as soon as one filter applies,
2509 the whole document needs to be buffered anyway, which destroys the
2510 advantage of the kill-popups action over it's filter equivalent.
2512 Killing all pop-ups is a dangerous business. Many shops and banks rely on
2513 pop-ups to display forms, shopping carts etc, and killing only the unwanted
2514 pop-ups would require artificial intelligence in Privoxy. If the only kind
2515 of pop-ups that you want to kill are exit consoles (those really nasty
2516 windows that appear when you close an other one), you might want to use
2517 filter{js-annoyances} instead.
2523 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2525 8.5.15. limit-connect
2529 Prevent abuse of Privoxy as a TCP proxy relay
2533 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
2541 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes,
2542 with the minimum defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
2546 By default, i.e. if no limit-connect action applies, Privoxy only allows
2547 HTTP CONNECT requests to port 443 (the standard, secure HTTPS port). Use
2548 limit-connect if more fine-grained control is desired for some or all
2551 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
2552 ("https://" URLs) through proxies. It works very simply: the proxy connects
2553 to the server on the specified port, and then short-circuits its
2554 connections to the client and to the remote server. This can be a big
2555 security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can be abused as TCP relays
2558 If you don't know what any of this means, there probably is no reason to
2559 change this one, since the default is already very restrictive.
2563 +limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need not be specified.
2564 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
2565 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
2566 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK (gaping security hole!)
2568 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2570 8.5.16. prevent-compression
2574 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be passed
2579 Adds a header to the request that asks for uncompressed transfer.
2591 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which is
2592 generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But for the filter,
2593 deanimate-gifs and kill-popups actions to work, Privoxy needs access to the
2594 uncompressed data. Unfortunately, Privoxy can't yet(!) uncompress, filter,
2595 and re-compress the content on the fly. So if you want to ensure that all
2596 websites, including those that normally compress, can be filtered, you need
2599 This will slow down transfers from those websites, though. If you use any
2600 of the above-mentioned actions, you will typically want to use
2601 prevent-compression in conjunction with them.
2603 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for
2604 uncompressed documents correctly (they send an empty document body). If you
2605 use prevent-compression per default, you'll have to add exceptions for
2606 those sites. See the example for how to do that.
2608 Example usage (sections):
2612 {+prevent-compression}
2615 # Make exceptions for ill sites:
2617 {-prevent-compression}
2619 www.pclinuxonline.com
2621 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2623 8.5.17. send-vanilla-wafer
2627 Feed log analysis scripts with useless data.
2631 Sends a cookie with each request stating that you do not accept any
2632 copyright on cookies sent to you, and asking the site operator not to track
2645 The vanilla wafer is a (relatively) unique header and could conceivably be
2648 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
2654 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2660 Send custom cookies or feed log analysis scripts with even more useless
2665 Sends a custom, user-defined cookie with each request.
2673 A string of the form "name=value".
2677 Being multi-valued, multiple instances of this action can apply to the same
2678 request, resulting in multiple cookies being sent.
2680 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
2682 Example usage (section):
2684 {+send-wafer{UsingPrivoxy=true}}
2685 my-internal-testing-server.void
2687 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2689 8.5.19. session-cookies-only
2693 Allow only temporary "session" cookies (for the current browser session
2698 Deletes the "expires" field from "Set-Cookie:" server headers. Most
2699 browsers will not store such cookies permanently and forget them in between
2712 This is less strict than crunch-incoming-cookies / crunch-outgoing-cookies
2713 and allows you to browse websites that insist or rely on setting cookies,
2714 without compromising your privacy too badly.
2716 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed
2717 by session-cookies-only and will forget about them between sessions. This
2718 makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require
2719 cookies so that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned
2720 on for all sites, and is the recommended setting.
2722 It makes no sense at all to use session-cookies-only together with
2723 crunch-incoming-cookies or crunch-outgoing-cookies. If you do, cookies will
2726 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an
2727 "expires" field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out
2732 +session-cookies-only
2734 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2736 8.5.20. set-image-blocker
2740 Choose the replacement for blocked images
2744 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If both block and
2745 handle-as-image also apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an
2746 image, then the parameter of this action decides what will be sent as a
2755 + "pattern" to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is
2756 visually decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners
2759 + "blank" to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners
2760 disappear completely, but makes it hard to detect where Privoxy has
2761 blocked images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if
2762 Privoxy has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
2764 + "target-url" to send a redirect to target-url. You can redirect to any
2765 image anywhere, even in your local filesystem (via "file:///" URL).
2767 A good application of redirects is to use special Privoxy-built-in
2768 URLs, which send the built-in images, as target-url. This has the same
2769 visual effect as specifying "blank" or "pattern" in the first place,
2770 but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of
2771 requesting it over and over again.
