+Privoxy 3.0.3 User Manual
- output is user-manual Using catalogs: /etc/sgml/sgml-docbook-3.1.cat
- Using stylesheet:
- /usr/share/sgml/docbook/utils-0.6/docbook-utils.dsl#html Working on:
- /home/hal/junkbuster/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml
+[ Copyright © 2001 - 2004 by Privoxy Developers ]
-Junkbuster User Manual
+$Id: user-manual.txt,v 1.60.2.7 2004/01/30 23:46:57 oes Exp $
- By: Junkbuster Developers
+The User Manual gives users information on how to install, configure and use
+Privoxy.
- Abstract
+Privoxy is a web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for protecting
+privacy, modifying web page content, 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.
- The user manual gives the users information on how to install and
- configure Internet Junkbuster. Internet Junkbuster is an application
- that provides privacy and security to users of the World Wide Web.
+Privoxy is based on Internet Junkbuster (tm).
- You can find the latest version of the user manual at
- [1]http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/user-manual/.
+You can find the latest version of the User Manual at http://www.privoxy.org/
+user-manual/. Please see the Contact section on how to contact the developers.
- Feel free to send a note to the developers at
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net
+Table of Contents
+1. Introduction
- .
- ____________________________________________________
+ 1.1. Features
- Table of Contents
- [2]Introduction
- [3]Installation
- [4]Junkbuster Configuration
- [5]Quickstart to Using Junkbuster
- [6]Contact the Developers
- [7]Copyright and History
- [8]See also
- [9]Appendix
+2. Installation
-Introduction
+ 2.1. Binary Packages
- Internet Junkbuster is a web proxy with advanced filtering
- capabilities for protecting privacy, filtering web page content,
- managing cookies, controlling access, and removing ads, banners,
- pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet Junk. Junkbuster has a very
- flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs
- and tastes. Internet Junkbuster has application for both stand-alone
- systems and multi-user networks.
+ 2.1.1. Red Hat, SuSE and Conectiva RPMs
+ 2.1.2. Debian
+ 2.1.3. Windows
+ 2.1.4. Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX
+ 2.1.5. OS/2
+ 2.1.6. Mac OSX
+ 2.1.7. AmigaOS
+ 2.1.8. Gentoo
- This documentation is included with the current development version of
- Internet Junkbuster and is incomplete at this point. The most up to
- date reference for the time being is still the comments in the source
- files and in the individual configuration files. Development of
- version 3.0 is currently underway, and includes many significant
- changes and enhancements over earlier verions. The target release date
- for stable v3.0 is December 2001.
+ 2.2. Building from Source
+ 2.3. Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date
- Since this is a development version, some features are in the process
- of being implemented. This documentation may be slightly out of sync
- as a result. And there are bugs, though hopefully not many!
- _________________________________________________________________
+3. Note to Upgraders
+4. Quickstart to Using Privoxy
-New Features
+ 4.1. Quickstart to Ad Blocking
- In addition to Junkbuster's traditional features of ad and banner
- blocking and cookie management, this is a list of new features
- currently under development:
+5. Starting Privoxy
- * Modularized configuration that will allow for system wide
- settings, and individual user settings.
- * A browser based GUI configuration utility (not finished).
- * Blocking of annoying pop-up browser windows (previously available
- as a patch).
- * Partial support for HTTP/1.1.
- * Support for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions in the
- configuration files, and generally a more sophisticated
- configuration syntax over previous versions.
- * Web page content filtering.
- * Multi-threaded.
- _________________________________________________________________
+ 5.1. Red Hat and Conectiva
+ 5.2. Debian
+ 5.3. SuSE
+ 5.4. Windows
+ 5.5. Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others
+ 5.6. OS/2
+ 5.7. Mac OSX
+ 5.8. AmigaOS
+ 5.9. Gentoo
+ 5.10. Command Line Options
-Installation
+6. Privoxy Configuration
- Junkbuster is available as raw source code, or pre-compiled binaries.
- See the [10]Junkbuster Home Page for current release info. Junkbuster
- is also available via [11]CVS. This is the recommended approach at
- this time. But please be aware that CVS is constantly changing, and it
- may break in mysterious ways.
- _________________________________________________________________
+ 6.1. Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser
+ 6.2. Configuration Files Overview
-Source
+7. The Main Configuration File
- For gzipped tar archives, unpack the source:
+ 7.1. Configuration and Log File Locations
- tar zxvf ijb_source_2.9*
- cd ijb_source_2.9*
+ 7.1.1. confdir
+ 7.1.2. logdir
+ 7.1.3. actionsfile
+ 7.1.4. filterfile
+ 7.1.5. logfile
+ 7.1.6. jarfile
+ 7.1.7. trustfile
- For retrieving the current CVS sources, you'll need the CVS package
- installed first. To download CVS source:
+ 7.2. Local Set-up Documentation
+
+ 7.2.1. user-manual
+ 7.2.2. trust-info-url
+ 7.2.3. admin-address
+ 7.2.4. proxy-info-url
+
+ 7.3. Debugging
+
+ 7.3.1. debug
+ 7.3.2. single-threaded
+
+ 7.4. Access Control and Security
+
+ 7.4.1. listen-address
+ 7.4.2. toggle
+ 7.4.3. enable-remote-toggle
+ 7.4.4. enable-edit-actions
+ 7.4.5. ACLs: permit-access and deny-access
+ 7.4.6. buffer-limit
+
+ 7.5. Forwarding
+
+ 7.5.1. forward
+ 7.5.2. forward-socks4 and forward-socks4a
+ 7.5.3. Advanced Forwarding Examples
+
+ 7.6. Windows GUI Options
+
+8. Actions Files
+
+ 8.1. Finding the Right Mix
+ 8.2. How to Edit
+ 8.3. How Actions are Applied to URLs
+ 8.4. Patterns
+
+ 8.4.1. The Domain Pattern
+ 8.4.2. The Path Pattern
+
+ 8.5. Actions
+
+ 8.5.1. add-header
+ 8.5.2. block
+ 8.5.3. crunch-incoming-cookies
+ 8.5.4. crunch-outgoing-cookies
+ 8.5.5. deanimate-gifs
+ 8.5.6. downgrade-http-version
+ 8.5.7. fast-redirects
+ 8.5.8. filter
+ 8.5.9. handle-as-image
+ 8.5.10. hide-forwarded-for-headers
+ 8.5.11. hide-from-header
+ 8.5.12. hide-referrer
+ 8.5.13. hide-user-agent
+ 8.5.14. kill-popups
+ 8.5.15. limit-connect
+ 8.5.16. prevent-compression
+ 8.5.17. send-vanilla-wafer
+ 8.5.18. send-wafer
+ 8.5.19. session-cookies-only
+ 8.5.20. set-image-blocker
+ 8.5.21. Summary
+
+ 8.6. Aliases
+ 8.7. Actions Files Tutorial
+
+ 8.7.1. default.action
+ 8.7.2. user.action
+
+9. The Filter File
+
+ 9.1. Filter File Tutorial
+ 9.2. The Pre-defined Filters
+
+10. Templates
+11. Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests
+
+ 11.1. Get Support
+ 11.2. Report Bugs
+ 11.3. Request New Features
+ 11.4. Report Ads or Other Actions-Related Problems
+ 11.5. Other
+
+12. Privoxy Copyright, License and History
+
+ 12.1. License
+ 12.2. History
+ 12.3. Authors
+
+13. See Also
+14. Appendix
+
+ 14.1. Regular Expressions
+ 14.2. Privoxy's Internal Pages
+
+ 14.2.1. Bookmarklets
+
+ 14.3. Chain of Events
+ 14.4. Anatomy of an Action
+
+1. Introduction
+
+This documentation is included with the current stable version of Privoxy,
+v.3.0.3.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1.1. Features
+
+In addition to Internet Junkbuster's traditional features of ad and banner
+blocking and cookie management, Privoxy provides new features:
+
+ * 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).
+
+ * GIF de-animation.
+
+ * Bypass many click-tracking scripts (avoids script redirection).
+
+ * 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. Installation
+
+Privoxy is available both in convenient pre-compiled packages for a wide range
+of operating systems, and as raw source code. For most users, we recommend
+using the packages, which can be downloaded from our Privoxy Project Page.
+
+Note: If you have a previous Junkbuster or Privoxy installation on your system,
+you will need to remove it. On some platforms, this may be done for you as part
+of their installation procedure. (See below for your platform). In any case be
+sure to backup your old configuration if it is valuable to you. See the note to
+upgraders section below.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.1. Binary Packages
+
+How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.1.1. Red Hat, SuSE and Conectiva RPMs
+
+RPMs can be installed with rpm -Uvh privoxy-3.0.3-1.rpm, and will use /etc/
+privoxy for the location of configuration files.
+
+Note that on Red Hat, Privoxy will not be automatically started on system boot.
+You will need to enable that using chkconfig, ntsysv, or similar methods. Note
+that SuSE will automatically start Privoxy in the boot process.
+
+If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM: rpm
+--rebuild privoxy-3.0.3-1.src.rpm. This will use your locally installed
+libraries and RPM version.
+
+Also note that if you have a Junkbuster RPM installed on your system, you need
+to remove it first, because the packages conflict. Otherwise, RPM will try to
+remove Junkbuster automatically, before installing Privoxy.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.1.2. Debian
+
+DEBs can be installed with apt-get install privoxy, and will use /etc/privoxy
+for the location of configuration files.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.1.3. Windows
+
+Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through the installation
+process. You will find the configuration files in the same directory as you
+installed Privoxy in. We do not use the registry of Windows.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.1.4. Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX
+
+Create a new directory, cd to it, then unzip and untar the archive. For the
+most part, you'll have to figure out where things go.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.1.5. OS/2
+
+First, make sure that no previous installations of Junkbuster and / or Privoxy
+are left on your system. Check that no Junkbuster or Privoxy objects are in
+your startup folder.
+
+Then, just double-click the WarpIN self-installing archive, which will guide
+you through the installation process. A shadow of the Privoxy executable will
+be placed in your startup folder so it will start automatically whenever OS/2
+starts.
+
+The directory you choose to install Privoxy into will contain all of the
+configuration files.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.1.6. Mac OSX
+
+Unzip the downloaded file (you can either double-click on the file from the
+finder, or from the desktop if you downloaded it there). Then, double-click on
+the package installer icon named Privoxy.pkg and follow the installation
+process. Privoxy will be installed in the folder /Library/Privoxy. It will
+start automatically whenever you start up. To prevent it from starting
+automatically, remove or rename the folder /Library/StartupItems/Privoxy.
+
+To start Privoxy by hand, double-click on StartPrivoxy.command in the /Library/
+Privoxy folder. Or, type this command in the Terminal:
+
+ /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
+
+
+
+You will be prompted for the administrator password.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.1.7. AmigaOS
+
+Copy and then unpack the lha archive to a suitable location. All necessary
+files will be installed into Privoxy directory, including all configuration and
+log files. To uninstall, just remove this directory.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.1.8. Gentoo
+
+Gentoo source packages (Ebuilds) for Privoxy are contained in the Gentoo
+Portage Tree (they are not on the download page, but there is a Gentoo section,
+where you can see when a new Privoxy Version is added to the Portage Tree).
+
+Before installing Privoxy under Gentoo just do first emerge rsync to get the
+latest changes from the Portage tree. With emerge privoxy you install the
+latest version.
+
+Configuration files are in /etc/privoxy, the documentation is in /usr/share/doc
+/privoxy-3.0.3 and the Log directory is in /var/log/privoxy.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+2.2. Building from Source
+
+The most convenient way to obtain the Privoxy sources is to download the source
+tarball from our project page.
