$Id: faq.sgml,v 1.10 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa Exp $ By: Junkbuster Developers The FAQ document gives users and developers alike answers to frequently asked questions about the Internet Junkbuster. Internet Junkbuster is a web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for protecting privacy, filtering web page content, managing cookies, controlling access, and removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet Junk. Junkbuster has a very flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and tastes. Internet Junkbuster has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user networks. You can find the latest version of the document at http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/faq/. Please see the Contact section in the user-manual if you want to contact the developers. Fillme. Fillme. Fillme. Fillme. Fillme. Configuring the Internet Junkbuster is not easy. To help you get started, we provide you with three different default configurations. The following table shows you, which features are enabled in each configuration. Feature ijb.action ijb-basic.action ijb-intermediate.action ijb-advanced.action ad-filtering ? x x x blank image ? x x x de-animate GIFs ? x x x referer forging ? x x x jon's +no-cookies-keep (i.e. session cookies only) ? x x x no-popup windows ? x x fast redirects ? x x hide-referrer ? x x hide-useragent ? x x content-modification ? x feature-x ? feature-y ? feature-z ? What I don't understand, is how I can browser edit the config file as a regular user, while the whole /etc/junkbuster hierarchy belongs to the user "junkbuster", with only 644 perms. When you use the browser-based editor, JunkBuster itself is writing to the config files. Because JunkBuster is running as the user "junkbuster", it can update the config files. If you don't like this, setting "enable-edit-actions 0" in the config file will disable the browser-based editor. If you're that paranoid, you should also consider setting "enable-remote-toggle 0" to prevent browser-based enabling/disabling of JunkBuster. Note that normally only local users can connect to JunkBuster, so this is not (normally) a security problem. Using the default filtering configuration, I noticed considerable delays in page requests compared to the old IJB. Loading pages with large contents seemed to take forever, then suddenly delivering all the content at once. The whole content must be loaded in order to filter, and nothing is is sent to the browser during this time. The loading time does not really change in real numbers, but the feeling is different, because most browsers are able to start rendering incomplete content, giving the user a feeling of "it works". To modify the content of a page (i.e. make frames resizeable again, etc.) and not just replace ads, the Internet Junkbuster needs to download the entire page first, do its content magic and then send the page to the browser. Since JunkBuster sits between your web browser and the Internet, it can be programmed to handle certain pages specially. With recent versions of JunkBuster (version 2.9.x), you can get some information about JunkBuster and change some settings by going to http://i.j.b/ or, equivalently, http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/config/ (Note that i.j.b is far easier to type but may not work in some configurations). These pages are *not* forwarded to a server on the internet - instead they are handled by a special web server which is built in to JunkBuster. If you are not running JunkBuster, then http://i.j.b/ will fail, and http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/config/ will return a web page telling you you're not running JunkBuster. If you have version 2.0.2, then the equivalent is http://example.com/show-proxy-args (but you get far less information, and you should really consider upgrading to 2.9.x). Fillme. Fillme. Well, helping the team is always a good idea. We welcome new developers, RPM gurus or documentation makers. Simply get an account on sourceforge.net and mail your id to the developer mailing list. Once we have added you to the team, you'll have write access to the CVS repository, and together we'll find a suitable task for you. No. The format of the blocklists has changed significantly in the versions 2.9.x. Once we have released the new version, there will again be blocklists that you can update automatically. As of now, please discontinue to submit new ad blocking infos. Once we have released the new version, there will again be a form on the website, which you can use to contribute new ads. You cannot hide your IP address with Junkbuster or any other software, since the server needs to know your IP address to send the answer to you. Fortunately there are many publicly usable anonymous proxies out there, which solve the problem by providing a further level of indirection between you and the web server, shared by many people and thus letting your requests "drown" in white noise of unrelated requests as far as user tracking is concerned. Most of them will, however, log your IP address and make it available to the authorities in case you abuse that anonymity for criminal purposes. In fact you can't even rule out that some of them only exist to *collect* information on (those suspicious) people with a more than average preference for privacy. You can find a list of anonymous public proxies at multiproxy.org and many more through Google. Fillme. Please see the user manual for information on how to contact the developers. Please see the user manual for information on Copyright and History. Please see the user manual for information on references.