2775 The URLs for the built-in images are "http://config.privoxy.org/
2776 send-banner?type=type", where type is either "blank" or "pattern".
2778 There is a third (advanced) type, called "auto". It is NOT to be used in
2779 set-image-blocker, but meant for use from filters. Auto will select the
2780 type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an
2787 +set-image-blocker{pattern}
2789 Redirect to the BSD devil:
2791 +set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}
2793 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
2795 +set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}
2797 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2801 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
2802 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways a site
2803 designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header content, and other
2804 criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard and fast rules for all
2805 sites. See the Appendix for a brief example on troubleshooting actions.
2807 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2811 Custom "actions", known to Privoxy as "aliases", can be defined by combining
2812 other actions. These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
2813 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab, "=", "{"
2814 and "}", but we strongly recommend that you only use "a" to "z", "0" to "9",
2815 "+", and "-". Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start
2816 with a "+" or "-" sign, since they are merely textually expanded.
2818 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they must be defined in a
2819 special section at the top of the file! And there can only be one such section
2820 per actions file. Each actions file may have its own alias section, and the
2821 aliases defined in it are only visible within that file.
2823 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
2824 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
2825 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called "shop",
2826 you can later change your policy on shops in one place, and your changes will
2827 take effect everywhere in the actions file where the "shop" alias is used.
2828 Calling aliases by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
2830 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though: Privoxy's
2831 built-in web-based action file editor honors aliases when reading the actions
2832 files, but it expands them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are
2833 of course preserved, but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections
2834 that use aliases with it. This is likely to change in future versions of
2837 Now let's define some aliases...
2839 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
2841 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
2842 # must be at the top of the actions file!
2846 # These aliases just save typing later:
2848 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
2849 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
2850 +imageblock = +block +handle-as-image
2852 # These aliases define combinations of actions
2853 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
2855 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referer -kill-popups
2856 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -fast-redirects
2858 # Aliases defined from other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
2860 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
2861 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies
2863 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
2864 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
2865 up for the "/" pattern):
2867 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
2868 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
2871 .office.microsoft.com
2872 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
2876 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
2880 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
2883 # These shops require pop-ups:
2885 {shop -kill-popups -filter{popups}}
2889 Aliases like "shop" and "fragile" are often used for "problem" sites that
2890 require some actions to be disabled in order to function properly.
2892 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2894 8.7. Sample Actions Files
2896 Remember that the meaning of each action is reversed by preceding the action
2897 with a "-", in place of the "+". Also, that some actions are turned on in the
2898 default section of the actions file, and require little to no additional
2899 configuration. These are just "on".
2901 But, other actions that are turned on in the default section do typically
2902 require exceptions to be listed in the latter sections of one of our actions
2903 file. For instance, by default no URLs are "blocked" (i.e. in the default
2904 definitions of default.action). We need exceptions to this in order to enable
2905 ad blocking in the lower sections. But we need to be very selective about what
2906 we do block. Thus, the default is "off" for blocking.
2908 Below is a liberally commented sample default.action file to demonstrate how
2909 all the pieces come together. And to show how exceptions to the default
2910 policies can be handled. This is followed by a brief user.action with similar
2913 # Sample default.action file <developers@privoxy.org>
2915 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
2917 for-privoxy-version=3.0
2920 ##########################################################################
2921 # Aliases must be defined *before* they are used. These are
2922 # easier to remember, and can combine several actions into one. Once
2923 # defined they can be used just like any built-in action -- but within
2924 # this file only! Aliases do not require a + or - sign.
2925 ##########################################################################
2928 # Some useful aliases.
2929 # Alias to turn off cookie handling, ie allow all cookies unmolested.
2931 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies \
2932 -session-cookies-only
2934 # Alias to both block and treat as if an image for ad blocking
2937 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
2939 # Shops should be allowed to set persistent cookies
2941 shop = -filter mercy-for-cookies
2943 # Fragile sites should receive minimum interference:
2945 fragile = -block -deanimate-gifs -fast-redirects -filter -hide-referer \
2946 mercy-for-cookies -kill-popups
2948 ##########################################################################
2949 # Matching starts here. Remember that at this time, all actions are
2950 # disabled, so we need to explicitly enable the ones we want.
2952 # We begin with "default" action settings, i.e. we define a set of actions
2953 # for a pattern ("/") that matches all URLs. This default set will be
2954 # applied to all requests as a start, and can be partly or wholly overridden
2955 # by later matches further down this file, or in user.action.
2957 # We will show all potential actions here whether they are enabled
2958 # or not. We could omit any disabled action if we wanted, since all
2959 # actions are 'off' by default anyway. Shown for completeness only.
