+Privoxy Frequently Asked Questions
-Junkbuster Frequently Asked Questions
+Copyright © 2001-2006 by Privoxy Developers
- By: Junkbuster Developers
+$Id: faq.sgml,v 2.18 2006/09/22 01:27:55 hal9 Exp $
+
+This FAQ gives quick answers to frequently asked questions about Privoxy. It is
+not a substitute for the Privoxy User Manual.
+
+What is Privoxy?
+
+Privoxy is a web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for protecting
+privacy, modifying web page data, managing cookies, controlling access, and
+removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a
+very flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and
+tastes. Privoxy has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user
+networks.
+
+Privoxy is based on Internet Junkbuster (tm).
+
+Please note that this document is a work in progress. This copy represents the
+state at the release of version 3.0.5. You can find the latest version of the
+document at http://www.privoxy.org/faq/. Please see the Contact section if you
+want to contact the developers.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Table of Contents
+1. General Information
- $Id: faq.sgml,v 1.3 2001/09/23 10:13:48 swa Exp $
+ 1.1. Who should use Privoxy?
+ 1.2. Is Privoxy the best choice for me?
+ 1.3. What is a "proxy"? How does Privoxy work?
+ 1.4. What is this new version of "Junkbuster"?
+ 1.5. Why "Privoxy"? Why change the name from Junkbuster at all?
+ 1.6. How does Privoxy differ from the old Junkbuster?
+ 1.7. How does Privoxy know what is an ad, and what is not?
+ 1.8. Can Privoxy make mistakes? This does not sound very scientific.
+ 1.9. Will I have to configure Privoxy before I can use it?
+ 1.10. My browser does the same things as Privoxy. Why should I use Privoxy
+ at all?
+ 1.11. Why should I trust Privoxy?
+ 1.12. Is there is a license or fee? What about a warranty? Registration?
+ 1.13. Can Privoxy remove spyware? Adware? Viruses?
+ 1.14. Can I use Privoxy with other ad-blocking software?
+ 1.15. I would like to help you, what can I do?
+
+ 1.15.1. Would you like to participate?
+ 1.15.2. Contribute!
+ 1.15.3. Software
+
+2. Installation
- The FAQ document gives users and developers alike answers to
- frequently asked questions about the Internet Junkbuster. The Internet
- Junkbuster is an application that provides privacy and security to the
- user of the world wide web.
+ 2.1. Which browsers are supported by Privoxy?
+ 2.2. Which operating systems are supported?
+ 2.3. Can I use Privoxy with my email client?
+ 2.4. Can I install Privoxy over Junkbuster?
+ 2.5. I just installed Privoxy. Is there anything special I have to do now?
+ 2.6. What is the proxy address of Privoxy?
+ 2.7. I just installed Privoxy, and nothing is happening. All the ads are
+ there. What's wrong?
+ 2.8. I get a "Privoxy is not being used" dummy page although Privoxy is
+ running and being used.
- You can find the latest version of the document at
- [1]http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/faq/. Please see the Contact section
- in the user-manual if you want to contact the developers.
+3. Configuration
- Feel free to send a note to the developers at
- <[2]ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net>.
- _________________________________________________________________
+ 3.1. Where can I get updated Actions Files?
+ 3.2. Can I use my old config files?
+ 3.3. What exactly is an "actions" file?
+ 3.4. The "actions" concept confuses me. Please list some of these
+ "actions".
+ 3.5. How are actions files configured? What is the easiest way to do this?
+ 3.6. There are several different "actions" files. What are the differences?
+ 3.7. How can I make my Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail account work?
+ 3.8. What's the difference between the "Cautious", "Medium" and "Advanced"
+ defaults?
+ 3.9. Why can I change the configuration with a browser? Does that not raise
+ security issues?
+ 3.10. What is the default.filter file? What is a "filter"?
+ 3.11. How can I set up Privoxy to act as a proxy for my LAN?
+ 3.12. Instead of ads, now I get a checkerboard pattern. I don't want to see
+ anything.
+ 3.13. Why would anybody want to see a checkerboard pattern?
+ 3.14. I see some images being replaced by a text instead of the
+ checkerboard image. Why and how do I get rid of this?
+ 3.15. Can Privoxy run as a service on Win2K/NT/XP?
+ 3.16. How can I make Privoxy work with other proxies like Squid or Tor?
+ 3.17. Can I just set Privoxy to use port 80 and thus avoid individual
+ browser configuration?
+ 3.18. Can Privoxy run as a "transparent" proxy?
+ 3.19. How can I configure Privoxy for use with Outlook Express?
+ 3.20. How can I have separate rules just for HTML mail?
+ 3.21. I sometimes notice cookies sneaking through. How?
+ 3.22. Are all cookies bad? Why?
+ 3.23. How can I allow permanent cookies for my trusted sites?
+ 3.24. Can I have separate configurations for different users?
+ 3.25. Can I set-up Privoxy as a whitelist of "good" sites?
- Table of Contents
- 1. [3]Introduction
- 2. [4]Frequently Asked Questions
-
- 2.1. [5]Installation
- 2.2. [6]Configuration
- 2.3. [7]Misc
-
- 3. [8]Contact the developers
- 4. [9]Copyright and History
- 5. [10]See also
-
-1. Introduction
-
- To be filled.
- _________________________________________________________________
+4. Miscellaneous
-2. Frequently Asked Questions
+ 4.1. How much does Privoxy slow my browsing down? This has to add extra
+ time to browsing.
+ 4.2. I notice considerable delays in page requests compared to the old
+ Junkbuster. What's wrong?
+ 4.3. What are "http://config.privoxy.org/" and "http://p.p/"?
+ 4.4. How can I submit new ads, or report problems?
+ 4.5. Why doesn't anyone answer my support request?
+ 4.6. How can I hide my IP address?
+ 4.7. Can Privoxy guarantee I am anonymous?
+ 4.8. A test site says I am not using a Proxy.
+ 4.9. How do I use Privoxy together with Tor?
+ 4.10. Might some things break because header information or content is
+ being altered?
+ 4.11. Can Privoxy act as a "caching" proxy to speed up web browsing?
+ 4.12. What about as a firewall? Can Privoxy protect me?
+ 4.13. I have large empty spaces / a checkerboard pattern now where ads used
+ to be. Why?
+ 4.14. How can Privoxy filter Secure (HTTPS) URLs?
+ 4.15. Privoxy runs as a "server". How secure is it? Do I need to take any
+ special precautions?
+ 4.16. How can I temporarily disable Privoxy?
+ 4.17. When "disabled" is Privoxy totally out of the picture?
+ 4.18. My logs show Privoxy "crunches" ads, but also its own internal CGI
+ pages. What is a "crunch"?
+ 4.19. Can Privoxy effect files that I download from a webserver? FTP
+ server?
+ 4.20. I just downloaded a Perl script, and Privoxy altered it! Yikes, what
+ is wrong!
+ 4.21. Should I continue to use a "HOSTS" file for ad-blocking?
+ 4.22. Where can I find more information about Privoxy and related issues?
+ 4.23. I've noticed that Privoxy changes "Microsoft" to "MicroSuck"! Why are
+ you manipulating my browsing?
+
+5. Troubleshooting
+
+ 5.1. I am getting "connection refused" with every web page?
+ 5.2. I just added a new rule, but the steenkin ad is still getting through.
+ How?
+ 5.3. One of my favorite sites does not work with Privoxy. What can I do?
+ 5.4. After installing Privoxy, I have to log in every time I start IE. What
+ gives?
+ 5.5. I cannot connect to any FTP sites. Privoxy is blocking me.
+ 5.6. In Mac OSX, I can't configure Microsoft Internet Explorer to use
+ Privoxy as the HTTP proxy.
+ 5.7. In Mac OSX, I dragged the Privoxy folder to the trash in order to
+ uninstall it. Now the finder tells me I don't have sufficient
+ privileges to empty the trash.
+ 5.8. In Mac OSX Panther (10.3), images often fail to load and/or I
+ experience random delays in page loading. I'm using localhost as my
+ browser's proxy setting.
+ 5.9. I get a completely blank page at one site. "View Source" shows only:
+ <html><body></body></html>. Without Privoxy the page loads fine.
+ 5.10. Why am I getting a 503 Error (WSAECONNREFUSED) on every page?
+ 5.11. My logs show many "Unable to get my own hostname" lines. Why?
+ 5.12. When I try to launch Privoxy, I get an error message "port 8118 is
+ already in use" (or similar wording). Why?
+ 5.13. Pages with UTF-8 fonts are garbled.
+ 5.14. Why are binary files (such as images) corrupted when Privoxy is used?
+ 5.15. What is the "demoronizer" and why is it there?
+ 5.16. Why do I keep seeing "PrivoxyWindowOpen()" in raw source code?
+ 5.17. I am getting too many DNS errors like "404 No Such Domain". Why can't
+ Privoxy do this better?
+ 5.18. At one site Privoxy just hangs, and starts taking all CPU. Why is
+ this?
+ 5.19. I just installed Privoxy, and all my browsing has slowed to a crawl.
+ What gives?
+
+6. Contacting the developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests
+
+ 6.1. Get Support
+ 6.2. Reporting Problems
+
+ 6.2.1. Reporting Ads or Other Configuration Problems
+ 6.2.2. Reporting Bugs
+
+ 6.3. Request New Features
+ 6.4. Other
+
+7. Privoxy Copyright, License and History
+
+ 7.1. License
+ 7.2. History
+
+1. General Information
-2.1. Installation
+1.1. Who should use Privoxy?
- To be done later.
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-2.2. Configuration
+Anyone that is interested in security, privacy, or in finer-grained control
+over their web and Internet experience. Everyone is encouraged to try Privoxy.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.2. Is Privoxy the best choice for me?
