1 Privoxy 3.0.5 User Manual
3 Copyright © 2001 - 2006 by Privoxy Developers
5 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.21 2006/09/20 03:21:36 david__schmidt Exp $
7 The Privoxy User Manual gives users information on how to install, configure
10 Privoxy is a web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for protecting
11 privacy, modifying web page data, 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 Privoxy User Manual at http://
20 www.privoxy.org/user-manual/. Please see the Contact section on how to contact
23 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
34 2.1.1. Red Hat, SuSE and Conectiva RPMs
37 2.1.4. Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX
43 2.2. Building from Source
44 2.3. Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date
46 3. What's New in this Release
48 3.1. Note to Upgraders
50 4. Quickstart to Using Privoxy
52 4.1. Quickstart to Ad Blocking
56 5.1. Red Hat, Fedora and Conectiva
60 5.5. Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others
65 5.10. Command Line Options
67 6. Privoxy Configuration
69 6.1. Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser
70 6.2. Configuration Files Overview
72 7. The Main Configuration File
74 7.1. Local Set-up Documentation
81 7.2. Configuration and Log File Locations
94 7.3.2. single-threaded
96 7.4. Access Control and Security
100 7.4.3. enable-remote-toggle
101 7.4.4. enable-remote-http-toggle
102 7.4.5. enable-edit-actions
103 7.4.6. ACLs: permit-access and deny-access
109 7.5.2. forward-socks4 and forward-socks4a
110 7.5.3. Advanced Forwarding Examples
111 7.5.4. forwarded-connect-retries
113 7.6. Windows GUI Options
117 8.1. Finding the Right Mix
119 8.3. How Actions are Applied to URLs
122 8.4.1. The Domain Pattern
123 8.4.2. The Path Pattern
129 8.5.3. content-type-overwrite
130 8.5.4. crunch-client-header
131 8.5.5. crunch-if-none-match
132 8.5.6. crunch-incoming-cookies
133 8.5.7. crunch-server-header
134 8.5.8. crunch-outgoing-cookies
135 8.5.9. deanimate-gifs
136 8.5.10. downgrade-http-version
137 8.5.11. fast-redirects
139 8.5.13. filter-client-headers
140 8.5.14. filter-server-headers
141 8.5.15. force-text-mode
142 8.5.16. handle-as-empty-document
143 8.5.17. handle-as-image
144 8.5.18. hide-accept-language
145 8.5.19. hide-content-disposition
146 8.5.20. hide-if-modified-since
147 8.5.21. hide-forwarded-for-headers
148 8.5.22. hide-from-header
149 8.5.23. hide-referrer
150 8.5.24. hide-user-agent
151 8.5.25. inspect-jpegs
153 8.5.27. limit-connect
154 8.5.28. prevent-compression
155 8.5.29. overwrite-last-modified
157 8.5.31. send-vanilla-wafer
159 8.5.33. session-cookies-only
160 8.5.34. set-image-blocker
161 8.5.35. treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks
165 8.7. Actions Files Tutorial
167 8.7.1. default.action
172 9.1. Filter File Tutorial
173 9.2. The Pre-defined Filters
175 10. Privoxy's Template Files
176 11. Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests
179 11.2. Reporting Problems
181 11.2.1. Reporting Ads or Other Configuration Problems
182 11.2.2. Reporting Bugs
184 11.3. Request New Features
187 12. Privoxy Copyright, License and History
196 14.1. Regular Expressions
197 14.2. Privoxy's Internal Pages
201 14.3. Chain of Events
202 14.4. Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action
206 This documentation is included with the current BETA version of Privoxy,
207 v.3.0.5, and is mostly complete at this point. The most up to date reference
208 for the time being is still the comments in the source files and in the
209 individual configuration files. Development of a new version is currently
210 nearing completion, and includes significant changes and enhancements over
213 Since this is a BETA version, not all new features are well tested. This
214 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with CVS
215 sources). And there may be bugs, though hopefully not many!
217 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
221 In addition to the core features of ad blocking and cookie management, Privoxy
222 provides many supplemental features, some of them currently under development,
223 that give the end-user more control, more privacy and more freedom:
225 * Integrated browser based configuration and control utility at http://
226 config.privoxy.org/ (shortcut: http://p.p/). Browser-based tracing of rule
227 and filter effects. Remote toggling.
229 * Web page content filtering (removes banners based on size, invisible
230 "web-bugs", JavaScript and HTML annoyances, pop-up windows, etc.)
232 * Modularized configuration that allows for standard settings and user
233 settings to reside in separate files, so that installing updated actions
234 files won't overwrite individual user settings.
236 * HTTP/1.1 compliant (but not all optional 1.1 features are supported).
238 * Support for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions in the configuration files,
239 and generally a more sophisticated and flexible configuration syntax over
242 * Improved cookie management features (e.g. session based cookies).
246 * Bypass many click-tracking scripts (avoids script redirection).
248 * Multi-threaded (POSIX and native threads).
250 * User-customizable HTML templates for all proxy-generated pages (e.g.
253 * Auto-detection and re-reading of config file changes.
255 * Improved signal handling, and a true daemon mode (Unix).
257 * Every feature now controllable on a per-site or per-location basis,
258 configuration more powerful and versatile over-all.
260 * Many smaller new features added, limitations and bugs removed, and security
263 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
267 Privoxy is available both in convenient pre-compiled packages for a wide range
268 of operating systems, and as raw source code. For most users, we recommend
269 using the packages, which can be downloaded from our Privoxy Project Page.
271 Note: On some platforms, the installer may remove previously installed
272 versions, if found. (See below for your platform). In any case be sure to
273 backup your old configuration if it is valuable to you. See the note to
274 upgraders section below.
276 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
280 How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
282 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
284 2.1.1. Red Hat, SuSE and Conectiva RPMs
286 RPMs can be installed with rpm -Uvh privoxy-3.0.5-1.rpm, and will use /etc/
287 privoxy for the location of configuration files.
289 Note that on Red Hat, Privoxy will not be automatically started on system boot.
290 You will need to enable that using chkconfig, ntsysv, or similar methods.
292 If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM: rpm
293 --rebuild privoxy-3.0.5-1.src.rpm. This will use your locally installed
294 libraries and RPM version.
296 Also note that if you have a Junkbuster RPM installed on your system, you need
297 to remove it first, because the packages conflict. Otherwise, RPM will try to
298 remove Junkbuster automatically if found, before installing Privoxy.
300 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
304 DEBs can be installed with apt-get install privoxy, and will use /etc/privoxy
305 for the location of configuration files.
307 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
311 Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through the installation
312 process. You will find the configuration files in the same directory as you
313 installed Privoxy in.
315 Version 3.0.4 introduced full Windows service functionality. On Windows only,
316 the Privoxy program has two new command line arguments to install and uninstall
317 Privoxy as a service.
321 --install[:service_name]
323 --uninstall[:service_name]
325 After invoking Privoxy with --install, you will need to bring up the Windows
326 service console to assign the user you want Privoxy to run under, and whether
327 or not you want it to run whenever the system starts. You can start the Windows
328 services console with the following command: services.msc. If you do not take
329 the manual step of modifying Privoxy's service settings, it will not start.
330 Note too that you will need to give Privoxy a user account that actually
331 exists, or it will not be permitted to write to its log and configuration
334 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
336 2.1.4. Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX
338 Create a new directory, cd to it, then unzip and untar the archive. For the
339 most part, you'll have to figure out where things go.
341 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
345 First, make sure that no previous installations of Junkbuster and / or Privoxy
346 are left on your system. Check that no Junkbuster or Privoxy objects are in
349 Then, just double-click the WarpIN self-installing archive, which will guide
350 you through the installation process. A shadow of the Privoxy executable will
351 be placed in your startup folder so it will start automatically whenever OS/2
354 The directory you choose to install Privoxy into will contain all of the
357 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
361 Unzip the downloaded file (you can either double-click on the file from the
362 finder, or from the desktop if you downloaded it there). Then, double-click on
363 the package installer icon named Privoxy.pkg and follow the installation
364 process. Privoxy will be installed in the folder /Library/Privoxy. It will
365 start automatically whenever you start up. To prevent it from starting
366 automatically, remove or rename the folder /Library/StartupItems/Privoxy.
368 To start Privoxy by hand, double-click on StartPrivoxy.command in the /Library/
369 Privoxy folder. Or, type this command in the Terminal:
371 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
374 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
376 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
380 Copy and then unpack the lha archive to a suitable location. All necessary
381 files will be installed into Privoxy directory, including all configuration and
382 log files. To uninstall, just remove this directory.
384 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
388 Gentoo source packages (Ebuilds) for Privoxy are contained in the Gentoo
389 Portage Tree (they are not on the download page, but there is a Gentoo section,
390 where you can see when a new Privoxy Version is added to the Portage Tree).
392 Before installing Privoxy under Gentoo just do first emerge rsync to get the
393 latest changes from the Portage tree. With emerge privoxy you install the
396 Configuration files are in /etc/privoxy, the documentation is in /usr/share/doc
397 /privoxy-3.0.5 and the Log directory is in /var/log/privoxy.
399 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
401 2.2. Building from Source
403 The most convenient way to obtain the Privoxy sources is to download the source
404 tarball from our project page.
406 If you like to live on the bleeding edge and are not afraid of using possibly
407 unstable development versions, you can check out the up-to-the-minute version
408 directly from the CVS repository.
410 To build Privoxy from source, autoconf, GNU make (gmake), and, of course, a C
411 compiler like gcc are required.
413 When building from a source tarball, first unpack the source:
415 tar xzvf privoxy-3.0.5-beta-src* [.tgz or .tar.gz]
416 cd privoxy-3.0.5-beta
418 For retrieving the current CVS sources, you'll need CVS installed. Note that
419 sources from CVS are development quality, and may not be stable, or well
420 tested. To download CVS source, check the Sourceforge documentation, which
421 might give commands like:
423 cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@ijbswa.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa login
424 cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@ijbswa.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa co current
427 This will create a directory named current/, which will contain the source
430 You can also check out any Privoxy "branch", just exchange the current name
431 with the wanted branch name (Example: v_3_0_branch for the 3.0 cvs tree).
433 It is also strongly recommended to not run Privoxy as root, and instead it is
434 suggested to create a "privoxy" user and group for this purpose. See your local
435 documentation for the correct command line to do this.
437 /etc/passwd might then look like:
439 privoxy:*:7777:7777:privoxy proxy:/no/home:/no/shell
441 And then /etc/group, like:
445 Some binary packages may do this for you.
447 Then, to build from either unpacked tarball or CVS source:
451 ./configure # (--help to see options)
452 make # (the make from GNU, sometimes called gmake)
454 make -n install # (to see where all the files will go)
455 make -s install # (to really install, -s to silence output)
457 If you have GNU make, you can have the first four steps automatically done for
462 in the freshly downloaded or unpacked source directory.
464 WARNING: If installing as root, the install will fail unless a non-root user or
465 group is specified, or a privoxy user and group already exist on the system. If
466 a non-root user is specified, and no group, then the installation will try to
467 also use a group of the same name as "user". If a group is specified (and no
468 user), then the support files will be installed as writable by that group, and
469 owned by the user running the installation.
471 configure accepts --with-user and --with-group options for setting user and
472 group ownership of the configuration files (which need to be writable by the
473 daemon). The specified user must already exist. When starting Privoxy, it
474 should be run as this same user to insure write access to configuration and log
477 Alternately, you can specify user and group on the make command line, but be
478 sure both already exist:
480 make -s install USER=privoxy GROUP=privoxy
482 The default installation path for make install is /usr/local. This may of
483 course be customized with the various ./configure path options. If you are
484 doing a root install to anywhere else besides /usr/local, be sure to set the
485 appropriate paths with the correct configure options (./configure --help).
487 If you do install to /usr/local, the install will use sysconfdir=$prefix/etc/
488 privoxy by default. All other destinations, and the direct usage of
489 --sysconfdir flag behave like normal, i.e. will not add the extra privoxy
490 directory. This is for a safer install, as there may already exist another
491 program that uses a file with the "config" name, and thus makes /usr/local/etc
494 If installing to /usr/local, the docs will go by default to $prefix/share/doc.
495 But if this directory doesn't exist, it will then try $prefix/doc and install
496 there before creating a new $prefix/share/doc just for Privoxy.
498 Again, if the installs goes to /usr/local, the localstatedir (ie: var/) will
499 default to /var instead of $prefix/var so the logs will go to /var/log/privoxy
500 /, and the pid file will be created in /var/run/privoxy.pid.
502 make install will attempt to set the correct values in config (main
503 configuration file). You may want to check this to make sure all values are
504 correct. If appropriate, an init script will be installed, but it is up to the
505 user to determine how and where to start Privoxy. The init script should be
506 checked for correct paths and values, if anything other than a default install
509 If install finds previous versions of any configuration files, these will not
510 be overwritten, and the new ones will be installed with a "new" extension. You
511 will then need to manually update the installed configuration files as needed.
512 All template files will be overwritten. If you have customized, local
513 templates, you should save these first. If a previous version of Privoxy is
514 already running, you will have to restart it manually.
516 For more detailed instructions on how to build Redhat and SuSE RPMs, Windows
517 self-extracting installers, building on platforms with special requirements
518 etc, please consult the developer manual.
520 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
522 2.3. Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date
524 As user feedback comes in and development continues, we will make updated
525 versions of both the main actions file (as a separate package) and the software
526 itself (including the actions file) available for download.
528 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
529 Privoxy or the actions file, subscribe to our announce mailing list,
530 ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
532 In order not to lose your personal changes and adjustments when updating to the
533 latest default.action file we strongly recommend that you use user.action and
534 user.filter for your local customizations of Privoxy. See the Chapter on
535 actions files for details.
537 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
539 3. What's New in this Release
541 There are many improvements and new features in Privoxy 3.0.5 :
543 * Multiple filter files can now be specified in config. This allows for
544 locally defined filters that can be maintained separately from the filters
545 as supplied by the developers, i.e. default.filter.
547 * There are a number of new actions:
549 + content-type-overwrite
551 + crunch-client-header
553 + crunch-if-none-match
555 + crunch-server-header
557 + filter-client-headers
559 + filter-server-headers
563 + handle-as-empty-document
565 + hide-accept-language
567 + hide-content-disposition
569 + hide-if-modified-since
573 + overwrite-last-modified
577 + treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks
579 In addition, fast-redirects has been significantly improved with enhanced
582 And hide-referrer has a new option, conditional block.
584 * MS-Windows versions can now be installed and started as a Windows service.
586 * config has two new options: enable-remote-http-toggle, and
587 forwarded-connect-retries.
589 And there is improved handling of the user-manual option, for placing
590 documentation and help files on the local system.
592 * Actions files problems and suggestions are now being directed to: http://
593 sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=460288. Please use this to
594 report such configuration related problems as missed ads, sites that don't
595 function properly due to one action or another, innocent images being
598 * In addition, there are numerous bug fixes and significant enhancements,
599 including error pages should no longer be cached if the problem is fixed,
600 much better DNS error handling, and various logging improvements.
602 * The default actions setting is now Cautious. Previous releases had a
603 default setting of Medium. Experienced users may want to adjust this, as it
604 is fairly conservative by Privoxy standards and past practices. See http://
605 config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default. New users should try the
606 default settings for a while before turning up the volume.
608 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
610 3.1. Note to Upgraders
612 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier versions of
615 * Some installers may remove earlier versions completely, including
616 configuration files. Save any important configuration files!
618 * On the other hand, other installers may not overwrite any existing
619 configuration files, thinking you will want to do that. You may want to
620 manually check your saved files against the newer versions to see if the
621 improvements have merit, or whether there are new options that you may want
622 to consider. There are a number of new features, but most won't be
623 available unless these features are incorporated into your configuration
626 * See the full documentation on fast-redirects which has changed syntax, and
627 will require adjustments to local configs, such as user.action. You must
628 reference the new syntax:
630 { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
635 * The jarfile, cookie logger, is off by default now.
637 * What constitutes a "default" configuration has changed, and you may want to
638 review which actions are "on" by default. This is primarily a matter of
639 emphasis, but some features you may have been used to, may now be "off" by
640 default. There are also a number of new actions you may want to consider,
641 most of which are not incorporated into the default settings as yet (see
644 * Some installers may not automatically start Privoxy after installation.
646 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
648 4. Quickstart to Using Privoxy
650 * Install Privoxy. See the Installation Section below for platform specific
653 * Advanced users and those who want to offer Privoxy service to more than
654 just their local machine should check the main config file, especially the
655 security-relevant options. These are off by default.
657 * Start Privoxy, if the installation program has not done this already (may
658 vary according to platform). See the section Starting Privoxy.
660 * Set your browser to use Privoxy as HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) proxy by setting
661 the proxy configuration for address of 127.0.0.1 and port 8118. DO NOT
662 activate proxying for FTP or any protocols besides HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)! It
665 * Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad
666 images. If using Privoxy to manage cookies, you should remove any currently
669 * A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for most.
670 There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
671 configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little to no
672 initial configuration is required in most cases.
674 See the Configuration section for more configuration options, and how to
675 customize your installation. You might also want to look at the next
676 section for a quick introduction to how Privoxy blocks ads and banners.
678 * If you experience ads that slip through, innocent images that are blocked,
679 or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune Privoxy's behavior, take a look at
680 the actions files. As a quick start, you might find the richly commented
681 examples helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files through the
682 web-based user interface. The Appendix "Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an
683 Action" has hints how to understand and debug actions that "misbehave".
685 * For easy access to Privoxy's most important controls, drag the provided
686 Bookmarklets into your browser's personal toolbar.
688 * Please see the section Contacting the Developers on how to report bugs,
689 problems with websites or to get help.
691 * Now enjoy surfing with enhanced control, comfort and privacy!
693 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
695 4.1. Quickstart to Ad Blocking
697 Ad blocking is but one of Privoxy's array of features. Many of these features
698 are for the technically minded advanced user. But, ad and banner blocking is
699 surely common ground for everybody.
701 This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so you can get up to
702 speed quickly without having to read the more extensive information provided
703 below, though this is highly recommended.
705 First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the more
706 aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block things that were
707 not intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want extreme ad free
708 browsing, be prepared to deal with more "problem" sites, and to spend more time
709 adjusting the configuration to solve these unintended consequences. In short,
710 there is not an easy way to eliminate all ads. Either take the easy way and
711 settle for most ads blocked with the default configuration, or jump in and
712 tweak it for your personal surfing habits and preferences.
714 Secondly, a brief explanation of Privoxy's "actions". "Actions" in this
715 context, are the directives we use to tell Privoxy to perform some task
716 relating to HTTP transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell Privoxy to take some
717 "action". Each action has a unique name and function. While there are many
718 potential actions in Privoxy's arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking.
719 Actions, and action configuration files, are explained in depth below.
721 Actions are specified in Privoxy's configuration, followed by one or more URLs
722 to which the action should apply. URLs can actually be URL type patterns that
723 use wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs. The
724 actions, together with the URL patterns are called a section.
726 When you connect to a website, the full URL will either match one or more of
727 the sections as defined in Privoxy's configuration, or not. If so, then Privoxy
728 will perform the respective actions. If not, then nothing special happens.