2960 # Actions are enabled if preceded by a '+', otherwise they are disabled
2961 # (unless an alias has been defined without this).
2962 ##########################################################################
2967 -downgrade-http-version \
2969 +filter{html-annoyances} \
2970 +filter{js-annoyances} \
2971 -filter{content-cookies} \
2974 -filter{refresh-tags} \
2977 +filter{banners-by-size} \
2978 -filter{shockwave-flash} \
2979 -filter{crude-parental} \
2980 +hide-forwarded-for-headers \
2981 +hide-from-header{block} \
2985 +set-image-blocker{pattern} \
2987 +prevent-compression \
2988 -session-cookies-only \
2989 -crunch-outgoing-cookies \
2990 -crunch-incoming-cookies \
2992 -send-vanilla-wafer \
2995 / # forward slash will match *all* potential URL patterns.
2997 ##########################################################################
2998 # Default behavior is now set. Now we will define some exceptions to our
2999 # default action policies.
3000 ##########################################################################
3002 # These sites are very complex and require very minimal interference.
3003 # We'll disable most actions with our 'fragile' alias:
3005 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
3006 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
3009 # Shopping sites - not as fragile but require some special
3010 # handling. We still want to block ads, and we will allow
3011 # persistent cookies via the 'shop' alias:
3014 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
3019 # These sites require pop-ups too :( We'll combine our 'shop'
3020 # alias with two other actions into one rule to allow all popups.
3021 { shop -kill-popups -filter{popups} }
3026 # The 'Fast-redirects' action breaks some sites. Disable this action
3027 # for these known sensitive sites:
3030 edit.europe.yahoo.com
3032 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
3033 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
3037 # Define which file types will be treated as images. Important
3039 { +handle-as-image }
3040 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)
3043 # Now lets list some domains that are known ad generators. And
3044 # our alias that we use here will block these as well as force
3045 # them to be treated as images. This combination of actions is
3046 # important for ad blocking. What the browser will show instead is
3047 # determined by the setting of "+set-image-blocker"
3051 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
3052 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
3056 ad.*.doubleclick.net
3059 # These will just simply be blocked. They will generate the BLOCKED
3060 # banner page, if matched. Heavy use of wildcards and regular
3061 # expressions in this example. Enable block action:
3067 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
3068 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
3072 # The above block section will probably inadvertently catch some
3073 # sites we DO NOT want blocked via the wildcards and regular expressions.
3074 # Now let's set exceptions to the exceptions so the good guys get better
3075 # treatment. Disable block action:
3081 # Let's just trust all .edu top level domains.
3083 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv
3084 # We'll need to access to path names containing 'download'
3087 # 'adv' is for globalintersec and means advanced, not advertisement
3088 www.globalintersec.com/adv
3091 # Don't filter *anything* from our friends at sourceforge.
3092 # Notice we don't have to name the individual filter
3093 # identifiers -- we just turn them all off in one fell swoop.
3094 # Disable all filters for this one site:
3099 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies. The
3100 above would be a reasonable starting point for many situations. Now, we want to
3101 be more specific and have customized rules that are more suitable to our
3102 personal habits and preferences. These would be for narrowly defined situations
3103 like your ISP or your bank, and should be placed in user.action, which is
3104 parsed after all other actions files and should not be clobbered by upgrades.
3105 So any settings here, will have the last word and over-ride any previously
3108 Now a few examples of some things that one might do with a user.action file.
3110 # Sample user.action file.
3112 # Any aliases you want to use need to be re-defined here.
3113 # Alias to turn off cookie handling, ie allow all cookies unmolested.
3114 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies \
3115 -session-cookies-only
3117 # Fragile sites should have the minimum changes:
3118 fragile = -block -deanimate-gifs -fast-redirects -filter -hide-referer \
3119 -crunch-all-cookies -kill-popups
3121 # Allow persistent cookies for a few regular sites that we
3122 # trust via our above alias. These will be saved from one browser session
3123 # to the next. We are explicitly turning off any and all cookie handling,
3124 # even though the crunch-*-cookies settings were disabled in our above
3125 # default.action anyway. So cookies from these domains will come through
3127 { -crunch-all-cookies }
3134 # My ISP uses obnoxious self promoting images on many pages.
3135 # Nuke them :) Note that "+handle-as-image" need not be specified,
3136 # since all URLs ending in .gif will be tagged as images by the
3137 # general rules in default.action anyway.