+
+Privoxy is certainly a good choice, especially for those who want more control
+and security. Those that have the ability to fine-tune their installation will
+benefit the most. One of Privoxy's strength's is that it is highly configurable
+giving you the ability to completely personalize your installation. Being
+familiar with, or at least having an interest in learning about HTTP and other
+networking protocols, HTML, IP (Internet Protocol), and "Regular Expressions"
+will be a big plus and will help you get the most out of Privoxy.
+
+Much of Privoxy's configuration can be done with a Web browser. But there are
+areas where configuration is done using a text editor to edit configuration
+files.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.3. What is a "proxy"? How does Privoxy work?
+
+A web proxy is a service, based on a software such as Privoxy, that clients
+(i.e. browsers) can use instead of connecting directly to web servers on the
+Internet. The clients then ask the proxy to fetch the objects they need (web
+pages, images, movies etc) on their behalf, and when the proxy has done so, it
+hands the results back to the client. It is a "go-between". See the Wikipedia
+proxy definition for more.
+
+There are many reasons to use web proxies, such as security (firewalling),
+efficiency (caching) and others, and there are any number of proxies to
+accommodate those needs.
+
+Privoxy is a proxy that is primarily focused on privacy protection, ad and junk
+elimination and freeing the user from restrictions placed on his activities.
+Sitting between your browser(s) and the Internet, it is in a perfect position
+to filter outbound personal information that your browser is leaking, as well
+as inbound junk. It uses a variety of techniques to do this, all of which are
+under your complete control via the various configuration files and options.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.4. What is this new version of "Junkbuster"?
+
+Along time ago, there was the Internet Junkbuster, by Anonymous Coders and
+Junkbusters Corporation. This saved many users a lot of pain in the early days
+of web advertising and user tracking.
+
+But the web, its protocols and standards, and with it, the techniques for
+forcing ads on users, give up autonomy over their browsing, and for tracking
+them, keeps evolving. Unfortunately, the Internet Junkbuster did not. Version
+2.0.2, published in 1998, was (and is) the last official release available from
+Junkbusters Corporation. Fortunately, it had been released under the GNU GPL,
+which allowed further development by others.
+
+So Stefan Waldherr started maintaining an improved version of the software, to
+which eventually a number of people contributed patches. It could already
+replace banners with a transparent image, and had a first version of pop-up
+killing, but it was still very closely based on the original, with all its
+limitations, such as the lack of HTTP/1.1 support, flexible per-site
+configuration, or content modification. The last release from this effort was
+version 2.0.2-10, published in 2000.
+
+Then, some developers picked up the thread, and started turning the software
+inside out, upside down, and then reassembled it, adding many new features
+along the way.
+
+The result of this is Privoxy, whose first stable version, 3.0, was released
+August, 2002.
-2.2.1. How can I make my Yahoo account work?
- _________________________________________________________________
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.5. Why "Privoxy"? Why change the name from Junkbuster at all?
+
+Junkbusters Corporation continues to offer their original version of the
+Internet Junkbuster, so publishing our Junkbuster-derived software under the
+same name led to confusion.
+
+There are also potential legal complications from the continued use of the
+Junkbuster name, which is a registered trademark of Junkbusters Corporation.
+There are, however, no objections from Junkbusters Corporation to the Privoxy
+project itself, and they, in fact, still share our ideals and goals.
+
+The developers also believed that there are so many improvements over the
+original code, that it was time to make a clean break from the past and make a
+name in their own right.
+
+Privoxy is the "Privacy Enhancing Proxy". Also, its content modification and
+junk suppression gives you, the user, more control, more freedom, and allows
+you to browse your personal and "private edition" of the web.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.6. How does Privoxy differ from the old Junkbuster?
+
+Privoxy picks up where Junkbuster left off. All the old features remain. The
+new Privoxy still blocks ads and banners, still manages cookies, and still
+helps protect your privacy. But, these are all greatly enhanced, and many, many
+new features have been added, all in the same vein.
+
+The configuration has changed significantly as well. This is something that
+users will notice right off the bat if upgrading from Junkbuster 2.0.x. The
+"blocklist" "cookielist", "imagelist" and much more has been combined into the
+"actions" files, with a completely different syntax. See the What's New page
+for the latest updates.
+
+Privoxy's new features include:
+
+ * Integrated browser based configuration and control utility at http://
+ config.privoxy.org/ (shortcut: http://p.p/). Browser-based tracing of rule
+ and filter effects. Remote toggling.
+
+ * Web page content filtering (removes banners based on size, invisible
+ "web-bugs", JavaScript and HTML annoyances, pop-up windows, etc.)
+
+ * Modularized configuration that allows for standard settings and user
+ settings to reside in separate files, so that installing updated actions
+ files won't overwrite individual user settings.
+
+ * HTTP/1.1 compliant (but not all optional 1.1 features are supported).
+
+ * Support for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions in the configuration files,
+ and generally a more sophisticated and flexible configuration syntax over
+ previous versions.
+
+ * Improved cookie management features (e.g. session based cookies).
-2.2.2. How can I make my Hotmail account work?
- _________________________________________________________________
+ * GIF de-animation.
-2.2.3. How can I make my GMX account work?
- _________________________________________________________________
+ * Bypass many click-tracking scripts (avoids script redirection).
-2.3. Misc
+ * Multi-threaded (POSIX and native threads).
+
+ * User-customizable HTML templates for all proxy-generated pages (e.g.
+ "blocked" page).
+
+ * Auto-detection and re-reading of config file changes.
+
+ * Improved signal handling, and a true daemon mode (Unix).
+
+ * Every feature now controllable on a per-site or per-location basis,
+ configuration more powerful and versatile over-all.
+
+ * Many smaller new features added, limitations and bugs removed, and security
+ holes fixed.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-2.3.1. How can I hide my IP address?
+1.7. How does Privoxy know what is an ad, and what is not?
- You cannot hide your IP address with Junkbuster.
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-2.3.2. What is the imagefile (simage.ini, etc.) for?
+Privoxy's approach to blocking ads is twofold:
- Anytime the Junkbuster determines (with the help of the blocklist)
- that a URL contains an advertisement, it has to decide whether this
- advertisement is an image or not. The Junkbuster uses the imagefile
- for that purpose..
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-3. Contact the developers
+First, there are certain patterns in the locations (URLs) of banner images.
+This applies to both the path (you wouldn't guess how many web sites serve
+their banners from a directory called "banners"!) and the host (blocking the
+big banner hosting services like doublecklick.net already helps a lot). Privoxy
+takes advantage of this fact by using URL patterns to sort out and block the
+requests for things that sound like they would be ads or banners.
+
+Second, banners tend to come in certain sizes. But you can't tell the size of
+an image by its URL without downloading it, and if you do, it's too late to
+save bandwidth. Therefore, Privoxy also inspects the HTML sources of web pages
+while they are loaded, and replaces references to images with standard banner
+sizes by dummy references, so that your browser doesn't request them anymore in
+the first place.
+
+Both of this involves a certain amount of guesswork and is, of course, freely
+and readily configurable.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.8. Can Privoxy make mistakes? This does not sound very scientific.
+
+Actually, it's a black art ;-) And yes, it is always possible to have a broad
+rule accidentally block or change something by mistake. You will almost surely
+run into such situations at some point. It is tricky writing rules to cover
+every conceivable possibility, and not occasionally get false positives.
+
+But this should not be a big concern since the Privoxy configuration is very
+flexible, and includes tools to help identify these types of situations so they
+can be addressed as needed, allowing you to customize your installation. (See
+the Troubleshooting section below.)
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.9. Will I have to configure Privoxy before I can use it?
+
+No, not really. The default installation should give you a good starting point,
+and block most unwanted content.
+
+But you will certainly run into situations where there are false positives, or
+ads not being blocked that you may not want to see. In these cases, you would
+certainly benefit by customizing Privoxy's configuration to more closely match
+your individual situation. And we would encourage you to do this. This is where
+the real power of Privoxy lies!
+
+You will have to tell your browser about Privoxy (see the Installation section
+below).
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.10. My browser does the same things as Privoxy. Why should I use Privoxy at
+all?
+
+Modern browsers do indeed have some of the same functionality as Privoxy. Maybe
+this is adequate for you. But Privoxy is much more versatile and powerful, and
+can do a number of things that browsers just can't.
+
+In addition, a proxy is good choice if you use multiple browsers, or have a LAN
+with multiple computers. This way all the configuration is in one place, and
+you don't have to maintain a similar configuration for possibly many browsers.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.11. Why should I trust Privoxy?
+
+The most important reason is because you have access to everything, and you can
+control everything. You can check every line of every configuration file
+yourself. You can check every last bit of source code should you desire. And
+even if you can't read code, there should be some comfort in knowing that
+thousands of other people can, and do read it. You can build the software from
+scratch, if you want, so that you know the executable is clean, and that it is
+yours. In fact, we encourage this level of scrutiny. It is one reason we use
+Privoxy ourselves.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.12. Is there is a license or fee? What about a warranty? Registration?
+
+Privoxy is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It is free to
+use, copy, modify or distribute as you wish under the terms of this license.
+Please see the Copyright section for more information on the license and
+copyright. Or the LICENSE file that should be included.
+
+There is no warranty of any kind, expressed, implied or otherwise. That is
+something that would cost real money ;-) There is no registration either.
+Privoxy really is free in every respect!
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.13. Can Privoxy remove spyware? Adware? Viruses?
+
+No. Privoxy cannot remove anything. It is not a removal tool. It is a
+preventative. Privoxy can help prevent contact from sites that use such tactics
+with approriate configuration rules, and thus could conceivably prevent
+contamination from such sites.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.14. Can I use Privoxy with other ad-blocking software?