729 Furthermore, web pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web
730 browser will use to load additional components of the page, as it parses the
731 original page's HTML content. An ad image for instance, is just an URL embedded
732 in the page somewhere. The image itself may be on the same server, or a server
733 somewhere else on the Internet. Complex web pages will have many such embedded
736 The actions we need to know about for ad blocking are: block, handle-as-image,
737 and set-image-blocker:
739 * block - this action stops any contact between your browser and any URL
740 patterns that match this action's configuration. It can be used for
741 blocking ads, but also anything that is determined to be unwanted. By
742 itself, it simply stops any communication with the remote server and sends
743 Privoxy's own built-in BLOCKED page instead to let you now what has
746 * handle-as-image - tells Privoxy to treat this URL as an image. Privoxy's
747 default configuration already does this for all common image types (e.g.
748 GIF), but there are many situations where this is not so easy to determine.
749 So we'll force it in these cases. This is particularly important for ad
750 blocking, since only if we know that it's an image of some kind, can we
751 replace it with an image of our choosing, instead of the Privoxy BLOCKED
752 page (which would only result in a "broken image" icon). There are some
753 limitations to this though. For instance, you can't just brute-force an
754 image substitution for an entire HTML page in most situations.
756 * set-image-blocker - tells Privoxy what to display in place of an ad image
757 that has hit a block rule. For this to come into play, the URL must match a
758 block action somewhere in the configuration, and, it must also match an
759 handle-as-image action.
761 The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
763 pattern - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad replacement is obvious.
766 blank - A very small empty GIF image is displayed. This is the so-called
767 "invisible" configuration option.
769 http://<URL> - A redirect to any image anywhere of the user's choosing
772 The quickest way to adjust any of these settings is with your browser through
773 the special Privoxy editor at http://config.privoxy.org/show-status (shortcut:
774 http://p.p/show-status). This is an internal page, and does not require
775 Internet access. Select the appropriate "actions" file, and click "Edit". It is
776 best to put personal or local preferences in user.action since this is not
777 meant to be overwritten during upgrades, and will over-ride the settings in
778 other files. Here you can insert new "actions", and URLs for ad blocking or
779 other purposes, and make other adjustments to the configuration. Privoxy will
780 detect these changes automatically.
782 A quick and simple step by step example:
784 * Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select "Copy Link Location"
785 from the pop-up menu.
787 * Set your browser to http://config.privoxy.org/show-status
789 * Find user.action in the top section, and click on "Edit":
791 Figure 1. Actions Files in Use
795 * You should have a section with only block listed under "Actions:". If not,
796 click a "Insert new section below" button, and in the new section that just
797 appeared, click the Edit button right under the word "Actions:". This will
798 bring up a list of all actions. Find block near the top, and click in the
799 "Enabled" column, then "Submit" just below the list.
801 * Now, in the block actions section, click the "Add" button, and paste the
802 URL the browser got from "Copy Link Location". Remove the http:// at the
803 beginning of the URL. Then, click "Submit" (or "OK" if in a pop-up window).
805 * Now go back to the original page, and press SHIFT-Reload (or flush all
806 browser caches). The image should be gone now.
808 This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
809 wildcard pattern match to include potentially similar images from the same
810 site. For a more extensive explanation of "patterns", and the entire actions
811 concept, see the Actions section.
813 For advanced users who want to hand edit their config files, you might want to
814 now go to the Actions Files Tutorial. The ideas explained therein also apply to
815 the web-based editor.
817 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
821 Before launching Privoxy for the first time, you will want to configure your
822 browser(s) to use Privoxy as a HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) proxy. The default is
823 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions
824 used port 8000). This is the one configuration step that must be done!
826 Please note that Privoxy can only proxy HTTP and HTTPS traffic. It will not
827 work with FTP or other protocols.
829 Figure 2. Proxy Configuration Showing Mozilla/Netscape HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)
834 With Firefox, this can be set under:
836 Tools -> Options -> General -> Connection Settings -> Manual Proxy
840 With Netscape (and Mozilla), this can be set under:
842 Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Proxies -> HTTP Proxy
845 For Internet Explorer v.5-6:
847 Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN Settings
849 Then, check "Use Proxy" and fill in the appropriate info (Address: 127.0.0.1,
850 Port: 8118). Include HTTPS (SSL), if you want HTTPS proxy support too
851 (sometimes labeled "Secure"). Make sure any checkboxes like "Use the same proxy
852 server for all protocols" is UNCHECKED. You want only HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)!
854 Figure 3. Proxy Configuration Showing Internet Explorer HTTP and HTTPS (Secure)
859 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
860 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. Remove
861 any cookies, if you want Privoxy to manage that. You are now ready to start
862 enjoying the benefits of using Privoxy!
864 Privoxy itself is typically started by specifying the main configuration file
865 to be used on the command line. If no configuration file is specified on the
866 command line, Privoxy will look for a file named config in the current
867 directory. Except on Win32 where it will try config.txt.
869 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
871 5.1. Red Hat, Fedora and Conectiva
873 A default Red Hat installation may not start Privoxy upon boot. It will use the
874 file /etc/privoxy/config as its main configuration file.
876 # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
880 # service privoxy start
882 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
886 We use a script. Note that Debian typically starts Privoxy upon booting per
887 default. It will use the file /etc/privoxy/config as its main configuration
890 # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
892 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
896 We use a script. It will use the file /etc/privoxy/config as its main
897 configuration file. Note that SuSE starts Privoxy upon booting your PC.
901 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
905 Click on the Privoxy Icon to start Privoxy. If no configuration file is
906 specified on the command line, Privoxy will look for a file named config.txt.
907 Note that Windows will automatically start Privoxy when the system starts if
908 you chose that option when installing.
910 Privoxy can run with full Windows service functionality. On Windows only, the
911 Privoxy program has two new command line arguments to install and uninstall
912 Privoxy as a service. See the Windows Installation instructions for details.
914 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
916 5.5. Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others
918 Example Unix startup command:
920 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
922 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
926 During installation, Privoxy is configured to start automatically when the
927 system restarts. You can start it manually by double-clicking on the Privoxy
928 icon in the Privoxy folder.
930 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
934 During installation, Privoxy is configured to start automatically when the
935 system restarts. To start Privoxy manually, double-click on the
936 StartPrivoxy.command icon in the /Library/Privoxy folder. Or, type this command
939 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
942 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
944 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
948 Start Privoxy (with RUN <>NIL:) in your startnet script (AmiTCP), in s:
949 user-startup (RoadShow), as startup program in your startup script (Genesis),
950 or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx). Privoxy will automatically quit when
951 you quit your TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack
952 may display that Privoxy is still running).
954 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
958 A script is again used. It will use the file /etc/privoxy/config as its main
961 /etc/init.d/privoxy start
964 Note that Privoxy is not automatically started at boot time by default. You can
965 change this with the rc-update command.
967 rc-update add privoxy default
970 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
972 5.10. Command Line Options
974 Privoxy may be invoked with the following command-line options:
978 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
982 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
986 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group leader, and
987 don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
991 On startup, write the process ID to FILE. Delete the FILE on exit. Failure
992 to create or delete the FILE is non-fatal. If no FILE option is given, no
993 PID file will be used. Unix only.
995 * --user USER[.GROUP]
997 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of USER, and if
998 included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the privileges are not sufficient to do
1003 Before changing to the user ID given in the --user option, chroot to that
1004 user's home directory, i.e. make the kernel pretend to the Privoxy process
1005 that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
1006 the impact of possible vulnerabilities in Privoxy to the files contained in
1007 that hierarchy. Unix only.
1011 If no configfile is included on the command line, Privoxy will look for a
1012 file named "config" in the current directory (except on Win32 where it will
1013 look for "config.txt" instead). Specify full path to avoid confusion. If no
1014 config file is found, Privoxy will fail to start.
1016 On MS Windows only there are two additional command-line options to allow
1017 Privoxy to install and run as a service. See the Window Installation section
1020 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1022 6. Privoxy Configuration
1024 All Privoxy configuration is stored in text files. These files can be edited
1025 with a text editor. Many important aspects of Privoxy can also be controlled
1026 easily with a web browser.
1028 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1030 6.1. Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser
1032 Privoxy's user interface can be reached through the special URL http://
1033 config.privoxy.org/ (shortcut: http://p.p/), which is a built-in page and works
1034 without Internet access. You will see the following section:
1037 ? View & change the current configuration
1038 ? View the source code version numbers
1039 ? View the request headers.
1040 ? Look up which actions apply to a URL and why
1041 ? Toggle Privoxy on or off
1045 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
1046 actions files, which is where the ad, banner, cookie, and URL blocking magic is
1047 configured as well as other advanced features of Privoxy. This is an easy way
1048 to adjust various aspects of Privoxy configuration. The actions file, and other
1049 configuration files, are explained in detail below.
1051 "Toggle Privoxy On or Off" is handy for sites that might have problems with
1052 your current actions and filters. You can in fact use it as a test to see
1053 whether it is Privoxy causing the problem or not. Privoxy continues to run as a
1054 proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e. Privoxy acts like a
1055 normal forwarding proxy. There is even a toggle Bookmarklet offered, so that
1056 you can toggle Privoxy with one click from your browser.
1058 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1060 6.2. Configuration Files Overview
1062 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in /etc/privoxy/
1063 by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and AmigaOS these are all in the same
1064 directory as the Privoxy executable. The name and number of configuration files
1065 has changed from previous versions, and is subject to change as development
1068 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though some
1069 settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the principle
1070 configuration files are:
1072 * The main configuration file is named config on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and
1073 AmigaOS and config.txt on Windows. This is a required file.
1075 * default.action (the main actions file) is used to define which "actions"
1076 relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups, content modification, cookie
1077 handling etc should be applied by default. It also defines many exceptions
1078 (both positive and negative) from this default set of actions that enable
1079 Privoxy to selectively eliminate the junk, and only the junk, on as many
1080 websites as possible.
1082 Multiple actions files may be defined in config. These are processed in the
1083 order they are defined. Local customizations and locally preferred
1084 exceptions to the default policies as defined in default.action (which you
1085 will most probably want to define sooner or later) are probably best
1086 applied in user.action, where you can preserve them across upgrades.
1087 standard.action is for Privoxy's internal use.
1089 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from http://
1090 config.privoxy.org/show-status (Shortcut: http://p.p/show-status) for the
1091 various actions files.
1093 * "Filter files" (the filter file) can be used to re-write the raw page
1094 content, including viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript,
1095 and whatever else lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only
1096 pre-defined here; whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
1097 default.filter includes various filters made available for use by the
1098 developers. Some are much more intrusive than others, and all should be
1099 used with caution. You may define additional filter files in config as you
1100 can with actions files. We suggest user.filter for any locally defined
1101 filters or customizations.
1103 The syntax of all configuration files has remained the same throughout the 3.x
1104 series. There have been enhancements, but no changes that would preclude the
1105 use of any configuration file from one version to the next. (There is one
1106 exception: +fast-redirects which has enhanced syntax and will require updating
1107 any local configs from earlier versions.)
1109 All files use the "#" character to denote a comment (the rest of the line will
1110 be ignored) and understand line continuation through placing a backslash ("\")
1111 as the very last character in a line. If the # is preceded by a backslash, it
1112 looses its special function. Placing a # in front of an otherwise valid
1113 configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
1114 out" that line. Blank lines are ignored.
1116 The actions files and filter files can use Perl style regular expressions for
1117 maximum flexibility.
1119 After making any changes, there is no need to restart Privoxy in order for the
1120 changes to take effect. Privoxy detects such changes automatically. Note,
1121 however, that it may take one or two additional requests for the change to take
1122 effect. When changing the listening address of Privoxy, these "wake up"
1123 requests must obviously be sent to the old listening address.
1125 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change. The
1126 below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this. Also, what
1127 constitutes a "default" setting, may change, so please check all your
1128 configuration files on important issues.
1130 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1132 7. The Main Configuration File
1134 Again, the main configuration file is named config on Linux/Unix/BSD and OS/2,
1135 and config.txt on Windows. Configuration lines consist of an initial keyword
1136 followed by a list of values, all separated by whitespace (any number of spaces
1137 or tabs). For example:
1139 confdir /etc/privoxy
1141 Assigns the value /etc/privoxy to the option confdir and thus indicates that
1142 the configuration directory is named "/etc/privoxy/".
1144 All options in the config file except for confdir and logdir are optional.
1145 Watch out in the below description for what happens if you leave them unset.
1147 The main config file controls all aspects of Privoxy's operation that are not
1148 location dependent (i.e. they apply universally, no matter where you may be
1151 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1153 7.1. Local Set-up Documentation
1155 If you intend to operate Privoxy for more users than just yourself, it might be
1156 a good idea to let them know how to reach you, what you block and why you do
1157 that, your policies, etc.
1159 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1165 Location of the Privoxy User Manual.
1169 A fully qualified URI
1177 http://www.privoxy.org/version/user-manual/ will be used, where version is
1178 the Privoxy version.
1182 The User Manual URI is the single best source of information on Privoxy,
1183 and is used for help links from some of the internal CGI pages. The manual
1184 itself is normally packaged with the binary distributions, so you probably
1185 want to set this to a locally installed copy.
1189 The best all purpose solution is simply to put the full local PATH to where
1190 the User Manual is located:
1192 user-manual /usr/share/doc/privoxy/user-manual
1194 The User Manual is then available to anyone with access to the proxy, by
1195 following the built-in URL: http://config.privoxy.org/user-manual/ (or the
1196 shortcut: http://p.p/user-manual/).
1198 If the documentation is not on the local system, it can be accessed from a
1201 user-manual http://example.com/privoxy/user-manual/
1203 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
1205 |-----------------------------------------------------------------|
1206 |If set, this option should be the first option in the config |
1207 |file, because it is used while the config file is being read on |
1209 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
1211 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1213 7.1.2. trust-info-url
1217 A URL to be displayed in the error page that users will see if access to an
1218 untrusted page is denied.
1226 Two example URL are provided
1230 No links are displayed on the "untrusted" error page.
1234 The value of this option only matters if the experimental trust mechanism
1235 has been activated. (See trustfile above.)
1237 If you use the trust mechanism, it is a good idea to write up some on-line
1238 documentation about your trust policy and to specify the URL(s) here. Use
1239 multiple times for multiple URLs.
1241 The URL(s) should be added to the trustfile as well, so users don't end up
1242 locked out from the information on why they were locked out in the first
1245 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1247 7.1.3. admin-address
1251 An email address to reach the proxy administrator.
1263 No email address is displayed on error pages and the CGI user interface.
1267 If both admin-address and proxy-info-url are unset, the whole "Local
1268 Privoxy Support" box on all generated pages will not be shown.
1270 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1272 7.1.4. proxy-info-url
1276 A URL to documentation about the local Privoxy setup, configuration or
1289 No link to local documentation is displayed on error pages and the CGI user
1294 If both admin-address and proxy-info-url are unset, the whole "Local
1295 Privoxy Support" box on all generated pages will not be shown.
1297 This URL shouldn't be blocked ;-)
1299 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1301 7.2. Configuration and Log File Locations
1303 Privoxy can (and normally does) use a number of other files for additional
1304 configuration, help and logging. This section of the configuration file tells
1305 Privoxy where to find those other files.
1307 The user running Privoxy, must have read permission for all configuration
1308 files, and write permission to any files that would be modified, such as log
1309 files and actions files.
1311 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1317 The directory where the other configuration files are located
1325 /etc/privoxy (Unix) or Privoxy installation dir (Windows)
1333 No trailing "/", please
1335 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1341 The directory where all logging takes place (i.e. where logfile and jarfile
1350 /var/log/privoxy (Unix) or Privoxy installation dir (Windows)
1358 No trailing "/", please
1360 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1366 The actions file(s) to use
1370 File name, relative to confdir, without the .action suffix
1374 standard # Internal purposes, no editing recommended
1376 default # Main actions file
1378 user # User customizations
1382 No actions are taken at all. Simple neutral proxying.
1386 Multiple actionsfile lines are permitted, and are in fact recommended!
1388 The default values include standard.action, which is used for internal
1389 purposes and should be loaded, default.action, which is the "main" actions
1390 file maintained by the developers, and user.action, where you can make your
1393 Actions files are where all the per site and per URL configuration is done
1394 for ad blocking, cookie management, privacy considerations, etc. There is
1395 no point in using Privoxy without at least one actions file.
1397 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1403 The filter file(s) to use
1407 File name, relative to confdir
1411 default.filter (Unix) or default.filter.txt (Windows)
1415 No textual content filtering takes place, i.e. all +filter{name} actions in
1416 the actions files are turned neutral.
1420 Multiple filterfile lines are permitted.
1422 The filter files contain content modification rules that use regular
1423 expressions. These rules permit powerful changes on the content of Web
1424 pages, and optionally the headers as well, e.g., you could disable your
1425 favorite JavaScript annoyances, re-write the actual displayed text, or just
1426 have some fun playing buzzword bingo with web pages.
1428 The +filter{name} actions rely on the relevant filter (name) to be defined
1431 A pre-defined filter file called default.filter that contains a number of
1432 useful filters for common problems is included in the distribution. See the
1433 section on the filter action for a list.
1435 It is recommended to place any locally adapted filters into a separate
1436 file, such as user.filter.
1438 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1448 File name, relative to logdir
1452 logfile (Unix) or privoxy.log (Windows)
1456 No log file is used, all log messages go to the console (STDERR).
1460 The logfile is where all logging and error messages are written. The level
1461 of detail and number of messages are set with the debug option (see below).
1462 The logfile can be useful for tracking down a problem with Privoxy (e.g.,
1463 it's not blocking an ad you think it should block) but in most cases you
1464 probably will never look at it.
1466 Your logfile will grow indefinitely, and you will probably want to
1467 periodically remove it. On Unix systems, you can do this with a cron job
1468 (see "man cron"). For Red Hat, a logrotate script has been included.
1470 On SuSE Linux systems, you can place a line like "/var/log/privoxy.* +1024k
1471 644 nobody.nogroup" in /etc/logfiles, with the effect that cron.daily will
1472 automatically archive, gzip, and empty the log, when it exceeds 1M size.
1474 Any log files must be writable by whatever user Privoxy is being run as
1475 (default on UNIX, user id is "privoxy").
1477 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1483 The file to store intercepted cookies in
1487 File name, relative to logdir
1491 Unset (commented out). When activated: jarfile (Unix) or privoxy.jar
1496 Intercepted cookies are not stored in a dedicated log file.
1500 The jarfile may grow to ridiculous sizes over time.
1502 If debug 8 (show header parsing) is enabled, cookies are written to the
1503 logfile with the rest of the headers.
1505 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1511 The name of the trust file to use
1515 File name, relative to confdir
1519 Unset (commented out). When activated: trust (Unix) or trust.txt (Windows)
1523 The entire trust mechanism is disabled.
1527 The trust mechanism is an experimental feature for building white-lists and
1528 should be used with care. It is NOT recommended for the casual user.
1530 If you specify a trust file, Privoxy will only allow access to sites that
1531 are specified in the trustfile. Sites can be listed in one of two ways:
1533 Prepending a ~ character limits access to this site only (and any sub-paths
1534 within this site), e.g. ~www.example.com allows access to ~www.example.com/
1535 features/news.html, etc.