3139 www.my-isp-example.com/logo[0-9].gif
3142 # Say the site where you do your home banking needs to open
3143 # popup windows, but you have chosen to kill popups by
3144 # default. This will allow it for your-example-bank.com:
3146 { -filter{popups} -kill-popups }
3147 .my-example-bank.com
3150 # This site is delicate, and requires kid-glove
3156 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3160 Any web page can be dynamically modified with the filter file. This
3161 modification can be removal, or re-writing, of any web page content, including
3162 tags and non-visible content. The default filter file is oddly enough
3163 default.filter, located in the config directory.
3165 This is potentially a very powerful feature, and requires knowledge of both
3166 "regular expression" and HTML in order create custom filters. But, there are a
3167 number of useful filters included with Privoxy for many common situations.
3169 The included example file is divided into sections. Each section begins with
3170 the FILTER keyword, followed by the identifier for that section, e.g. "FILTER:
3171 webbugs". Each section performs a similar type of filtering, such as
3174 This file uses regular expressions to alter or remove any string in the target
3175 page. The expressions can only operate on one line at a time. Some examples
3176 from the included default default.filter:
3178 Stop web pages from displaying annoying messages in the status bar by deleting
3181 FILTER: html-annoyances
3183 # New browser windows should be resizeable and have a location and status
3186 s/resizable="?(no|0)"?/resizable=1/ig s/noresize/yesresize/ig
3187 s/location="?(no|0)"?/location=1/ig s/status="?(no|0)"?/status=1/ig
3188 s/scrolling="?(no|0|Auto)"?/scrolling=1/ig
3189 s/menubar="?(no|0)"?/menubar=1/ig
3191 # The <BLINK> tag was a crime!
3193 s*<blink>|</blink>**ig
3197 #s/framespacing="?(no|0)"?//ig
3198 #s/margin(height|width)=[0-9]*//gi
3201 Just for kicks, replace any occurrence of "Microsoft" with "MicroSuck", and
3202 have a little fun with topical buzzwords:
3206 s/microsoft(?!.com)/MicroSuck/ig
3210 s/industry-leading|cutting-edge|award-winning/<font color=red><b>BINGO!</b></
3214 Kill those pesky little web-bugs:
3216 # webbugs: Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)
3219 s/<img\s+[^>]*?(width|height)\s*=\s*['"]?1\D[^>]*?(width|height)\s*=\s*['"]?1
3220 (\D[^>]*?)?>/<!-- Squished WebBug -->/sig
3223 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3225 9.1. The +filter Action
3227 Filters are enabled with the "+filter" action from within one of the actions
3228 files. "+filter" requires one parameter, which should match one of the section
3229 identifiers in the filter file itself. Example:
3231 +filter{html-annoyances}
3233 This would activate that particular filter. Similarly, "+filter" can be turned
3234 off for selected sites as: "-filter{html-annoyances}". Remember too, all
3235 actions are off by default, unless they are explicitly enabled in one of the
3238 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3242 When Privoxy displays one of its internal pages, such as a 404 Not Found error
3243 page (Privoxy must be running for link to work as intended), it uses the
3244 appropriate template. On Linux, BSD, and Unix, these are located in /etc/
3245 privoxy/templates by default. These may be customized, if desired.
3246 cgi-style.css is used to control the HTML attributes (fonts, etc).
3248 The default Blocked (Privoxy needs to be running for page to display) banner
3249 page with the bright red top banner, is called just "blocked". This may be
3250 customized or replaced with something else if desired (not recommended for the
3253 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3255 11. Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests
3257 We value your feedback. However, to provide you with the best support, please
3258 note the following sections.
3260 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3264 To get support, use the Sourceforge Support Forum:
3266 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=211118
3268 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3272 To submit bugs, use the Sourceforge Bug Forum:
3274 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=111118.
3276 Make sure that the bug has not already been submitted. Please try to verify
3277 that it is a Privoxy bug, and not a browser or site bug first. If you are using
3278 your own custom configuration, please try the stock configs to see if the
3279 problem is a configuration related bug. And if not using the latest development
3280 snapshot, please try the latest one. Or even better, CVS sources. Please be
3281 sure to include the Privoxy version, platform, browser, any pertinent log data,
3282 any other relevant details (please be specific) and, if possible, some way to
3285 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3287 11.3. Request new features
3289 To submit ideas on new features, use the Sourceforge feature request forum:
3291 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=361118&group_id=11118&func=browse.
3293 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3295 11.4. Report ads or other filter problems
3297 You can also send feedback on websites that Privoxy has problems with. Please
3298 bookmark the following link: "Privoxy - Submit Filter Feedback". Once you surf
3299 to a page with problems, use the bookmark to send us feedback. We will look
3300 into the issue as soon as possible.
3302 New, improved default.action files will occasionally be made available based on
3303 your feedback. These will be announced on the ijbswa-announce list.
3305 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3309 For any other issues, feel free to use the mailing lists:
3311 http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=11118.