+
+Privoxy should work fine with other proxies and other software in general.
+
+But it is probably not necessary to use Privoxy in conjunction with other
+ad-blocking products, and this could conceivably cause undesirable results. It
+would be better to choose one software or the other and work a little to tweak
+its configuration to your liking.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.15. I would like to help you, what can I do?
+
+1.15.1. Would you like to participate?
+
+Well, we always need help. There is something for everybody who wants to help
+us. We welcome new developers, packagers, testers, documentation writers or
+really anyone with a desire to help in any way. You DO NOT need to be a
+"programmer". There are many other tasks available. In fact, the programmers
+often can't spend as much time programming because of some of the other, more
+mundane things that need to be done, like checking the Tracker feedback
+sections.
+
+So first thing, get an account on SourceForge.net and mail your id to the
+developers mailing list. Then, please read the Developer's Manual, at least the
+pertinent sections.
+
+Once we have added you to the team, you'll have access to the CVS repository,
+and together we'll find a suitable task for you.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.15.2. Contribute!
+
+We, of course, welcome donations and could use money for domain registering,
+buying software to test Privoxy with, and, of course, for regular world-wide
+get-togethers (hahaha). If you enjoy the software and feel like helping us with
+a donation, just drop us a note.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.15.3. Software
+
+If you are a vendor of a web-related software like a browser, web server or
+proxy, and would like us to ensure that Privoxy runs smoothly with your
+product, you might consider supplying us with a copy or license. We can't,
+however, guarantee that we will fix all potential compatibility issues as a
+result.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2. Installation
+
+2.1. Which browsers are supported by Privoxy?
+
+Any browser that can be configured to use a proxy, which should be virtually
+all browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera among others.
+Direct browser support is not an absolute requirement since Privoxy runs as a
+separate application and talks to the browser in the standardized HTTP
+protocol, just like a web server does.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.2. Which operating systems are supported?
+
+At present, Privoxy is known to run on Windows(95, 98, ME, 2000, XP), Linux
+(RedHat, SuSE, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Slackware and others), Mac OSX, OS/2,
+AmigaOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, and various other flavors of Unix.
+
+But any operating system that runs TCP/IP, can conceivably take advantage of
+Privoxy in a networked situation where Privoxy would run as a server on a LAN
+gateway. Then only the "gateway" needs to be running one of the above operating
+systems.
+
+Source code is freely available, so porting to other operating systems is
+always a possibility.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.3. Can I use Privoxy with my email client?
+
+As long as there is some way to set a HTTP proxy for the client, then yes, any
+application can be used, whether it is strictly speaking a "browser" or not.
+Though this may not be the best approach for dealing with some of the common
+abuses of HTML in email. See How can I configure Privoxy with Outlook Express?
+below for more on this.
+
+Be aware that HTML email presents a number of unique security and privacy
+related issues, that can require advanced skills to overcome. The developers
+recommend using email clients that can be configured to convert HTML to plain
+text for these reasons.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.4. Can I install Privoxy over Junkbuster?
+
+We recommend you un-install Junkbuster first to minimize conflicts and
+confusion. You may want to save your old configuration files for future
+reference. The configuration files and syntax have substantially changed, so
+you will need to manually port your old patterns. See the note to upgraders and
+installation chapter in the User Manual for details.
+
+Note: Some installers may automatically un-install Junkbuster, if present!
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.5. I just installed Privoxy. Is there anything special I have to do now?
+
+All browsers must be told to use Privoxy as a proxy by specifying the correct
+proxy address and port number in the appropriate configuration area for the
+browser. See below. You should also flush your browser's memory and disk cache
+to get rid of any cached junk items, and remove any stored cookies.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.6. What is the proxy address of Privoxy?
+
+If you set up the Privoxy to run on the computer you browse from (rather than
+your ISP's server or some networked computer on a LAN), the proxy will be on
+127.0.0.1 (sometimes referred to as "localhost", which is the special name used
+by every computer on the Internet to refer to itself) and the port will be 8118
+(unless you have Privoxy to run on a different port with the listen-address
+config option).
+
+When configuring your browser's proxy settings you typically enter the word
+"localhost" or the IP address "127.0.0.1" in the boxes next to "HTTP" and
+"Secure" (HTTPS) and then the number "8118" for "port". This tells your browser
+to send all web requests to Privoxy instead of directly to the Internet.
+
+Privoxy can also be used to proxy for a Local Area Network. In this case, your
+would enter either the IP address of the LAN host where Privoxy is running, or
+the equivalent hostname. Port assignment would be same as above. Note that
+Privoxy doesn't listen on any LAN interfaces by default.
+
+Privoxy does not currently handle any other protocols such as FTP, SMTP, IM,
+IRC, ICQ, etc. Be sure that proxying any of these other protocols is not
+activated.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.7. I just installed Privoxy, and nothing is happening. All the ads are there.
+What's wrong?
+
+Did you configure your browser to use Privoxy as a proxy? It does not sound
+like it. See above. You might also try flushing the browser's caches to force a
+full re-reading of pages. You can verify that Privoxy is running, and your
+browser is correctly configured by entering the special URL: http://p.p/. This
+should take you to a page titled "This is Privoxy.." with access to Privoxy's
+internal configuration. If you see this, then you are good to go. If you
+receive a page saying "Privoxy is not running", then the browser is not set up
+to use your Privoxy installation. If you receive anything else (probably
+nothing at all), it could either be that the browser is not set up correctly,
+or that Privoxy is not running at all. Check the log file. For instructions on
+starting Privoxy and browser configuration, see the chapter on starting Privoxy
+in the User Manual.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.8. I get a "Privoxy is not being used" dummy page although Privoxy is running
+and being used.
+
+First, make sure that Privoxy is really running and being used by visiting
+http://p.p/. You should see the Privoxy main page. If not, see the chapter on
+starting Privoxy in the User Manual.
+
+Now if http://p.p/ works for you, but other parts of Privoxy's web interface
+show the dummy page, your browser has cached a redirection it encountered
+before Privoxy was being used. You need to clear your browser's cache. Note
+that shift-reloading the dummy page won't help, since that'll only refresh the
+dummy page, not the redirection that lead you there.
+
+The procedure for clearing the cache varies from browser to browser. For
+example, Mozilla/Netscape users would click Edit --> Preferences --> Advanced
+--> Cache and then click both "Clear Memory Cache" and "Clear Disk Cache". And,
+Firefox users would click Tools --> Options --> Privacy --> Cache and then
+click "Clear Cache Now".
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3. Configuration
+
+3.1. Where can I get updated Actions Files?
+
+Based on your feedback and the continuing development, updates of
+default.action will be made available from time to time on the files section of
+our project page.
+
+If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
+Privoxy or the actions file, subscribe to our announce mailing list,
+ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.2. Can I use my old config files?
+
+The syntax and purpose of configuration files has remained the same throughout
+the 3.x series. Although each release contains updated, "improved" versions and
+it is recommended to use the newer configuration files. If upgrading from
+version prior to 3.0.4 the syntax for fast-redirects has changed. See the
+What's New section of the User Manual for details.
+
+But all configuration files have substantially changed from the Junkbuster
+days, and early versions of Privoxy 2.x. The old files, like blocklist will not
+work at all.
+
+Refer to the What's New page for information on configuration changes that may
+occur from one release to another.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.3. What exactly is an "actions" file?
+
+Actions files are where various actions that Privoxy could take while
+processing a certain request, are configured. Typically, you would define a set
+of default actions that apply to all URLs, then add exceptions to these
+defaults where needed. There is a wide array of actions available that give the
+user a high degree of control and flexibility on how to process each and every
+web page.
+
+Actions can be defined on a URL pattern basis, i.e. for single URLs, whole web
+sites, groups or parts thereof etc. Actions can also be grouped together and
+then applied to requests matching one or more patterns. There are many possible
+actions that might apply to any given site. As an example, if you are blocking
+cookies as one of your default actions, but need to accept cookies from a given
+site, you would need to define an exception for this site in one of your
+actions files, preferably in user.action.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.4. The "actions" concept confuses me. Please list some of these "actions".
+
+For a comprehensive discussion of the actions concept, please refer to the
+actions file chapter in the user manual. It includes a list of all actions and
+an actions file tutorial to get you started.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.5. How are actions files configured? What is the easiest way to do this?
+
+Actions files are just text files in a special syntax and can be edited with a
+text editor. But probably the easiest way is to access Privoxy's user interface
+with your web browser at http://config.privoxy.org/ (Shortcut: http://p.p/) and
+then select "View & change the current configuration" from the menu.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.6. There are several different "actions" files. What are the differences?
+
+As of Privoxy v2.9.15, three actions files are being included, to be used for
+different purposes: These are default.action, the "main" actions file which is
+actively maintained by the Privoxy developers, user.action, where users are
+encouraged to make their private customizations, and standard.action, which is
+for internal Privoxy use only. Please see the actions chapter in the User
+Manual for a more detailed explanation.
+
+Earlier versions included three different versions of the default.action file.
+The new scheme allows for greater flexibility of local configuration, and for
+browser based selection of pre-defined "aggressiveness" levels.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.7. How can I make my Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail account work?
+
+The default configuration shouldn't impact the usability of any of these
+services. It will, however, make all cookies temporary, so that your browser
+will forget your login credentials in between browser sessions. If you would
+like not to have to log in manually each time you access those websites, simply
+turn off all cookie handling for them in the user.action file. An example for
+yahoo might look like:
+
+# Allow all cookies for Yahoo login:
+#
+{ -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies -session-cookies-only }
+.login.yahoo.com
+
+These kinds of sites are often quite complex and heavy with Javascript and thus
+"fragile". So if still a problem, we have an alias just for such sticky
+situations:
+
+# Gmail is a _fragile_ site:
+#
+{ fragile }
+ mail.google.com
+
+Be sure to flush your browser's caches whenever making these kinds of changes,
+just to make sure the changes "take".