+
+If you like to live on the bleeding edge and are not afraid of using possibly
+unstable development versions, you can check out the up-to-the-minute version
+directly from the CVS repository or simply download the nightly CVS tarball.
+
+To build Privoxy from source, autoconf, GNU make (gmake), and, of course, a C
+compiler like gcc are required.
+
+When building from a source tarball (either release version or nightly CVS
+tarball), first unpack the source:
+
+ tar xzvf privoxy-3.0.3-src* [.tgz or .tar.gz]
+ cd privoxy-3.0.3
+
+
+For retrieving the current CVS sources, you'll need CVS installed. Note that
+sources from CVS are development quality, and may not be stable, or well
+tested. To download CVS source:
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa login
- cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa co cu
-rrent
+ cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa co current
cd current
- This will create a directory named current/, which will contain the
- source tree.
- Then, in either case, to build from source:
+This will create a directory named current/, which will contain the source
+tree.
- autoconf #recommended for CVS source
- ./configure
- make
+Then, in either case, to build from unpacked tarball or CVS source:
+
+ autoheader
+ autoconf
+ ./configure # (--help to see options)
+ make # (the make from gnu, gmake for *BSD)
su
- make install
+ make -n install # (to see where all the files will go)
+ make install # (to really install)
- For Redhat and SuSE Linux RPM packages, see below.
- _________________________________________________________________
-Red Hat
+If you have gnu make, you can have the first four steps automatically done for
+you by just typing:
- To build Redhat RPM packages, install source as above. Then:
+ make
- autoconf #recommended for CVS source
- ./configure
- make redhat-dist
- This will create both binary and src RPMs in the usual places.
- Example:
+in the freshly downloaded or unpacked source directory.
- /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i686/junkbuster-2.9.8-1.i686.rpm
+For more detailed instructions on how to build Redhat and SuSE RPMs, Windows
+self-extracting installers, building on platforms with special requirements
+etc, please consult the developer manual.
- /usr/src/redhat/SRPMS/junkbuster-2.9.9-1.src.rpm
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- To install, of course:
+2.3. Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date
- rpm -Uvv /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i686/junkbuster-2.9.9-1.i686.rpm
+As user feedback comes in and development continues, we will make updated
+versions of both the main actions file (as a separate package) and the software
+itself (including the actions file) available for download.
- This will place the Junkbuster configuration files in
- /etc/junkbuster/, and log files in /var/log/junkbuster/.
- _________________________________________________________________
+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.
-SuSE
+In order not to loose your personal changes and adjustments when updating to
+the latest default.action file we strongly recommend that you use user.action
+for your customization of Privoxy. See the Chapter on actions files for
+details.
- To build SuSE RPM packages, install source as above. Then:
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- autoconf #recommended for CVS source
- ./configure
- make suse-dist
+3. Note to Upgraders
- This will create both binary and src RPMs in the usual places.
- Example:
+There are very significant changes from earlier Junkbuster versions to the
+current Privoxy. The number, names, syntax, and purposes of configuration files
+have substantially changed. Junkbuster 2.0.x configuration files will not
+migrate, Junkbuster 2.9.x and Privoxy configurations will need to be ported.
+The functionalities of the old blockfile, cookiefile and imagelist are now
+combined into the "actions files". default.action, is the main actions file.
+Local exceptions should best be put into user.action.
- /usr/src/suse/RPMS/i686/junkbuster-2.9.9-1.i686.rpm
+A "filter file" (typically default.filter) is new as of Privoxy 2.9.x, and
+provides some of the new sophistication (explained below). config is much the
+same as before.
- /usr/src/suse/SRPMS/junkbuster-2.9.9-1.src.rpm
+If upgrading from a 2.0.x version, you will have to use the new config files,
+and possibly adapt any personal rules from your older files. When porting
+personal rules over from the old blockfile to the new actions files, please
+note that even the pattern syntax has changed. If upgrading from 2.9.x
+development versions, it is still recommended to use the new configuration
+files.
- To install, of course:
+A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading:
- rpm -Uvv /usr/src/suse/RPMS/i686/junkbuster-2.9.9-1.i686.rpm
+ * The default listening port is now 8118 due to a conflict with another
+ service (NAS).
- This will place the Junkbuster configuration files in
- /etc/junkbuster/, and log files in /var/log/junkbuster/.
- _________________________________________________________________
+ * Some installers may remove earlier versions completely. Save any important
+ configuration files!
-OS/2
+ * Privoxy is controllable with a web browser at the special URL: http://
+ config.privoxy.org/ (Shortcut: http://p.p/). Many aspects of configuration
+ can be done here, including temporarily disabling Privoxy.
- The OS/2 version of Junkbuster requires the EMX runtime library to be
- installed. The EMX runtime library is available on the hobbes OS/2
- archive, among many other locations:
- [12]http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?sh=1&button=Search&key=emx
- rt.zip&stype=all&sort=type&dir=%2Fpub%2Fos2%2Fdev%2Femx%2Fv0.9d
+ * The primary configuration files for cookie management, ad and banner
+ blocking, and many other aspects of Privoxy configuration are the actions
+ files. It is strongly recommended to become familiar with the new actions
+ concept below, before modifying these files. Locally defined rules should
+ go into user.action.
- Junkbuster is packaged in a WarpIN self- installing archive. The
- self-installing program will be named depending on the release
- version, something like: ijbos123.exe. In order to install it, simply
- run this executable or double-click on its icon and follow the WarpIN
- installation panels. A shadow of the Junkbuster executable will be
- placed in your startup folder so it will start automatically whenever
- OS/2 starts.
+ * Some installers may not automatically start Privoxy after installation.
- The directory you choose to install Junkbuster into will contain all
- of the configuration files.
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- If you would like to build binary images on OS/2 yourself, you will
- need a working EMX/GCC environment, plus several Unix-like tools. The
- Hobbes OS/2 archive is a good place to start when building such an
- environment. A set of Unix-like tools named gnupack is located here:
- [13]http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?sh=1&key=gnupack&stype=all
- &sort=type&dir=%2Fpub%2Fos2%2Fapps
+4. Quickstart to Using Privoxy
- Once you have the source code unpacked as above, you can build the
- binaries from the current/ directory:
+ * If upgrading, from versions before 2.9.16, please back up any configuration
+ files. See the Note to Upgraders Section.
- autoconf
- sh configure
- make
- _________________________________________________________________
+ * Install Privoxy. See the Installation Section below for platform specific
+ information.
-Windows
+ * Advanced users and those who want to offer Privoxy service to more than
+ just their local machine should check the main config file, especially the
+ security-relevant options. These are off by default.
- Click-click. (I need help on this. Not a clue here. Also for
- configuration section below. HB.)
- _________________________________________________________________
+ * Start Privoxy, if the installation program has not done this already (may
+ vary according to platform). See the section Starting Privoxy.
-Other
+ * Set your browser to use Privoxy as HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) proxy by setting
+ the proxy configuration for address of 127.0.0.1 and port 8118. (Junkbuster
+ and earlier versions of Privoxy used port 8000.) See the section Starting
+ Privoxy below for more details on this.
- Some quick notes on other Operating Systems.
+ * Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad
+ images. If using Privoxy to manage cookies, you should remove any currently
+ stored cookies too.
- For FreeBSD (and other *BSDs?), the build will need gmake instead of
- the included make. gmake is available from [14]http://www.gnu.org. The
- rest should be the same as above for Linux/Unix.
- _________________________________________________________________
+ * A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for most.
+ There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
+ configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little to no
+ initial configuration is required in most cases.
-Junkbuster Configuration
+ See the Configuration section for more configuration options, and how to
+ customize your installation.
+
+ * If you experience ads that slipped through, innocent images that are
+ blocked, or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune Privoxy's behaviour, take
+ a look at the actions files. As a quick start, you might find the richly
+ commented examples helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files
+ through the web-based user interface. The Appendix "Anatomy of an Action"
+ has hints how to debug actions that "misbehave".
+
+ * For easy access to Privoxy's most important controls, drag the provided
+ Bookmarklets into your browser's personal toolbar.
+
+ * Please see the section Contacting the Developers on how to report bugs or
+ problems with websites or to get help.
+
+ * Now enjoy surfing with enhanced comfort and privacy!
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuraton files are located in
- /etc/junkbuster/ by default. For MS Windows and OS/2, these are all in
- the same directory as the Junkbuster executable. The name and number
- of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
- subject to change as development progresses.
+4.1. Quickstart to Ad Blocking
+
+Ad blocking is but one of Privoxy's array of features. Many of these features
+are for the technically minded advanced user. But, ad and banner blocking is
+surely common ground for everybody.
- The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point. For the
- time being, there are only three default configuration files (this
- will change in time):
+This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so you can get up to
+speed quickly without having to read the more extensive information provided
+below, though this is highly recommended.
+
+First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the more
+aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block things that were
+not intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want extreme ad free
+browsing, be prepared to deal with more "problem" sites, and to spend more time
+adjusting the configuration to solve these unintended consequences. In short,
+there is not an easy way to eliminate all ads. Either take the easy way and
+settle for most ads blocked with the default configuration, or jump in and
+tweak it for your personal surfing habits and preferences.
+
+Secondly, a brief explanation of Privoxy's "actions". "Actions" in this
+context, are the directives we use to tell Privoxy to perform some task
+relating to HTTP transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell Privoxy to take some
+"action". Each action has a unique name and function. While there are many
+potential actions in Privoxy's arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking.
+Actions, and action configuration files, are explained in depth below.
- * The main configuration file is named config on Linux, Unix, BSD,
- and OS/2, and junkbustr.txt on Windows. On Amiga, it is
- AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/config.
- * The actionsfile file is used to define various actions relating to
- images, banners, pop-ups, banners and cookies. There is a CGI
- based editor for this file that can be accessed via
- [15]http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/config/. (Still under active
- development.)
- * The re_filterfile file can be used to rewrite the raw page
- content, including text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript.
+Actions are specified in Privoxy's configuration, followed by one or more URLs
+to which the action should apply. URLs can actually be URL type patterns that
+use wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs. The
+actions, together with the URL patterns are called a section.
- actionsfile and re_filterfile can use Perl style regular expressions
- for maximum flexibility. All files use the "#" character to denote a
- comment. Such lines are not processed by Junkbuster. After making any
- changes, restart Junkbuster in order for the changes to take effect.
- _________________________________________________________________
+When you connect to a website, the full URL will either match one or more of
+the sections as defined in Privoxy's configuration, or not. If so, then Privoxy
+will perform the respective actions. If not, then nothing special happens.
+Furthermore, web pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web
+browser will use to load additional components of the page, as it parses the
+original page's HTML content. An ad image for instance, is just an URL embedded
+in the page somewhere. The image itself may be on the same server, or a server
+somewhere else on the Internet. Complex web pages will have many such embedded
+URLs.
-The Main Configuration File
+The actions we need to know about for ad blocking are: block, handle-as-image,
+and set-image-blocker:
- Again, the main configuration file is named config on Linux/Unix/BSD
- and OS/2, and junkbustr.txt on Windows. Configuration lines consist of
- an initial keyword followed by a list of values, all separated by
- whitespace (any number of spaces or tabs). For example:
+ * block - this action stops any contact between your browser and any URL
+ patterns that match this action's configuration. It can be used for
+ blocking ads, but also anything that is determined to be unwanted. By
+ itself, it simply stops any communication with the remote server and sends
+ Privoxy's own built-in BLOCKED page instead to let you now what has
+ happened.
- blockfile blocklist.ini
+ * handle-as-image - tells Privoxy to treat this URL as an image. Privoxy's
+ default configuration already does this for all common image types (e.g.
+ GIF), but there are many situations where this is not so easy to determine.