1537 Or, you can designate sites as trusted referrers, by prepending the name
1538 with a + character. The effect is that access to untrusted sites will be
1539 granted -- but only if a link from this trusted referrer was used to get
1540 there. The link target will then be added to the "trustfile" so that
1541 future, direct accesses will be granted. Sites added via this mechanism do
1542 not become trusted referrers themselves (i.e. they are added with a ~
1543 designation). There is a limit of 512 such entries, after which new entries
1546 If you use the + operator in the trust file, it may grow considerably over
1549 It is recommended that Privoxy be compiled with the --disable-force,
1550 --disable-toggle and --disable-editor options, if this feature is to be
1553 Possible applications include limiting Internet access for children.
1555 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1559 These options are mainly useful when tracing a problem. Note that you might
1560 also want to invoke Privoxy with the --no-daemon command line option when
1563 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1569 Key values that determine what information gets logged to the logfile.
1577 12289 (i.e.: URLs plus informational and warning messages)
1581 Nothing gets logged.
1585 The available debug levels are:
1587 debug 1 # show each GET/POST/CONNECT request
1588 debug 2 # show each connection status
1589 debug 4 # show I/O status
1590 debug 8 # show header parsing
1591 debug 16 # log all data into the logfile
1592 debug 32 # debug force feature
1593 debug 64 # debug regular expression filter
1594 debug 128 # debug fast redirects
1595 debug 256 # debug GIF de-animation
1596 debug 512 # Common Log Format
1597 debug 1024 # debug kill pop-ups
1598 debug 2048 # CGI user interface
1599 debug 4096 # Startup banner and warnings.
1600 debug 8192 # Non-fatal errors
1602 To select multiple debug levels, you can either add them or use multiple
1605 A debug level of 1 is informative because it will show you each request as
1606 it happens. 1, 4096 and 8192 are highly recommended so that you will notice
1607 when things go wrong. The other levels are probably only of interest if you
1608 are hunting down a specific problem. They can produce a hell of an output
1611 The reporting of fatal errors (i.e. ones which crash Privoxy) is always on
1612 and cannot be disabled.
1614 If you want to use CLF (Common Log Format), you should set "debug 512" ONLY
1615 and not enable anything else.
1617 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1619 7.3.2. single-threaded
1623 Whether to run only one server thread
1635 Multi-threaded (or, where unavailable: forked) operation, i.e. the ability
1636 to serve multiple requests simultaneously.
1640 This option is only there for debug purposes and you should never need to
1641 use it. It will drastically reduce performance.
1643 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1645 7.4. Access Control and Security
1647 This section of the config file controls the security-relevant aspects of
1648 Privoxy's configuration.
1650 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1652 7.4.1. listen-address
1656 The IP address and TCP port on which Privoxy will listen for client
1669 Bind to 127.0.0.1 (localhost), port 8118. This is suitable and recommended
1670 for home users who run Privoxy on the same machine as their browser.
1674 You will need to configure your browser(s) to this proxy address and port.
1676 If you already have another service running on port 8118, or if you want to
1677 serve requests from other machines (e.g. on your local network) as well,
1678 you will need to override the default.
1680 If you leave out the IP address, Privoxy will bind to all interfaces
1681 (addresses) on your machine and may become reachable from the Internet. In
1682 that case, consider using access control lists (ACL's, see below), and/or a
1685 If you open Privoxy to untrusted users, you will also want to turn off the
1686 enable-edit-actions and enable-remote-toggle options!
1690 Suppose you are running Privoxy on a machine which has the address
1691 192.168.0.1 on your local private network (192.168.0.0) and has another
1692 outside connection with a different address. You want it to serve requests
1695 listen-address 192.168.0.1:8118
1697 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1703 Initial state of "toggle" status
1715 Act as if toggled on
1719 If set to 0, Privoxy will start in "toggled off" mode, i.e. behave like a
1720 normal, content-neutral proxy where all ad blocking, filtering, etc are
1721 disabled. See enable-remote-toggle below. This is not really useful
1722 anymore, since toggling is much easier via the web interface than via
1723 editing the conf file.
1725 The windows version will only display the toggle icon in the system tray if
1726 this option is present.
1728 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1730 7.4.3. enable-remote-toggle
1734 Whether or not the web-based toggle feature may be used
1746 The web-based toggle feature is disabled.
1750 When toggled off, Privoxy acts like a normal, content-neutral proxy, i.e.
1751 it acts as if none of the actions applied to any URL.
1753 For the time being, access to the toggle feature can not be controlled
1754 separately by "ACLs" or HTTP authentication, so that everybody who can
1755 access Privoxy (see "ACLs" and listen-address above) can toggle it for all
1756 users. So this option is not recommended for multi-user environments with
1759 Note that you must have compiled Privoxy with support for this feature,
1760 otherwise this option has no effect.
1762 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1764 7.4.4. enable-remote-http-toggle
1768 Whether or not Privoxy recognizes special HTTP headers to change its
1781 Privoxy ignores special HTTP headers.
1785 When toggled on, the client can change Privoxy's behaviour by setting
1786 special HTTP headers. Currently the only supported special header is
1787 "X-Filter: No", to disable filtering for the ongoing request, even if it is
1788 enabled in one of the action files.
1790 If you are using Privoxy in a multi-user environment or with untrustworthy
1791 clients and want to enforce filtering, you will have to disable this
1792 option, otherwise you can ignore it.
1794 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1796 7.4.5. enable-edit-actions
1800 Whether or not the web-based actions file editor may be used
1812 The web-based actions file editor is disabled.
1816 For the time being, access to the editor can not be controlled separately
1817 by "ACLs" or HTTP authentication, so that everybody who can access Privoxy
1818 (see "ACLs" and listen-address above) can modify its configuration for all
1819 users. So this option is not recommended for multi-user environments with
1822 Note that you must have compiled Privoxy with support for this feature,
1823 otherwise this option has no effect.
1825 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1827 7.4.6. ACLs: permit-access and deny-access
1831 Who can access what.
1835 src_addr[/src_masklen] [dst_addr[/dst_masklen]]
1837 Where src_addr and dst_addr are IP addresses in dotted decimal notation or
1838 valid DNS names, and src_masklen and dst_masklen are subnet masks in CIDR
1839 notation, i.e. integer values from 2 to 30 representing the length (in
1840 bits) of the network address. The masks and the whole destination part are
1849 Don't restrict access further than implied by listen-address
1853 Access controls are included at the request of ISPs and systems
1854 administrators, and are not usually needed by individual users. For a
1855 typical home user, it will normally suffice to ensure that Privoxy only
1856 listens on the localhost (127.0.0.1) or internal (home) network address by
1857 means of the listen-address option.
1859 Please see the warnings in the FAQ that this proxy is not intended to be a
1860 substitute for a firewall or to encourage anyone to defer addressing basic
1861 security weaknesses.
1863 Multiple ACL lines are OK. If any ACLs are specified, then the Privoxy
1864 talks only to IP addresses that match at least one permit-access line and
1865 don't match any subsequent deny-access line. In other words, the last match
1866 wins, with the default being deny-access.
1868 If Privoxy is using a forwarder (see forward below) for a particular
1869 destination URL, the dst_addr that is examined is the address of the
1870 forwarder and NOT the address of the ultimate target. This is necessary
1871 because it may be impossible for the local Privoxy to determine the IP
1872 address of the ultimate target (that's often what gateways are used for).
1874 You should prefer using IP addresses over DNS names, because the address
1875 lookups take time. All DNS names must resolve! You can not use domain
1876 patterns like "*.org" or partial domain names. If a DNS name resolves to
1877 multiple IP addresses, only the first one is used.
1879 Denying access to particular sites by ACL may have undesired side effects
1880 if the site in question is hosted on a machine which also hosts other
1885 Explicitly define the default behavior if no ACL and listen-address are
1886 set: "localhost" is OK. The absence of a dst_addr implies that all
1887 destination addresses are OK:
1889 permit-access localhost
1891 Allow any host on the same class C subnet as www.privoxy.org access to
1892 nothing but www.example.com:
1894 permit-access www.privoxy.org/24 www.example.com/32
1896 Allow access from any host on the 26-bit subnet 192.168.45.64 to anywhere,
1897 with the exception that 192.168.45.73 may not access
1898 www.dirty-stuff.example.com:
1900 permit-access 192.168.45.64/26
1901 deny-access 192.168.45.73 www.dirty-stuff.example.com
1903 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1909 Maximum size of the buffer for content filtering.
1921 Use a 4MB (4096 KB) limit.
1925 For content filtering, i.e. the +filter and +deanimate-gif actions, it is
1926 necessary that Privoxy buffers the entire document body. This can be
1927 potentially dangerous, since a server could just keep sending data
1928 indefinitely and wait for your RAM to exhaust -- with nasty consequences.
1931 When a document buffer size reaches the buffer-limit, it is flushed to the
1932 client unfiltered and no further attempt to filter the rest of the document
1933 is made. Remember that there may be multiple threads running, which might
1934 require up to buffer-limit Kbytes each, unless you have enabled
1935 "single-threaded" above.
1937 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1941 This feature allows routing of HTTP requests through a chain of multiple
1942 proxies. It can be used to better protect privacy and confidentiality when
1943 accessing specific domains by routing requests to those domains through an
1944 anonymous public proxy. Or to use a caching proxy to speed up browsing. Or
1945 chaining to a parent proxy may be necessary because the machine that Privoxy
1946 runs on has no direct Internet access.
1948 Also specified here are SOCKS proxies. Privoxy supports the SOCKS 4 and SOCKS
1951 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1957 To which parent HTTP proxy specific requests should be routed.
1961 target_pattern http_parent[:port]
1963 where target_pattern is a URL pattern that specifies to which requests
1964 (i.e. URLs) this forward rule shall apply. Use / to denote "all URLs".
1965 http_parent[:port] is the DNS name or IP address of the parent HTTP proxy
1966 through which the requests should be forwarded, optionally followed by its
1967 listening port (default: 8080). Use a single dot (.) to denote "no
1976 Don't use parent HTTP proxies.
1980 If http_parent is ".", then requests are not forwarded to another HTTP
1981 proxy but are made directly to the web servers.
1983 Multiple lines are OK, they are checked in sequence, and the last match
1988 Everything goes to an example anonymizing proxy, except SSL on port 443
1989 (which it doesn't handle):
1991 forward / anon-proxy.example.org:8080
1994 Everything goes to our example ISP's caching proxy, except for requests to
1997 forward / caching-proxy.example-isp.net:8000
1998 forward .example-isp.net .
2000 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2002 7.5.2. forward-socks4 and forward-socks4a
2006 Through which SOCKS proxy (and to which parent HTTP proxy) specific
2007 requests should be routed.
2011 target_pattern socks_proxy[:port] http_parent[:port]
2013 where target_pattern is a URL pattern that specifies to which requests
2014 (i.e. URLs) this forward rule shall apply. Use / to denote "all URLs".
2015 http_parent and socks_proxy are IP addresses in dotted decimal notation or
2016 valid DNS names (http_parent may be "." to denote "no HTTP forwarding"),
2017 and the optional port parameters are TCP ports, i.e. integer values from 1
2026 Don't use SOCKS proxies.
2030 Multiple lines are OK, they are checked in sequence, and the last match
2033 The difference between forward-socks4 and forward-socks4a is that in the
2034 SOCKS 4A protocol, the DNS resolution of the target hostname happens on the
2035 SOCKS server, while in SOCKS 4 it happens locally.
2037 If http_parent is ".", then requests are not forwarded to another HTTP
2038 proxy but are made (HTTP-wise) directly to the web servers, albeit through
2043 From the company example.com, direct connections are made to all "internal"
2044 domains, but everything outbound goes through their ISP's proxy by way of
2045 example.com's corporate SOCKS 4A gateway to the Internet.
2047 forward-socks4a / socks-gw.example.com:1080 www-cache.example-isp.net:8080
2048 forward .example.com .
2050 A rule that uses a SOCKS 4 gateway for all destinations but no HTTP parent
2053 forward-socks4 / socks-gw.example.com:1080 .
2055 To chain Privoxy and Tor, both running on the same system, you should use
2058 forward-socks4 / 127.0.0.1:9050 .
2060 The public Tor network can't be used to reach your local network, therefore
2061 it's a good idea to make some exceptions:
2063 forward 192.168.*.*/ .
2065 forward 127.*.*.*/ .
2067 Unencrypted connections to systems in these address ranges will be as (un)
2068 secure as the local network is, but the alternative is that you can't reach
2071 If you also want to be able to reach servers in your local network by using
2072 their names, you will need additional exceptions that look like this:
2074 forward localhost/ .
2076 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2078 7.5.3. Advanced Forwarding Examples
2080 If you have links to multiple ISPs that provide various special content only to
2081 their subscribers, you can configure multiple Privoxies which have connections
2082 to the respective ISPs to act as forwarders to each other, so that your users
2083 can see the internal content of all ISPs.
2085 Assume that host-a has a PPP connection to isp-a.net. And host-b has a PPP
2086 connection to isp-b.net. Both run Privoxy. Their forwarding configuration can
2092 forward .isp-b.net host-b:8118
2097 forward .isp-a.net host-a:8118
2099 Now, your users can set their browser's proxy to use either host-a or host-b
2100 and be able to browse the internal content of both isp-a and isp-b.
2102 If you intend to chain Privoxy and squid locally, then chain as browser ->
2103 squid -> privoxy is the recommended way.
2105 Assuming that Privoxy and squid run on the same box, your squid configuration
2106 could then look like this:
2108 # Define Privoxy as parent proxy (without ICP)
2109 cache_peer 127.0.0.1 parent 8118 7 no-query
2111 # Define ACL for protocol FTP
2114 # Do not forward FTP requests to Privoxy
2115 always_direct allow ftp
2117 # Forward all the rest to Privoxy
2118 never_direct allow all
2120 You would then need to change your browser's proxy settings to squid's address
2121 and port. Squid normally uses port 3128. If unsure consult http_port in
2124 You could just as well decide to only forward requests for Windows executables
2125 through a virus-scanning parent proxy, say, on antivir.example.com, port 8010:
2128 forward /.*\.(exe|com|dll|zip)$ antivir.example.com:8010
2130 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2132 7.5.4. forwarded-connect-retries
2136 How often Privoxy retries if a forwarded connection request fails.
2148 Forwarded connections are treated like direct connections and no retry
2153 forwarded-connect-retries is mainly interesting for socks4a connections,
2154 where Privoxy can't detect why the connections failed. The connection might
2155 have failed because of a DNS timeout in which case a retry makes sense, but
2156 it might also have failed because the server doesn't exist or isn't
2157 reachable. In this case the retry will just delay the appearance of
2158 Privoxy's error message.
2160 Only use this option, if you are getting many forwarding related error
2161 messages, that go away when you try again manually. Start with a small
2162 value and check Privoxy's logfile from time to time, to see how many
2163 retries are usually needed.
2167 forwarded-connect-retries 1
2169 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2171 7.6. Windows GUI Options
2173 Privoxy has a number of options specific to the Windows GUI interface:
2175 If "activity-animation" is set to 1, the Privoxy icon will animate when
2176 "Privoxy" is active. To turn off, set to 0.
2178 activity-animation 1
2181 If "log-messages" is set to 1, Privoxy will log messages to the console window:
2186 If "log-buffer-size" is set to 1, the size of the log buffer, i.e. the amount
2187 of memory used for the log messages displayed in the console window, will be
2188 limited to "log-max-lines" (see below).
2190 Warning: Setting this to 0 will result in the buffer to grow infinitely and eat
2196 log-max-lines is the maximum number of lines held in the log buffer. See above.
2201 If "log-highlight-messages" is set to 1, Privoxy will highlight portions of the
2202 log messages with a bold-faced font:
2204 log-highlight-messages 1
2207 The font used in the console window:
2209 log-font-name Comic Sans MS
2212 Font size used in the console window:
2217 "show-on-task-bar" controls whether or not Privoxy will appear as a button on
2218 the Task bar when minimized:
2223 If "close-button-minimizes" is set to 1, the Windows close button will minimize
2224 Privoxy instead of closing the program (close with the exit option on the File
2227 close-button-minimizes 1
2230 The "hide-console" option is specific to the MS-Win console version of Privoxy.
2231 If this option is used, Privoxy will disconnect from and hide the command
2237 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2241 The actions files are used to define what actions Privoxy takes for which URLs,
2242 and thus determines how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP
2243 content and transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts
2244 thereof). There are a number of such actions, with a wide range of
2245 functionality. Each action does something a little different. These actions
2246 give us a veritable arsenal of tools with which to exert our control,
2247 preferences and independence. Actions can be combined so that their effects are
2248 aggregated when applied against a given set of URLs.
2250 There are three action files included with Privoxy with differing purposes:
2252 * default.action - is the primary action file that sets the initial values
2253 for all actions. It is intended to provide a base level of functionality
2254 for Privoxy's array of features. So it is a set of broad rules that should
2255 work reasonably well as-is for most users. This is the file that the
2256 developers are keeping updated, and making available to users. The user's
2257 preferences as set in standard.action, e.g. either Cautious (the default),
2258 Medium, or Advanced (see below).
2260 * user.action - is intended to be for local site preferences and exceptions.
2261 As an example, if your ISP or your bank has specific requirements, and need
2262 special handling, this kind of thing should go here. This file will not be
2265 * standard.action - is used by the web based editor at http://
2266 config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default, to set various pre-defined
2267 sets of rules for the default actions section in default.action.
2269 Edit Set to Cautious Set to Medium Set to Advanced
2271 These have increasing levels of aggressiveness and have no influence on
2272 your browsing unless you select them explicitly in the editor. A default
2273 installation should be pre-set to Cautious (versions prior to 3.0.5 were
2274 set to Medium). New users should try this for a while before adjusting the
2275 settings to more aggressive levels.
2277 The Edit button allows you to turn each action on/off individually for
2278 fine-tuning. The Cautious button changes the actions list to low/safe
2279 settings which will activate a minimal set of Privoxy's features, and
2280 subsequently there will be less of a chance for accidental problems. The
2281 Medium button sets the list to a medium level of ad blocking and a low
2282 level set of privacy features. The Advanced button sets the list to a high
2283 level of ad blocking and medium level of privacy. See the chart below. The
2284 latter three buttons over-ride any changes via with the Edit button. More
2285 fine-tuning can be done in the lower sections of this internal page.
2287 It is not recommend to edit the standard.action file itself.
2289 The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
2290 standard.action are:
2292 Table 1. Default Configurations
2294 +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
2295 |Feature |Cautious |Medium |Advanced |
2296 |------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------|
2297 |Ad-blocking |medium |high |high |
2298 |Aggressiveness | | | |
2299 |------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------|
2300 |Ad-filtering by |no |yes |yes |
2302 |------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------|
2303 |Ad-filtering by |no |no |yes |
2305 |------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------|
2306 |Pop-up killing |blocks only |blocks only |all |
2307 |------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------|
2308 |Privacy Features |low |medium |medium/high |
2309 |------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------|
2310 |Cookie handling |none |session-only |kill |
2311 |------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------|
2312 |Referer forging |no |yes |yes |
2313 |------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------|
2314 |GIF de-animation |no |yes |yes |
2315 |------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------|
2316 |Fast redirects |no |no |yes |
2317 |------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------|
2318 |HTML taming |no |yes |yes |
2319 |------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------|
2320 |JavaScript taming |no |yes |yes |
2321 |------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------|
2322 |Web-bug killing |no |yes |yes |
2323 |------------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------|
2324 |Image tag |no |no |yes |
2326 +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
2328 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
2329 file, and are processed in the order they are defined (e.g. default.action is
2330 typically process before user.action). The content of these can all be viewed
2331 and edited from http://config.privoxy.org/show-status. The over-riding
2332 principle when applying actions, is that the last action that matches a given
2333 URL, wins. The broadest, most general rules go first (defined in
2334 default.action), followed by any exceptions (typically also in default.action),
2335 which are then followed lastly by any local preferences (typically in
2336 user.action). Generally, user.action has the last word.