+
+Make sure the domain, host and path are appropriate as well. Your browser can
+tell you where you are specifically and you should use that information for
+your configuration settings. Note that above it is not referenced as gmail.com,
+which is a valid domain name.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.8. What's the difference between the "Cautious", "Medium" and "Advanced"
+defaults?
+
+Configuring Privoxy is not entirely trivial. To help you get started, we
+provide you with three different default action "profiles" in the web based
+actions file editor at http://config.privoxy.org/show-status. See the User
+Manual for a list of actions, and how the default profiles are set.
+
+Where the defaults are likely to break some sites, exceptions for known popular
+"problem" sites are included, but in general, the more aggressive your default
+settings are, the more exceptions you will have to make later. See the User
+Manual for a more detailed discussion.
+
+It should be noted that the "Advanced" profile (formerly known as the
+"Adventuresome" profile) is more aggressive, and will make use of some of
+Privoxy's advanced features. Use at your own risk!
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.9. Why can I change the configuration with a browser? Does that not raise
+security issues?
+
+It may seem strange that regular users can edit the config files with their
+browsers, although the whole /etc/privoxy hierarchy belongs to the user
+"privoxy", with only 644 permissions.
+
+When you use the browser-based editor, Privoxy itself is writing to the config
+files. Because Privoxy is running as the user "privoxy", it can update the
+config files.
+
+If you run Privoxy for multiple untrusted users (e.g. in a LAN), you will
+probably want to turn the web-based editor and remote toggle features off by
+setting "enable-edit-actions 0" and "enable-remote-toggle 0" in the main
+configuration file.
+
+Note that in the default configuration, only local users (i.e. those on
+"localhost") can connect to Privoxy, so this is not (normally) a security
+problem.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.10. What is the default.filter file? What is a "filter"?
+
+The default.filter file is where filters as supplied by the developers are
+defined. Filters are a special subset of actions that can be used to modify or
+remove, web page content on the fly. Filters apply to anything in the page
+source (and optionally both client and server headers), including HTML tags,
+and JavaScript. Regular expressions are used to accomplish this. There are a
+number of pre-defined filters to deal with common annoyances. The filters are
+only defined here, to invoke them, you need to use the filter action in one of
+the actions files. Filtering is automatically disabled for inappropriate MIME
+types.
+
+If you are familiar with regular expressions, and HTML, you can look at the
+provided default.filter with a text editor and define your own filters. This is
+potentially a very powerful feature, but requires some expertise in both
+regular expressions and HTML/HTTP. You should place any modifications to the
+default filters, or any new ones you create in a separate file, such as
+user.filter, so they won't be overwritten during upgrades. The ability to
+define multiple filter files in config is a new feature as of v. 3.0.5.
+
+There is no GUI editor option for this part of the configuration, but you can
+disable/enable the various pre-defined filters of the included default.filter
+file with the web-based actions file editor.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.11. How can I set up Privoxy to act as a proxy for my LAN?
+
+By default, Privoxy only responds to requests from 127.0.0.1 (localhost). To
+have it act as a server for a network, this needs to be changed in the main
+configuration file. Look for the listen-address option, which may be commented
+out with a "#" symbol. Make sure it is uncommented, and assign it the address
+of the LAN gateway interface, and port number to use. Assuming your LAN address
+is 192.168.1.1 and you wish to run Privoxy on port 8118, this line should look
+like:
+
+ listen-address 192.168.1.1:8118
+
+Save the file, and restart Privoxy. Configure all browsers on the network then
+to use this address and port number.
+
+Alternately, you can have Privoxy listen on all available interfaces:
+
+ listen-address :8118
+
+And then use Privoxy's permit-access feature to limit connections. A firewall
+in this situation is recommended as well.
+
+The above steps should be the same for any TCP network, regardless of operating
+system.
+
+If you run Privoxy on a LAN with untrusted users, we recommend that you
+double-check the access control and security options!
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.12. Instead of ads, now I get a checkerboard pattern. I don't want to see
+anything.
+
+The replacement for blocked images can be controlled with the set-image-blocker
+action. You have the choice of a checkerboard pattern, a transparent 1x1 GIF
+image (aka "blank"), or a redirect to a custom image of your choice. Note that
+this choice only has effect for images which are blocked as images, i.e. whose
+URLs match both a handle-as-image and block action.
+
+If you want to see nothing, then change the set-image-blocker action to
+"blank". This can be done by editing the default.action file, or trough the
+web-based actions file editor.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.13. Why would anybody want to see a checkerboard pattern?
+
+Remember that telling which image is an ad and which isn't, is mostly
+guesswork. While we hope that the standard configuration is rather smart, it
+can and will make errors. The checkerboard image is visually decent, but it
+shows you that and where images were blocked, which can be very helpful in case
+some navigation aid or otherwise innocent image was erroneously blocked. Some
+people might also enjoy seeing how many banners they don't have to see..
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.14. I see some images being replaced by a text instead of the checkerboard
+image. Why and how do I get rid of this?
+
+This happens when the banners are not embedded in the HTML code of the page
+itself, but in separate HTML (sub)documents that are loaded into (i)frames or
+(i)layers, and these external HTML documents are blocked. Being non-images they
+get replaced by a substitute HTML page rather than a substitute image, which
+wouldn't work out technically, since the browser expects and accepts only HTML
+when it has requested an HTML document.
+
+The substitute page adapts to the available space and shows itself as a
+miniature two-liner if loaded into small frames, or full-blown with a large red
+"BLOCKED" banner if space allows.
+
+If you prefer the banners to be blocked by images, you must see to it that the
+HTML documents in which they are embedded are not blocked. Clicking the "See
+why" link offered in the substitute page will show you which rule blocked the
+page. After changing the rule and un-blocking the HTML documents, the browser
+will try to load the actual banner images and the usual image blocking will
+(hopefully!) kick in.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.15. Can Privoxy run as a service on Win2K/NT/XP?
+
+Yes. Version 3.0.5 introduces full Windows service functionality. See the User
+Manual for details on how to install and configure Privoxy as a service.
+
+Earlier 3.x versions could run as a system service using srvany.exe. See the
+discussion at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=361118&aid=
+485617&group_id=11118, for details, and a sample configuration.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.16. How can I make Privoxy work with other proxies like Squid or Tor?
+
+This can be done and is often useful to combine the benefits of Privoxy with
+those of a another proxy. See the forwarding chapter in the User Manual which
+describes how to do this, and the How do I use Privoxy together with Tor
+section below.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.17. Can I just set Privoxy to use port 80 and thus avoid individual browser
+configuration?
+
+No, its more complicated than that. This only works with special kinds of
+proxies known as "transparent" proxies (see below).
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.18. Can Privoxy run as a "transparent" proxy?
+
+No, Privoxy currently does not have this ability, though it may be added in a
+future release. Transparent proxies require special handling of the request
+headers beyond what Privoxy is now capable of.
+
+Chaining Privoxy behind another proxy that has this ability should work though.
+See the forwarding chapter in the User Manual. As a transparent proxy to be
+used for chaining we recommend Transproxy (http://transproxy.sourceforge.net/).
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.19. How can I configure Privoxy for use with Outlook Express?
+
+Outlook Express uses Internet Explorer components to both render HTML, and
+fetch any HTTP requests that may be embedded in an HTML email. So however you
+have Privoxy configured to work with IE, this configuration should
+automatically be shared.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.20. How can I have separate rules just for HTML mail?
+
+The short answer is, you can't. Privoxy has no way of knowing which particular
+application makes a request, so there is no way to distinguish between web
+pages and HTML mail. Privoxy just blindly proxies all requests. In the case of
+Outlook Express (see above), OE uses IE anyway, and there is no way for Privoxy
+to ever be able to distinguish between them (nor could any other proxy type
+application for that matter).
+
+For a good discussion of some of the issues involved (including privacy and
+security issues), see http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=211118&
+aid=629518&group_id=11118.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.21. I sometimes notice cookies sneaking through. How?
+
+Cookies can be set in several ways. The classic method is via the Set-Cookie
+HTTP header. This is straightforward, and an easy one to manipulate, such as
+the Privoxy concept of session-cookies-only. There is also the possibility of
+using Javascript to set cookies (Privoxy calls these content-cookies). This is
+trickier because the syntax can vary widely, and thus requires a certain amount
+of guesswork. It is not realistic to catch all of these short of disabling
+Javascript, which would break many sites. And lastly, if the cookies are
+embedded in a HTTPS/SSL secure session via Javascript, they are beyond
+Privoxy's reach.
+
+All in all, Privoxy can help manage cookies in general, can help minimize the
+loss of privacy posed by cookies, but can't realistically stop all cookies.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.22. Are all cookies bad? Why?
+
+No, in fact there are many beneficial uses of cookies. Cookies are just a
+method that browsers can use to store data between pages, or between browser
+sessions. Sometimes there is a good reason for this, and the user's life is a
+bit easier as a result. But there is a long history of some websites taking
+advantage of this layer of trust, and using the data they glean from you and
+your browsing habits for their own purposes, and maybe to your potential
+detriment. Such sites are using you and storing their data on your system. That
+is why the security conscious watch from whom those cookies come, and why they
+really need to be there.
+
+See the Wikipedia cookie definition for more.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.23. How can I allow permanent cookies for my trusted sites?