3313 Anyone interested in actively participating in development and related
3314 discussions can also join the appropriate mailing list. Archives are available,
3315 too. See the page on Sourceforge.
3317 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3319 12. Privoxy Copyright, License and History
3321 Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Privoxy Developers <developers@privoxy.org>
3323 Some source code is based on code Copyright © 1997 by Anonymous Coders and
3324 Junkbusters, Inc. and licensed under the GNU General Public License.
3326 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3330 Privoxy is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
3331 terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, as published by the Free
3332 Software Foundation.
3334 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
3335 WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
3336 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details, which
3337 is available from the Free Software Foundation, Inc, 59 Temple Place - Suite
3338 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
3340 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
3341 this program; if not, write to the
3344 Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place - Suite 330
3345 Boston, MA 02111-1307
3348 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3352 Privoxy is evolved, and derived from, the Internet Junkbuster, with many
3353 improvements and enhancements over the original.
3355 Junkbuster was originally written by Anonymous Coders and Junkbusters
3356 Corporation, and was released as free open-source software under the GNU GPL.
3357 Stefan Waldherr made many improvements, and started the SourceForge project
3358 Privoxy to rekindle development. There are now several active developers
3359 contributing. The last stable release of Junkbuster was v2.0.2, which has now
3362 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3366 Other references and sites of interest to Privoxy users:
3368 http://www.privoxy.org/, The Privoxy Home page.
3370 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa, the Project Page for Privoxy on
3373 http://p.p/, access Privoxy from your browser. Alternately, http://
3374 config.privoxy.org may work in some situations where the first does not.
3376 http://p.p/, and select "Privoxy - Submit Filter Feedback" to submit "misses"
3379 http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/cookies.html
3381 http://www.waldherr.org/junkbuster/
3383 http://privacy.net/analyze/
3385 http://www.squid-cache.org/
3389 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3393 14.1. Regular Expressions
3395 Privoxy can use "regular expressions" in various config files. Assuming support
3396 for "pcre" (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions) is compiled in, which is the
3397 default. Such configuration directives do not require regular expressions, but
3398 they can be used to increase flexibility by matching a pattern with wild-cards
3401 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what "regular
3402 expressions" are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
3403 introduction only. A full explanation would require a book ;-)
3405 "Regular expressions" is a way of matching one character expression against
3406 another to see if it matches or not. One of the "expressions" is a literal
3407 string of readable characters (letter, numbers, etc), and the other is a
3408 complex string of literal characters combined with wild-cards, and other
3409 special characters, called meta-characters. The "meta-characters" have special
3410 meanings and are used to build the complex pattern to be matched against. Perl
3411 Compatible Regular Expressions is an enhanced form of the regular expression
3412 language with backward compatibility.
3414 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
3415 characters when listing files with the dir command in DOS. *.* matches all
3416 filenames. The "special" character here is the asterisk which matches any and
3417 all characters. We can be more specific and use ? to match just individual
3418 characters. So "dir file?.text" would match "file1.txt", "file2.txt", etc. We
3419 are pattern matching, using a similar technique to "regular expressions"!
3421 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
3422 powerful. There are many more "special characters" and ways of building complex
3423 patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones, and then some
3426 . - Matches any single character, e.g. "a", "A", "4", ":", or "@".
3428 ? - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE times. Either/
3431 + - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE times.
3433 * - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE times.
3435 \ - The "escape" character denotes that the following character should be taken
3436 literally. This is used where one of the special characters (e.g. ".") needs to
3437 be taken literally and not as a special meta-character. Example: "example
3438 \.com", makes sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded
3439 to its meta-character meaning of any single character).
3441 [] - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if any of the enclosed
3442 characters are encountered. For instance, "[0-9]" matches any numeric digit
3443 (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine this with "+" to match any
3444 digit one of more times: "[0-9]+".
3446 () - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression, or multiple
3449 | - The "bar" character works like an "or" conditional statement. A match is
3450 successful if the sub-expression on either side of "|" matches. As an example:
3451 "/(this|that) example/" uses grouping and the bar character and would match
3452 either "this example" or "that example", and nothing else.
3454 s/string1/string2/g - This is used to rewrite strings of text. "string1" is
3455 replaced by "string2" in this example. There must of course be a match on
3458 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
3459 Privoxy, and is a long way from a definitive list. This is enough to get us
3460 started with a few simple examples which may be more illuminating:
3462 /.*/banners/.* - A simple example that uses the common combination of "." and "
3463 *" to denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at
3464 all. So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression
3465 pattern (".*") another literal forward slash, the string "banners", another
3466 forward slash, and lastly another ".*". We are building a directory path here.