+ So we'll force it in these cases. This is particularly important for ad
+ blocking, since only if we know that it's an image of some kind, can we
+ replace it with an image of our choosing, instead of the Privoxy BLOCKED
+ page (which would only result in a "broken image" icon). There are some
+ limitations to this though. For instance, you can't just brute-force an
+ image substitution for an entire HTML page in most situations.
+
+ * set-image-blocker - tells Privoxy what to display in place of an ad image
+ that has hit a block rule. For this to come into play, the URL must match a
+ block action somewhere in the configuration, and, it must also match an
+ handle-as-image action.
+
+ The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
+
+ pattern - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad replacement is obvious.
+ This is the default.
+
+ blank - A very small empty GIF image is displayed. This is the so-called
+ "invisible" configuration option.
+
+ http://<URL> - A redirect to any image anywhere of the user's choosing
+ (advanced usage).
+
+The quickest way to adjust any of these settings is with your browser through
+the special Privoxy editor at http://config.privoxy.org/show-status (shortcut:
+http://p.p/show-status). This is an internal page, and does not require
+Internet access. Select the appropriate "actions" file, and click "Edit". It is
+best to put personal or local preferences in user.action since this is not
+meant to be overwritten during upgrades, and will over-ride the settings in
+other files. Here you can insert new "actions", and URLs for ad blocking or
+other purposes, and make other adjustments to the configuration. Privoxy will
+detect these changes automatically.
- Indicates that the blockfile is named "blocklist.ini".
+A quick and simple step by step example:
- A "#" indicates a comment. Any part of a line following a "#" is
- ignored, except if the "#" is preceded by a "\".
+ * Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select "Copy Link Location"
+ from the pop-up menu.
- Thus, by placing a "#" at the start of an existing configuration line,
- you can make it a comment and it will be treated as if it weren't
- there. This is called "commenting out" an option and can be useful to
- turn off features: If you comment out the "logfile" line, junkbuster
- will not log to a file at all. Watch for the "default:" section in
- each explanation to see what happens if the option is left unset (or
- commented out).
+ * Set your browser to http://config.privoxy.org/show-status
- Long lines can be continued on the next line by using a "\" as the
- very last character.
+ * Find user.action in the top section, and click on "Edit":
- There are various aspects of Junkbuster behavior that can be tuned.
- _________________________________________________________________
+ Figure 1. Actions Files in Use
-Defining Other Configuration Files
+ [files-in-u]
- Junkbuster can use a number of other files to tell it what ads to
- block, what cookies to accept, etc. This section of the configuration
- file tells Junkbuster where to find all those other files.
+ * You should have a section with only block listed under "Actions:". If not,
+ click a "Insert new section below" button, and in the new section that just
+ appeared, click the Edit button right under the word "Actions:". This will
+ bring up a list of all actions. Find block near the top, and click in the
+ "Enabled" column, then "Submit" just below the list.
- On Windows, Junkbuster looks for these files in the same directory as
- the executable. On Unix and OS/2, Junkbuster looks for these files in
- the current working directory. In either case, an absolute path name
- can be used to avoid problems.
+ * Now, in the block actions section, click the "Add" button, and paste the
+ URL the browser got from "Copy Link Location". Remove the http:// at the
+ beginning of the URL. Then, click "Submit" (or "OK" if in a pop-up window).
- When development goes modular and multiuser, the blocker, filter, and
- per-user config will be stored in subdirectories of "confdir". For
- now, only confdir/templates is used for storing HTML templates for CGI
- results.
+ * Now go back to the original page, and press SHIFT-Reload (or flush all
+ browser caches). The image should be gone now.
- The location of the configuration files:
+This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
+wildcard pattern match to include potentially similar images from the same
+site. For a more extensive explanation of "patterns", and the entire actions
+concept, see the Actions section.
- confdir /etc/junkbuster # No trailing /, please.
+For advanced users who want to hand edit their config files, you might want to
+now go to the Actions Files Tutorial. The ideas explained therein also apply to
+the web-based editor.
- The directory where all logging (i.e. logfile and jarfile) takes
- place. No trailing "/", please:
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- logdir /var/log/junkbuster
+5. Starting Privoxy
- Note that all file specifications below are relative to the above two
- directories!
+Before launching Privoxy for the first time, you will want to configure your
+browser(s) to use Privoxy as a HTTP and HTTPS proxy. The default is 127.0.0.1
+(or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions used port
+8000). This is the one configuration step that must be done!
- The "actionsfile" contains patterns to specify the actions to apply to
- requests for each site. Default: Cookies to and from all destinations
- are filtered. Popups are disabled for all sites. All sites are
- filtered if re_filterfile specified. No sites are blocked. An empty
- image is displayed for filtered ads and other images (formerly
- "tinygif"). The syntax of this file is explained in detail [16]below.
+Please note that Privoxy can only proxy HTTP and HTTPS traffic. It will not
+work with FTP or other protocols.
- actionsfile actionsfile
+Figure 2. Proxy Configuration (Mozilla)
- The "re_filterfile" file contains content modification rules. These
- rules permit powerful changes on the content of Web pages, e.g., you
- could disable your favourite JavaScript annoyances, rewrite the actual
- content, or just have some fun replacing "Microsoft" with "MicroSuck"
- wherever it appears on a Web page. Default: No content modification,
- or whatever the developers are playing with :-/
+[proxy_setu]
- re_filterfile re_filterfile
-
- The logfile is where all logging and error messages are written. The
- logfile can be useful for tracking down a problem with Junkbuster
- (e.g., it's not blocking an ad you think it should block) but in most
- cases you probably will never look at it.
+With Netscape (and Mozilla), this can be set under:
- Your logfile will grow indefinitely, and you will probably want to
- periodically remove it. On Unix systems, you can do this with a cron
- job (see "man cron"). For Redhat, a logrotate script has been
- included.
-
- On SuSE Linux systems, you can place a line like
- "/var/log/junkbuster.* +1024k 644 nobody.nogroup" in /etc/logfiles,
- with the effect that cron.daily will automatically archive, gzip, and
- empty the log, when it exceeds 1M size.
-
- Default: Log to the a file named logfile. Comment out to disable
- logging.
+ Edit
+ |_
+ Preferences
+ |_
+ Advanced
+ |_
+ Proxies
+ |_
+ HTTP Proxy
- logfile logfile
+For Internet Explorer:
- The "jarfile" defines where Junkbuster stores the cookies it
- intercepts. Note that if you use a "jarfile", it may grow quite large.
- Default: Don't store intercepted cookies.
+ Tools
+ |_
+ Internet Properties
+ |_
+ Connections
+ |_
+ LAN Settings
- #jarfile jarfile
+Then, check "Use Proxy" and fill in the appropriate info (Address: 127.0.0.1,
+Port: 8118). Include HTTPS (SSL), if you want HTTPS proxy support too.
- If you specify a "trustfile", Junkbuster will only allow access to
- sites that are named in the trustfile. You can also mark sites as
- trusted referrers, with the effect that access to untrusted sites will
- be granted, if a link from a trusted referrer was used. The link
- target will then be added to the "trustfile". This is a very
- restrictive feature that typical users most propably want to leave
- disabled. Default: Disabled, don't use the trust mechanism.
+After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
+re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. You are
+now ready to start enjoying the benefits of using Privoxy!
- #trustfile trust
+Privoxy is typically started by specifying the main configuration file to be
+used on the command line. If no configuration file is specified on the command
+line, Privoxy will look for a file named config in the current directory.
+Except on Win32 where it will try config.txt.
- If you use the trust mechanism, it is a good idea to write up some
- online documentation about your blocking policy and to specify the
- URL(s) here. They will appear on the page that your users receive when
- they try to access untrusted content. Use multiple times for multiple
- URLs. Default: Don't display links on the "untrusted" info page.
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- trust-info-url http://www.your-site.com/why_we_block.html
- trust-info-url http://www.your-site.com/what_we_allow.html
- _________________________________________________________________
+5.1. Red Hat and Conectiva
-Other Configuration Options
+We use a script. Note that Red Hat does not start Privoxy upon booting per
+default. It will use the file /etc/privoxy/config as its main configuration
+file.
- This part of the configuration file contains options that control how
- Junkbuster operates.
+ # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
- "Admin-address" should be set to the email address of the proxy
- administrator. It is used in many of the proxy-generated pages.
- Default: fill@me.in.please.
- #admin-address fill@me.in.please
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- "Proxy-info-url" can be set to a URL that contains more info about
- this Junkbuster installation, it's configuration and policies. It is
- used in many of the proxy-generated pages and its use is highly
- recommended in multi-user installations, since your users will want to
- know why certain content is blocked or modified. Default: Don't show a
- link to online documentation.
+5.2. Debian
- proxy-info-url http://www.your-site.com/proxy.html
+We use a script. Note that Debian starts Privoxy upon booting per default. It
+will use the file /etc/privoxy/config as its main configuration file.
- "Listen-address" specifies the address and port where Junkbuster will
- listen for connections from your Web browser. The default is to listen
- on the localhost port 8000, and this is suitable for most users. (In
- your web browser, under proxy configuration, list the proxy server as
- "localhost" and the port as "8000").
+ # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
- If you already have another service running on port 8000, or if you
- want to serve requests from other machines (e.g. on your local
- network) as well, you will need to override the default. The syntax is
- "listen-address [<ip-address>]:<port>". If you leave out the IP
- adress, junkbuster will bind to all interfaces (addresses) on your
- machine and may become reachable from the internet. In that case,
- consider using access control lists (acl's) (see "aclfile" above).
-
- For example, suppose you are running Junkbuster on a machine which has
- the address 192.168.0.1 on your local private network (192.168.0.0)
- and has another outside connection with a different address. You want
- it to serve requests from inside only:
-
- listen-address 192.168.0.1:8000
-
- If you want it to listen on all addresses (including the outside
- connection):
-
- listen-address :8000
-
- If you do this, consider using ACLs (see "aclfile" above). Note: you
- will need to point your browser(s) to the address and port that you
- have configured here. Default: localhost:8000 (127.0.0.1:8000).
- The debug option sets the level of debugging information to log in the
- logfile (and to the console in the Windows version). A debug level of
- 1 is informative because it will show you each request as it happens.
- Higher levels of debug are probably only of interest to developers.
-
- debug 1 # GPC = show each GET/POST/CONNECT request
- debug 2 # CONN = show each connection status
- debug 4 # IO = show I/O status
- debug 8 # HDR = show header parsing
- debug 16 # LOG = log all data into the logfile
- debug 32 # FRC = debug force feature
- debug 64 # REF = debug regular expression filter
- debug 128 # = debug fast redirects
- debug 256 # = debug GIF deanimation
- debug 512 # CLF = Common Log Format
- debug 1024 # = debug kill popups
- debug 4096 # INFO = Startup banner and warnings.
- debug 8192 # ERROR = Non-fatal errors
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- It is highly recommended that you enable ERROR reporting (debug 8192),
- at least until the next stable release.
+5.3. SuSE
- The reporting of FATAL errors (i.e. ones which crash JunkBuster) is
- always on and cannot be disabled.
+We use a script. It will use the file /etc/privoxy/config as its main
+configuration file. Note that SuSE starts Privoxy upon booting your PC.
- If you want to use CLF (Common Log Format), you should set "debug 512"
- ONLY, do not enable anything else.
+ # rcprivoxy start
- Multiple "debug" directives, are OK - they're logical-OR'd together.
- debug 15 # same as setting the first 4 listed above
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Default:
+5.4. Windows
- debug 1 # URLs
- debug 4096 # Info
- debug 8192 # Errors - *we highly recommended enabling this*
+Click on the Privoxy Icon to start Privoxy. If no configuration file is
+specified on the command line, Privoxy will look for a file named config.txt.