+
+There are several actions that relate to cookies. The default behavior is to
+allow only "session cookies", which means the cookies only last for the current
+browser session. This eliminates most kinds of abuse related to cookies. But
+there may be cases where we want cookies to last.
+
+To disable all cookie actions, so that cookies are allowed unrestricted, both
+in and out, for example.com:
+
+ { -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies -session-cookies-only -filter{content-cookies} }
+ .example.com
+
+Place the above in user.action. Note some of these may be off by default
+anyway, so this might be redundant, but there is no harm being explicit in what
+you want to happen. user.action includes an alias for this situation, called
+allow-all-cookies.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.24. Can I have separate configurations for different users?
+
+Each instance of Privoxy has its own configuration, including such attributes
+as the TCP port that it listens on. What you can do is run multiple instances
+of Privoxy, each with a unique listen-address and configuration path, and then
+each of these can have their own configurations. Think of it as per-port
+configuration.
+
+Simple enough for a few users, but for large installations, consider having
+groups of users that might share like configurations.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+3.25. Can I set-up Privoxy as a whitelist of "good" sites?
+
+Sure. There are a couple of things you can do for simple whitelisting. Here's
+one real easy one:
+
+ ############################################################
+ # Blacklist
+ ############################################################
+ { +block }
+ / # Block *all* URLs
+
+ ############################################################
+ # Whitelist
+ ############################################################
+ { -block }
+ kids.example.com
+ toys.example.com
+ games.example.com
+
+This allows access to only those three sites.
+
+A more interesting approach is Privoxy's trustfile concept, which incorporates
+the notion of "trusted referrers". See the User Manual Trust documentation.
+
+These are fairly simple approaches and are not completely foolproof. There are
+various other configuration options that should be disabled (described
+elsewhere here and in the User Manual) so that users can't modify their own
+configuration and easily circumvent the whitelist.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4. Miscellaneous
+
+4.1. How much does Privoxy slow my browsing down? This has to add extra time to
+browsing.
+
+How much of an impact depends on many things, including the CPU of the host
+system, how aggressive the configuration is, which specific actions are being
+triggered, the size of the page, etc.
+
+Overall, it should not slow you down any in real terms, and may actually help
+speed things up since ads, banners and other junk are not typically being
+retrieved and displayed. The actual processing time required by Privoxy itself
+for each page, is relatively small in the overall scheme of things, and happens
+very quickly. This is typically more than offset by time saved not downloading
+and rendering ad images (if ad blocking is being used).
- Please see the user manual for information on how to contact the
- developers.
- _________________________________________________________________
+"Filtering" content via the filter or deanimate-gifs actions will certainly
+cause a perceived slowdown, since the entire document needs to be buffered
+before displaying. And on very large documents, there may be some impact. How
+much depends on the page size, the actual definition of the filter(s), etc. See
+below. Most other actions have little to no impact on speed.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.2. I notice considerable delays in page requests compared to the old
+Junkbuster. What's wrong?
+
+If you use any filter action, such as filtering banners by size, web-bugs etc,
+or the deanimate-gifs action, the entire document must be loaded into memory in
+order for the filtering mechanism to work, and nothing is sent to the browser
+during this time.
+
+The loading time typically does not really change much 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". This effect is
+more noticeable on slower dialup connections. Extremely large documents may
+have some impact on the time to load the page where there is filtering being
+done. But overall, the difference should be very minimal. If there is a big
+impact, then probably some other problem is contributing.
+
+Filtering is automatically disabled for inappropriate MIME types. But note that
+if the web server mis-reports the MIME type, then content that should not be
+filtered, could be. Privoxy only knows how to differentiate filterable content
+because of the MIME type as reported by the server, or because of some
+configuration setting that enables/disables filtering.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.3. What are "http://config.privoxy.org/" and "http://p.p/"?
+
+http://config.privoxy.org/ is the address of Privoxy's built-in user interface,
+and http://p.p/ is a shortcut for it.
+
+Since Privoxy sits between your web browser and the Internet, it can simply
+intercept requests for these addresses and answer them with its built-in "web
+server".
+
+This also makes for a good test for your browser configuration: If entering the
+URL http://config.privoxy.org/ takes you to a page saying "This is Privoxy
+...", everything is OK. If you get a page saying "Privoxy is not working"
+instead, then your browser didn't use Privoxy for the request, hence it could
+not be intercepted, and you have accessed the real web site at
+config.privoxy.org.
+
+With recent versions of Privoxy (version 2.9.x and later), the user interface
+features information on the run time status, the configuration, and even a
+built-in editor for the actions files.
+
+Note that the built-in URLs from earlier versions of Junkbuster / Privoxy,
+http://example.com/show-proxy-args and http://i.j.b/, are no longer supported.
+If you still use such an old version, you should really consider upgrading to
+3.0.5.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.4. How can I submit new ads, or report problems?
+
+Please see the Contact section for various ways to interact with the
+developers.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.5. Why doesn't anyone answer my support request?
+
+Rest assured that it has been read and considered. Why it is not answered,
+could be for various reasons, including no one has a good answer for it, no one
+has had time to yet investigate it thoroughly, it has been reported numerous
+times already, or because not enough information was provided to help us help
+you. Your efforts are not wasted, and we do appreciate them.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.6. How can I hide my IP address?
+
+If you run both the browser and the proxy locally, you cannot hide your IP
+address with Privoxy or ultimately any other software. The server needs to know
+your IP address so that it knows where to send the responses back.
+
+There are many publicly usable "anonymous" proxies out there, which provide a
+further level of indirection between you and the web server.
+
+However, these proxies are called "anonymous" because you don't need a
+password, not because they would offer any real anonymity. Most of them will
+log your IP address and make it available to the authorities in case you
+violate the law of the country they run in. 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.
+
+Your best bet is to chain Privoxy with Tor, an EFF supported onion routing
+system. The configuration details can be found in How do I use Privoxy together
+with Tor section just below.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.7. Can Privoxy guarantee I am anonymous?
+
+No. Your chances of remaining anonymous are greatly improved, but unless you
+chain Privoxy with Tor or a similar system and know what you're doing when it
+comes to configuring the rest of your system, it would be safest to assume that
+everything you do on the Web can be traced back to you.
+
+Privoxy can remove various information about you, and allows you more freedom
+to decide which sites you can trust, and what details you want to reveal. But
+it neither hides your ip address, nor can it guarantee that the rest of the
+system behaves correctly. There are several possibilities how a web sites can
+find out who you are, even if you are using a strict Privoxy configuration and
+chained it with Tor.
+
+Most of Privoxy's protection can be easily subverted by an insecure browser
+configuration, therefore you should use a browser that can be configured to
+only execute code from trusted sites, and be careful which sites you trust. For
+example there is no point in having Privoxy modify the User-Agent header, if
+websites can get all the information they want through JavaScript, ActiveX,
+Flash, Java etc.
+
+A few browsers disclose the user's email address in certain situations, such as
+when transferring a file by FTP. Privoxy does not filter FTP. If you need this
+feature, or are concerned about the mail handler of your browser disclosing
+your email address, you might consider products such as NSClean.
+
+Browsers available only as binaries could use non-standard headers to give out
+any information they can have access to: see the manufacturer's license
+agreement. It's impossible to anticipate and prevent every breach of privacy
+that might occur. The professionally paranoid prefer browsers available as
+source code, because anticipating their behavior is easier. Trust the source,
+Luke!
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.8. A test site says I am not using a Proxy.
+
+Good! Actually, they are probably testing for some other kinds of proxies.
+Hiding yourself completely would require additional steps.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.9. How do I use Privoxy together with Tor?
+
+Before you configure Privoxy to use Tor (http://tor.eff.org/), please follow
+the User Manual chapters 2. Installation and 5. Startup to make sure Privoxy
+itself is setup correctly.
+
+If it is, refer to Tor's extensive documentation to learn how to install Tor,
+and make sure Tor's logfile says that "Tor has successfully opened a circuit"
+and it "looks like client functionality is working".
+
+If either Tor or Privoxy isn't working, their combination most likely will
+neither. Testing them on their own will also help you to direct problem reports
+to the right audience. If Privoxy isn't working, don't bother the Tor
+developers. If Tor isn't working, don't send bug reports to the Privoxy Team.
+
+If you verified that Privoxy and Tor are working, it is time to connect them.
+As far as Privoxy is concerned, Tor is just another proxy that can be reached
+by socks4 or socks4a. Most likely you are interested in Tor to increase your
+anonymity level, therefore you should use socks4a, to make sure Privoxy's DNS
+requests are done through Tor and thus invisible to your local network.
+
+Since Privoxy 3.0.5, its configuration (section 5.2) is already prepared for
+Tor, if you are using a default Tor configuration and run it on the same system
+as Privoxy, you just have to uncomment the line:
+
+# forward-socks4a / 127.0.0.1:9050 .
+
+
+This is enough to reach the Internet, but additionally you should uncomment the
+following forward rules, to make sure your local network is still reachable
+through Privoxy:
+
+# forward 192.168.*.*/ .
+# forward 10.*.*.*/ .
+# forward 127.*.*.*/ .
+
+
+Unencrypted connections to systems in these address ranges will be as (un)
+secure as the local network is, but the alternative is that you can't reach the
+network at all. If you also want to be able to reach servers in your local
+network by using their names, you will need additional exceptions that look
+like this:
+
+# forward localhost/ .
+
+
+Save the modified configuration file and open http://config.privoxy.org/
+show-status/ in your browser, confirm that Privoxy has reloaded its
+configuration and that there are no other forward lines, unless you know that
+you need them. I everything looks good, refer to Tor Faq 4.2 to learn how to
+verify that you are really using Tor.