2338 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use "aliases"
2339 in an actions file, you have to place the (optional) alias section at the top
2340 of that file. Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally
2341 to all sites and pages (be very careful with using such a universal set in
2342 user.action or any other actions file after default.action, because it will
2343 override the result from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
2344 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard user.action as an
2345 appendix to default.action, with the advantage that is a separate file, which
2346 makes preserving your personal settings across Privoxy upgrades easier.
2348 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or just
2349 some obnoxious URL that you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted or
2350 rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not written
2351 to disk), content can be modified, JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking fooled, and
2352 much more. See below for a complete list of actions.
2354 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2356 8.1. Finding the Right Mix
2358 Note that some actions, like cookie suppression or script disabling, may render
2359 some sites unusable that rely on these techniques to work properly. Finding the
2360 right mix of actions is not always easy and certainly a matter of personal
2361 taste. And, things can always change, requiring refinements in the
2362 configuration. In general, it can be said that the more "aggressive" your
2363 default settings (in the top section of the actions file) are, the more
2364 exceptions for "trusted" sites you will have to make later. If, for example,
2365 you want to crunch all cookies per default, you'll have to make exceptions from
2366 that rule for sites that you regularly use and that require cookies for
2367 actually useful purposes, like maybe your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
2369 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
2370 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
2371 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
2372 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again
2375 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2379 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by using our
2380 browser-based editor, which can be reached from http://config.privoxy.org/
2381 show-status. The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single
2382 feature on a per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults
2383 like "Cautious", "Medium" or "Advanced". Warning: the "Advanced" setting is
2384 more aggressive, and will be more likely to cause problems for some sites.
2385 Experienced users only!
2387 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit
2388 the the actions files with your favorite text editor. Look at default.action
2389 which is richly commented with many good examples.
2391 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2393 8.3. How Actions are Applied to URLs
2395 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections, like the "
2396 alias" sections which will be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on
2397 regular sections: They have a heading line (often split up to multiple lines
2398 for readability) which consist of a list of actions, separated by whitespace
2399 and enclosed in curly braces. Below that, there is a list of URL patterns, each
2402 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
2403 compared to all patterns in each "action file" file. Every time it matches, the
2404 list of applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated, using the
2405 heading of the section in which the pattern is located. If multiple matches for
2406 the same URL set the same action differently, the last match wins. If not, the
2407 effects are aggregated. E.g. a URL might match a regular section with a heading
2408 line of { +handle-as-image }, then later another one with just { +block },
2409 resulting in both actions to apply. And there may well be cases where you will
2410 want to combine actions together. Such a section then might look like:
2412 { +handle-as-image +block }
2413 # Block these as if they were images. Send no block page.
2415 media.example.com/.*banners
2416 .example.com/images/ads/
2418 You can trace this process for any given URL by visiting http://
2419 config.privoxy.org/show-url-info.
2421 Examples and more detail on this is provided in the Appendix, Troubleshooting:
2422 Anatomy of an Action section.
2424 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2428 As mentioned, Privoxy uses "patterns" to determine what actions might apply to
2429 which sites and pages your browser attempts to access. These "patterns" use
2430 wild card type pattern matching to achieve a high degree of flexibility. This
2431 allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match against many similar
2434 Generally, a Privoxy pattern has the form <domain>/<path>, where both the
2435 <domain> and <path> are optional. (This is why the special / pattern matches
2436 all URLs). Note that the protocol portion of the URL pattern (e.g. http://)
2437 should not be included in the pattern. This is assumed already!
2439 The pattern matching syntax is different for the domain and path parts of the
2440 URL. The domain part uses a simple globbing type matching technique, while the
2441 path part uses a more flexible "Regular Expressions (PCRE)" based syntax.
2445 is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to www.example.com,
2446 regardless of which document on that server is requested. So ALL pages in
2447 this domain would be covered by the scope of this action. Note that a
2448 simple example.com is different and would NOT match.
2452 means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing / may be
2455 www.example.com/index.html
2457 matches only the single document /index.html on www.example.com.
2461 matches the document /index.html, regardless of the domain, i.e. on any web
2466 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and there
2467 is no top-level domain called .html. So its a mistake.
2469 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2471 8.4.1. The Domain Pattern
2473 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the domain
2474 starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end. For example:
2478 matches any domain that ENDS in .example.com
2482 matches any domain that STARTS with www.
2486 matches any domain that CONTAINS .example.. And, by the way, also included
2487 would be any files or documents that exist within that domain since no path
2488 limitations are specified. (Correctly speaking: It matches any FQDN that
2489 contains example as a domain.) This might be www.example.com,
2490 news.example.de, or www.example.net/cgi/testing.pl for instance. All these
2493 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
2494 themselves. These work similarly to shell globbing type wild-cards: "*"
2495 represents zero or more arbitrary characters (this is equivalent to the
2496 "Regular Expression" based syntax of ".*"), "?" represents any single character
2497 (this is equivalent to the regular expression syntax of a simple "."), and you
2498 can define "character classes" in square brackets which is similar to the same
2499 regular expression technique. All of this can be freely mixed:
2503 matches "adserver.example.com", "ads.example.com", etc but not
2508 matches all of the above, and then some.
2512 matches www.ipix.com, pictures.epix.com, a.b.c.d.e.upix.com etc.
2514 www[1-9a-ez].example.c*
2516 matches www1.example.com, www4.example.cc, wwwd.example.cy,
2517 wwwz.example.com etc., but not wwww.example.com.
2519 While flexibile, this is not the sophistication of full regular expression
2522 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2524 8.4.2. The Path Pattern
2526 Privoxy uses Perl compatible (PCRE) "Regular Expression" based syntax (through
2527 the PCRE library) for matching the path portion (after the slash), and is thus
2530 There is an Appendix with a brief quick-start into regular expressions, and
2531 full (very technical) documentation on PCRE regex syntax is available on-line
2532 at http://www.pcre.org/man.txt. You might also find the Perl man page on
2533 regular expressions (man perlre) useful, which is available on-line at http://
2534 perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html.
2536 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the "/", i.e. it
2537 matches as if it would start with a "^" (regular expression speak for the
2538 beginning of a line).
2540 Please also note that matching in the path is CASE INSENSITIVE by default, but
2541 you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the "(?
2542 -i)" switch: www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.* will match only documents whose
2543 path starts with PaTtErN in exactly this capitalization.
2547 Is equivalent to just ".example.com", since any documents within that
2548 domain are matched with or without the ".*" regular expression. This is
2551 .example.com/.*/index.html
2553 Will match any page in the domain of "example.com" that is named
2554 "index.html", and that is part of some path. For example, it matches
2555 "www.example.com/testing/index.html" but NOT "www.example.com/index.html"
2556 because the regular expression called for at least two "/'s", thus the path
2557 requirement. It also would match "www.example.com/testing/index_html",
2558 because of the special meta-character ".".
2560 .example.com/(.*/)?index\.html
2562 This regular expression is conditional so it will match any page named
2563 "index.html" regardless of path which in this case can have one or more "/
2564 's". And this one must contain exactly ".html" (but does not have to end
2567 .example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)
2569 This regular expression will match any path of "example.com" that contains
2570 any of the words "ads", "banner", "banners" (because of the "?") or "junk".
2571 The path does not have to end in these words, just contain them.
2573 .example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)/.*\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$
2575 This is very much the same as above, except now it must end in either
2576 ".jpg", ".jpeg", ".gif" or ".png". So this one is limited to common image
2579 There are many, many good examples to be found in default.action, and more
2580 tutorials below in Appendix on regular expressions.
2582 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2586 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
2587 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a "+", and
2588 turned off if preceded with a "-". So a +action means "do that action", e.g.
2589 +block means "please block URLs that match the following patterns", and -block
2590 means "don't block URLs that match the following patterns, even if +block
2591 previously applied."
2593 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces
2594 and separated by whitespace, like in {+some-action -some-other-action
2595 {some-parameter}}, followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which
2596 they apply. Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up
2597 a section of the actions file.
2599 Actions fall into three categories:
2601 * Boolean, i.e the action can only be "enabled" or "disabled". Syntax:
2603 +name # enable action name
2604 -name # disable action name
2608 * Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of
2611 +name{param} # enable action and set parameter to param,
2612 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
2613 -name # disable action. The parameter can be omitted
2615 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized
2616 action, the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are
2619 Example: +hide-user-agent{ Mozilla 1.0 }
2621 * Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions, but they behave
2622 differently: If the action applies multiple times to the same URL, but with
2623 different parameters, all the parameters from all matches are remembered.
2624 This is used for actions that can be executed for the same request
2625 repeatedly, like adding multiple headers, or filtering through multiple
2628 +name{param} # enable action and add param to the list of parameters
2629 -name{param} # remove the parameter param from the list of parameters
2630 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
2631 -name # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list
2633 Examples: +add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text} and +filter{html-annoyances}
2635 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no "actions" are taken. So in this
2636 case Privoxy would just be a normal, non-blocking, non-anonymizing proxy. You
2637 must specifically enable the privacy and blocking features you need (although
2638 the provided default actions files will give a good starting point).
2640 Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. So exceptions to any rules
2641 you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or in a file that is
2642 processed later when using multiple actions files such as user.action). For
2643 multi-valued actions, the actions are applied in the order they are specified.
2644 Actions files are processed in the order they are defined in config (the
2645 default installation has three actions files). It also quite possible for any
2646 given URL pattern to match more than one pattern and thus more than one set of
2647 actions! Last match wins.
2649 The list of valid Privoxy actions are:
2651 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2657 Confuse log analysis, custom applications
2661 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
2669 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not
2670 checked. It is recommended that you use the "X-" prefix for custom headers.
2674 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
2675 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
2676 "HTTP headers" are, you definitely don't need to worry about this one.
2680 +add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}
2682 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2688 Block ads or other unwanted content
2692 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the
2693 requests are trapped by Privoxy and the requested URL is never retrieved,
2694 but is answered locally with a substitute page or image, as determined by
2695 the handle-as-image, set-image-blocker, and handle-as-empty-document
2708 Privoxy sends a special "BLOCKED" page for requests to blocked pages. This
2709 page contains links to find out why the request was blocked, and a
2710 click-through to the blocked content (the latter only if compiled with the
2711 force feature enabled). The "BLOCKED" page adapts to the available screen
2712 space -- it displays full-blown if space allows, or miniaturized and
2713 text-only if loaded into a small frame or window. If you are using Privoxy
2714 right now, you can take a look at the "BLOCKED" page.
2716 A very important exception occurs if both block and handle-as-image, apply
2717 to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
2718 set-image-blocker (see below) also applies, the type of image will be
2719 determined by its parameter, if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is
2722 It is important to understand this process, in order to understand how
2723 Privoxy deals with ads and other unwanted content. Blocking is a core
2724 feature, and one upon which various other features depend.
2726 The filter action can perform a very similar task, by "blocking" banner
2727 images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
2728 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
2729 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse
2732 Example usage (section):
2735 # Block and replace with "blocked" page
2736 .nasty-stuff.example.com
2738 {+block +handle-as-image}
2739 # Block and replace with image
2743 {+block +handle-as-empty-document}
2744 # Block and then ignore
2745 adserver.exampleclick.net/.*\.js$
2747 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2749 8.5.3. content-type-overwrite
2753 Stop useless download menus from popping up, or change the browser's
2758 Replaces the "Content-Type:" HTTP server header.
2770 The "Content-Type:" HTTP server header is used by the browser to decide
2771 what to do with the document. The value of this header can cause the
2772 browser to open a download menu instead of displaying the document by
2773 itself, even if the document's format is supported by the browser.
2775 The declared content type can also affect which rendering mode the browser
2776 chooses. If XHTML is delivered as "text/html", many browsers treat it as
2777 yet another broken HTML document. If it is send as "application/xml",
2778 browsers with XHTML support will only display it, if the syntax is correct.
2780 If you see a web site that proudly uses XHTML buttons, but sets
2781 "Content-Type: text/html", you can use Privoxy to overwrite it with
2782 "application/xml" and validate the web master's claim inside your
2783 XHTML-supporting browser. If the syntax is incorrect, the browser will
2786 You can also go the opposite direction: if your browser prints error
2787 messages instead of rendering a document falsely declared as XHTML, you can
2788 overwrite the content type with "text/html" and have it rendered as broken
2791 By default content-type-overwrite only replaces "Content-Type:" headers
2792 that look like some kind of text. If you want to overwrite it
2793 unconditionally, you have to combine it with force-text-mode. This
2794 limitation exists for a reason, think twice before circumventing it.
2796 Most of the time it's easier to enable filter-server-headers and replace
2797 this action with a custom regular expression. It allows you to activate it
2798 for every document of a certain site and it will still only replace the
2799 content types you aimed at.
2801 Of course you can apply content-type-overwrite to a whole site and then
2802 make URL based exceptions, but it's a lot more work to get the same
2805 Example usage (sections):
2807 # Check if www.example.net/ really uses valid XHTML
2808 {+content-type-overwrite {application/xml}}
2811 # but leave the content type unmodified if the URL looks like a style sheet
2812 {-content-type-overwrite}
2813 www.example.net/*.\.css$
2814 www.example.net/*.style
2816 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2818 8.5.4. crunch-client-header
2822 Remove a client header Privoxy has no dedicated action for.
2826 Deletes every header sent by the client that contains the string the user
2827 supplied as parameter.
2839 This action allows you to block client headers for which no dedicated
2840 Privoxy action exists. Privoxy will remove every client header that
2841 contains the string you supplied as parameter.
2843 Regular expressions are not supported and you can't use this action to
2844 block different headers in the same request, unless they contain the same
2847 crunch-client-header is only meant for quick tests. If you have to block
2848 several different headers, or only want to modify parts of them, you should
2849 enable filter-client-headers and create your own filter.
2851 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
2853 |-----------------------------------------------------------------|
2854 |Don't block any header without understanding the consequences. |
2855 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
2856 Example usage (section):
2858 # Block the non-existent "Privacy-Violation:" client header
2859 {+crunch-client-header {Privacy-Violation:}}
2863 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2865 8.5.5. crunch-if-none-match
2869 Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.
2873 Deletes the "If-None-Match:" HTTP client header.
2885 Removing the "If-None-Match:" HTTP client header is useful for filter
2886 testing, where you want to force a real reload instead of getting status
2887 code "304" which would cause the browser to use a cached copy of the page.
2889 It is also useful to make sure the header isn't used as a cookie
2892 Blocking the "If-None-Match:" header shouldn't cause any caching problems,
2893 as long as the "If-Modified-Since:" header isn't blocked as well.
2895 It is recommended to use this action together with hide-if-modified-since
2896 and overwrite-last-modified.
2898 Example usage (section):
2900 # Let the browser revalidate cached documents without being tracked across sessions
2901 {+hide-if-modified-since {-60} \
2902 +overwrite-last-modified {randomize} \
2903 +crunch-if-none-match}
2906 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2908 8.5.6. crunch-incoming-cookies
2912 Prevent the web server from setting any cookies on your system
2916 Deletes any "Set-Cookie:" HTTP headers from server replies.
2928 This action is only concerned with incoming cookies. For outgoing cookies,
2929 use crunch-outgoing-cookies. Use both to disable cookies completely.
2931 It makes no sense at all to use this action in conjunction with the
2932 session-cookies-only action, since it would prevent the session cookies
2933 from being set. See also filter-content-cookies.
2937 +crunch-incoming-cookies
2939 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2941 8.5.7. crunch-server-header
2945 Remove a server header Privoxy has no dedicated action for.
2949 Deletes every header sent by the server that contains the string the user
2950 supplied as parameter.
2962 This action allows you to block server headers for which no dedicated
2963 Privoxy action exists. Privoxy will remove every server header that
2964 contains the string you supplied as parameter.
2966 Regular expressions are not supported and you can't use this action to
2967 block different headers in the same request, unless they contain the same
2970 crunch-server-header is only meant for quick tests. If you have to block
2971 several different headers, or only want to modify parts of them, you should
2972 enable filter-server-headers and create your own filter.
2974 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
2976 |-----------------------------------------------------------------|
2977 |Don't block any header without understanding the consequences. |
2978 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
2979 Example usage (section):
2981 # Crunch server headers that try to prevent caching
2982 {+crunch-server-header {no-cache}}
2985 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2987 8.5.8. crunch-outgoing-cookies
2991 Prevent the web server from reading any cookies from your system
2995 Deletes any "Cookie:" HTTP headers from client requests.
3007 This action is only concerned with outgoing cookies. For incoming cookies,
3008 use crunch-incoming-cookies. Use both to disable cookies completely.
3010 It makes no sense at all to use this action in conjunction with the
3011 session-cookies-only action, since it would prevent the session cookies
3016 +crunch-outgoing-cookies
3018 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3020 8.5.9. deanimate-gifs
3024 Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.
3028 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
3040 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
3041 the option "first" is given, the first frame of the animation is used as
3042 the replacement. If "last" is given, the last frame of the animation is
3043 used instead, which probably makes more sense for most banner animations,
3044 but also has the risk of not showing the entire last frame (if it is only a
3045 delta to an earlier frame).
3047 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
3048 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
3053 +deanimate-gifs{last}
3055 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3057 8.5.10. downgrade-http-version
3061 Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1
3065 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
3077 This is a left-over from the time when Privoxy didn't support important
3078 HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the unlikely case that you
3079 experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server out there. Not all
3080 (optional) HTTP/1.1 features are supported yet, so there is a chance you
3081 might need this action.
3083 Example usage (section):
3085 {+downgrade-http-version}
3086 problem-host.example.com
3088 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3090 8.5.11. fast-redirects
3094 Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links.
3098 Detects redirection URLs and redirects the browser without contacting the
3099 redirection server first.
3107 + "simple-check" to just search for the string "http://" to detect
3110 + "check-decoded-url" to decode URLs (if necessary) before searching for
3115 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
3116 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
3117 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs resulting
3118 from this scheme typically look like: "http://www.example.org/
3119 click-tracker.cgi?target=http%3a//www.example.net/".
3121 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
3122 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
3123 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go to.
3124 Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your browser
3125 asks the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds the
3128 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
3129 If it is enabled by default, you will have to create some exceptions to
3130 this action. It can lead to failures in several ways:
3132 Not every URLs with other URLs as parameters is evil. Some sites offer a
3133 real service that requires this information to work. For example a
3134 validation service needs to know, which document to validate.
3135 fast-redirects assumes that every URL parameter that looks like another URL
3136 is a redirection target, and will always redirect to the last one. Most of
3137 the time the assumption is correct, but if it isn't, the user gets
3140 Another failure occurs if the URL contains other parameters after the URL
3141 parameter. The URL: "http://www.example.org/?redirect=http%3a//
3142 www.example.net/&foo=bar". contains the redirection URL "http://
3143 www.example.net/", followed by another parameter. fast-redirects doesn't
3144 know that and will cause a redirect to "http://www.example.net/&foo=bar".