+Note that Windows will automatically start Privoxy upon booting you PC.
- Junkbuster normally uses "multi-threading", a software technique that
- permits it to handle many different requests simultaneously. In some
- cases you may wish to disable this -- particularly if you're trying to
- debug a problem. The "single-threaded" option forces Junkbuster to
- handle requests sequentially. Default: Multi-threaded mode.
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- #single-threaded
+5.5. Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others
- "toggle" allows you to temporarily disable all Junkbuster's filtering.
- Just set "toggle 0".
+Example Unix startup command:
- The Windows version of Junkbuster puts an icon in the system tray,
- which allows you to change this option without having to edit this
- file. If you right-click on that icon (or select the "Options" menu),
- one choice is "Enable". Clicking on enable toggles Junkbuster on and
- off. This is useful if you want to temporarily disable Junkbuster,
- e.g., to access a site that requires cookies which you normally have
- blocked.
+ # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
- "toggle 1" means Junkbuster runs normally, "toggle 0" means that
- Junkbuster becomes a non-anonymizing non-blocking proxy. Default: 1.
- toggle 1
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- For content filtering, i.e. the "+filter" and "+deanimate-gif"
- actions, it is neccessary that Junkbuster buffers up the entire
- document body. This can be potentially dangerous, since a server could
- just keep sending data indefinitely and wait for your RAM to exhaust.
+5.6. OS/2
- The buffer-limit option lets you set the maximum size in Kbytes that
- each buffer may use. When the documents buffer exceeds this size, it
- is flushed to the client unfiltered and no further attempt to filter
- the rest of it is made. Remember that there may multiple threads
- running, which might require increasing the "buffer-limit" Kbytes
- each, unless you have enabled "single-threaded" above.
+During installation, Privoxy is configured to start automatically when the
+system restarts. You can start it manually by double-clicking on the Privoxy
+icon in the Privoxy folder.
- buffer-limit 4069
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- To enable the web-based actionsfile editor set enable-edit-actions to
- 1, or 0 to disable. Note that you must have compiled JunkBuster with
- support for this feature, otherwise this option has no effect. This
- internal page can be reached at
- [17]http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/config/.
+5.7. Mac OSX
- Security note: If this is enabled, anyone who can use the proxy can
- edit the actions file, and their changes will affect all users. For
- shared proxies, you probably want to disable this. Default: enabled.
+During installation, Privoxy is configured to start automatically when the
+system restarts. To start Privoxy by hand, double-click on the
+StartPrivoxy.command icon in the /Library/Privoxy folder. Or, type this command
+in the Terminal:
- enable-edit-actions 1
+ /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
- Allow JunkBuster to be toggled on and off remotely, using your web
- browser. Set "enable-remote-toggle"to 1 to enable, and 0 to disable.
- Note that you must have compiled JunkBuster with support for this
- feature, otherwise this option has no effect.
- Security note: If this is enabled, anyone who can use the proxy can
- toggle it on or off, and their changes will affect all users. For
- shared proxies, you probably want to disable this. Default: enabled.
- enable-remote-toggle 1
- _________________________________________________________________
+You will be prompted for the administrator password.
-Access Control List (ACL)
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Access controls are included at the request of some ISPs and systems
- administrators, and are not usually needed by individual users. Please
- note the warnings in the FAQ that this proxy is not intended to be a
- substitute for a firewall or to encourage anyone to defer addressing
- basic security weaknesses.
+5.8. AmigaOS
- If no access settings are specified, the proxy talks to anyone that
- connects. If any access settings file are specified, then the proxy
- talks only to IP addresses permitted somewhere in this file and not
- denied later in this file.
+Start Privoxy (with RUN <>NIL:) in your startnet script (AmiTCP), in
+s:user-startup (RoadShow), as startup program in your startup script (Genesis),
+or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx). Privoxy will automatically quit when
+you quit your TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack
+may display that Privoxy is still running).
- Summary -- if using an ACL:
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Client must have permission to receive service.
+5.9. Gentoo
- LAST match in ACL wins.
+A script is again used. It will use the file /etc/privoxy/config as its main
+configuration file.
- Default behavior is to deny service.
+ /etc/init.d/privoxy start
- The syntax for an entry in the Access Control List is:
- ACTION SRC_ADDR[/SRC_MASKLEN] [ DST_ADDR[/DST_MASKLEN] ]
- Where the individual fields are:
+Note that Privoxy is not automatically started at boot time by default. You can
+change this with the rc-update command.
- ACTION = "permit-access" or "deny-access"
- SRC_ADDR = client hostname or dotted IP address
- SRC_MASKLEN = number of bits in the subnet mask for the source
- DST_ADDR = server or forwarder hostname or dotted IP address
- DST_MASKLEN = number of bits in the subnet mask for the target
+ rc-update add privoxy default
- The field separator (FS) is whitespace (space or tab).
- IMPORTANT NOTE: If the junkbuster is using a forwarder (see below) or
- a gateway for a particular destination URL, the DST_ADDR that is
- examined is the address of the forwarder or the gateway and NOT the
- address of the ultimate target. This is necessary because it may be
- impossible for the local Junkbuster to determine the address of the
- ultimate target (that's often what gateways are used for).
- Here are a few examples to show how the ACL features work:
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- "localhost" is OK -- no DST_ADDR implies that ALL destination
- addresses are OK:
+5.10. Command Line Options
- permit-access localhost
+Privoxy may be invoked with the following command-line options:
- A silly example to illustrate permitting any host on the class-C
- subnet with Junkbuster to go anywhere:
+ * --version
- permit-access www.junkbusters.com/24
+ Print version info and exit. Unix only.
- Except deny one particular IP address from using it at all:
+ * --help
- deny-access ident.junkbusters.com
+ Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
- You can also specify an explicit network address and subnet mask.
- Explicit addresses do not have to be resolved to be used.
+ * --no-daemon
- permit-access 207.153.200.0/24
+ Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group leader, and
+ don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
- A subnet mask of 0 matches anything, so the next line permits
- everyone.
+ * --pidfile FILE
- permit-access 0.0.0.0/0
+ On startup, write the process ID to FILE. Delete the FILE on exit. Failure
+ to create or delete the FILE is non-fatal. If no FILE option is given, no
+ PID file will be used. Unix only.
- Note, you cannot say:
+ * --user USER[.GROUP]
- permit-access .org
+ After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of USER, and if
+ included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the privileges are not sufficient to do
+ so. Unix only.
- to allow all *.org domains. Every IP address listed must resolve
- fully.
+ * --chroot
- An ISP may want to provide a Junkbuster that is accessible by "the
- world" and yet restrict use of some of their private content to hosts
- on its internal network (i.e. its own subscribers). Say, for instance
- the ISP owns the Class-B IP address block 123.124.0.0 (a 16 bit
- netmask). This is how they could do it:
+ Before changing to the user ID given in the --user option, chroot to that
+ user's home directory, i.e. make the kernel pretend to the Privoxy process
+ that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
+ the impact of possible vulnerabilities in Privoxy to the files contained in
+ that hierarchy. Unix only.
- permit-access 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 # other clients can go anywhere
- # with the following exceptions
- :
+ * configfile
- deny-access 0.0.0.0/0 123.124.0.0/16 # block all external request
- s for
- # sites on the ISP's network
- permit 0.0.0.0/0 www.my_isp.com # except for the ISP's main
- # web site
- permit 123.124.0.0/16 0.0.0.0/0 # the ISP's clients can go
- # anywhere
+ If no configfile is included on the command line, Privoxy will look for a
+ file named "config" in the current directory (except on Win32 where it will
+ look for "config.txt" instead). Specify full path to avoid confusion. If no
+ config file is found, Privoxy will fail to start.
- Note that if some hostnames are listed with multiple IP addresses, the
- primary value returned by DNS (via gethostbyname()) is used. Default:
- Anyone can access the proxy.
- _________________________________________________________________
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Forwarding
+6. Privoxy Configuration
- This feature allows chaining of HTTP requests via multiple proxies. It
- can be used to better protect privacy and confidentiality when
- accessing specific domains by routing requests to those domains to a
- special purpose filtering proxy such as lpwa.com. Or to use a caching
- proxy to speed up browsing.
+All Privoxy configuration is stored in text files. These files can be edited
+with a text editor. Many important aspects of Privoxy can also be controlled
+easily with a web browser.
- It can also be used in an environment with multiple networks to route
- requests via multiple gateways allowing transparent access to multiple
- networks without having to modify browser configurations.
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Also specified here are SOCKS proxies. Junkbuster SOCKS 4 and SOCKS
- 4A. The difference is that SOCKS 4A will resolve the target hostname
- using DNS on the SOCKS server, not our local DNS client.
+6.1. Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser
- The syntax of each line is:
+Privoxy's user interface can be reached through the special URL http://
+config.privoxy.org/ (shortcut: http://p.p/), which is a built-in page and works
+without Internet access. You will see the following section:
- forward target_domain[:port] http_proxy_host[:port]
- forward-socks4 target_domain[:port] socks_proxy_host[:port]
- http_proxy_host[:port]
- forward-socks4a target_domain[:port] socks_proxy_host[:port]
- http_proxy_host[:port]
+ Privoxy Menu
+ ? View & change the current configuration
+ ? View the source code version numbers
+ ? View the request headers.
+ ? Look up which actions apply to a URL and why
+ ? Toggle Privoxy on or off
+ ? Documentation
- If http_proxy_host is ".", then requests are not forwarded to a HTTP
- proxy but are made directly to the web servers.
- Lines are checked in sequence, and the last match wins.
+This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
+actions files, which is where the ad, banner, cookie, and URL blocking magic is
+configured as well as other advanced features of Privoxy. This is an easy way
+to adjust various aspects of Privoxy configuration. The actions file, and other
+configuration files, are explained in detail below.
- There is an implicit line equivalent to the following, which specifies
- that anything not finding a match on the list is to go out without
- forwarding or gateway protocol, like so:
+"Toggle Privoxy On or Off" is handy for sites that might have problems with
+your current actions and filters. You can in fact use it as a test to see
+whether it is Privoxy causing the problem or not. Privoxy continues to run as a
+proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e. Privoxy acts like a
+normal forwarding proxy. There is even a toggle Bookmarklet offered, so that
+you can toggle Privoxy with one click from your browser.
- forward .* . # implicit
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- In the following common configuration, everything goes to Lucent's
- LPWA, except SSL on port 443 (which it doesn't handle):
+6.2. Configuration Files Overview
- forward .* lpwa.com:8000
- forward :443 .
+For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in /etc/privoxy/
+by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and AmigaOS these are all in the same
+directory as the Privoxy executable.
- See the FAQ for instructions on how to automate the login procedure
- for LPWA. Some users have reported difficulties related to LPWA's use
- of "." as the last element of the domain, and have said that this can
- be fixed with this:
+The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though some
+settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the principle
+configuration files are:
- forward lpwa. lpwa.com:8000
+ * The main configuration file is named config on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and
+ AmigaOS and config.txt on Windows. This is a required file.
- (NOTE: the syntax for specifiying target_domain has changed since the
- previous paragraph was written -- it will not work now. More
- information is welcome.)
+ * default.action (the main actions file) is used to define which "actions"
+ relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups, content modification, cookie
+ handling etc should be applied by default. It also defines many exceptions
+ (both positive and negative) from this default set of actions that enable
+ Privoxy to selectively eliminate the junk, and only the junk, on as many
+ websites as possible.
- In this fictitious example, everything goes via an ISP's caching
- proxy, except requests to that ISP:
+ Multiple actions files may be defined in config. These are processed in the
+ order they are defined. Local customizations and locally preferred
+ exceptions to the default policies as defined in default.action (which you
+ will most probably want to define sooner or later) are probably best
+ applied in user.action, where you can preserve them across upgrades.