+
+Afterward, please take the time to at least skim through the rest of Tor's
+documentation. Make sure you understand what Tor does, why it is no replacement
+for application level security, and why you shouldn't use it for unencrypted
+logins.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.10. Might some things break because header information or content is being
+altered?
+
+Definitely. More and more sites use HTTP header content to decide what to
+display and how to display it. There is many ways that this can be handled, so
+having hard and fast rules, is tricky.
+
+"User-Agent" in particular is often used in this way to identify the browser,
+and adjust content accordingly. Changing this now (at least not further than
+removing the OS information) is not recommended, since so many sites do look
+for it. You may get undesirable results by changing this.
+
+For instance, different browsers use different encodings of Russian and Czech
+characters, certain web servers convert pages on-the-fly according to the User
+Agent header. Giving a "User Agent" with the wrong operating system or browser
+manufacturer causes some sites in these languages to be garbled; Surfers to
+Eastern European sites should change it to something closer. And then some page
+access counters work by looking at the "Referer" header; they may fail or break
+if unavailable. The weather maps of Intellicast have been blocked by their
+server when no "Referer" or cookie is provided, is another example. (But you
+can forge both headers without giving information away). There are many other
+ways things can go wrong when trying to fool a web server.
+
+Similar thoughts apply to modifying JavaScript, and, to a lesser degree, HTML
+elements.
+
+If you have problems with a site, you will have to adjust your configuration
+accordingly. Cookies are probably the most likely adjustment that may be
+required, but by no means the only one.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.11. Can Privoxy act as a "caching" proxy to speed up web browsing?
+
+No, it does not have this ability at all. You want something like Squid for
+this. And, yes, before you ask, Privoxy can co-exist with other kinds of
+proxies like Squid. See the forwarding chapter in the user manual for details.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.12. What about as a firewall? Can Privoxy protect me?
+
+Not in the way you mean, or in the way a true firewall can. Privoxy can help
+protect your privacy, but not protect you from intrusion attempts. It is, of
+course, perfectly possible and recommended to use both.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.13. I have large empty spaces / a checkerboard pattern now where ads used to
+be. Why?
+
+It would be technically possible eliminate the banners in a way that frees
+their screen estate in many cases, by doing all banner blocking with filters,
+i.e. eliminating the whole image references from the HTML pages instead of
+letting them stay in, and blocking the resulting requests for the banners
+themselves.
+
+But this would consume considerable CPU resources, would likely destroy the
+layout of many web pages which rely on the banners consuming a certain amount
+of screen space, and would fail in other cases, where the screen space is
+reserved e.g. by tables anyway. Also, making the banners disappear without a
+visual trace complicates troubleshooting.
+
+So we won't support this in the default configuration, but you can of course
+define appropriate filters yourself.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.14. How can Privoxy filter Secure (HTTPS) URLs?
+
+Since secure HTTP connections are encrypted SSL sessions between your browser
+and the secure site, and are meant to be reliably secure, there is little that
+Privoxy can do but hand the raw gibberish data though from one end to the other
+unprocessed.
+
+The only exception to this is blocking by host patterns, as the client needs to
+tell Privoxy the name of the remote server, so that Privoxy can establish the
+connection. If that name matches a host-only pattern, the connection will be
+blocked.
+
+As far as ad blocking is concerned, this is less of a restriction than it may
+seem, since ad sources are often identifiable by the host name, and often the
+banners to be placed in an encrypted page come unencrypted nonetheless for
+efficiency reasons, which exposes them to the full power of Privoxy's ad
+blocking.
+
+"Content cookies" (those that are embedded in the actual HTML or JS page
+content, see filter{content-cookies}), in an SSL transaction will be impossible
+to block under these conditions. Fortunately, this does not seem to be a very
+common scenario since most cookies come by traditional means.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.15. Privoxy runs as a "server". How secure is it? Do I need to take any
+special precautions?
+
+There are no known exploits that might affect Privoxy. On Unix-like systems,
+Privoxy can run as a non-privileged user, which is how we recommend it be run.
+Also, by default Privoxy only listens to requests from "localhost" only. The
+server aspect of Privoxy is not itself directly exposed to the Internet in this
+configuration. If you want to have Privoxy serve as a LAN proxy, this will have
+to be opened up to allow for LAN requests. In this case, we'd recommend you
+specify only the LAN gateway address, e.g. 192.168.1.1, in the main Privoxy
+configuration file and check all access control and security options. All LAN
+hosts can then use this as their proxy address in the browser proxy
+configuration, but Privoxy will not listen on any external interfaces. ACLs can
+be defined in addition, and using a firewall is always good too. Better safe
+than sorry.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.16. How can I temporarily disable Privoxy?
+
+The easiest way is to access Privoxy with your browser by using the remote
+toggle URL: http://config.privoxy.org/toggle. See the Bookmarklets section of
+the User Manual for an easy way to access this feature.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.17. When "disabled" is Privoxy totally out of the picture?
+
+No, this just means all filtering and actions are disabled. Privoxy is still
+acting as a proxy, but just not doing any of the things that Privoxy would
+normally be expected to do. It is still a "middle-man" in the interaction
+between your browser and web sites.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.18. My logs show Privoxy "crunches" ads, but also its own internal CGI pages.
+What is a "crunch"?
+
+A "crunch" simply means Privoxy intercepted something, nothing more. Often this
+is indeed ads or banners, but Privoxy uses the same mechanism for trapping
+requests for its own internal pages. For instance, a request for Privoxy's
+configuration page at: http://config.privoxy.org, is intercepted (i.e. it does
+not go out to the 'net), and the familiar CGI configuration is returned to the
+browser, and the log consequently will show a "crunch".
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.19. Can Privoxy effect files that I download from a webserver? FTP server?
+
+From the webserver's perspective, there is no difference between viewing a
+document (i.e. a page), and downloading a file. The same is true of Privoxy. If
+there is a match for a block pattern, it will still be blocked, and of course
+this is obvious.
+
+Filtering is potentially more of a concern since the results are not always so
+obvious, and the effects of filtering are there whether the file is simply
+viewed, or downloaded. And potentially whether the content is some obnoxious
+advertisement, or Mr. Jimmy's latest/greatest source code jewel. Of course, one
+of these presumably is "bad" content that we don't want, and the other is
+"good" content that we do want. Privoxy is blind to the differences, and can
+only distinguish "good from bad" by the configuration parameters we give it.
+
+Privoxy knows the differences in files according to the "Document Type" as
+reported by the webserver. If this is reported accurately (e.g. "application/
+zip" for a zip archive), then Privoxy knows to ignore these where appropriate.
+Privoxy potentially can filter HTML as well as plain text documents, subject to
+configuration parameters of course. Also, documents that are of an unknown type
+(generally assumed to be "text/plain") can be filtered, as will those that
+might be incorrectly reported by the webserver. If such a file is a downloaded
+file that is intended to be saved to disk, then any content that might have
+been altered by filtering, will be saved too, for these (probably rare) cases.
+
+Note that versions later than 3.0.2 do NOT filter document types reported as
+"text/plain". Prior to this, Privoxy did filter this document type.
+
+In short, filtering is "ON" if a) the Document Type as reported by the
+webserver is appropriate and b) the configuration allows it (or at least does
+not disallow it). That's it. There is no magic cookie anywhere to say this is
+"good" and this is "bad". It's the configuration that let's it all happen or
+not.
+
+If you download text files, you probably do not want these to be filtered,
+particularly if the content is source code, or other critical content. Source
+code sometimes might be mistaken for Javascript (i.e. the kind that might open
+a pop-up window). It is recommended to turn off filtering for download sites
+(particularly if the content may be plain text files and you are using version
+3.0.2 or earlier) in your user.action file. And also, for any site or page
+where making any changes at all to the content is to be avoided.
+
+Privoxy does not do FTP at all, only HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) protocols, so please
+don't try.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.20. I just downloaded a Perl script, and Privoxy altered it! Yikes, what is
+wrong!
+
+Please read above.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.21. Should I continue to use a "HOSTS" file for ad-blocking?
+
+One time-tested technique to defeat common ads is to trick the local DNS system
+by giving a phony IP address for the ad generator in the local HOSTS file,
+typically using 127.0.0.1, aka localhost. This effectively blocks the ad.
+
+There is no reason to use this technique in conjunction with Privoxy. Privoxy
+does essentially the same thing, much more elegantly and with much more
+flexibility. A large HOSTS file, in fact, not only duplicates effort, but may
+get in the way. It is recommended to remove such entries from your HOSTS file.
+If you think your hosts list is neglected by Privoxy's configuration, consider
+adding your list to your user.action file:
+
+ { +block }
+ www.ad.example1.com
+ ad.example2.com
+ ads.galore.example.com
+ etc.example.com
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.22. Where can I find more information about Privoxy and related issues?
+
+Other references and sites of interest to Privoxy users:
+
+http://www.privoxy.org/, the Privoxy Home page.
+
+http://www.privoxy.org/faq/, the Privoxy FAQ.
+
+http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/, the Project Page for Privoxy on
+SourceForge.
+
+http://config.privoxy.org/, the web-based user interface. Privoxy must be
+running for this to work. Shortcut: http://p.p/
+
+http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=460288, to submit "misses"
+and other configuration related suggestions to the developers.
+
+http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/cookies.html, an explanation how cookies are
+used to track web users.
+
+http://www.junkbusters.com/ijb.html, the original Internet Junkbuster.
+
+http://privacy.net/, a useful site to check what information about you is
+leaked while you browse the web.
+
+http://www.squid-cache.org/, a very popular caching proxy, which is often used
+together with Privoxy.
+
+http://tor.eff.org/, Tor can help anonymize web browsing, web publishing,
+instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications.