3145 Depending on the target server configuration, the parameter will be
3146 silently ignored or lead to a "page not found" error. It is possible to fix
3147 these redirected requests with filter-client-headers but it requires a
3150 To detect a redirection URL, fast-redirects only looks for the string
3151 "http://", either in plain text (invalid but often used) or encoded as
3152 "http%3a//". Some sites use their own URL encoding scheme, encrypt the
3153 address of the target server or replace it with a database id. In theses
3154 cases fast-redirects is fooled and the request reaches the redirection
3155 server where it probably gets logged.
3159 { +fast-redirects{simple-check} }
3162 { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
3163 another.example.com/testing
3165 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3171 Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
3172 do fun text replacements, etc.
3176 All files of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which
3177 this action applies, are filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular
3178 expression based substitutions. (Note: as of version 3.0.3 plain text
3179 documents are exempted from filtering, because web servers often use the
3180 text/plain MIME type for all files whose type they don't know.) By default,
3181 filtering works only on the raw document content itself (that which can be
3182 seen with View Source), not the headers.
3190 The name of a filter, as defined in the filter file. Filters can be defined
3191 in one or more files as defined by the filterfile option in the config file
3192 . default.filter is the collection of filters supplied by the developers.
3193 Locally defined filters should go in their own file, such as user.filter.
3195 When used in its negative form, and without parameters, all filtering is
3196 completely disabled.
3200 For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
3201 in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below
3204 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to slow
3205 down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has passed
3206 the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way since the
3207 page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more noticeable
3208 on slower connections.
3210 "Rolling your own" filters requires a knowledge of "Regular Expressions"
3211 and "HTML". This is very powerful feature, and potentially very intrusive.
3214 The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the buffer-limit
3215 option in the main config file. The default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this
3216 limit is exceeded, the buffered data, and all pending data, is passed
3219 Inappropriate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
3220 (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data (from
3221 HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate the
3222 integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might be
3223 necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering by
3224 defining appropriate -filter exceptions.
3226 At this time, Privoxy cannot uncompress compressed documents. If you want
3227 filtering to work on all documents, even those that would normally be sent
3228 compressed, use the prevent-compression action in conjunction with filter.
3230 Filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the block action, i.e. it
3231 can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism works quite
3232 differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners based on their size
3233 (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat standardized.
3235 Feedback with suggestions for new or improved filters is particularly
3238 The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
3239 predefined filter. There are more verbose explanations of what these
3240 filters do in the filter file chapter.
3242 Example usage (with filters from the distribution default.filter file). See the
3243 Predefined Filters section for more explanation on each:
3245 +filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
3247 +filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites)
3249 +filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse
3251 +filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content
3253 +filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups)
3255 +filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows
3257 +filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML
3259 +filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective
3261 +filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size
3263 +filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers
3265 +filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)
3267 +filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap
3269 +filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves
3271 +filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizeable
3273 +filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets
3275 +filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects
3277 +filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies savable
3279 +filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!
3281 +filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering (demo only)
3283 +filter{ie-exploits} # Disable some known Internet Explorer bug exploits
3285 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3287 8.5.13. filter-client-headers
3291 To apply filtering to the client's (browser's) headers
3295 By default, Privoxy's filters only apply to the document content itself.
3296 This will extend those filters to include the client's headers as well.
3308 Regular expressions can be used to filter headers as well. Check your
3309 filters closely before activating this action, as it can easily lead to
3312 These filters are applied to each header on its own, not to them all at
3313 once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside you
3314 can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
3316 The filters are used after the other header actions have finished and can
3317 use their output as input.
3319 Whenever possible one should specify ^, $, the whole header name and the
3320 colon, to make sure the filter doesn't cause havoc to other headers or the
3321 page itself. For example if you want to transform Galeon User-Agents to
3322 Firefox User-Agents you shouldn't use:
3324 s@Galeon/\d\.\d\.\d @@
3328 s@^(User-Agent:.*) Galeon/\d\.\d\.\d (Firefox/\d\.\d\.\d\.\d)$@$1 $2@
3330 Example usage (section):
3332 {+filter-client-headers +filter{test_filter}}
3333 problem-host.example.com
3336 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3338 8.5.14. filter-server-headers
3342 To apply filtering to the server's headers
3346 By default, Privoxy's filters only apply to the document content itself.
3347 This will extend those filters to include the server's headers as well.
3359 Similar to filter-client-headers, but works on the server instead. To
3360 filter both server and client, use both.
3362 As with filter-client-headers, check your filters before activating this
3363 action, as it can easily lead to broken requests.
3365 These filters are applied to each header on its own, not to them all at
3366 once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside you
3367 can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
3369 The filters are used after the other header actions have finished and can
3370 use their output as input.
3372 Remember too, whenever possible one should specify ^, $, the whole header
3373 name and the colon, to make sure the filter doesn't cause havoc to other
3374 headers or the page itself. See above for example.
3376 Example usage (section):
3378 {+filter-server-headers +filter{test_filter}}
3379 problem-host.example.com
3382 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3384 8.5.15. force-text-mode
3388 Force Privoxy to treat a document as if it was in some kind of text format.
3392 Declares a document as text, even if the "Content-Type:" isn't detected as
3405 As explained above, Privoxy tries to only filter files that are in some
3406 kind of text format. The same restrictions apply to content-type-overwrite.
3407 force-text-mode declares a document as text, without looking at the
3408 "Content-Type:" first.
3410 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
3412 |-----------------------------------------------------------------|
3413 |Think twice before activating this action. Filtering binary data |
3414 |with regular expressions can cause file damage. |
3415 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
3421 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3423 8.5.16. handle-as-empty-document
3427 Mark URLs that should be replaced by empty documents if they get blocked
3431 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs. If
3432 the block action also applies, the presence or absence of this mark decides
3433 whether an HTML "blocked" page, or an empty document will be sent to the
3434 client as a substitute for the blocked content. The empty document isn't
3435 literally empty, but actually contains a single space.
3447 Some browsers complain about syntax errors if JavaScript documents are
3448 blocked with Privoxy's default HTML page; this option can be used to
3451 The content type for the empty document can be specified with
3452 content-type-overwrite{}, but usually this isn't necessary.
3456 # Block all documents on example.org that end with ".js",
3457 # but send an empty document instead of the usual HTML message.
3458 {+block +handle-as-empty-document}
3462 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3464 8.5.17. handle-as-image
3468 Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images if they
3469 do get blocked, rather than HTML pages)
3473 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as
3474 images. If the block action also applies, the presence or absence of this
3475 mark decides whether an HTML "blocked" page, or a replacement image (as
3476 determined by the set-image-blocker action) will be sent to the client as a
3477 substitute for the blocked content.
3489 The below generic example section is actually part of default.action. It
3490 marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and
3491 should be left intact.
3493 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in
3494 conjunction with block, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
3495 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
3497 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For
3498 instance, (in-line) ad frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they
3499 won't display properly. Forcing handle-as-image in this situation will not
3500 replace the ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
3502 Example usage (sections):
3504 # Generic image extensions:
3507 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
3509 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
3510 # blocked as images:
3512 {+block +handle-as-image}
3513 some.nasty-banner-server.com/junk.cgi?output=trash
3515 # Banner source! Who cares if they also have non-image content?
3518 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3520 8.5.18. hide-accept-language
3524 Pretend to use different language settings.
3528 Deletes or replaces the "Accept-Language:" HTTP header in client requests.
3536 Keyword: "block", or any user defined value.
3540 Faking the browser's language settings can be useful to make a foreign
3541 User-Agent set with hide-user-agent more believable.
3543 However some sites with content in different languages check the
3544 "Accept-Language:" to decide which one to take by default. Sometimes it
3545 isn't possible to later switch to another language without changing the
3546 "Accept-Language:" header first.
3548 Therefore it's a good idea to either only change the "Accept-Language:"
3549 header to languages you understand, or to languages that aren't wide
3552 Before setting the "Accept-Language:" header to a rare language, you should
3553 consider that it helps to make your requests unique and thus easier to
3554 trace. If you don't plan to change this header frequently, you should stick
3555 to a common language.
3557 Example usage (section):
3559 # Pretend to use Canadian language settings.
3560 {+hide-accept-language{en-ca} \
3561 +hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenBSD i386; en-CA; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060628 Firefox/1.5.0.4} \
3565 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3567 8.5.19. hide-content-disposition
3571 Prevent download menus for content you prefer to view inside the browser.
3575 Deletes or replaces the "Content-Disposition:" HTTP header set by some
3584 Keyword: "block", or any user defined value.
3588 Some servers set the "Content-Disposition:" HTTP header for documents they
3589 assume you want to save locally before viewing them. The
3590 "Content-Disposition:" header contains the file name the browser is
3591 supposed to use by default.
3593 In most browsers that understand this header, it makes it impossible to
3594 just view the document, without downloading it first, even if it's just a
3595 simple text file or an image.
3597 Removing the "Content-Disposition:" header helps to prevent this annoyance,
3598 but some browsers additionally check the "Content-Type:" header, before
3599 they decide if they can display a document without saving it first. In
3600 these cases, you have to change this header as well, before the browser
3601 stops displaying download menus.
3603 It is also possible to change the server's file name suggestion to another
3604 one, but in most cases it isn't worth the time to set it up.
3608 # Disarm the download link in Sourceforge's patch tracker
3610 +content-type-overwrite {text/plain}\
3611 +hide-content-disposition {block} }
3612 .sourceforge.net/tracker/download.php
3614 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3616 8.5.20. hide-if-modified-since
3620 Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.
3624 Deletes the "If-Modified-Since:" HTTP client header or modifies its value.
3632 Keyword: "block", or a user defined value that specifies a range of hours.
3636 Removing this header is useful for filter testing, where you want to force
3637 a real reload instead of getting status code "304", which would cause the
3638 browser to use a cached copy of the page.
3640 Instead of removing the header, hide-if-modified-since can also add or
3641 subtract a random amount of time to/from the header's value. You specify a
3642 range of minutes where the random factor should be chosen from and Privoxy
3643 does the rest. A negative value means subtracting, a positive value adding.
3645 Randomizing the value of the "If-Modified-Since:" makes sure it isn't used
3646 as a cookie replacement, but you will run into caching problems if the
3647 random range is too high.
3649 It is a good idea to only use a small negative value and let
3650 overwrite-last-modified handle the greater changes.
3652 It is also recommended to use this action together with
3653 crunch-if-none-match.
3655 Example usage (section):
3657 # Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
3658 {+hide-if-modified-since {-60}\
3659 +overwrite-last-modified {randomize}\
3660 +crunch-if-none-match}
3663 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3665 8.5.21. hide-forwarded-for-headers
3669 Improve privacy by hiding the true source of the request
3673 Deletes any existing "X-Forwarded-for:" HTTP header from client requests,
3674 and prevents adding a new one.
3686 It is fairly safe to leave this on.
3688 This action is scheduled for improvement: It should be able to generate
3689 forged "X-Forwarded-for:" headers using random IP addresses from a
3690 specified network, to make successive requests from the same client look
3691 like requests from a pool of different users sharing the same proxy.
3695 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
3697 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3699 8.5.22. hide-from-header
3703 Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address
3707 Deletes any existing "From:" HTTP header, or replaces it with the specified
3716 Keyword: "block", or any user defined value.
3720 The keyword "block" will completely remove the header (not to be confused
3721 with the block action).
3723 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
3724 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
3725 is actually used by a real person.
3727 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send "From:"
3732 +hide-from-header{block}
3736 +hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}
3738 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3740 8.5.23. hide-referrer
3744 Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site
3748 Deletes the "Referer:" (sic) HTTP header from the client request, or
3749 replaces it with a forged one.
3757 + "conditional-block" to delete the header completely if the host has
3760 + "block" to delete the header unconditionally.
3762 + "forge" to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are
3765 + Any other string to set a user defined referrer.
3769 conditional-block is the only parameter, that isn't easily detected in the
3770 server's log file. If it blocks the referrer, the request will look like
3771 the visitor used a bookmark or typed in the address directly.
3773 Leaving the referrer unmodified for requests on the same host allows the
3774 server owner to see the visitor's "click path", but in most cases she could
3775 also get that information by comparing other parts of the log file: for
3776 example the User-Agent if it isn't a very common one, or the user's IP
3777 address if it doesn't change between different requests.
3779 Always blocking the referrer, or using a custom one, can lead to failures
3780 on servers that check the referrer before they answer any requests, in an
3781 attempt to prevent their valuable content from being embedded or linked to
3784 Both conditional-block and forge will work with referrer checks, as long as
3785 content and valid referring page are on the same host. Most of the time
3788 hide-referer is an alternate spelling of hide-referrer and the two can be
3789 can be freely substituted with each other. ("referrer" is the correct
3790 English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it requires it
3791 to be spelled as "referer".)
3795 +hide-referrer{forge}
3799 +hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}
3801 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3803 8.5.24. hide-user-agent
3807 Conceal your type of browser and client operating system
3811 Replaces the value of the "User-Agent:" HTTP header in client requests with
3812 the specified value.
3820 Any user-defined string.
3824 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
3826 |-----------------------------------------------------------------|
3827 |This can lead to problems on web sites that depend on looking at |
3828 |this header in order to customize their content for different |
3829 |browsers (which, by the way, is NOT the right thing to do: good |
3830 |web sites work browser-independently). |
3831 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
3833 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
3834 browsers will access the same Privoxy is not recommended. In single-user,
3835 single-browser setups, you might use it to delete your OS version
3836 information from the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known
3837 bugs for your OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to
3838 access sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
3839 reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not let Mozilla
3840 enter, yet forging to a Netscape 6.1 user-agent works just fine. (Must be
3841 just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
3843 This action is scheduled for improvement.
3847 +hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}
3849 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3851 8.5.25. inspect-jpegs
3855 To protect against the MS buffer over-run in JPEG processing
3859 Protect against a known exploit
3871 See Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-028. JPEG images are one of the most
3872 common image types found across the Internet. The exploit as described can
3873 allow execution of code on the target system, giving an attacker access to
3874 the system in question by merely planting an altered JPEG image, which
3875 would have no obvious indications of what lurks inside. This action
3876 prevents unwanted intrusion.
3882 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3888 Eliminate those annoying pop-up windows (deprecated)
3892 While loading the document, replace JavaScript code that opens pop-up
3893 windows with (syntactically neutral) dummy code on the fly.
3905 This action is basically a built-in, hardwired special-purpose filter
3906 action, but there are important differences: For kill-popups, the document
3907 need not be buffered, so it can be incrementally rendered while
3908 downloading. But kill-popups doesn't catch as many pop-ups as filter
3909 {all-popups} does and is not as smart as filter{unsolicited-popups} is.
3911 Think of it as a fast and efficient replacement for a filter that you can
3912 use if you don't want any filtering at all. Note that it doesn't make sense
3913 to combine it with any filter action, since as soon as one filter applies,
3914 the whole document needs to be buffered anyway, which destroys the
3915 advantage of the kill-popups action over its filter equivalent.
3917 Killing all pop-ups unconditionally is problematic. Many shops and banks
3918 rely on pop-ups to display forms, shopping carts etc, and the filter
3919 {unsolicited-popups} does a fairly good job of catching only the unwanted
3922 If the only kind of pop-ups that you want to kill are exit consoles (those
3923 really nasty windows that appear when you close an other one), you might
3924 want to use filter{js-annoyances} instead.
3930 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3932 8.5.27. limit-connect
3936 Prevent abuse of Privoxy as a TCP proxy relay or disable SSL for untrusted
3941 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
3949 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes,
3950 with the minimum defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
3954 By default, i.e. if no limit-connect action applies, Privoxy only allows
3955 HTTP CONNECT requests to port 443 (the standard, secure HTTPS port). Use
3956 limit-connect if more fine-grained control is desired for some or all
3959 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
3960 ("https://" URLs) through proxies. It works very simply: the proxy connects
3961 to the server on the specified port, and then short-circuits its
3962 connections to the client and to the remote server. This can be a big
3963 security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can be abused as TCP relays
3966 Privoxy relays HTTPS traffic without seeing the decoded content. Websites
3967 can leverage this limitation to circumvent Privoxy's filters. By specifying
3968 an invalid port range you can disable HTTPS entirely. If you plan to
3969 disable SSL by default, consider enabling
3970 treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks as well, to be able to quickly create
3975 +limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need not be specified.
3976 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
3977 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
3978 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK
3979 +limit-connect{,} # No HTTPS/SSL traffic is allowed
3981 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3983 8.5.28. prevent-compression
3987 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be passed
3992 Removes the Accept-Encoding header which can be used to ask for compressed
4005 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which is
4006 generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But for the filter,
4007 deanimate-gifs and kill-popups actions to work, Privoxy needs access to the
4008 uncompressed data. Unfortunately, Privoxy can't yet(!) uncompress, filter,
4009 and re-compress the content on the fly. So if you want to ensure that all
4010 websites, including those that normally compress, can be filtered, you need
4013 This will slow down transfers from those websites, though. If you use any
4014 of the above-mentioned actions, you will typically want to use
4015 prevent-compression in conjunction with them.
4017 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for
4018 uncompressed documents correctly (they send an empty document body). If you
4019 use prevent-compression per default, you'll have to add exceptions for
4020 those sites. See the example for how to do that.
4022 Example usage (sections):
4026 {+prevent-compression}
4029 # Make exceptions for ill sites:
4031 {-prevent-compression}
4033 www.pclinuxonline.com
4035 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4037 8.5.29. overwrite-last-modified
4041 Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.
4045 Deletes the "Last-Modified:" HTTP server header or modifies its value.
4053 One of the keywords: "block", "reset-to-request-time" and "randomize"
4057 Removing the "Last-Modified:" header is useful for filter testing, where
4058 you want to force a real reload instead of getting status code "304", which
4059 would cause the browser to reuse the old version of the page.
4061 The "randomize" option overwrites the value of the "Last-Modified:" header
4062 with a randomly chosen time between the original value and the current
4063 time. In theory the server could send each document with a different
4064 "Last-Modified:" header to track visits without using cookies. "Randomize"
4065 makes it impossible and the browser can still revalidate cached documents.
4067 "reset-to-request-time" overwrites the value of the "Last-Modified:" header
4068 with the current time. You could use this option together with
4069 hided-if-modified-since to further customize your random range.
4071 The preferred parameter here is "randomize". It is safe to use, as long as
4072 the time settings are more or less correct. If the server sets the
4073 "Last-Modified:" header to the time of the request, the random range
4074 becomes zero and the value stays the same. Therefore you should later
4075 randomize it a second time with hided-if-modified-since, just to be sure.
4077 It is also recommended to use this action together with
4078 crunch-if-none-match.
4082 # Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
4083 {+hide-if-modified-since {-60}\
4084 +overwrite-last-modified {randomize}\
4085 +crunch-if-none-match}
4088 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4094 Redirect requests to other sites.
4098 Convinces the browser that the requested document has been moved to another
4099 location and the browser should get it from there.
4111 This action is useful to replace whole documents with ones of your
4112 choosing. This can be used to enforce safe surfing, or just as a simple
4115 You can do the same by combining the actions block, handle-as-image and
4116 set-image-blocker{URL}. It doesn't sound right for non-image documents, and
4117 that's why this action was created.