+ standard.action is for Privoxy's internal use.
- forward .* caching.myisp.net:8000
- forward myisp.net .
+ There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from http://
+ config.privoxy.org/show-status (Shortcut: http://p.p/show-status) for the
+ various actions files.
- For the @home network, we're told the forwarding configuration is
- this:
+ * default.filter (the filter file) can be used to re-write the raw page
+ content, including viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript,
+ and whatever else lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only
+ pre-defined here; whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
+ Only one filter file may be defined.
- forward .* proxy:8080
+All files use the "#" character to denote a comment (the rest of the line will
+be ignored) and understand line continuation through placing a backslash ("\")
+as the very last character in a line. If the # is preceded by a backslash, it
+looses its special function. Placing a # in front of an otherwise valid
+configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
+out" that line.
- Also, we're told they insist on getting cookies and JavaScript, so you
- need to add home.com to the cookie file. We consider JavaScript a
- security risk. Java need not be enabled.
+The actions files and default.filter can use Perl style regular expressions for
+maximum flexibility.
- In this example direct connections are made to all "internal" domains,
- but everything else goes through Lucent's LPWA by way of the company's
- SOCKS gateway to the Internet.
+After making any changes, there is no need to restart Privoxy in order for the
+changes to take effect. Privoxy detects such changes automatically. Note,
+however, that it may take one or two additional requests for the change to take
+effect. When changing the listening address of Privoxy, these "wake up"
+requests must obviously be sent to the old listening address.
- forward_socks4 .* lpwa.com:8000 firewall.my_company.com:1080
- forward my_company.com .
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- This is how you could set up a site that always uses SOCKS but no
- forwarders:
+7. The Main Configuration File
- forward_socks4a .* . firewall.my_company.com:1080
+Again, the main configuration file is named config on Linux/Unix/BSD and OS/2,
+and config.txt on Windows. Configuration lines consist of an initial keyword
+followed by a list of values, all separated by whitespace (any number of spaces
+or tabs). For example:
- An advanced example for network administrators:
+ confdir /etc/privoxy
- If you have links to multiple ISPs that provide various special
- content to their subscribers, you can configure forwarding to pass
- requests to the specific host that's connected to that ISP so that
- everybody can see all of the content on all of the ISPs.
+Assigns the value /etc/privoxy to the option confdir and thus indicates that
+the configuration directory is named "/etc/privoxy/".
- This is a bit tricky, but here's an example:
+All options in the config file except for confdir and logdir are optional.
+Watch out in the below description for what happens if you leave them unset.
- host-a has a PPP connection to isp-a.com. And host-b has a PPP
- connection to isp-b.com. host-a can run a Junkbuster proxy with
- forwarding like this:
+The main config file controls all aspects of Privoxy's operation that are not
+location dependent (i.e. they apply universally, no matter where you may be
+surfing).
- forward .* .
- forward isp-b.com host-b:8000
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- host-b can run a Junkbuster proxy with forwarding like this:
+7.1. Configuration and Log File Locations
- forward .* .
- forward isp-a.com host-a:8000
+Privoxy can (and normally does) use a number of other files for additional
+configuration, help and logging. This section of the configuration file tells
+Privoxy where to find those other files.
- Now, anyone on the Internet (including users on host-a and host-b) can
- set their browser's proxy to either host-a or host-b and be able to
- browse the content on isp-a or isp-b.
+The user running Privoxy, must have read permission for all configuration
+files, and write permission to any files that would be modified, such as log
+files and actions files.
- Here's another practical example, for University of Kent at Canterbury
- students with a network connection in their room, who need to use the
- University's Squid web cache.
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- forward *. ssbcache.ukc.ac.uk:3128 # Use the proxy, except for:
- forward .ukc.ac.uk . # Anything on the same domain as us
- forward * . # Host with no domain specified
- forward 129.12.*.* . # A dotted IP on our /16 network.
- forward 127.*.*.* . # Loopback address
- forward localhost.localdomain . # Loopback address
- forward www.ukc.mirror.ac.uk . # Specific host
+7.1.1. confdir
- If you intend to chain Junkbuster and squid locally, then chain as
- browser -> squid -> junkbuster is the recommended way.
+Specifies:
- Your squid configuration could then look like this:
+ The directory where the other configuration files are located
- # Define junkbuster as parent cache
+Type of value:
- cache_peer 127.0.0.1 parent 8000 0 no-query
+ Path name
- # Define ACL for protocol FTP
- acl FTP proto FTP
- # Do not forward ACL FTP to junkbuster
- always_direct allow FTP
- # Do not forward ACL CONNECT (https) to junkbuster
- always_direct allow CONNECT
- # Forward the rest to junkbuster
- never_direct allow all
- _________________________________________________________________
+Default value:
-Windows GUI Options
+ /etc/privoxy (Unix) or Privoxy installation dir (Windows)
- Junkbuster has a number of options specific to the Windows GUI
- interface:
+Effect if unset:
- If "activity-animation" is set to 1, the Junkbuster icon will animate
- when "Junkbuster" is active. To turn off, set to 0.
+ Mandatory
- activity-animation 1
+Notes:
- If "log-messages" is set to 1, Junkbuster will log messages to the
- console window:
+ No trailing "/", please
- log-messages 1
+ When development goes modular and multi-user, the blocker, filter, and
+ per-user config will be stored in subdirectories of "confdir". For now, the
+ configuration directory structure is flat, except for confdir/templates,
+ where the HTML templates for CGI output reside (e.g. Privoxy's 404 error
+ page).
- If "log-buffer-size" is set to 1, the size of the log buffer, i.e. the
- amount of memory used for the log messages displayed in the console
- window, will be limited to "log-max-lines" (see below).
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Warning: Setting this to 0 will result in the buffer to grow
- infinitely and eat up all your memory!
+7.1.2. logdir
- log-buffer-size 1
+Specifies:
- log-max-lines is the maximum number of lines held in the log buffer.
- See above.
+ The directory where all logging takes place (i.e. where logfile and jarfile
+ are located)
- log-max-lines 200
+Type of value:
- If "log-highlight-messages" is set to 1, Junkbuster will highlight
- portions of the log messages with a bold-faced font:
+ Path name
- log-highlight-messages 1
+Default value:
- The font used in the console window:
+ /var/log/privoxy (Unix) or Privoxy installation dir (Windows)
- log-font-name Comic Sans MS
+Effect if unset:
- Font size used in the console window:
+ Mandatory
- log-font-size 8
+Notes:
- "show-on-task-bar" controls whether or not Junkbuster will appear as a
- button on the Task bar when minimized:
+ No trailing "/", please
- show-on-task-bar 0
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- If "close-button-minimizes" is set to 1, the Windows close button will
- minimize Junkbuster instead of closing the program (close with the
- exit option on the File menu).
+7.1.3. actionsfile
- close-button-minimizes 1
+Specifies:
- The "hide-console" option is specific to the MS-Win console version of
- JunkBuster. If this option is used, Junkbuster will disconnect from
- and hide the command console.
+ The actions file(s) to use
- #hide-console
- _________________________________________________________________
+Type of value:
-The Actions File
+ File name, relative to confdir, without the .action suffix
- The "actionsfile" is used to define what actions Junkbuster takes, and
- thus determines how images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP
- content and transactions are handled. Images can be anything you want,
- including ads, banners, or just some obnoxious image that you would
- rather not see. Cookies can be accepted or rejected. The default file
- is in fact named actionsfile.
+Default values:
- To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request
- is compared to all patterns in this file. Every time it matches, the
- list of applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated. You
- can trace this process by visiting [18]http://i.j.b/show-url-info.
+ standard # Internal purposes, no editing recommended
- There are four types of lines in this file: comments (begin with a "#"
- character), actions, aliases and patterns, all of which are explained
- below.
- _________________________________________________________________
+ default # Main actions file
-URL Domain and Path Syntax
+ user # User customizations
- Generally, a pattern has the form <domain>/<path>, where both the
- <domain> and <path> part are optional. If you only specify a domain
- part, the "/" can be left out:
+Effect if unset:
- www.example.com - is a domain only pattern and will match any request
- to "www.example.com".
+ No actions are taken at all. Simple neutral proxying.
- www.example.com/ - means exactly the same.
+Notes:
- www.example.com/index.html - matches only the single document
- "/index.html" on "www.example.com".
+ Multiple actionsfile lines are permitted, and are in fact recommended!
- /index.html - matches the document "/index.html", regardless of the
- domain.
+ The default values include standard.action, which is used for internal
+ purposes and should be loaded, default.action, which is the "main" actions
+ file maintained by the developers, and user.action, where you can make your
+ personal additions.
- index.html - matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a
- domain name and there is no top-level domain called ".html".
+ Actions files are where all the per site and per URL configuration is done
+ for ad blocking, cookie management, privacy considerations, etc. There is
+ no point in using Privoxy without at least one actions file.
- The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
- domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
- For example:
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- .example.com - matches any domain that ENDS in ".example.com".
+7.1.4. filterfile
- www. - matches any domain that STARTS with "www".
+Specifies:
- Additionally, there are wildcards that you can use in the domain names
- themselves. They work pretty similar to shell wildcards: "*" stands
- for zero or more arbitrary characters, "?" stands for any single
- character. And you can define charachter classes in square brackets
- and they can be freely mixed:
+ The filter file to use
- ad*.example.com - matches "adserver.example.com", "ads.example.com",
- etc but not "sfads.example.com".
+Type of value:
- *ad*.example.com - matches all of the above, and then some.
+ File name, relative to confdir
- .?pix.com - matches "www.ipix.com", "pictures.epix.com",
- "a.b.c.d.e.upix.com", etc.
+Default value:
- www[1-9a-ez].example.com - matches "www1.example.com",
- "www4.example.com", "wwwd.example.com", "wwwz.example.com", etc., but
- not "wwww.example.com".
+ default.filter (Unix) or default.filter.txt (Windows)
- If Junkbuster was compiled with "pcre" support (default), Perl
- compatible regular expressions can be used. See the pcre/docs/
- direcory or "man perlre" (also available on
- [19]http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html) for details. A
- brief discussion of regular expressions is in the [20]Appendix. For
- instance:
+Effect if unset:
- /.*/advert[0-9]+\.jpe?g - would match a URL from any domain, with any
- path that includes "advert" followed immediately by one or more
- digits, then a "." and ending in either "jpeg" or "jpg". So we match
- "example.com/ads/advert2.jpg", and
- "www.example.com/ads/banners/advert39.jpeg", but not
- "www.example.com/ads/banners/advert39.gif" (no gifs in the example
- pattern).
-
- Please note that matching in the path is case INSENSITIVE by default,
- but you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by
- using the "(?-i)" switch:
-
- www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.* - will match only documents whose path
- starts with "PaTtErN" in exactly this capitalization.
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-Actions
-
- Actions are enabled if preceded with a "+", and disabled if preceded
- with a "-". Actions are invoked by enclosing the action name in curly
- braces (e.g. {+some_action}), followed by a list of URLs to which the
- action applies. There are three classes of actions:
-
- * Boolean (e.g. "+/-block"):
- {+name} # enable this action
- {-name} # disable this action
-
- * Parameterized (e.g. "+/-hide-user-agent"):
- {+name{param}} # enable action and set parameter to "param"
- {-name} # disable action
-
- * Multi-value (e.g. "{+/-add-header{Name: value}}",
- "{+/-wafer{name=value}}"):
- {+name{param}} # enable action and add parameter "param"
- {-name{param}} # remove the parameter "param"
- {-name} # disable this action totally
-
- If nothing is specified in this file, no "actions" are taken. So in
- this case JunkBuster would just be a normal, non-blocking,
- non-anonymizing proxy. You must specifically enable the privacy and
- blocking features you need (although the provided default actionsfile
- file will give a good starting point).