+
+http://www.privoxy.org/developer-manual/, the Privoxy developer manual.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+4.23. I've noticed that Privoxy changes "Microsoft" to "MicroSuck"! Why are you
+manipulating my browsing?
+
+We're not. The text substitutions that you are seeing are disabled in the
+default configuration as shipped. You have either manually activated the "fun"
+filter which is clearly labeled "Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!
+" or you are using an older Privoxy version and have implicitly activated it by
+choosing the "Adventuresome" profile in the web-based editor. Please upgrade!
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5. Troubleshooting
+
+5.1. I am getting "connection refused" with every web page?
+
+Either Privoxy is not running, or your browser is configured for a different
+port than what Privoxy is using, or, if using a forwarding rule, you have a
+configuration problem or a problem with a host in the forwarding chain.
+
+You should verify that Privoxy is indeed running and that the correct port is
+set, and matches what your browser is set to. See listen-address option in
+Privoxy's main configuration file. If using any forwarding rules, disable those
+to make sure the problem is not with a forwarder.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.2. I just added a new rule, but the steenkin ad is still getting through.
+How?
+
+If the ad had been displayed before you added its URL, it will probably be held
+in the browser's cache for some time, so it will be displayed without the need
+for any request to the server, and Privoxy will not be in the picture. The best
+thing to do is try flushing the browser's caches. And then try again.
+
+If this doesn't help, you probably have an error in the rule you applied. Try
+pasting the full URL of the offending ad into http://config.privoxy.org/
+show-url-info and see if it really matches your new rule. Blocking ads is like
+blocking spam: a lot of tinkering is required to stay ahead of the game.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.3. One of my favorite sites does not work with Privoxy. What can I do?
+
+First verify that it is indeed a Privoxy problem, by toggling off Privoxy
+through http://config.privoxy.org/toggle, and then shift-reloading the problem
+page (i.e. holding down the shift key while clicking reload. Alternatively,
+flush your browser's disk and memory caches).
+
+If still a problem, go to http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info and paste the
+full URL of the page in question into the prompt. See which actions are being
+applied to the URL, and which matches in which actions files are responsible
+for that. Now, armed with this information, go to http://config.privoxy.org/
+show-status and select the appropriate actions files for editing.
+
+You can now either look for a section which disables the actions that you
+suspect to cause the problem and add a pattern for your site there, or make up
+a completely new section for your site. In any case, the recommended way is to
+disable only the prime suspect, reload the problem page, and only if the
+problem persists, disable more and more actions until you have identified the
+culprit. You may or may not want to turn the other actions on again. Remember
+to flush your browser's caches in between any such changes!
+
+Alternately, if you are comfortable with a text editor, you can accomplish the
+same thing by editing the appropriate actions file. Probably the easiest way to
+deal with such problems when editing by hand is to add your site to a { fragile
+} section in user.action, which is an alias that turns off most "dangerous"
+actions, but is also likely to turn off more actions then needed, and thus
+lower your privacy and protection more than necessary,
+
+Troubleshooting actions is discussed in more detail in the User Manual
+appendix, Troubleshooting: the Anatomy of an Action. There is also an actions
+tutorial with general configuration information and examples.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.4. After installing Privoxy, I have to log in every time I start IE. What
+gives?
+
+This is a quirk that effects the installation of Privoxy, in conjunction with
+Internet Explorer and Internet Connection Sharing on Windows 2000 and Windows
+XP. The symptoms may appear to be corrupted or invalid DUN settings, or
+passwords.
+
+When setting up an NT based Windows system with Privoxy you may find that
+things do not seem to be doing what you expect. When you set your system up you
+will probably have set up Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) with Dial up
+Networking (DUN) when logged in with administrator privileges. You will
+probably have made this DUN connection available to other accounts that you may
+have set-up on your system. E.g. Mum or Dad sets up the system and makes
+accounts suitably configured for the kids.
+
+When setting up Privoxy in this environment you will have to alter the proxy
+set-up of Internet Explorer (IE) for the specific DUN connection on which you
+wish to use Privoxy. When you do this the ICS DUN set-up becomes user specific.
+In this instance you will see no difference if you change the DUN connection
+under the account used to set-up the connection. However when you do this from
+another user you will notice that the DUN connection changes to make available
+to "Me only". You will also find that you have to store the password under each
+different user!
+
+The reason for this is that each user's set-up for IE is user specific. Each
+set-up DUN connection and each LAN connection in IE store the settings for each
+user individually. As such this enforces individual configurations rather than
+common ones. Hence the first time you use a DUN connection after re-booting
+your system it may not perform as you expect, and prompt you for the password.
+Just set and save the password again and all should be OK.
+
+[Thanks to Ray Griffith for this submission.]
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.5. I cannot connect to any FTP sites. Privoxy is blocking me.
+
+Privoxy cannot act as a proxy for FTP traffic, so do not configure your browser
+to use Privoxy as an FTP proxy. The same is true for any protocol other than
+HTTP or HTTPS (SSL).
+
+Most browsers understand FTP as well as HTTP. If you connect to a site, with a
+URL like ftp://ftp.example.com, your browser is making an FTP connection, and
+not a HTTP connection. So while your browser may speak FTP, Privoxy does not,
+and cannot proxy such traffic.
+
+To complicate matters, some systems may have a generic "proxy" setting, which
+will silently enable various protocols, including both HTTP and FTP proxying!
+So it is possible to accidentally enable FTP proxying in these cases. And of
+course, if this happens, Privoxy will indeed cause problems since it does not
+know FTP. Newer version will give a sane error message if a FTP connection is
+attempted. Just disable the FTP setting and all will be well again.
+
+Will Privoxy ever proxy FTP traffic? Unlikely. There just is not much reason,
+and the work to make this happen is more than it may seem.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.6. In Mac OSX, I can't configure Microsoft Internet Explorer to use Privoxy
+as the HTTP proxy.
+
+Microsoft Internet Explorer (in versions like 5.1) respects system-wide network
+settings. In order to change the HTTP proxy, open System Preferences, and click
+on the Network icon. In the settings pane that comes up, click on the Proxies
+tab. Ensure the "Web Proxy (HTTP)" checkbox is checked and enter 127.0.0.1 in
+the entry field. Enter 8118 in the Port field. The next time you start IE, it
+should reflect these values.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.7. In Mac OSX, I dragged the Privoxy folder to the trash in order to
+uninstall it. Now the finder tells me I don't have sufficient privileges to
+empty the trash.
+
+Just dragging the Privoxy folder to the trash is not enough to delete it.
+Privoxy supplies an uninstall.command file that takes care of these details.
+Open the trash, drag the uninstall.command file out of the trash and
+double-click on it. You will be prompted for confirmation and the
+administration password.
+
+The trash may still appear full after this command; emptying the trash from the
+desktop should make it appear empty again.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.8. In Mac OSX Panther (10.3), images often fail to load and/or I experience
+random delays in page loading. I'm using localhost as my browser's proxy
+setting.
+
+We believe this is due to an IPv6-related bug in OSX, but don't fully
+understand the issue yet. In any case, changing the proxy setting to 127.0.0.1
+instead of localhost works around the problem.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.9. I get a completely blank page at one site. "View Source" shows only:
+<html><body></body></html>. Without Privoxy the page loads fine.
+
+Chances are that the site suffers from a bug in PHP, which results in empty
+pages being sent if the client explicitly requests an uncompressed page, like
+Privoxy does. This bug has been fixed in PHP 4.2.3.
+
+To find out if this is in fact the source of the problem, try adding the site
+to a -prevent-compression section in user.action:
+
+ # Make exceptions for ill-behaved sites:
+ #
+ {-prevent-compression}
+ .example.com
+
+If that works, you may also want to report the problem to the site's
+webmasters, telling them to use zlib.output_compression instead of ob_gzhandler
+in their PHP applications (workaround) or upgrade to PHP 4.2.3 or later (fix).
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.10. Why am I getting a 503 Error (WSAECONNREFUSED) on every page?
+
+More than likely this is a problem with your TCP/IP networking. ZoneAlarm has
+been reported to cause this symptom -- even if not running. The solution is to
+either fight the ZA configuration, or uninstall ZoneAlarm, and then find
+something better behaved in its place. Other personal firewall type products
+may cause similar type problems if not configured correctly.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.11. My logs show many "Unable to get my own hostname" lines. Why?
+
+Privoxy tries to get the hostname of the system its running on from the IP
+address of the system interface it is bound to (from the config file
+listen-address setting). If the system cannot supply this information, Privoxy
+logs this condition.
+
+Typically, this would be considered a minor system configuration error. It is
+not a fatal error to Privoxy however, but may result in a much slower response
+from Privoxy on some platforms due to DNS timeouts.
+
+This can be caused by a problem with the local HOSTS file. If this file has
+been changed from the original, try reverting it to see if that helps.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.12. When I try to launch Privoxy, I get an error message "port 8118 is
+already in use" (or similar wording). Why?
+
+Port 8118 is Privoxy's default TCP "listening" port. Typically this message
+would mean that there is already one instance of Privoxy running, and you are
+actually trying to start a second Privoxy on the same port, which will not
+work. (You can have multiple instances but they must be assigned different
+ports.) How and why this might happen varies from platform to platform, but you
+need to check your installation and start-up procedures.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.13. Pages with UTF-8 fonts are garbled.
+
+This is caused by the "demoronizer" filter. You should either upgrade Privoxy,
+or at least upgrade to the most recent default.action file available from
+SourceForge. Or you can simply disable the demoronizer filter.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.14. Why are binary files (such as images) corrupted when Privoxy is used?
+
+This may also be caused by the "demoronizer" filter, in conjunction with a web
+server that is misreporting a file type. Binary files are exempted from
+Privoxy's filtering (unless the web server by mistake says the file is
+something else). Either upgrade Privoxy, or go to the most recent
+default.action file available from SourceForge.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.15. What is the "demoronizer" and why is it there?