3467 This will match any file with the path that has a directory named "banners" in
3468 it. The ".*" matches any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward
3469 slashes, so it might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this
3470 could match: "/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif", or just "/
3471 banners/annoying.html", or almost an infinite number of other possible
3472 combinations, just so it has "banners" in the path somewhere.
3474 A now something a little more complex:
3476 /.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/ - We have several literal forward
3477 slashes again ("/"), so we are building another expression that is a file path
3478 statement. We have another ".*", so we are matching against any conceivable
3479 sub-path, just so it matches our expression. The only true literal that must
3480 match our pattern is adv, together with the forward slashes. What comes after
3481 the "adv" string is the interesting part.
3483 Remember the "?" means the preceding expression (either a literal character or
3484 anything grouped with "(...)" in this case) can exist or not, since this means
3485 either zero or one match. So "((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))" is optional, as
3486 are the individual sub-expressions: "(er)", "(ing|ements?)", and the "s". The "
3487 |" means "or". We have two of those. For instance, "(ing|ements?)", can expand
3488 to match either "ing" OR "ements?". What is being done here, is an attempt at
3489 matching as many variations of "advertisement", and similar, as possible. So
3490 this would expand to match just "adv", or "advert", or "adverts", or
3491 "advertising", or "advertisement", or "advertisements". You get the idea. But
3492 it would not match "advertizements" (with a "z"). We could fix that by changing
3493 our regular expression to: "/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/", which
3494 would then match either spelling.
3496 /.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g) - Again another path statement with forward
3497 slashes. Anything in the square brackets "[]" can be matched. This is using
3498 "0-9" as a shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the
3499 same as saying "0123456789". So any digit matches. The "+" means one or more of
3500 the preceding expression must be included. The preceding expression here is
3501 what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit one through nine.
3502 Then, at the end, we have a grouping: "(gif|jpe?g)". This includes a "|", so
3503 this needs to match the expression on either side of that bar character also. A
3504 simple "gif" on one side, and the other side will in turn match either "jpeg"
3505 or "jpg", since the "?" means the letter "e" is optional and can be matched
3506 once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to match image GIF or
3507 JPEG type image file. It must include the literal string "advert", then one or
3508 more digits, and a "." (which is now a literal, and not a special character,
3509 since it is escaped with "\"), and lastly either "gif", or "jpeg", or "jpg".
3510 Some possible matches would include: "//advert1.jpg", "/nasty/ads/
3511 advert1234.gif", "/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg". It would not match
3512 "advert1.gif" (no leading slash), or "/adverts232.jpg" (the expression does not
3513 include an "s"), or "/advert1.jsp" ("jsp" is not in the expression anywhere).
3515 s/microsoft(?!.com)/MicroSuck/i - This is a substitution. "MicroSuck" will
3516 replace any occurrence of "microsoft". The "i" at the end of the expression
3517 means ignore case. The "(?!.com)" means the match should fail if "microsoft" is
3518 followed by ".com". In other words, this acts like a "NOT" modifier. In case
3519 this is a hyperlink, we don't want to break it ;-).
3521 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
3522 can understand the default Privoxy configuration files, and maybe use this
3523 knowledge to customize your own installation. There is much, much more that can
3524 be done with regular expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you
3525 can learn more on your own :/
3527 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions: http://www.perldoc.com/
3528 perl5.6/pod/perlre.html
3530 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3532 14.2. Privoxy's Internal Pages
3534 Since Privoxy proxies each requested web page, it is easy for Privoxy to trap
3535 certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to Privoxy, and see how
3536 it is configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these rules and
3537 other configuration options, and even turn Privoxy's filtering off, all with a
3540 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access to Privoxy.
3541 Of course, Privoxy must be running to access these. If not, you will get a
3542 friendly error message. Internet access is not necessary either.
3544 * Privoxy main page:
3546 http://config.privoxy.org/
3548 Alternately, this may be reached at http://p.p/, but this variation may not
3549 work as reliably as the above in some configurations.