4119 This action will be ignored if you use it together with block.
4123 # Replace example.com's style sheet with another one
4124 { +redirect{http://localhost/css-replacements/example.com.css} }
4125 example.com/stylesheet.css
4127 # Create a short, easy to remember nickname for a favorite site
4128 { +redirect{http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html} }
4131 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4133 8.5.31. send-vanilla-wafer
4137 Feed log analysis scripts with useless data.
4141 Sends a cookie with each request stating that you do not accept any
4142 copyright on cookies sent to you, and asking the site operator not to track
4155 The vanilla wafer is a (relatively) unique header and could conceivably be
4158 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
4164 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4170 Send custom cookies or feed log analysis scripts with even more useless
4175 Sends a custom, user-defined cookie with each request.
4183 A string of the form "name=value".
4187 Being multi-valued, multiple instances of this action can apply to the same
4188 request, resulting in multiple cookies being sent.
4190 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
4192 Example usage (section):
4194 {+send-wafer{UsingPrivoxy=true}}
4195 my-internal-testing-server.void
4197 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4199 8.5.33. session-cookies-only
4203 Allow only temporary "session" cookies (for the current browser session
4208 Deletes the "expires" field from "Set-Cookie:" server headers. Most
4209 browsers will not store such cookies permanently and forget them in between
4222 This is less strict than crunch-incoming-cookies / crunch-outgoing-cookies
4223 and allows you to browse websites that insist or rely on setting cookies,
4224 without compromising your privacy too badly.
4226 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed
4227 by session-cookies-only and will forget about them between sessions. This
4228 makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require
4229 cookies so that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned
4230 on for all sites, and is the recommended setting.
4232 It makes no sense at all to use session-cookies-only together with
4233 crunch-incoming-cookies or crunch-outgoing-cookies. If you do, cookies will
4236 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an
4237 "expires" field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out
4240 This setting also has no effect on cookies that may have been stored
4241 previously by the browser before starting Privoxy. These would have to be
4244 Privoxy also uses the content-cookies filter to block some types of
4245 cookies. Content cookies are not effected by session-cookies-only.
4249 +session-cookies-only
4251 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4253 8.5.34. set-image-blocker
4257 Choose the replacement for blocked images
4261 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If both block and
4262 handle-as-image also apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an
4263 image, then the parameter of this action decides what will be sent as a
4272 + "pattern" to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is
4273 visually decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners
4276 + "blank" to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners
4277 disappear completely, but makes it hard to detect where Privoxy has
4278 blocked images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if
4279 Privoxy has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
4281 + "target-url" to send a redirect to target-url. You can redirect to any
4282 image anywhere, even in your local filesystem via "file:///" URL. (But
4283 note that not all browsers support redirecting to a local file system).
4285 A good application of redirects is to use special Privoxy-built-in
4286 URLs, which send the built-in images, as target-url. This has the same
4287 visual effect as specifying "blank" or "pattern" in the first place,
4288 but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of
4289 requesting it over and over again.
4293 The URLs for the built-in images are "http://config.privoxy.org/
4294 send-banner?type=type", where type is either "blank" or "pattern".
4296 There is a third (advanced) type, called "auto". It is NOT to be used in
4297 set-image-blocker, but meant for use from filters. Auto will select the
4298 type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an
4305 +set-image-blocker{pattern}
4307 Redirect to the BSD devil:
4309 +set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}
4311 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
4313 +set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}
4315 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4317 8.5.35. treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks
4321 Block forbidden connects with an easy to find error message.
4325 If this action is enabled, Privoxy no longer makes a difference between
4326 forbidden connects and ordinary blocks.
4338 By default Privoxy answers forbidden "Connect" requests with a short error
4339 message inside the headers. If the browser doesn't display headers (most
4340 don't), you just see an empty page.
4342 With this action enabled, Privoxy displays the message that is used for
4343 ordinary blocks instead. If you decide to make an exception for the page in
4344 question, you can do so by following the "See why" link.
4346 For "Connect" requests the clients tell Privoxy which host they are
4347 interested in, but not which document they plan to get later. As a result,
4348 the "Go there anyway" link becomes rather useless: it lets the client
4349 request the home page of the forbidden host through unencrypted HTTP, still
4350 using the port of the last request.
4352 If you previously configured Privoxy to do the request through a SSL
4353 tunnel, everything will work. Most likely you haven't and the server will
4354 respond with an error message because it is expecting HTTPS (SSL).
4358 +treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks
4360 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4364 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
4365 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways a site
4366 designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header content, and other
4367 criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard and fast rules for all
4368 sites. See the Appendix for a brief example on troubleshooting actions.
4370 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4374 Custom "actions", known to Privoxy as "aliases", can be defined by combining
4375 other actions. These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
4376 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab, "=", "{"
4377 and "}", but we strongly recommend that you only use "a" to "z", "0" to "9",
4378 "+", and "-". Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start
4379 with a "+" or "-" sign, since they are merely textually expanded.
4381 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they must be defined in a
4382 special section at the top of the file! And there can only be one such section
4383 per actions file. Each actions file may have its own alias section, and the
4384 aliases defined in it are only visible within that file.
4386 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
4387 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
4388 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called "shop",
4389 you can later change your policy on shops in one place, and your changes will
4390 take effect everywhere in the actions file where the "shop" alias is used.
4391 Calling aliases by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
4393 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though: Privoxy's
4394 built-in web-based action file editor honors aliases when reading the actions
4395 files, but it expands them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are
4396 of course preserved, but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections
4397 that use aliases with it. This is likely to change in future versions of
4400 Now let's define some aliases...
4402 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
4404 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
4405 # must be at the top of the actions file!
4409 # These aliases just save typing later:
4410 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
4412 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
4413 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
4414 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
4415 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only -filter{content-cookies}
4417 # These aliases define combinations of actions
4418 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
4420 fragile = -block -filter -crunch-all-cookies -fast-redirects -hide-referrer -kill-popups
4421 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -filter{all-popups} -kill-popups
4423 # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
4425 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
4426 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies
4428 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
4429 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
4430 up for the "/" pattern):
4432 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
4433 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
4436 .office.microsoft.com
4437 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
4441 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
4445 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
4448 # These shops require pop-ups:
4450 {shop -kill-popups -filter{all-popups}}
4454 Aliases like "shop" and "fragile" are often used for "problem" sites that
4455 require some actions to be disabled in order to function properly.
4457 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4459 8.7. Actions Files Tutorial
4461 The above chapters have shown which actions files there are and how they are
4462 organized, how actions are specified and applied to URLs, how patterns work,
4463 and how to define and use aliases. Now, let's look at an example default.action
4464 and user.action file and see how all these pieces come together:
4466 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4468 8.7.1. default.action
4470 Every config file should start with a short comment stating its purpose:
4472 # Sample default.action file <ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net>
4474 Then, since this is the default.action file, the first section is a special
4475 section for internal use that you needn't change or worry about:
4477 ##########################################################################
4478 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
4479 ##########################################################################
4482 for-privoxy-version=3.0
4484 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example section
4485 from the above chapter on aliases, that also explains why and how aliases are
4488 ##########################################################################
4490 ##########################################################################
4493 # These aliases just save typing later:
4494 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
4496 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
4497 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
4498 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
4499 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only -filter{content-cookies}
4501 # These aliases define combinations of actions
4502 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
4504 fragile = -block -filter -crunch-all-cookies -fast-redirects -hide-referrer -kill-popups
4505 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -filter{all-popups} -kill-popups
4507 Now come the regular sections, i.e. sets of actions, accompanied by URL
4508 patterns to which they apply. Remember all actions are disabled when matching
4509 starts, so we have to explicitly enable the ones we want.
4511 The first regular section is probably the most important. It has only one
4512 pattern, "/", but this pattern matches all URLs. Therefore, the set of actions
4513 used in this "default" section will be applied to all requests as a start. It
4514 can be partly or wholly overridden by later matches further down this file, or
4515 in user.action, but it will still be largely responsible for your overall
4516 browsing experience.
4518 Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is no real
4519 need to disable any actions here, but we will do that nonetheless, to have a
4520 complete listing for your reference. (Remember: a "+" preceding the action name
4521 enables the action, a "-" disables!). Also note how this long line has been
4522 made more readable by splitting it into multiple lines with line continuation.
4524 ##########################################################################
4525 # "Defaults" section:
4526 ##########################################################################
4530 -content-type-overwrite \
4531 -crunch-client-header \
4532 -crunch-if-none-match \
4533 -crunch-incoming-cookies \
4534 -crunch-server-header \
4535 -crunch-outgoing-cookies \
4537 -downgrade-http-version \
4538 +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} \
4539 +filter{js-annoyances} \
4540 -filter{js-events} \
4541 +filter{html-annoyances} \
4542 -filter{content-cookies} \
4543 +filter{refresh-tags} \
4544 +filter{unsolicited-popups} \
4545 -filter{all-popups} \
4546 +filter{img-reorder} \
4547 +filter{banners-by-size} \
4548 -filter{banners-by-link} \
4550 -filter{tiny-textforms} \
4551 +filter{jumping-windows} \
4552 -filter{frameset-borders} \
4553 -filter{demoronizer} \
4554 -filter{shockwave-flash} \
4555 -filter{quicktime-kioskmode} \
4557 -filter{crude-parental} \
4558 +filter{ie-exploits} \
4559 -filter-client-headers \
4560 -filter-server-headers \
4562 -handle-as-empty-document \
4564 -hide-accept-language \
4565 -hide-content-disposition \
4566 -hide-if-modified-since \
4567 +hide-forwarded-for-headers \
4568 +hide-from-header{block} \
4569 +hide-referrer{forge} \
4574 +prevent-compression \
4575 -overwrite-last-modified \
4577 -send-vanilla-wafer \
4579 +session-cookies-only \
4580 +set-image-blocker{pattern} \
4581 -treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks \
4583 / # forward slash will match *all* potential URL patterns.
4585 The default behavior is now set. Note that some actions, like not hiding the
4586 user agent, are part of a "general policy" that applies universally and won't
4587 get any exceptions defined later. Other choices, like not blocking (which is
4588 understandably the default!) need exceptions, i.e. we need to specify
4589 explicitly what we want to block in later sections.
4591 The first of our specialized sections is concerned with "fragile" sites, i.e.
4592 sites that require minimum interference, because they are either very complex
4593 or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that make them
4594 unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will simply use our
4595 pre-defined fragile alias instead of stating the list of actions explicitly:
4597 ##########################################################################
4598 # Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
4599 ##########################################################################
4601 # "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
4604 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
4605 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
4607 Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically require cookies to log
4608 in, and pop-up windows for shopping carts or item details. Again, we'll use a
4615 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
4619 The fast-redirects action, which we enabled per default above, breaks some
4620 sites. So disable it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
4626 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
4627 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
4630 It is important that Privoxy knows which URLs belong to images, so that if they
4631 are to be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
4632 Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it would destroy
4633 the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it would feed the
4634 advertisers (in terms of money and information). We can mark any URL as an
4635 image with the handle-as-image action, and marking all URLs that end in a known
4636 image file extension is a good start:
4638 ##########################################################################
4640 ##########################################################################
4642 # Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
4643 # blocked further down this file:
4645 { +handle-as-image }
4646 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$
4648 And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to generate the
4649 banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the request is for an image.
4650 Hence we block them and mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
4651 +block-as-image alias defined above. (We could of course just as well use +
4652 block +handle-as-image here.) Remember that the type of the replacement image
4653 is chosen by the set-image-blocker action. Since all URLs have matched the
4654 default section with its +set-image-blocker{pattern} action before, it still
4655 applies and needn't be repeated:
4657 # Known ad generators:
4662 .ad.*.doubleclick.net
4663 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
4664 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
4669 One of the most important jobs of Privoxy is to block banners. A huge bunch of
4670 them can be "blocked" by the filter{banners-by-size} action, which we enabled
4671 above, and which deletes the references to banner images from the pages while
4672 they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request them anymore, and hence they
4673 don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally doesn't catch all banners,
4674 and some people choose not to use filters, so we need a comprehensive list of
4675 patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the block action to them.
4677 First comes a bunch of generic patterns, which do most of the work, by matching
4678 typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes a list of
4679 individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here to keep the
4682 ##########################################################################
4683 # Block these fine banners:
4684 ##########################################################################
4693 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
4694 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
4696 # Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
4700 You wouldn't believe how many advertisers actually call their banner servers
4701 ads.company.com, or call the directory in which the banners are stored simply
4702 "banners". So the above generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
4704 But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want to
4705 block. The pattern .*ads. e.g. catches "nasty-ads.nasty-corp.com" as intended,
4706 but also "downloads.sourcefroge.net" or "adsl.some-provider.net." So here come
4707 some well-known exceptions to the +block section above.
4709 Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
4710 "downloads.sourcefroge.net": Initially, all actions are deactivated, so it
4711 wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the URL,
4712 but just deactivates the block action once again. Then it matches .*ads., an
4713 exception to the general non-blocking policy, and suddenly +block applies. And
4714 now, it'll match .*loads., where -block applies, so (unless it matches again
4715 further down) it ends up with no block action applying.
4717 ##########################################################################
4718 # Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
4719 ##########################################################################
4724 adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
4725 adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
4726 ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
4727 .edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
4728 .*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
4736 www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
4737 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv
4739 Filtering source code can have nasty side effects, so make an exception for our
4740 friends at sourceforge.net, and all paths with "cvs" in them. Note that -filter
4741 disables all filters in one fell swoop!
4743 # Don't filter code!
4749 The actual default.action is of course much more comprehensive, but we hope
4750 this example made clear how it works.
4752 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4756 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies, which
4757 would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now, you might want to be
4758 more specific and have customized rules that are more suitable to your personal
4759 habits and preferences. These would be for narrowly defined situations like
4760 your ISP or your bank, and should be placed in user.action, which is parsed
4761 after all other actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any
4762 previously defined actions. user.action is also a safe place for your personal
4763 settings, since default.action is actively maintained by the Privoxy developers
4764 and you'll probably want to install updated versions from time to time.
4766 So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
4769 # My user.action file. <fred@foobar.com>
4771 As aliases are local to the actions file that they are defined in, you can't
4772 use the ones from default.action, unless you repeat them here:
4774 # Aliases are local to the file they are defined in.
4775 # (Re-)define aliases for this file:
4779 # These aliases just save typing later, and the alias names should
4780 # be self explanatory.
4782 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
4783 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
4784 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
4785 allow-popups = -filter{all-popups} -kill-popups
4786 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
4787 -block-as-image = -block
4789 # These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
4790 # certain types of sites:
4792 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referrer -kill-popups
4793 shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
4795 # Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
4797 allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}
4799 # Alias for specific file types that are text, but might have conflicting
4800 # MIME types. We want the browser to force these to be text documents.
4801 handle-as-text = -filter +-content-type-overwrite{text/plain} +-force-text-mode -hide-content-disposition
4805 Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and you don't
4806 want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like to allow persistent
4807 cookies for these sites. The allow-all-cookies alias defined above does exactly
4808 that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
4809 processing of cookies to make them only temporary.
4811 { allow-all-cookies }
4817 Your bank is allergic to some filter, but you don't know which, so you disable
4821 .your-home-banking-site.com
4823 Some file types you may not want to filter for various reasons:
4825 # Technical documentation is likely to contain strings that might
4826 # erroneously get altered by the JavaScript-oriented filters:
4831 # And this stupid host sends streaming video with a wrong MIME type,
4832 # so that Privoxy thinks it is getting HTML and starts filtering:
4834 stupid-server.example.com/
4836 Example of a simple block action. Say you've seen an ad on your favourite page
4837 on example.com that you want to get rid of. You have right-clicked the image,
4838 selected "copy image location" and pasted the URL below while removing the
4839 leading http://, into a { +block } section. Note that { +handle-as-image } need
4840 not be specified, since all URLs ending in .gif will be tagged as images by the
4841 general rules as set in default.action anyway:
4844 www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.gif
4845 another.popular.site.net/more/junk/here/
4847 The URLs of dynamically generated banners, especially from large banner farms,
4848 often don't use the well-known image file name extensions, which makes it
4849 impossible for Privoxy to guess the file type just by looking at the URL. You
4850 can use the +block-as-image alias defined above for these cases. Note that
4851 objects which match this rule but then turn out NOT to be an image are
4852 typically rendered as a "broken image" icon by the browser. Use cautiously.
4860 Now you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine, but you
4861 were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you were again too
4862 lazy to give feedback, so you just used the fragile alias on the site, and --
4863 whoa! -- it worked. The fragile aliases disables those actions that are most
4864 likely to break a site. Also, good for testing purposes to see if it is Privoxy
4865 that is causing the problem or not. We later find other regular sites that
4866 misbehave, and add those to our personalized list of troublemakers:
4873 You like the "fun" text replacements in default.filter, but it is disabled in
4874 the distributed actions file. (My colleagues on the team just don't have a
4875 sense of humour, that's why! ;-). So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
4876 update-safe config, once and for all:
4881 Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions to the
4882 filters in default.action for things that really shouldn't be filtered, like
4883 code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since user.action has the last word, these
4884 exceptions won't be valid for the "fun" filtering specified here.
4886 You might also worry about how your favourite free websites are funded, and
4887 find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements to survive. So you
4888 might want to specifically allow banners for those sites that you feel provide
4896 Note that allow-ads has been aliased to -block, -filter{banners-by-size}, and -
4897 filter{banners-by-link} above.
4899 Invoke another alias here to force an over-ride of the MIME type application/
4900 x-sh which typically would open a download type dialog. In my case, I want to
4901 look at the shell script, and then I can save it should I choose to.
4906 user.action is generally the best place to define exceptions and additions to
4907 the default policies of default.action. Some actions are safe to have their
4908 default policies set here though. So let's set a default policy to have a
4909 "blank" image as opposed to the checkerboard pattern for ALL sites. "/" of
4910 course matches all URL paths and patterns:
4912 { +set-image-blocker{blank} }
4915 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4919 On-the-fly text substitutions that can be invoked through the filter action
4920 need to be defined in a "filter file". Once defined, they can then be invoked
4921 as an "action". Multiple filter files can be defined through the filterfile
4922 config directive. The filters as supplied by the developers will be found in
4923 default.filter. It is recommended that any locally defined or modified filters
4924 go in a separately defined file such as user.filter.
4926 Typical reasons for doing these kinds of substitutions are to eliminate common
4927 annoyances in HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows, exit consoles,
4928 crippled windows without navigation tools, the infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to
4929 suppress images with certain width and height attributes (standard banner sizes
4930 or web-bugs), or just to have fun. The possibilities are endless.
4932 Filtering works on any text-based document type, including HTML, JavaScript,
4933 CSS etc. (all text/* MIME types, except text/plain). Substitutions are made at
4934 the source level, so if you want to "roll your own" filters, you should first
4935 be familiar with HTML syntax, and, of course, regular expressions. By default,
4936 filters are only applied to the raw document content, but can be extended to
4937 the HTTP headers with the supplemental actions: filter-client-headers and
4938 filter-server-headers.
4940 Just like the actions files, the filter file is organized in sections, which
4941 are called filters here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts
4942 with the keyword FILTER:, followed by the filter's name, and a short (one line)
4943 description of what it does. Below that line come the jobs, i.e. lines that
4944 define the actual text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
4945 should describe what the filter eliminates. The comment is used in the
4946 web-based user interface.