+
+The original demoronizer was a Perl script that cleaned up HTML pages which
+were created with certain Microsoft products. MS has used proprietary
+extensions to standardized font encodings (ISO 8859-1), which has caused
+problems for pages that are viewed with non-Microsoft products (and are
+expecting to see a standard set of fonts). The demoronizer corrected these
+errors so the pages displayed correctly. Privoxy borrowed from this script,
+introducing a filter based on the original demoronizer, which in turn could
+correct these errors on the fly.
+
+But this is only needed in some situations, and will cause serious problems in
+some other situations.
+
+If you are using Microsoft products, you do not need it. If you need to view
+pages with UTF-8 characters (such as Cyrillic or Chinese), then it will cause
+corruption of the fonts, and thus should not be on.
+
+On the other hand, if you use non-Microsoft products, and you occasionally
+notice wierd characters on pages, you might want to try it.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.16. Why do I keep seeing "PrivoxyWindowOpen()" in raw source code?
+
+Privoxy is attempting to disable malicious Javascript in this case, with the
+unsolicited-popups filter. Privoxy cannot tell very well "good" code snippets
+from "bad" code snippets.
+
+If you see this in HTML source, and the page displays without problems, then
+this is good, and likely some pop-up window was disabled. If you see this where
+it is causing a problem, such as a downloaded program source code file, then
+you should set an exception for this site or page such that the integrity of
+the page stays in tact by disabling all filtering.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.17. I am getting too many DNS errors like "404 No Such Domain". Why can't
+Privoxy do this better?
+
+There are potentially several factors here. First of all, the DNS resolution is
+done by the underlying operating system -- not Privoxy itself. Privoxy merely
+initiates the process and hands it off, and then later reports whatever the
+outcome was. And tries to give a coherent message if there seems to be a
+problem. In some cases, this might otherwise be mitigated by the browser itself
+which might try some work-arounds and alternate approaches (e.g adding "www."
+to the URL). In other cases, if Privoxy is being chained with another proxy,
+this could complicate the issue, and cause undue delays and timeouts. In the
+case of a "socks4a" proxy, the socks server handles all the DNS. Privoxy would
+just be the "messenger" which is reporting whatever problem occurred
+downstream, and not the root cause of the error.
+
+In any case, v. 3.0.5 includes various improvements to help Privoxy better
+handle these cases.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.18. At one site Privoxy just hangs, and starts taking all CPU. Why is this?
+
+This is probably a manifestation of the "100% cpu" problem that occurs on pages
+containing many (thousands upon thousands) of blank lines. The blank lines are
+in the raw HTML source of the page, and the browser just ignores them. But the
+pattern matching in Privoxy's page filtering mechanism is trying to match
+against absurdly long strings and this becomes very CPU-intensive, taking a
+long, long time to complete. Until a better solution comes along, disable
+filtering on these pages, particularly the js-annoyances and unsolicited-popups
+filters.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+5.19. I just installed Privoxy, and all my browsing has slowed to a crawl. What
+gives?
+
+This should not happen, and for the overwhelming number of users world-wide, it
+does not happen. I would suspect some inadvertent interaction of software
+components such as anti-virus software, spyware protectors, personal firewalls
+or similar components. Try disabling (or uninstalling) these one at a time and
+see if that helps.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+6. Contacting the developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests
+
+We value your feedback. In fact, we rely on it to improve Privoxy and its
+configuration. However, please note the following hints, so we can provide you
+with the best support:
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+6.1. Get Support
+
+For casual users, our support forum at SourceForge is probably best suited:
+http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=211118
+
+All users are of course welcome to discuss their issues on the users mailing
+list, where the developers also hang around.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+6.2. Reporting Problems
+
+"Problems" for our purposes, come in two forms:
+
+ * Configuration issues, such as ads that slip through, or sites that don't
+ function properly due to one Privoxy "action" or another being turned "on".
-4. Copyright and History
+ * "Bugs" in the programming code that makes up Privoxy, such as that might
+ cause a crash.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+6.2.1. Reporting Ads or Other Configuration Problems
+
+Please send feedback on ads that slipped through, innocent images that were
+blocked, sites that don't work properly, and other configuration related
+problem of default.action file, to http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=
+11118&atid=460288, the Actions File Tracker.
+
+New, improved default.action files may occasionally be made available based on
+your feedback. These will be announced on the ijbswa-announce list and
+available from our the files section of our project page.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+6.2.2. Reporting Bugs
+
+Please report all bugs only through our bug tracker: http://sourceforge.net/
+tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=111118.
+
+Before doing so, please make sure that the bug has not already been submitted
+and observe the additional hints at the top of the submit form. If already
+submitted, please feel free to add any info to the original report that might
+help solve the issue.
+
+Please try to verify that it is a Privoxy bug, and not a browser or site bug
+first. If unsure, try toggling off Privoxy, and see if the problem persists. If
+you are using your own custom configuration, please try the stock configs to
+see if the problem is configuration related.
+
+If not using the latest version, the bug may have been found and fixed in the
+meantime. We would appreciate if you could take the time to upgrade to the
+latest version (or even the latest CVS snapshot) and verify your bug.
- Please see the user manual for information on Copyright and History.
- _________________________________________________________________
+Please be sure to provide the following information:
+
+ * The exact Privoxy version of the proxy software (if you got the source from
+ CVS, please also give the date).
+
+ * The operating system and versions you run Privoxy on, (e.g. Windows XP).
+
+ * The name, platform, and version of the browser you were using (e.g.
+ Internet Explorer v5.5 for Mac).
+
+ * The URL where the problem occurred, or some way for us to duplicate the
+ problem (e.g. http://somesite.example.com?somethingelse=123).
+
+ * Whether your version of Privoxy is one supplied by the developers of
+ Privoxy via SourceForge, or somewhere else.
+
+ * Whether you are using Privoxy in tandem with another proxy such as TOR. If
+ so, please try disabling the other proxy.
+
+ * Whether you are using a personal firewall product. If so, does Privoxy work
+ without it?
+
+ * Any other pertinent information to help identify the problem such as config
+ or log file excerpts (yes, you should have log file entries for each action
+ taken).
-5. See also
+ * Please provide your SF login, or email address, in case we need to contact
+ you.
+
+The appendix of the Privoxy User Manual also has helpful information on
+understanding actions, and action debugging.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+6.3. Request New Features
+
+You are welcome to submit ideas on new features or other proposals for
+improvement through our feature request tracker at http://sourceforge.net/
+tracker/?atid=361118&group_id=11118.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+6.4. Other
+
+For any other issues, feel free to use the mailing lists. Technically
+interested users and people who wish to contribute to the project are also
+welcome on the developers list! You can find an overview of all Privoxy-related
+mailing lists, including list archives, at: http://sourceforge.net/mail/?
+group_id=11118.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7. Privoxy Copyright, License and History
+
+Copyright © 2001 - 2006 by Privoxy Developers <
+ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net>
+
+Some source code is based on code Copyright © 1997 by Anonymous Coders and
+Junkbusters, Inc. and licensed under the GNU General Public License.
+
+Portions of this document are "borrowed" from the original Junkbuster (tm) FAQ,
+and modified as appropriate for Privoxy.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.1. License
+
+Privoxy is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
+terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, as published by the Free
+Software Foundation.
+
+This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
+WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details, which
+is available from the Free Software Foundation, Inc, 51 Franklin Street, Fifth
+Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
+
+You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
+this program; if not, write to the
+
+ Free Software
+ Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
+ Boston, MA 02110-1301
+ USA
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.2. History
+
+Along time ago, there was the Internet Junkbuster, by Anonymous Coders and
+Junkbusters Corporation. This saved many users a lot of pain in the early days
+of web advertising and user tracking.
+
+But the web, its protocols and standards, and with it, the techniques for
+forcing ads on users, give up autonomy over their browsing, and for tracking
+them, keeps evolving. Unfortunately, the Internet Junkbuster did not. Version
+2.0.2, published in 1998, was (and is) the last official release available from
+Junkbusters Corporation. Fortunately, it had been released under the GNU GPL,
+which allowed further development by others.
+
+So Stefan Waldherr started maintaining an improved version of the software, to
+which eventually a number of people contributed patches. It could already
+replace banners with a transparent image, and had a first version of pop-up
+killing, but it was still very closely based on the original, with all its
+limitations, such as the lack of HTTP/1.1 support, flexible per-site
+configuration, or content modification. The last release from this effort was
+version 2.0.2-10, published in 2000.
- Please see the user manual for information on references.
+Then, some developers picked up the thread, and started turning the software
+inside out, upside down, and then reassembled it, adding many new features
+along the way.
-References
+The result of this is Privoxy, whose first stable version, 3.0, was released
+August, 2002.
- 1. http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/faq/
- 2. mailto:ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net
- 3. file://localhost/home/swa/sf/current/doc/source/tmp.html#INTRODUCTION
- 4. file://localhost/home/swa/sf/current/doc/source/tmp.html#QUESTIONS
- 5. file://localhost/home/swa/sf/current/doc/source/tmp.html#INSTALLATION
- 6. file://localhost/home/swa/sf/current/doc/source/tmp.html#CONFIGURATION
- 7. file://localhost/home/swa/sf/current/doc/source/tmp.html#MISC
- 8. file://localhost/home/swa/sf/current/doc/source/tmp.html#CONTACT
- 9. file://localhost/home/swa/sf/current/doc/source/tmp.html#COPYRIGHT
- 10. file://localhost/home/swa/sf/current/doc/source/tmp.html#SEEALSO
projects / privoxy.git / blobdiff