-
- Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. For multi-valued
- actions, the actions are applied in the order they are specified.
-
- The list of valid Junkbuster "actions" are:
-
- * Add the specified HTTP header, which is not checked for validity.
- You may specify this many times to specify many different headers:
- +add-header{Name: value}
-
- * Block this URL totally.
- +block
-
- * De-animate all animated GIF images, i.e. reduce them to their last
- frame. This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes,
- not pixels!). If the option "first" is given, the first frame of
- the animation is used as the replacement. If "last" is given, the
- last frame of the animation is used instead, which propably makes
- more sense for most banner animations, but also has the risk of
- not showing the entire last frame (if it is only a delta to an
- earlier frame).
- +deanimate-gifs{last}
- +deanimate-gifs{first}
-
- * "+downgrade" will downgrade HTTP/1.1 client requests to HTTP/1.0
- and downgrade the responses as well. Use this action for servers
- that use HTTP/1.1 protocol features that Junkbuster doesn't handle
- well yet. HTTP/1.1 is only partially implemented. Default is not
- to downgrade requests.
- +downgrade
-
- * Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites.
- Instead, they will link to some script on their own server, giving
- the destination as a parameter, which will then redirect you to
- the final target. URLs resulting from this scheme typically look
- like: http://some.place/some_script?http://some.where-else.
- Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded
- in the URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browing
- more traceable, since the server from which you follow such a link
- can see where you go to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and
- time is wasted, while your browser ask the server for one redirect
- after the other. Plus, it feeds the advertisers.
- The "+fast-redirects" option enables interception of these
- requests by Junkbuster, who will cut off all but the last valid
- URL in the request and send a local redirect back to your browser
- without contacting the remote site.
- +fast-redirects
-
- * Filter the website through the re_filterfile:
- +filter{filename}
-
- * Block any existing X-Forwarded-for header, and do not add a new
- one:
- +hide-forwarded
-
- * If the browser sends a "From:" header containing your e-mail
- address, this either completely removes the header ("block"), or
- changes it to the specified e-mail address.
- +hide-from{block}
- +hide-from{spam@sittingduck.xqq}
-
- * Don't send the "Referer:" (sic) header to the web site. You can
- block it, forge a URL to the same server as the request (which is
- preferred because some sites will not send images otherwise) or
- set it to a constant string of your choice.
- +hide-referer{block}
- +hide-referer{forge}
- +hide-referer{http://nowhere.com}
-
- * Alternative spelling of "+hide-referer". It has the same
- parameters, and can be freely mixed with, "+hide-referer".
- ("referrer" is the correct English spelling, however the HTTP
- specification has a bug - it requires it to be spelled "referer".)
- +hide-referrer{...}
-
- * Change the "User-Agent:" header so web servers can't tell your
- browser type. Warning! This breaks many web sites. Specify the
- user-agent value you want. Example, pretend to be using Netscape
- on Linux:
- +hide-user-agent{Mozilla (X11; I; Linux 2.0.32 i586)}
-
- * Treat this URL as an image. This only matters if it's also
- "+block"ed, in which case a "blocked" image can be sent rather
- than a HTML page. See "+image-blocker{}" below for the control
- over what is actually sent.
- +image
-
- * Decides what to do with URLs that end up tagged with "{+block
- +image}". There are 4 options. "-image-blocker" will send a HTML
- "blocked" page, usually resulting in a "broken image" icon.
- "+image-blocker{logo}" will send a "JunkBuster" image.
- "+image-blocker{blank}" will send a 1x1 transparent GIF image. And
- finally, "+image-blocker{http://xyz.com}" will send a HTTP
- temporary redirect to the specified image. This has the advantage
- of the icon being being cached by the browser, which will speed up
- the display.
- +image-blocker{logo}
- +image-blocker{blank}
- +image-blocker{http://i.j.b/send-banner}
-
- * By default (i.e. in the absence of a "+limit-connect" action),
- Junkbuster will only allow CONNECT requests to port 443, which is
- the standard port for https as a precaution.
- The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure
- websites (https:// URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
- the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
- short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote
- proxy. This can be a big security hole, since CONNECT-enabled
- proxies can be abused as TCP relays very easily.
- If you want to allow CONNECT for more ports than this, or want to
- forbid CONNECT altogether, you can specify a comma separated list
- of ports and port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the
- minimum defaulting to 0 and max to 65K):
- +limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need no be
- specified.
- +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
- +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Port less than 3, 7, 20 to
- 100
- #and above 500 are OK.
-
- * "+no-compression" prevents the website from compressing the data.
- Some websites do this, which can be a problem for Junkbuster,
- since "+filter", "+no-popup" and "+gif-deanimate" will not work on
- compressed data. This will slow down connections to those
- websites, though. Default is "nocompression" is turned on.
- +nocompression
-
- * Prevent the website from reading cookies:
- +no-cookies-read
-
- * Prevent the website from setting cookies:
- +no-cookies-set
-
- * Filter the website through a built-in filter to disable those
- obnoxious JavaScript pop-up windows via window.open(), etc. The
- two alternative spellings are equivalent.
- +no-popup
- +no-popups
-
- * This action only applies if you are using a jarfile for saving
- cookies. It sends a cookie to every site stating that you do not
- accept any copyright on cookies sent to you, and asking them not
- to track you. Of course, this is a (relatively) unique header they
- could use to track you.
- +vanilla-wafer
-
- * This allows you to add an arbitrary cookie. It can be specified
- multiple times in order to add as many cookies as you like.
- +wafer{name=value}
-
- The meaning of any of the above is reversed by preceding the action
- with a "-", in place of the "+".
-
- Some examples:
-
- Turn off cookies by default, then allow a few through for specified
- sites:
-
- # Turn off all cookies
- { +no-cookies-read }
- { +no-cookies-set }
- # Execeptions to the above, sites that need cookies
- { -no-cookies-read }
- { -no-cookies-set }
- .javasoft.com
- .sun.com
- .yahoo.com
- .msdn.microsoft.com
- .redhat.com
- # Alternative way of saying the same thing
- {-no-cookies-set -no-cookies-read}
- .sourceforge.net
- .sf.net
-
- Now turn off "fast redirects", and then we allow two exceptions:
-
- # Turn them off!
- {+fast-redirects}
+ No textual content filtering takes place, i.e. all +filter{name} actions in
+ the actions files are turned neutral.
+
+Notes:
+
+ The filter file contains content modification rules that use regular
+ expressions. These rules permit powerful changes on the content of Web
+ pages, e.g., you could disable your favorite JavaScript annoyances,
+ re-write the actual displayed text, or just have some fun replacing
+ "Microsoft" with "MicroSuck" wherever it appears on a Web page.
+
+ The +filter{name} actions rely on the relevant filter (name) to be defined
+ in the filter file!
+
+ A pre-defined filter file called default.filter that contains a bunch of
+ handy filters for common problems is included in the distribution. See the
+ section on the filter action for a list.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.1.5. logfile
+
+Specifies:
+
+ The log file to use
+
+Type of value:
+
+ File name, relative to logdir
+
+Default value:
+
+ logfile (Unix) or privoxy.log (Windows)
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ No log file is used, all log messages go to the console (STDERR).
+
+Notes:
+
+ The logfile is where all logging and error messages are written. The level
+ of detail and number of messages are set with the debug option (see below).
+ The logfile can be useful for tracking down a problem with Privoxy (e.g.,
+ it's not blocking an ad you think it should block) but in most cases you
+ probably will never look at it.
+
+ Your logfile will grow indefinitely, and you will probably want to
+ periodically remove it. On Unix systems, you can do this with a cron job
+ (see "man cron"). For Red Hat, a logrotate script has been included.
+
+ On SuSE Linux systems, you can place a line like "/var/log/privoxy.* +1024k
+ 644 nobody.nogroup" in /etc/logfiles, with the effect that cron.daily will
+ automatically archive, gzip, and empty the log, when it exceeds 1M size.
+
+ Any log files must be writable by whatever user Privoxy is being run as
+ (default on UNIX, user id is "privoxy").
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.1.6. jarfile
+
+Specifies:
+
+ The file to store intercepted cookies in
+
+Type of value:
+
+ File name, relative to logdir
+
+Default value:
+
+ jarfile (Unix) or privoxy.jar (Windows)
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ Intercepted cookies are not stored at all.
+
+Notes:
+
+ The jarfile may grow to ridiculous sizes over time.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.1.7. trustfile
+
+Specifies:
+
+ The trust file to use
+
+Type of value:
+
+ File name, relative to confdir
+
+Default value:
+
+ Unset (commented out). When activated: trust (Unix) or trust.txt (Windows)
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ The entire trust mechanism is turned off.
+
+Notes:
+
+ The trust mechanism is an experimental feature for building white-lists and
+ should be used with care. It is NOT recommended for the casual user.
+
+ If you specify a trust file, Privoxy will only allow access to sites that
+ are specified in the trustfile. Sites can be listed in one of two ways:
+
+ Prepending a ~ character limits access to this site only (and any sub-paths
+ within this site), e.g. ~www.example.com.
+
+ Or, you can designate sites as trusted referrers, by prepending the name
+ with a + character. The effect is that access to untrusted sites will be
+ granted -- but only if a link from this trusted referrer was used. The link
+ target will then be added to the "trustfile" so that future, direct
+ accesses will be granted. Sites added via this mechanism do not become
+ trusted referrers themselves (i.e. they are added with a ~ designation).
+
+ If you use the + operator in the trust file, it may grow considerably over
+ time.
+
+ It is recommended that Privoxy be compiled with the --disable-force,
+ --disable-toggle and --disable-editor options, if this feature is to be
+ used.
+
+ Possible applications include limiting Internet access for children.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.2. Local Set-up Documentation
+
+If you intend to operate Privoxy for more users than just yourself, it might be
+a good idea to let them know how to reach you, what you block and why you do
+that, your policies, etc.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.2.1. user-manual
+
+Specifies:
+
+ Location of the Privoxy User Manual.
+
+Type of value:
+
+ A fully qualified URI
+
+Default value:
+
+ Unset
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ http://www.privoxy.org/version/user-manual/ will be used, where version is
+ the Privoxy version.
+
+Notes:
+
+ The User Manual URI is used for help links from some of the internal CGI
+ pages. The manual itself is normally packaged with the binary
+ distributions, so you probably want to set this to a locally installed
+ copy. For multi-user setups, you could provide a copy on a local webserver
+ for all your users and use the corresponding URL here.
+
+ Examples:
+
+ Unix, in local filesystem:
+
+ user-manual file:///usr/share/doc/privoxy-3.0.3/user-manual/
+
+
+ Windows, in local filesystem, must use forward slash notation:
+
+ user-manual file:/c:/some-dir/privoxy-3.0.3/user-manual/
+
+
+ Windows, UNC notation (with forward slashes):
+
+ user-manual file://///some-server/some-path/privoxy-3.0.3/user-manual/
+
+
+ Any platform, on local webserver (called "local-webserver"):
+
+ user-manual http://local-webserver/privoxy-user-manual/
+
+
+ +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
+ | Warning |
+ |-----------------------------------------------------------------|
+ |If set, this option should be the first option in the config |
+ |file, because it is used while the config file is being read. |
+ +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.2.2. trust-info-url
+
+Specifies:
+
+ A URL to be displayed in the error page that users will see if access to an
+ untrusted page is denied.