4948 Once a filter called name has been defined in the filter file, it can be
4949 invoked by using an action of the form +filter{name} in any actions file.
4951 A filter header line for a filter called "foo" could look like this:
4953 FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
4955 Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that define what
4956 text replacements the filter executes. They are specified in a syntax that
4957 imitates Perl's s/// operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you will find
4958 this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the PCRS documentation for
4959 the subtle differences to Perl behaviour. Most notably, the non-standard option
4960 letter U is supported, which turns the default to ungreedy matching.
4962 If you are new to "Regular Expressions", you might want to take a look at the
4963 Appendix on regular expressions, and see the Perl manual for the s///
4964 operator's syntax and Perl-style regular expressions in general. The below
4965 examples might also help to get you started.
4967 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4969 9.1. Filter File Tutorial
4971 Now, let's complete our "foo" filter. We have already defined the heading, but
4972 the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace "foo" with "bar",
4973 there is only one (trivial) job needed:
4977 But wait! Didn't the comment say that all occurrences of "foo" should be
4978 replaced? Our current job will only take care of the first "foo" on each page.
4979 For global substitution, we'll need to add the g option:
4983 Our complete filter now looks like this:
4985 FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
4988 Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see a
4989 filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
4990 abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
4992 FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
4994 # Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
4996 s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg
4998 Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses |
4999 as the delimiter instead of /, because the pattern contains a forward slash,
5000 which would otherwise have to be escaped by a backslash (\).
5002 Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <script.* enclosed in
5003 parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and * means: "Match an
5004 arbitrary number of the element left of myself", this matches "<script",
5005 followed by any text, i.e. it matches the whole page, from the start of the
5008 That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: document\.referrer matches
5009 only the exact string "document.referrer". The dot needed to be escaped, i.e.
5010 preceded by a backslash, to take away its special meaning as a joker, and make
5011 it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is: Match from the start of the
5012 first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including, the text
5013 "document.referrer", if both are present in the page (and appear in that
5016 But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in
5017 parentheses, is .*</script>. You already know what .* means, so the whole
5018 pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a page
5019 to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text "document.referrer"
5020 appears somewhere in between.
5022 This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the
5023 parentheses: The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed
5024 in parentheses, will be remembered and be available through the variables $1,
5025 $2, ... in the substitute. The U option switches to ungreedy matching, which
5026 means that the first .* in the pattern will only "eat up" all text in between "
5027 <script" and the first occurrence of "document.referrer", and that the second .
5028 * will only span the text up to the first "</script>" tag. Furthermore, the s
5029 option says that the match may span multiple lines in the page, and the g
5030 option again means that the substitution is global.
5032 So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
5033 "document.referrer". Remember the parts of the script from (and including) the
5034 start tag up to (and excluding) the string "document.referrer" as $1, and the
5035 part following that string, up to and including the closing tag, as $2.
5037 Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
5038 lets look at the substitute: $1"Not Your Business!"$2 is easy to read: The text
5039 remembered as $1, followed by "Not Your Business!" (including the quotation
5040 marks!), followed by the text remembered as $2. This produces an exact copy of
5041 the original string, with the middle part (the "document.referrer") replaced by
5042 "Not Your Business!".
5044 The whole job now reads: Replace "document.referrer" by "Not Your Business!"
5045 wherever it appears inside a <script> tag. Note that this job won't break
5046 JavaScript syntax, since both the original and the replacement are
5047 syntactically valid string objects. The script just won't have access to the
5048 referrer information anymore.
5050 We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but this
5051 time only point out the constructs of special interest:
5053 # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
5055 s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig
5057 \s stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline, carriage return, form
5058 feed), so that \s* means: "zero or more whitespace". The ? in .*? makes this
5059 matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the U option is not set). The
5060 ['"] construct means: "a single or a double quote". Finally, \1 is a
5061 back-reference to the first parenthesis just like $1 above, with the difference
5062 that in the pattern, a backslash indicates a back-reference, whereas in the
5063 substitute, it's the dollar.
5065 So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
5066 strings to the "window.status" object with a dummy assignment (using a variable
5067 name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with real variables in
5068 scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless descriptions are
5069 displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when you move your mouse
5072 # Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
5074 s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU
5076 Including the OnUnload event binding in the HTML DOM was a CRIME. When I close
5077 a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta. This job replaces the
5078 "onunload" attribute in "<body>" tags with the dummy word never. Note that the
5079 i option makes the pattern matching case-insensitive. Also note that ungreedy
5080 matching alone doesn't always guarantee a minimal match: In the first
5081 parenthesis, we had to use [^>]* instead of .* to prevent the match from
5082 exceeding the <body> tag if it doesn't contain "OnUnload", but the page's
5085 The last example is from the fun department:
5087 FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
5089 # Spice the daily news:
5091 s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig
5093 Note the (?!\.com) part (a so-called negative lookahead) in the job's pattern,
5094 which means: Don't match, if the string ".com" appears directly following
5095 "microsoft" in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being
5096 trashed, while still replacing the word everywhere else.
5098 # Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
5100 s* industry[ -]leading \
5102 | customer[ -]focused \
5103 | market[ -]driven \
5104 | award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
5105 | high[ -]performance \
5106 | solutions[ -]based \
5110 *<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
5113 The x option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for e.g. the
5114 liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
5118 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5120 9.2. The Pre-defined Filters
5122 The distribution default.filter file contains a selection of pre-defined
5123 filters for your convenience:
5127 The purpose of this filter is to get rid of particularly annoying
5128 JavaScript abuse. To that end, it
5130 + replaces JavaScript references to the browser's referrer information
5131 with the string "Not Your Business!". This compliments the
5132 hide-referrer action on the content level.
5134 + removes the bindings to the DOM's unload event which we feel has no
5135 right to exist and is responsible for most "exit consoles", i.e. nasty
5136 windows that pop up when you close another one.
5138 + removes code that causes new windows to be opened with undesired
5139 properties, such as being full-screen, non-resizeable, without
5140 location, status or menu bar etc.
5144 This is a very radical measure. It removes virtually all JavaScript event
5145 bindings, which means that scripts can not react to user actions such as
5146 mouse movements or clicks, window resizing etc, anymore.
5148 We strongly discourage using this filter as a default since it breaks many
5149 legitimate scripts. It is meant for use only on extra-nasty sites (should
5150 you really need to go there).
5154 This filter will undo many common instances of HTML based abuse.
5156 The BLINK and MARQUEE tags are neutralized (yeah baby!), and browser
5157 windows will be created as resizeable (as of course they should be!), and
5158 will have location, scroll and menu bars -- even if specified otherwise.
5162 Most cookies are set in the HTTP dialog, where they can be intercepted by
5163 the crunch-incoming-cookies and crunch-outgoing-cookies actions. But web
5164 sites increasingly make use of HTML meta tags and JavaScript to sneak
5165 cookies to the browser on the content level.
5167 This filter disables HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets cookies.
5168 Use it wherever you would also use the cookie crunch actions.
5172 Disable any refresh tags if the interval is greater than nine seconds (so
5173 that redirections done via refresh tags are not destroyed). This is useful
5174 for dial-on-demand setups, or for those who find this HTML feature
5179 This filter attempts to prevent only "unsolicited" pop-up windows from
5180 opening, yet still allow pop-up windows that the user has explicitly chosen
5181 to open. It was added in version 3.0.1, as an improvement over earlier such
5184 Technical note: The filter works by redefining the window.open JavaScript
5185 function to a dummy function during the loading and rendering phase of each
5186 HTML page access, and restoring the function afterward.
5190 Attempt to prevent all pop-up windows from opening. Note this should be
5191 used with more discretion than the above, since it is more likely to break
5192 some sites that require pop-ups for normal usage. Use with caution.
5196 This is a helper filter that has no value if used alone. It makes the
5197 banners-by-size and banners-by-link (see below) filters more effective and
5198 should be enabled together with them.
5202 This filter removes image tags purely based on what size they are.
5203 Fortunately for us, many ads and banner images tend to conform to certain
5204 standardized sizes, which makes this filter quite effective for ad
5207 Occasionally this filter will cause false positives on images that are not
5208 ads, but just happen to be of one of the standard banner sizes.
5212 This is an experimental filter that attempts to kill any banners if their
5213 URLs seem to point to known or suspected click trackers. It is currently
5214 not of much value and is not recommended for use by default.
5218 Webbugs are small, invisible images (technically 1X1 GIF images), that are
5219 used to track users across websites, and collect information on them. As an
5220 HTML page is loaded by the browser, an embedded image tag causes the
5221 browser to contact a third-party site, disclosing the tracking information
5222 through the requested URL and/or cookies for that third-party domain,
5223 without the use ever becoming aware of the interaction with the third-party
5224 site. HTML-ized spam also uses a similar technique to verify email
5227 This filter removes the HTML code that loads such "webbugs".
5231 A rather special-purpose filter that can be used to enlarge textareas
5232 (those multi-line text boxes in web forms) and turn off hard word wrap in
5233 them. It was written for the sourceforge.net tracker system where such
5234 boxes are a nuisance, but it can be handy on other sites, too.
5236 It is not recommended to use this filter as a default.
5240 Many consider windows that move, or resize themselves to be abusive. This
5241 filter neutralizes the related JavaScript code. Note that some sites might
5242 not display or behave as intended when using this filter.
5246 Some web designers seem to assume that everyone in the world will view
5247 their web sites using the same browser brand and version, screen resolution
5248 etc, because only that assumption could explain why they'd use static frame
5249 sizes, yet prevent their frames from being resized by the user, should they
5250 be too small to show their whole content.
5252 This filter removes the related HTML code. It should only be applied to
5253 sites which need it.
5257 Many Microsoft products that generate HTML use non-standard extensions
5258 (read: violations) of the ISO 8859-1 aka Latin-1 character set. This can
5259 cause those HTML documents to display with errors on standard-compliant
5262 This filter translates the MS-only characters into Latin-1 equivalents. It
5263 is not necessary when using MS products, and will cause corruption of all
5264 documents that use 8-bit character sets other than Latin-1. It's mostly
5265 worthwhile for Europeans on non-MS platforms, if weird garbage characters
5266 sometimes appear on some pages, or user agents that don't correct for this
5271 A filter for shockwave haters. As the name suggests, this filter strips
5272 code out of web pages that is used to embed shockwave flash objects.
5276 Change HTML code that embeds Quicktime objects so that kioskmode, which
5277 prevents saving, is disabled.
5281 Text replacements for subversive browsing fun. Make fun of your favorite
5282 Monopolist or play buzzword bingo.
5286 A demonstration-only filter that shows how Privoxy can be used to delete
5287 web content on a keyword basis.
5291 A collection of text replacements to disable malicious HTML and JavaScript
5292 code that exploits known security holes in Internet Explorer.
5294 Presently, it only protects against Nimda and a cross-site scripting bug,
5295 and would need active maintenance to provide more substantial protection.
5299 Some web sites have very specific problems, the cure for which doesn't
5300 apply anywhere else, or could even cause damage on other sites.
5302 This is a collection of such site-specific cures which should only be
5303 applied to the sites they were intended for, which is what the supplied
5304 default.action file does. Users shouldn't need to change anything regarding
5307 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5309 10. Privoxy's Template Files
5311 All Privoxy built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the "404 - No Such Domain"
5312 error page, the "BLOCKED" page and all pages of its web-based user interface,
5313 are generated from templates. (Privoxy must be running for the above links to
5316 These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the configuration directory
5317 called templates. On Unixish platforms, this is typically /etc/privoxy/
5320 The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called
5321 symbols or exports), which Privoxy fills at run time. You can edit the
5322 templates with a normal text editor, should you want to customize them. (Not
5323 recommended for the casual user). Note that just like in configuration files,
5324 lines starting with # are ignored when the templates are filled in.
5326 The place-holders are of the form @name@, and you will find a list of available
5327 symbols, which vary from template to template, in the comments at the start of
5328 each file. Note that these comments are not always accurate, and that it's
5329 probably best to look at the existing HTML code to find out which symbols are
5330 supported and what they are filled in with.
5332 A special application of this substitution mechanism is to make whole blocks of
5333 HTML code disappear when a specific symbol is set. We use this for many
5334 purposes, one of them being to include the beta warning in all our user
5335 interface (CGI) pages when Privoxy is in an alpha or beta development stage:
5337 <!-- @if-unstable-start -->
5339 ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
5341 <!-- if-unstable-end@ -->
5343 If the "unstable" symbol is set, everything in between and including
5344 @if-unstable-start and if-unstable-end@ will disappear, leaving nothing but an
5349 There's also an if-then-else construct and an #include mechanism, but you'll
5350 sure find out if you are inclined to edit the templates ;-)
5352 All templates refer to a style located at http://config.privoxy.org/
5353 send-stylesheet. This is, of course, locally served by Privoxy and the source
5354 for it can be found and edited in the cgi-style.css template.
5356 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5358 11. Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests
5360 We value your feedback. In fact, we rely on it to improve Privoxy and its
5361 configuration. However, please note the following hints, so we can provide you
5362 with the best support:
5364 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5368 For casual users, our support forum at SourceForge is probably best suited:
5369 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=211118
5371 All users are of course welcome to discuss their issues on the users mailing
5372 list, where the developers also hang around.
5374 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5376 11.2. Reporting Problems
5378 "Problems" for our purposes, come in two forms:
5380 * Configuration issues, such as ads that slip through, or sites that don't
5381 function properly due to one Privoxy "action" or another being turned "on".
5383 * "Bugs" in the programming code that makes up Privoxy, such as that might
5386 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5388 11.2.1. Reporting Ads or Other Configuration Problems
5390 Please send feedback on ads that slipped through, innocent images that were
5391 blocked, sites that don't work properly, and other configuration related
5392 problem of default.action file, to http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=
5393 11118&atid=460288, the Actions File Tracker.
5395 New, improved default.action files may occasionally be made available based on
5396 your feedback. These will be announced on the ijbswa-announce list and
5397 available from our the files section of our project page.
5399 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5401 11.2.2. Reporting Bugs
5403 Please report all bugs only through our bug tracker: http://sourceforge.net/
5404 tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=111118.
5406 Before doing so, please make sure that the bug has not already been submitted
5407 and observe the additional hints at the top of the submit form. If already
5408 submitted, please feel free to add any info to the original report that might
5409 help solve the issue.
5411 Please try to verify that it is a Privoxy bug, and not a browser or site bug
5412 first. If unsure, try toggling off Privoxy, and see if the problem persists. If
5413 you are using your own custom configuration, please try the stock configs to
5414 see if the problem is configuration related.
5416 If not using the latest version, the bug may have been found and fixed in the
5417 meantime. We would appreciate if you could take the time to upgrade to the
5418 latest version (or even the latest CVS snapshot) and verify your bug.
5420 Please be sure to provide the following information:
5422 * The exact Privoxy version of the proxy software (if you got the source from
5423 CVS, please also give the date).
5425 * The operating system and versions you run Privoxy on, (e.g. Windows XP).
5427 * The name, platform, and version of the browser you were using (e.g.
5428 Internet Explorer v5.5 for Mac).
5430 * The URL where the problem occurred, or some way for us to duplicate the
5431 problem (e.g. http://somesite.example.com?somethingelse=123).
5433 * Whether your version of Privoxy is one supplied by the developers of
5434 Privoxy via SourceForge, or somewhere else.
5436 * Whether you are using Privoxy in tandem with another proxy such as TOR. If
5437 so, please try disabling the other proxy.
5439 * Whether you are using a personal firewall product. If so, does Privoxy work
5442 * Any other pertinent information to help identify the problem such as config
5443 or log file excerpts (yes, you should have log file entries for each action
5446 * Please provide your SF login, or email address, in case we need to contact
5449 The appendix of the Privoxy User Manual also has helpful information on
5450 understanding actions, and action debugging.
5452 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5454 11.3. Request New Features
5456 You are welcome to submit ideas on new features or other proposals for
5457 improvement through our feature request tracker at http://sourceforge.net/
5458 tracker/?atid=361118&group_id=11118.
5460 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5464 For any other issues, feel free to use the mailing lists. Technically
5465 interested users and people who wish to contribute to the project are also
5466 welcome on the developers list! You can find an overview of all Privoxy-related
5467 mailing lists, including list archives, at: http://sourceforge.net/mail/?
5470 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5472 12. Privoxy Copyright, License and History
5474 Copyright © 2001 - 2006 by Privoxy Developers <
5475 ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net>
5477 Some source code is based on code Copyright © 1997 by Anonymous Coders and
5478 Junkbusters, Inc. and licensed under the GNU General Public License.
5480 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5484 Privoxy is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
5485 terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, as published by the Free
5486 Software Foundation.
5488 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
5489 WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
5490 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details, which
5491 is available from the Free Software Foundation, Inc, 51 Franklin Street, Fifth
5492 Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
5494 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
5495 this program; if not, write to the
5498 Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
5499 Boston, MA 02110-1301
5502 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5506 Along time ago, there was the Internet Junkbuster, by Anonymous Coders and
5507 Junkbusters Corporation. This saved many users a lot of pain in the early days
5508 of web advertising and user tracking.
5510 But the web, its protocols and standards, and with it, the techniques for
5511 forcing ads on users, give up autonomy over their browsing, and for tracking
5512 them, keeps evolving. Unfortunately, the Internet Junkbuster did not. Version
5513 2.0.2, published in 1998, was (and is) the last official release available from
5514 Junkbusters Corporation. Fortunately, it had been released under the GNU GPL,
5515 which allowed further development by others.
5517 So Stefan Waldherr started maintaining an improved version of the software, to
5518 which eventually a number of people contributed patches. It could already
5519 replace banners with a transparent image, and had a first version of pop-up
5520 killing, but it was still very closely based on the original, with all its
5521 limitations, such as the lack of HTTP/1.1 support, flexible per-site
5522 configuration, or content modification. The last release from this effort was
5523 version 2.0.2-10, published in 2000.
5525 Then, some developers picked up the thread, and started turning the software
5526 inside out, upside down, and then reassembled it, adding many new features
5529 The result of this is Privoxy, whose first stable version, 3.0, was released
5532 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5536 Current Privoxy Team:
5538 Fabian Keil, developer
5539 David Schmidt, developer
5546 Former Privoxy Team Members:
5570 Thanks to the many people who have tested Privoxy, reported bugs, made
5571 suggestions or contributed in some way. These include (in alphabetical order):
5598 Privoxy is based in part on code originally developed by:
5603 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5607 Other references and sites of interest to Privoxy users:
5609 http://www.privoxy.org/, the Privoxy Home page.
5611 http://www.privoxy.org/faq/, the Privoxy FAQ.
5613 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/, the Project Page for Privoxy on
5616 http://config.privoxy.org/, the web-based user interface. Privoxy must be
5617 running for this to work. Shortcut: http://p.p/
5619 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=460288, to submit "misses"
5620 and other configuration related suggestions to the developers.
5622 http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/cookies.html, an explanation how cookies are
5623 used to track web users.
5625 http://www.junkbusters.com/ijb.html, the original Internet Junkbuster.
5627 http://privacy.net/, a useful site to check what information about you is
5628 leaked while you browse the web.
5630 http://www.squid-cache.org/, a very popular caching proxy, which is often used
5631 together with Privoxy.