3551 * Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
3552 editing of actions files:
3554 http://config.privoxy.org/show-status
3556 * Show the source code version numbers:
3558 http://config.privoxy.org/show-version
3560 * Show the browser's request headers:
3562 http://config.privoxy.org/show-request
3564 * Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
3566 http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info
3568 * Toggle Privoxy on or off. In this case, "Privoxy" continues to run, but
3569 only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking place:
3571 http://config.privoxy.org/toggle
3573 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
3575 http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable
3577 http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable
3579 These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
3581 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3583 14.2.1. Bookmarklets
3585 Below are some "bookmarklets" to allow you to easily access a "mini" version of
3586 some of Privoxy's special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer,
3587 but should work equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which
3588 support JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not
3589 by clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
3591 To save them, right-click the link and choose "Add to Favorites" (IE) or "Add
3592 Bookmark" (Netscape). You will get a warning that the bookmark "may not be
3593 safe" - just click OK. Then you can run the Bookmarklet directly from your
3594 favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access, you can put them on the "Links"
3595 bar (IE) or the "Personal Toolbar" (Netscape), and run them with a single
3602 * Privoxy - Toggle Privoxy (Toggles between enabled and disabled)
3604 * Privoxy- View Status
3606 * Privoxy - Submit Filter Feedback
3608 Credit: The site which gave me the general idea for these bookmarklets is
3609 www.bookmarklets.com. They have more information about bookmarklets.
3611 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3613 14.3. Chain of Events
3615 Let's take a quick look at the basic sequence of events when a web page is
3616 requested by your browser and Privoxy is on duty:
3618 * First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send the
3619 request to Privoxy, which will in turn, relay the request to the remote web
3620 server after passing the following tests:
3622 * Privoxy traps any request for its own internal CGI pages (e.g http://p.p/)
3623 and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
3625 * Next, Privoxy checks to see if the URL matches any "+block" patterns. If
3626 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be
3627 contacted. "+handle-as-image" is then checked and if it does not match, an
3628 HTML "BLOCKED" page is sent back. Otherwise, if it does match, an image is
3629 returned. The type of image depends on the setting of "+set-image-blocker"
3630 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
3632 * Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the trust file, then
3635 * If the URL pattern matches the "+fast-redirects" action, it is then
3636 processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
3638 * Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
3639 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. "+hide-user-agent", etc.),
3640 headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and their
3643 * Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web
3644 page and related data).
3646 * First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
3647 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
3648 filtered as determined by the "+crunch-incoming-cookies",
3649 "+session-cookies-only", and "+downgrade-http-version" actions.
3651 * If the "+kill-popups" action applies, and it is an HTML or JavaScript
3652 document, the popup-code in the response is filtered on-the-fly as it is
3655 * If a "+filter" or "+deanimate-gifs" action applies (and the document type
3656 fits the action), the rest of the page is read into memory (up to a
3657 configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from default.filter) are
3658 processed against the buffered content. Filters are applied in the order
3659 they are specified in the default.filter file. Animated GIFs, if present,
3660 are reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
3661 setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by Privoxy
3662 back to your browser.
3664 If neither "+filter" or "+deanimate-gifs" matches, then Privoxy passes the
3665 raw data through to the client browser as it becomes available.
3667 * As the browser receives the now (probably filtered) page content, it reads
3668 and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page source,
3669 e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
3670 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a new
3671 request. And each such request is in turn processed as above. Note that a
3672 complex web page may have many such embedded URLs.
3674 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3676 14.4. Anatomy of an Action
3678 The way Privoxy applies "actions" and "filters" to any given URL can be
3679 complex, and not always so easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes
3680 we need to be able to see just what Privoxy is doing. Especially, if something
3681 Privoxy is doing is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little
3682 daunting to look at the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend
3683 to be filled with "regular expressions" whose consequences are not always so
3686 One quick test to see if Privoxy is causing a problem or not, is to disable it
3687 temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting step. See the
3688 Bookmarklets section on a quick and easy way to do this (be sure to flush
3691 Privoxy also provides the http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info page that can
3692 show us very specifically how actions are being applied to any given URL. This
3693 is a big help for troubleshooting.
3695 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then Privoxy will tell
3696 us how the current configuration will handle it. This will not help with
3697 filtering effects (i.e. the "+filter" action) from the default.filter file
3698 since this is handled very differently and not so easy to trap! It also will
3699 not tell you about any other URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are
3700 testing. For instance, images such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw
3701 page source of HTML pages. So you will only get info for the actual URL that is
3702 pasted into the prompt area -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about
3703 embedded URLs like ads, you will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use
3704 your browser's "View Page Source" option for this. Or right click on the ad,
3707 Let's try an example, google.com, and look at it one section at a time:
3709 Matches for http://google.com:
3711 --- File standard ---
3712 (no matches in this file)
3714 --- File default ---
3716 { -add-header -block +deanimate-gifs{last} -downgrade-http-version +fast-redirects
3717 -filter{popups} -filter{fun} -filter{shockwave-flash} -filter{crude-parental}
3718 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{content-cookies}
3719 +filter{webbugs} +filter{refresh-tags} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size}
3720 +hide-forwarded-for-headers +hide-from-header{block} +hide-referer{forge}
3721 -hide-user-agent -handle-as-image +set-image-blocker{pattern} -limit-connect
3722 +prevent-compression +session-cookies-only -crunch-outgoing-cookies
3723 -crunch-incoming-cookies -kill-popups -send-vanilla-wafer -send-wafer }
3726 { -session-cookies-only }
3733 (no matches in this file)
3735 This tells us how we have defined our "actions", and which ones match for our
3736 example, "google.com". The first listing is any matches for the standard.action
3737 file. No hits at all here on "standard". Then next is "default", or our
3738 default.action file. The large, multi-line listing, is how the actions are set
3739 to match for all URLs, i.e. our default settings. If you look at your "actions"
3740 file, this would be the section just below the "aliases" section near the top.