+
+Type of value:
+
+ URL
+
+Default value:
+
+ Two example URL are provided
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ No links are displayed on the "untrusted" error page.
+
+Notes:
+
+ The value of this option only matters if the experimental trust mechanism
+ has been activated. (See trustfile above.)
+
+ If you use the trust mechanism, it is a good idea to write up some on-line
+ documentation about your trust policy and to specify the URL(s) here. Use
+ multiple times for multiple URLs.
+
+ The URL(s) should be added to the trustfile as well, so users don't end up
+ locked out from the information on why they were locked out in the first
+ place!
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.2.3. admin-address
+
+Specifies:
+
+ An email address to reach the proxy administrator.
+
+Type of value:
+
+ Email address
+
+Default value:
+
+ Unset
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ No email address is displayed on error pages and the CGI user interface.
+
+Notes:
+
+ If both admin-address and proxy-info-url are unset, the whole "Local
+ Privoxy Support" box on all generated pages will not be shown.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.2.4. proxy-info-url
+
+Specifies:
+
+ A URL to documentation about the local Privoxy setup, configuration or
+ policies.
+
+Type of value:
+
+ URL
+
+Default value:
+
+ Unset
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ No link to local documentation is displayed on error pages and the CGI user
+ interface.
+
+Notes:
+
+ If both admin-address and proxy-info-url are unset, the whole "Local
+ Privoxy Support" box on all generated pages will not be shown.
+
+ This URL shouldn't be blocked ;-)
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.3. Debugging
+
+These options are mainly useful when tracing a problem. Note that you might
+also want to invoke Privoxy with the --no-daemon command line option when
+debugging.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.3.1. debug
+
+Specifies:
+
+ Key values that determine what information gets logged to the logfile.
+
+Type of value:
+
+ Integer values
+
+Default value:
+
+ 12289 (i.e.: URLs plus informational and warning messages)
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ Nothing gets logged.
+
+Notes:
+
+ The available debug levels are:
+
+ debug 1 # show each GET/POST/CONNECT request
+ debug 2 # show each connection status
+ debug 4 # show I/O status
+ debug 8 # show header parsing
+ debug 16 # log all data into the logfile
+ debug 32 # debug force feature
+ debug 64 # debug regular expression filter
+ debug 128 # debug fast redirects
+ debug 256 # debug GIF de-animation
+ debug 512 # Common Log Format
+ debug 1024 # debug kill pop-ups
+ debug 2048 # CGI user interface
+ debug 4096 # Startup banner and warnings.
+ debug 8192 # Non-fatal errors
+
+
+ To select multiple debug levels, you can either add them or use multiple
+ debug lines.
+
+ A debug level of 1 is informative because it will show you each request as
+ it happens. 1, 4096 and 8192 are highly recommended so that you will notice
+ when things go wrong. The other levels are probably only of interest if you
+ are hunting down a specific problem. They can produce a hell of an output
+ (especially 16).
+
+ The reporting of fatal errors (i.e. ones which crash Privoxy) is always on
+ and cannot be disabled.
+
+ If you want to use CLF (Common Log Format), you should set "debug 512" ONLY
+ and not enable anything else.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.3.2. single-threaded
+
+Specifies:
+
+ Whether to run only one server thread
+
+Type of value:
+
+ None
+
+Default value:
+
+ Unset
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ Multi-threaded (or, where unavailable: forked) operation, i.e. the ability
+ to serve multiple requests simultaneously.
+
+Notes:
+
+ This option is only there for debug purposes and you should never need to
+ use it. It will drastically reduce performance.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.4. Access Control and Security
+
+This section of the config file controls the security-relevant aspects of
+Privoxy's configuration.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.4.1. listen-address
+
+Specifies:
+
+ The IP address and TCP port on which Privoxy will listen for client
+ requests.
+
+Type of value:
+
+ [IP-Address]:Port
+
+Default value:
+
+ 127.0.0.1:8118
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ Bind to 127.0.0.1 (localhost), port 8118. This is suitable and recommended
+ for home users who run Privoxy on the same machine as their browser.
+
+Notes:
+
+ You will need to configure your browser(s) to this proxy address and port.
+
+ If you already have another service running on port 8118, or if you want to
+ serve requests from other machines (e.g. on your local network) as well,
+ you will need to override the default.
+
+ If you leave out the IP address, Privoxy will bind to all interfaces
+ (addresses) on your machine and may become reachable from the Internet. In
+ that case, consider using access control lists (ACL's, see below), and/or a
+ firewall.
+
+ If you open Privoxy to untrusted users, you will also want to turn off the
+ enable-edit-actions and enable-remote-toggle options!
+
+Example:
+
+ Suppose you are running Privoxy on a machine which has the address
+ 192.168.0.1 on your local private network (192.168.0.0) and has another
+ outside connection with a different address. You want it to serve requests
+ from inside only:
+
+ listen-address 192.168.0.1:8118
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.4.2. toggle
+
+Specifies:
+
+ Initial state of "toggle" status
+
+Type of value:
+
+ 1 or 0
+
+Default value:
+
+ 1
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ Act as if toggled on
+
+Notes:
+
+ If set to 0, Privoxy will start in "toggled off" mode, i.e. behave like a
+ normal, content-neutral proxy where all ad blocking, filtering, etc are
+ disabled. See enable-remote-toggle below. This is not really useful
+ anymore, since toggling is much easier via the web interface than via
+ editing the conf file.
+
+ The windows version will only display the toggle icon in the system tray if
+ this option is present.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.4.3. enable-remote-toggle
+
+Specifies:
+
+ Whether or not the web-based toggle feature may be used
+
+Type of value:
+
+ 0 or 1
+
+Default value:
+
+ 1
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ The web-based toggle feature is disabled.
+
+Notes:
+
+ When toggled off, Privoxy acts like a normal, content-neutral proxy, i.e.
+ it acts as if none of the actions applied to any URL.
+
+ For the time being, access to the toggle feature can not be controlled
+ separately by "ACLs" or HTTP authentication, so that everybody who can
+ access Privoxy (see "ACLs" and listen-address above) can toggle it for all
+ users. So this option is not recommended for multi-user environments with
+ untrusted users.
+
+ Note that you must have compiled Privoxy with support for this feature,
+ otherwise this option has no effect.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.4.4. enable-edit-actions
+
+Specifies:
+
+ Whether or not the web-based actions file editor may be used
+
+Type of value:
+
+ 0 or 1
+
+Default value:
+
+ 1
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ The web-based actions file editor is disabled.
+
+Notes:
+
+ For the time being, access to the editor can not be controlled separately
+ by "ACLs" or HTTP authentication, so that everybody who can access Privoxy
+ (see "ACLs" and listen-address above) can modify its configuration for all
+ users. So this option is not recommended for multi-user environments with
+ untrusted users.
+
+ Note that you must have compiled Privoxy with support for this feature,
+ otherwise this option has no effect.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.4.5. ACLs: permit-access and deny-access
+
+Specifies:
+
+ Who can access what.
+
+Type of value:
+
+ src_addr[/src_masklen] [dst_addr[/dst_masklen]]
+
+ Where src_addr and dst_addr are IP addresses in dotted decimal notation or
+ valid DNS names, and src_masklen and dst_masklen are subnet masks in CIDR
+ notation, i.e. integer values from 2 to 30 representing the length (in
+ bits) of the network address. The masks and the whole destination part are
+ optional.
+
+Default value:
+
+ Unset
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ Don't restrict access further than implied by listen-address
+
+Notes:
+
+ Access controls are included at the request of ISPs and systems
+ administrators, and are not usually needed by individual users. For a
+ typical home user, it will normally suffice to ensure that Privoxy only
+ listens on the localhost (127.0.0.1) or internal (home) network address by
+ means of the listen-address option.
+
+ Please see the warnings in the FAQ that this proxy is not intended to be a
+ substitute for a firewall or to encourage anyone to defer addressing basic
+ security weaknesses.
+
+ Multiple ACL lines are OK. If any ACLs are specified, then the Privoxy
+ talks only to IP addresses that match at least one permit-access line and
+ don't match any subsequent deny-access line. In other words, the last match
+ wins, with the default being deny-access.
+
+ If Privoxy is using a forwarder (see forward below) for a particular
+ destination URL, the dst_addr that is examined is the address of the
+ forwarder and NOT the address of the ultimate target. This is necessary
+ because it may be impossible for the local Privoxy to determine the IP
+ address of the ultimate target (that's often what gateways are used for).
+
+ You should prefer using IP addresses over DNS names, because the address
+ lookups take time. All DNS names must resolve! You can not use domain
+ patterns like "*.org" or partial domain names. If a DNS name resolves to
+ multiple IP addresses, only the first one is used.
+
+ Denying access to particular sites by ACL may have undesired side effects
+ if the site in question is hosted on a machine which also hosts other
+ sites.
+
+Examples:
+
+ Explicitly define the default behavior if no ACL and listen-address are
+ set: "localhost" is OK. The absence of a dst_addr implies that all
+ destination addresses are OK:
+
+ permit-access localhost
+
+
+ Allow any host on the same class C subnet as www.privoxy.org access to
+ nothing but www.example.com:
+
+ permit-access www.privoxy.org/24 www.example.com/32
+
+
+ Allow access from any host on the 26-bit subnet 192.168.45.64 to anywhere,
+ with the exception that 192.168.45.73 may not access
+ www.dirty-stuff.example.com:
+
+ permit-access 192.168.45.64/26
+ deny-access 192.168.45.73 www.dirty-stuff.example.com
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.4.6. buffer-limit
+
+Specifies:
+
+ Maximum size of the buffer for content filtering.
+
+Type of value:
+
+ Size in Kbytes
+
+Default value:
+
+ 4096
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ Use a 4MB (4096 KB) limit.
+
+Notes:
+
+ For content filtering, i.e. the +filter and +deanimate-gif actions, it is
+ necessary that Privoxy buffers the entire document body. This can be
+ potentially dangerous, since a server could just keep sending data
+ indefinitely and wait for your RAM to exhaust -- with nasty consequences.
+ Hence this option.
+
+ When a document buffer size reaches the buffer-limit, it is flushed to the
+ client unfiltered and no further attempt to filter the rest of the document
+ is made. Remember that there may be multiple threads running, which might
+ require up to buffer-limit Kbytes each, unless you have enabled
+ "single-threaded" above.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.5. Forwarding
+
+This feature allows routing of HTTP requests through a chain of multiple
+proxies. It can be used to better protect privacy and confidentiality when
+accessing specific domains by routing requests to those domains through an
+anonymous public proxy (see e.g. http://www.multiproxy.org/anon_list.htm) Or to
+use a caching proxy to speed up browsing. Or chaining to a parent proxy may be
+necessary because the machine that Privoxy runs on has no direct Internet
+access.
+
+Also specified here are SOCKS proxies. Privoxy supports the SOCKS 4 and SOCKS
+4A protocols.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.5.1. forward
+
+Specifies:
+
+ To which parent HTTP proxy specific requests should be routed.
+
+Type of value:
+
+ target_pattern http_parent[:port]
+
+ where target_pattern is a URL pattern that specifies to which requests
+ (i.e. URLs) this forward rule shall apply. Use / to denote "all URLs".
+ http_parent[:port] is the DNS name or IP address of the parent HTTP proxy
+ through which the requests should be forwarded, optionally followed by its
+ listening port (default: 8080). Use a single dot (.) to denote "no
+ forwarding".
+
+Default value:
+
+ Unset
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ Don't use parent HTTP proxies.
+
+Notes:
+
+ If http_parent is ".", then requests are not forwarded to another HTTP
+ proxy but are made directly to the web servers.
+
+ Multiple lines are OK, they are checked in sequence, and the last match
+ wins.