5633 http://tor.eff.org/, Tor can help anonymize web browsing, web publishing,
5634 instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications.
5636 http://www.privoxy.org/developer-manual/, the Privoxy developer manual.
5638 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5642 14.1. Regular Expressions
5644 Privoxy uses Perl-style "regular expressions" in its actions files and filter
5645 file, through the PCRE and PCRS libraries.
5647 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what "regular
5648 expressions" are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
5649 introduction only. A full explanation would require a book ;-)
5651 Regular expressions provide a language to describe patterns that can be run
5652 against strings of characters (letter, numbers, etc), to see if they match the
5653 string or not. The patterns are themselves (sometimes complex) strings of
5654 literal characters, combined with wild-cards, and other special characters,
5655 called meta-characters. The "meta-characters" have special meanings and are
5656 used to build complex patterns to be matched against. Perl Compatible Regular
5657 Expressions are an especially convenient "dialect" of the regular expression
5660 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
5661 characters when listing files with the dir command in DOS. *.* matches all
5662 filenames. The "special" character here is the asterisk which matches any and
5663 all characters. We can be more specific and use ? to match just individual
5664 characters. So "dir file?.text" would match "file1.txt", "file2.txt", etc. We
5665 are pattern matching, using a similar technique to "regular expressions"!
5667 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
5668 powerful. There are many more "special characters" and ways of building complex
5669 patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones, and then some
5672 . - Matches any single character, e.g. "a", "A", "4", ":", or "@".
5674 ? - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE times. Either/
5677 + - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE times.
5679 * - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE times.
5681 \ - The "escape" character denotes that the following character should be taken
5682 literally. This is used where one of the special characters (e.g. ".") needs to
5683 be taken literally and not as a special meta-character. Example: "example
5684 \.com", makes sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded
5685 to its meta-character meaning of any single character).
5687 [ ] - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if any of the enclosed
5688 characters are encountered. For instance, "[0-9]" matches any numeric digit
5689 (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine this with "+" to match any
5690 digit one of more times: "[0-9]+".
5692 ( ) - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression, or multiple
5695 | - The "bar" character works like an "or" conditional statement. A match is
5696 successful if the sub-expression on either side of "|" matches. As an example:
5697 "/(this|that) example/" uses grouping and the bar character and would match
5698 either "this example" or "that example", and nothing else.
5700 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
5701 Privoxy, and is a long way from a definitive list. This is enough to get us
5702 started with a few simple examples which may be more illuminating:
5704 /.*/banners/.* - A simple example that uses the common combination of "." and "
5705 *" to denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at
5706 all. So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression
5707 pattern (".*") another literal forward slash, the string "banners", another
5708 forward slash, and lastly another ".*". We are building a directory path here.
5709 This will match any file with the path that has a directory named "banners" in
5710 it. The ".*" matches any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward
5711 slashes, so it might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this
5712 could match: "/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif", or just "/
5713 banners/annoying.html", or almost an infinite number of other possible
5714 combinations, just so it has "banners" in the path somewhere.
5716 And now something a little more complex:
5718 /.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/ - We have several literal forward
5719 slashes again ("/"), so we are building another expression that is a file path
5720 statement. We have another ".*", so we are matching against any conceivable
5721 sub-path, just so it matches our expression. The only true literal that must
5722 match our pattern is adv, together with the forward slashes. What comes after
5723 the "adv" string is the interesting part.
5725 Remember the "?" means the preceding expression (either a literal character or
5726 anything grouped with "(...)" in this case) can exist or not, since this means
5727 either zero or one match. So "((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))" is optional, as
5728 are the individual sub-expressions: "(er)", "(ing|ements?)", and the "s". The "
5729 |" means "or". We have two of those. For instance, "(ing|ements?)", can expand
5730 to match either "ing" OR "ements?". What is being done here, is an attempt at
5731 matching as many variations of "advertisement", and similar, as possible. So
5732 this would expand to match just "adv", or "advert", or "adverts", or
5733 "advertising", or "advertisement", or "advertisements". You get the idea. But
5734 it would not match "advertizements" (with a "z"). We could fix that by changing
5735 our regular expression to: "/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/", which
5736 would then match either spelling.
5738 /.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g) - Again another path statement with forward
5739 slashes. Anything in the square brackets "[ ]" can be matched. This is using
5740 "0-9" as a shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the
5741 same as saying "0123456789". So any digit matches. The "+" means one or more of
5742 the preceding expression must be included. The preceding expression here is
5743 what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit one through nine.
5744 Then, at the end, we have a grouping: "(gif|jpe?g)". This includes a "|", so
5745 this needs to match the expression on either side of that bar character also. A
5746 simple "gif" on one side, and the other side will in turn match either "jpeg"
5747 or "jpg", since the "?" means the letter "e" is optional and can be matched
5748 once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to match image GIF or
5749 JPEG type image file. It must include the literal string "advert", then one or
5750 more digits, and a "." (which is now a literal, and not a special character,
5751 since it is escaped with "\"), and lastly either "gif", or "jpeg", or "jpg".
5752 Some possible matches would include: "//advert1.jpg", "/nasty/ads/
5753 advert1234.gif", "/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg". It would not match
5754 "advert1.gif" (no leading slash), or "/adverts232.jpg" (the expression does not
5755 include an "s"), or "/advert1.jsp" ("jsp" is not in the expression anywhere).
5757 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
5758 can understand the default Privoxy configuration files, and maybe use this
5759 knowledge to customize your own installation. There is much, much more that can
5760 be done with regular expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you
5761 can learn more on your own :/
5763 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions: http://perldoc.perl.org/
5766 For information on regular expression based substitutions and their
5767 applications in filters, please see the filter file tutorial in this manual.
5769 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5771 14.2. Privoxy's Internal Pages
5773 Since Privoxy proxies each requested web page, it is easy for Privoxy to trap
5774 certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to Privoxy, and see how
5775 it is configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these rules and
5776 other configuration options, and even turn Privoxy's filtering off, all with a
5779 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access to Privoxy.
5780 Of course, Privoxy must be running to access these. If not, you will get a
5781 friendly error message. Internet access is not necessary either.
5783 * Privoxy main page:
5785 http://config.privoxy.org/
5787 There is a shortcut: http://p.p/ (But it doesn't provide a fall-back to a
5788 real page, in case the request is not sent through Privoxy)
5790 * Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
5791 editing of actions files:
5793 http://config.privoxy.org/show-status
5795 * Show the source code version numbers:
5797 http://config.privoxy.org/show-version
5799 * Show the browser's request headers:
5801 http://config.privoxy.org/show-request
5803 * Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
5805 http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info
5807 * Toggle Privoxy on or off. In this case, "Privoxy" continues to run, but
5808 only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking place:
5810 http://config.privoxy.org/toggle
5812 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
5814 http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable
5816 http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable
5818 These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
5820 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5822 14.2.1. Bookmarklets
5824 Below are some "bookmarklets" to allow you to easily access a "mini" version of
5825 some of Privoxy's special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer,
5826 but should work equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which
5827 support JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not
5828 by clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
5830 To save them, right-click the link and choose "Add to Favorites" (IE) or "Add
5831 Bookmark" (Netscape). You will get a warning that the bookmark "may not be
5832 safe" - just click OK. Then you can run the Bookmarklet directly from your
5833 favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access, you can put them on the "Links"
5834 bar (IE) or the "Personal Toolbar" (Netscape), and run them with a single
5841 * Privoxy - Toggle Privoxy (Toggles between enabled and disabled)
5843 * Privoxy- View Status
5847 Credit: The site which gave us the general idea for these bookmarklets is
5848 www.bookmarklets.com. They have more information about bookmarklets.
5850 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5852 14.3. Chain of Events
5854 Let's take a quick look at the basic sequence of events when a web page is
5855 requested by your browser and Privoxy is on duty:
5857 * First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send the
5858 request to Privoxy, which will in turn, relay the request to the remote web
5859 server after passing the following tests:
5861 * Privoxy traps any request for its own internal CGI pages (e.g http://p.p/)
5862 and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
5864 * Next, Privoxy checks to see if the URL matches any "+block" patterns. If
5865 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be
5866 contacted. "+handle-as-image" is then checked and if it does not match, an
5867 HTML "BLOCKED" page is sent back. Otherwise, if it does match, an image is
5868 returned. The type of image depends on the setting of "+set-image-blocker"
5869 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
5871 * Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the trust file, then
5874 * If the URL pattern matches the "+fast-redirects" action, it is then
5875 processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
5877 * Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
5878 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. "+hide-user-agent", etc.),
5879 headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and their
5882 * Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web
5883 page and related data).
5885 * First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
5886 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
5887 filtered as determined by the "+crunch-incoming-cookies",
5888 "+session-cookies-only", and "+downgrade-http-version" actions.
5890 * If the "+kill-popups" action applies, and it is an HTML or JavaScript
5891 document, the popup-code in the response is filtered on-the-fly as it is
5894 * If a "+filter" or "+deanimate-gifs" action applies (and the document type
5895 fits the action), the rest of the page is read into memory (up to a
5896 configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from default.filter and any
5897 other filter files) are processed against the buffered content. Filters are
5898 applied in the order they are specified in one of the filter files.
5899 Animated GIFs, if present, are reduced to either the first or last frame,
5900 depending on the action setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is
5901 then sent by Privoxy back to your browser.
5903 If neither "+filter" or "+deanimate-gifs" matches, then Privoxy passes the
5904 raw data through to the client browser as it becomes available.
5906 * As the browser receives the now (possibly filtered) page content, it reads
5907 and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page source,
5908 e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
5909 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a new
5910 request. And each such request is in turn processed as above. Note that a
5911 complex web page may have many such embedded URLs.
5913 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5915 14.4. Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action
5917 The way Privoxy applies actions and filters to any given URL can be complex,
5918 and not always so easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need
5919 to be able to see just what Privoxy is doing. Especially, if something Privoxy
5920 is doing is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to
5921 look at the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled
5922 with regular expressions whose consequences are not always so obvious.
5924 One quick test to see if Privoxy is causing a problem or not, is to disable it
5925 temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting step. See the
5926 Bookmarklets section on a quick and easy way to do this (be sure to flush
5927 caches afterward!). Looking at the logs is a good idea too.
5929 Another easy troubleshooting step to try is if you have done any customization
5930 of your installation, revert back to the installed defaults and see if that
5931 helps. There are times the developers get complaints about one thing or
5932 another, and the problem is more related to a customized configuration issue.
5934 Privoxy also provides the http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info page that can
5935 show us very specifically how actions are being applied to any given URL. This
5936 is a big help for troubleshooting.
5938 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then Privoxy will tell
5939 us how the current configuration will handle it. This will not help with
5940 filtering effects (i.e. the "+filter" action) from one of the filter files
5941 since this is handled very differently and not so easy to trap! It also will
5942 not tell you about any other URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are
5943 testing. For instance, images such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw
5944 page source of HTML pages. So you will only get info for the actual URL that is
5945 pasted into the prompt area -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about
5946 embedded URLs like ads, you will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use
5947 your browser's "View Page Source" option for this. Or right click on the ad,
5950 Let's try an example, google.com, and look at it one section at a time in a
5951 sample configuration (your real configuration may vary):
5953 Matches for http://google.com:
5955 In file: default.action [ View ] [ Edit ]
5959 -content-type-overwrite
5960 -crunch-client-header
5961 -crunch-if-none-match
5962 -crunch-incoming-cookies
5963 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
5964 -crunch-server-header
5965 +deanimate-gifs {last}
5966 -downgrade-http-version
5967 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
5969 -filter {content-cookies}
5970 -filter {all-popups}
5971 -filter {banners-by-link}
5972 -filter {tiny-textforms}
5973 -filter {frameset-borders}
5974 -filter {demoronizer}
5975 -filter {shockwave-flash}
5976 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
5978 -filter {crude-parental}
5979 -filter {site-specifics}
5980 +filter {js-annoyances}
5981 +filter {html-annoyances}
5982 +filter {refresh-tags}
5983 +filter {unsolicited-popups}
5984 +filter {img-reorder}
5985 +filter {banners-by-size}
5987 +filter {jumping-windows}
5988 +filter {ie-exploits}
5989 -filter-client-headers
5990 -filter-server-headers
5992 -handle-as-empty-document
5994 -hide-accept-language
5995 -hide-content-disposition
5996 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
5997 +hide-from-header {block}
5998 -hide-if-modified-since
5999 +hide-referrer {forge}
6004 -overwrite-last-modified
6005 +prevent-compression
6009 +session-cookies-only
6010 +set-image-blocker {pattern}
6011 -treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks }
6014 { -session-cookies-only }
6020 In file: user.action [ View ] [ Edit ]
6021 (no matches in this file)
6023 This is telling us how we have defined our "actions", and which ones match for
6024 our test case, "google.com". Displayed is all the actions that are available to
6025 us. Remember, the + sign denotes "on". - denotes "off". So some are "on" here,
6026 but many are "off". Each example we try may provide a slightly different end
6027 result, depending on our configuration directives.
6029 The first listing is for our default.action file. The large, multi-line
6030 listing, is how the actions are set to match for all URLs, i.e. our default
6031 settings. If you look at your "actions" file, this would be the section just
6032 below the "aliases" section near the top. This will apply to all URLs as
6033 signified by the single forward slash at the end of the listing -- " / ".
6035 But we have defined additional actions that would be exceptions to these
6036 general rules, and then we list specific URLs (or patterns) that these
6037 exceptions would apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two
6038 explicit matches for ".google.com". The first is negating our previous cookie
6039 setting, which was for "+session-cookies-only" (i.e. not persistent). So we
6040 will allow persistent cookies for google, at least that is how it is in this
6041 example. The second turns off any "+fast-redirects" action, allowing this to
6042 take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading dot here -- ".google.com".
6043 This will match any hosts and sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such
6044 as "www.google.com" or "mail.google.com". But it would not match
6045 "www.google.de"! So, apparently, we have these two actions defined as
6046 exceptions to the general rules at the top somewhere in the lower part of our
6047 default.action file, and "google.com" is referenced somewhere in these latter
6050 Then, for our user.action file, we again have no hits. So there is nothing
6051 google-specific that we might have added to our own, local configuration. If
6052 there was, those actions would over-rule any actions from previously processed
6053 files, such as default.action. user.action typically has the last word. This is
6054 the best place to put hard and fast exceptions,
6056 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
6057 Privoxy is applying all its "actions" to "google.com":
6063 -content-type-overwrite
6064 -crunch-client-header
6065 -crunch-if-none-match
6066 -crunch-incoming-cookies
6067 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6068 -crunch-server-header
6069 +deanimate-gifs {last}
6070 -downgrade-http-version
6072 +filter {js-annoyances}
6073 +filter {html-annoyances}
6074 +filter {refresh-tags}
6075 +filter {unsolicited-popups}
6076 +filter {img-reorder}
6077 +filter {banners-by-size}
6079 +filter {jumping-windows}
6080 +filter {ie-exploits}
6081 -filter-client-headers
6082 -filter-server-headers
6084 -handle-as-empty-document
6086 -hide-accept-language
6087 -hide-content-disposition
6088 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
6089 +hide-from-header {block}
6090 -hide-if-modified-since
6091 +hide-referrer {forge}
6096 -overwrite-last-modified
6097 +prevent-compression
6101 -session-cookies-only
6102 +set-image-blocker {pattern}
6103 -treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks
6105 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to "fast-redirects"
6106 and "session-cookies-only", which are activated specifically for this site in
6107 our configuration, and thus show in the "Final Results".
6109 Now another example, "ad.doubleclick.net":
6117 { +block +handle-as-image }
6118 .[a-vx-z]*.doubleclick.net
6120 We'll just show the interesting part here - the explicit matches. It is matched
6121 three different times. Two "+block" sections, and a "+block +handle-as-image",
6122 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
6123 "+block-as-image". ("Aliases" are defined in the first section of the actions
6124 file and typically used to combine more than one action.)
6126 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
6127 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively would
6128 also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys though ;-)
6129 Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious URL to be invisible, it should be
6130 defined as "ad.doubleclick.net" is done here -- as both a "+block" and an
6131 "+handle-as-image". The custom alias "+block-as-image" just simplifies the
6132 process and make it more readable.
6134 One last example. Let's try "http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/". This one is
6135 giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
6137 Matches for http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
6139 In file: default.action [ View ] [ Edit ]
6143 -content-type-overwrite
6144 -crunch-client-header
6145 -crunch-if-none-match
6146 -crunch-incoming-cookies
6147 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6148 -crunch-server-header
6150 -downgrade-http-version
6151 +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url}
6152 +filter{html-annoyances}
6153 +filter{js-annoyances}
6154 +filter{kill-popups}
6157 +filter{banners-by-size}
6160 -filter-client-headers
6161 -filter-server-headers
6163 -handle-as-empty-document
6165 -hide-accept-language
6166 -hide-content-disposition
6167 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
6168 +hide-from-header{block}
6169 +hide-referer{forge}
6173 -overwrite-last-modified
6174 +prevent-compression
6178 +session-cookies-only
6179 +set-image-blocker{blank}
6180 -treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks }
6183 { +block +handle-as-image }
6186 Ooops, the "/adsl/" is matching "/ads" in our configuration! But we did not
6187 want this at all! Now we see why we get the blank page. It is actually
6188 triggering two different actions here, and the effects are aggregated so that
6189 the URL is blocked, and Privoxy is told to treat the block as if it were an
6190 image. But this is, of course, all wrong. We could now add a new action below
6191 this (or better in our own user.action file) that explicitly un blocks ( "
6192 {-block}") paths with "adsl" in them (remember, last match in the configuration
6193 wins). There are various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
6198 Now the page displays ;-) Remember to flush your browser's caches when making
6199 these kinds of changes to your configuration to insure that you get a freshly
6200 delivered page! Or, try using Shift+Reload.
6202 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like we did
6205 { +block +handle-as-image }
6208 That actually was very helpful and pointed us quickly to where the problem was.
6209 If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default rules in
6210 the first section of default.action is causing the problem. This would require
6211 some guesswork, and maybe a little trial and error to isolate the offending
6212 rule. One likely cause would be one of the "+filter" actions. These tend to be
6213 harder to troubleshoot. Try adding the URL for the site to one of aliases that
6218 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
6223 "{ shop }" is an "alias" that expands to "{ -filter -session-cookies-only }".
6224 Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
6227 # Disable ALL filter actions for sites in this section
6232 This would turn off all filtering for these sites. This is best put in
6233 user.action, for local site exceptions. Note that when a simple domain pattern
6234 is used by itself (without the subsequent path portion), all sub-pages within
6235 that domain are included automatcially in the scope of the action.
6237 Images that are inexplicably being blocked, may well be hitting the "+filter
6238 {banners-by-size}" rule, which assumes that images of certain sizes are ad
6239 banners (works well most of the time since these tend to be standardized).
6241 "{ fragile }" is an alias that disables most actions that are the most likely
6242 to cause trouble. This can be used as a last resort for problem sites.
6245 # Handle with care: easy to break
6249 Remember to flush caches! Note that the mail.google reference lacks the TLD
6250 portion (e.g. ".com". This will effectively match any TLD with google in it,
6251 such as mail.google.de, just as an example.
6253 If this still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining actions
6254 one by one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
projects / privoxy.git / blob