3741 This will apply to all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end
3742 of the listing -- "/".
3744 But we can define additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
3745 rules, and then list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions would
3746 apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit matches for
3747 ".google.com". The first is negating our previous cookie setting, which was for
3748 "+session-cookies-only" (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent
3749 cookies for google. The second turns off any "+fast-redirects" action, allowing
3750 this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading dot here --
3751 ".google.com". This will match any hosts and sub-domains, in the google.com
3752 domain also, such as "www.google.com". So, apparently, we have these two
3753 actions defined somewhere in the lower part of our default.action file, and
3754 "google.com" is referenced somewhere in these latter sections.
3756 Then, for our user.action file, we again have no hits.
3758 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
3759 Privoxy is applying all its "actions" to "google.com":
3762 -add-header -block +deanimate-gifs{last} -downgrade-http-version -fast-redirects
3763 -filter{popups} -filter{fun} -filter{shockwave-flash} -filter{crude-parental}
3764 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{content-cookies}
3765 +filter{webbugs} +filter{refresh-tags} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size}
3766 +hide-forwarded-for-headers +hide-from-header{block} +hide-referer{forge}
3767 -hide-user-agent -handle-as-image +set-image-blocker{pattern} -limit-connect
3768 +prevent-compression -session-cookies-only -crunch-outgoing-cookies
3769 -crunch-incoming-cookies -kill-popups -send-vanilla-wafer -send-wafer
3771 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to "fast-redirects"
3772 and "session-cookies-only".
3774 Now another example, "ad.doubleclick.net":
3776 { +block +handle-as-image }
3779 { +block +handle-as-image }
3782 { +block +handle-as-image }
3785 We'll just show the interesting part here, the explicit matches. It is matched
3786 three different times. Each as an "+block +handle-as-image", which is the
3787 expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as: "+imageblock". (
3788 "Aliases" are defined in the first section of the actions file and typically
3789 used to combine more than one action.)
3791 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
3792 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively would
3793 also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys though ;-)
3794 Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious URL to be invisible, it should be
3795 defined as "ad.doubleclick.net" is done here -- as both a "+block" and an
3796 "+handle-as-image". The custom alias "+imageblock" just simplifies the process
3797 and make it more readable.
3799 One last example. Let's try "http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/". This one is
3800 giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm...
3802 Matches for http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
3804 { -add-header -block +deanimate-gifs -downgrade-http-version +fast-redirects
3805 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{kill-popups}
3806 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size} +filter{hal}
3807 +filter{fun} +hide-forwarded-for-headers +hide-from-header{block}
3808 +hide-referer{forge} -hide-user-agent -handle-as-image +set-image-blocker{blank}
3809 +prevent-compression +session-cookies-only -crunch-incoming-cookies
3810 -crunch-outgoing-cookies +kill-popups -send-vanilla-wafer -send-wafer }
3813 { +block +handle-as-image }
3816 Ooops, the "/adsl/" is matching "/ads"! But we did not want this at all! Now we
3817 see why we get the blank page. We could now add a new action below this that
3818 explicitly does not block ("{-block}") paths with "adsl". There are various
3819 ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
3824 Now the page displays ;-) Be sure to flush your browser's caches when making
3825 such changes. Or, try using Shift+Reload.
3827 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like we did
3830 { +block +handle-as-image }
3833 That actually was very telling and pointed us quickly to where the problem was.
3834 If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default rules in
3835 the first section is causing the problem. This would require some guesswork,
3836 and maybe a little trial and error to isolate the offending rule. One likely
3837 cause would be one of the "{+filter}" actions. Try adding the URL for the site
3838 to one of aliases that turn off "+filter":
3842 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
3847 "{shop}" is an "alias" that expands to "{ -filter -session-cookies-only }". Or
3848 you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
3853 This would probably be most appropriately put in user.action, for local site
3856 "{fragile}" is an alias that disables most actions. This can be used as a last
3857 resort for problem sites. Remember to flush caches! If this still does not
3858 work, you will have to go through the remaining actions one by one to find
3859 which one(s) is causing the problem.
projects / privoxy.git / blob