+
+Examples:
+
+ Everything goes to an example anonymizing proxy, except SSL on port 443
+ (which it doesn't handle):
+
+ forward / anon-proxy.example.org:8080
+ forward :443 .
+
+
+ Everything goes to our example ISP's caching proxy, except for requests to
+ that ISP's sites:
+
+ forward / caching-proxy.example-isp.net:8000
+ forward .example-isp.net .
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.5.2. forward-socks4 and forward-socks4a
+
+Specifies:
+
+ Through which SOCKS proxy (and to which parent HTTP proxy) specific
+ requests should be routed.
+
+Type of value:
+
+ target_pattern socks_proxy[:port] http_parent[:port]
+
+ where target_pattern is a URL pattern that specifies to which requests
+ (i.e. URLs) this forward rule shall apply. Use / to denote "all URLs".
+ http_parent and socks_proxy are IP addresses in dotted decimal notation or
+ valid DNS names (http_parent may be "." to denote "no HTTP forwarding"),
+ and the optional port parameters are TCP ports, i.e. integer values from 1
+ to 64535
+
+Default value:
+
+ Unset
+
+Effect if unset:
+
+ Don't use SOCKS proxies.
+
+Notes:
+
+ Multiple lines are OK, they are checked in sequence, and the last match
+ wins.
+
+ The difference between forward-socks4 and forward-socks4a is that in the
+ SOCKS 4A protocol, the DNS resolution of the target hostname happens on the
+ SOCKS server, while in SOCKS 4 it happens locally.
+
+ If http_parent is ".", then requests are not forwarded to another HTTP
+ proxy but are made (HTTP-wise) directly to the web servers, albeit through
+ a SOCKS proxy.
+
+Examples:
+
+ From the company example.com, direct connections are made to all "internal"
+ domains, but everything outbound goes through their ISP's proxy by way of
+ example.com's corporate SOCKS 4A gateway to the Internet.
+
+ forward-socks4a / socks-gw.example.com:1080 www-cache.example-isp.net:8080
+ forward .example.com .
+
+
+ A rule that uses a SOCKS 4 gateway for all destinations but no HTTP parent
+ looks like this:
+
+ forward-socks4 / socks-gw.example.com:1080 .
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.5.3. Advanced Forwarding Examples
+
+If you have links to multiple ISPs that provide various special content only to
+their subscribers, you can configure multiple Privoxies which have connections
+to the respective ISPs to act as forwarders to each other, so that your users
+can see the internal content of all ISPs.
+
+Assume that host-a has a PPP connection to isp-a.net. And host-b has a PPP
+connection to isp-b.net. Both run Privoxy. Their forwarding configuration can
+look like this:
+
+host-a:
+
+ forward / .
+ forward .isp-b.net host-b:8118
+
+
+host-b:
+
+ forward / .
+ forward .isp-a.net host-a:8118
+
+
+Now, your users can set their browser's proxy to use either host-a or host-b
+and be able to browse the internal content of both isp-a and isp-b.
+
+If you intend to chain Privoxy and squid locally, then chain as browser ->
+squid -> privoxy is the recommended way.
+
+Assuming that Privoxy and squid run on the same box, your squid configuration
+could then look like this:
+
+ # Define Privoxy as parent proxy (without ICP)
+ cache_peer 127.0.0.1 parent 8118 7 no-query
+
+ # Define ACL for protocol FTP
+ acl ftp proto FTP
+
+ # Do not forward FTP requests to Privoxy
+ always_direct allow ftp
+
+ # Forward all the rest to Privoxy
+ never_direct allow all
+
+
+You would then need to change your browser's proxy settings to squid's address
+and port. Squid normally uses port 3128. If unsure consult http_port in
+squid.conf.
+
+You could just as well decide to only forward requests for Windows executables
+through a virus-scanning parent proxy, say, on antivir.example.com, port 8010:
+
+ forward / .
+ forward /.*\.(exe|com|dll|zip)$ antivir.example.com:8010
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+7.6. Windows GUI Options
+
+Privoxy has a number of options specific to the Windows GUI interface:
+
+If "activity-animation" is set to 1, the Privoxy icon will animate when
+"Privoxy" is active. To turn off, set to 0.
+
+ activity-animation 1
+
+
+If "log-messages" is set to 1, Privoxy will log messages to the console window:
+
+ log-messages 1
+
+
+If "log-buffer-size" is set to 1, the size of the log buffer, i.e. the amount
+of memory used for the log messages displayed in the console window, will be
+limited to "log-max-lines" (see below).
+
+Warning: Setting this to 0 will result in the buffer to grow infinitely and eat
+up all your memory!
+
+ log-buffer-size 1
+
+
+log-max-lines is the maximum number of lines held in the log buffer. See above.
+
+ log-max-lines 200
+
+
+If "log-highlight-messages" is set to 1, Privoxy will highlight portions of the
+log messages with a bold-faced font:
+
+ log-highlight-messages 1
+
+
+The font used in the console window:
+
+ log-font-name Comic Sans MS
+
+
+Font size used in the console window:
+
+ log-font-size 8
+
+
+"show-on-task-bar" controls whether or not Privoxy will appear as a button on
+the Task bar when minimized:
+
+ show-on-task-bar 0
+
+
+If "close-button-minimizes" is set to 1, the Windows close button will minimize
+Privoxy instead of closing the program (close with the exit option on the File
+menu).
+
+ close-button-minimizes 1
+
+
+The "hide-console" option is specific to the MS-Win console version of Privoxy.
+If this option is used, Privoxy will disconnect from and hide the command
+console.
+
+ #hide-console
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8. Actions Files
+
+The actions files are used to define what actions Privoxy takes for which URLs,
+and thus determine how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP
+content and transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts
+thereof). There are three such files included with Privoxy with differing
+purposes:
+
+ * default.action - is the primary action file that sets the initial values
+ for all actions. It is intended to provide a base level of functionality
+ for Privoxy's array of features. So it is a set of broad rules that should
+ work reasonably well for users everywhere. This is the file that the
+ developers are keeping updated, and making available to users.
+
+ * user.action - is intended to be for local site preferences and exceptions.
+ As an example, if your ISP or your bank has specific requirements, and need
+ special handling, this kind of thing should go here. This file will not be
+ upgraded.
+
+ * standard.action - is used by the web based editor, to set various
+ pre-defined sets of rules for the default actions section in
+ default.action. These have increasing levels of aggressiveness and have no
+ influence on your browsing unless you select them explicitly in the editor.
+ It is not recommend to edit this file.
+
+ The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
+ standard.action are:
+
+ Table 1. Default Configurations
+
+ +------------------------------------------------------------+
+ | Feature | Cautious | Medium |Adventuresome|
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |Ad-blocking by URL |yes |yes |yes |
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |Ad-filtering by size |yes |yes |yes |
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |GIF de-animation |no |yes |yes |
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |Referer forging |no |yes |yes |
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |Cookie handling |none |session-only|kill |
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |Pop-up killing |unsolicited|unsolicited |all |
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |Fast redirects |no |no |yes |
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |HTML taming |yes |yes |yes |
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |JavaScript taming |yes |yes |yes |
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |Web-bug killing |yes |yes |yes |
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |Fun text replacements|no |no |yes |
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |Image tag reordering |no |no |yes |
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |Ad-filtering by link |no |no |yes |
+ |---------------------+-----------+------------+-------------|
+ |Demoronizer |no |no |yes |
+ +------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
+file, and are processed in the order they are defined (e.g. default.action is
+typically process before user.action). The content of these can all be viewed
+and edited from http://config.privoxy.org/show-status.
+
+An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use "aliases"
+in an actions file, you have to place the (optional) alias section at the top
+of that file. Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally
+to all sites and pages (be very careful with using such a universal set in
+user.action or any other actions file after default.action, because it will
+override the result from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
+exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard user.action as an
+appendix to default.action, with the advantage that is a separate file, which
+makes preserving your personal settings across Privoxy upgrades easier.
+
+Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or just
+some obnoxious URL that you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted or
+rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not written
+to disk), content can be modified, JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking fooled, and
+much more. See below for a complete list of actions.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.1. Finding the Right Mix
+
+Note that some actions, like cookie suppression or script disabling, may render
+some sites unusable that rely on these techniques to work properly. Finding the
+right mix of actions is not always easy and certainly a matter of personal
+taste. In general, it can be said that the more "aggressive" your default
+settings (in the top section of the actions file) are, the more exceptions for
+"trusted" sites you will have to make later. If, for example, you want to
+crunch all cookies per default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule
+for sites that you regularly use and that require cookies for actually useful
+puposes, like maybe your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
+
+We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
+distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
+things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
+Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again
+:).
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.2. How to Edit
+
+The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by using our
+browser-based editor, which can be reached from http://config.privoxy.org/
+show-status. The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single
+feature on a per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults
+like "Cautious", "Medium" or "Adventuresome". Warning: the "Adventuresome"
+setting is not only more aggressive, but includes settings that are fun and
+subversive, and which some may find of dubious merit!
+
+If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit
+the the actions files. Look at default.action which is richly commented.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.3. How Actions are Applied to URLs
+
+Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections, like the "
+alias" sections which will be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on
+regular sections: They have a heading line (often split up to multiple lines
+for readability) which consist of a list of actions, separated by whitespace
+and enclosed in curly braces. Below that, there is a list of URL patterns, each
+on a separate line.
+
+To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
+compared to all patterns in each action file file. Every time it matches, the
+list of applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated, using the
+heading of the section in which the pattern is located. If multiple matches for
+the same URL set the same action differently, the last match wins. If not, the
+effects are aggregated. E.g. a URL might match a regular section with a heading
+line of { +handle-as-image }, then later another one with just { +block },
+resulting in both actions to apply.
+
+You can trace this process for any given URL by visiting http://
+config.privoxy.org/show-url-info.
+
+More detail on this is provided in the Appendix, Anatomy of an Action.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.4. Patterns
+
+As mentioned, Privoxy uses "patterns" to determine what actions might apply to
+which sites and pages your browser attempts to access. These "patterns" use
+wild card type pattern matching to achieve a high degree of flexibility. This
+allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match against many similar
+patterns.
+
+Generally, a Privoxy pattern has the form <domain>/<path>, where both the
+<domain> and <path> are optional. (This is why the special / pattern matches
+all URLs). Note that the protocol portion of the URL pattern (e.g. http://)
+should not be included in the pattern. This is assumed already!
+
+www.example.com/
+
+ is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to www.example.com,
+ regardless of which document on that server is requested.
+
+www.example.com
+
+ means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing / may be
+ omitted.
+
+www.example.com/index.html
+
+ matches only the single document /index.html on www.example.com.
+
+/index.html
+
+ matches the document /index.html, regardless of the domain, i.e. on any web
+ server.
+
+index.html
+
+ matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and there
+ is no top-level domain called .html.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.4.1. The Domain Pattern
+
+The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the domain
+starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end. For example:
+
+.example.com
+
+ matches any domain that ENDS in .example.com
+
+www.
+
+ matches any domain that STARTS with www.
+
+.example.
+
+ matches any domain that CONTAINS .example. (Correctly speaking: It matches
+ any FQDN that contains example as a domain.)
+
+Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
+themselves. They work pretty similar to shell wild-cards: "*" stands for zero
+or more arbitrary characters, "?" stands for any single character, you can
+define character classes in square brackets and all of that can be freely
+mixed:
+
+ad*.example.com
+
+ matches "adserver.example.com", "ads.example.com", etc but not
+ "sfads.example.com"
+
+*ad*.example.com
+
+ matches all of the above, and then some.
+
+.?pix.com
+
+ matches www.ipix.com, pictures.epix.com, a.b.c.d.e.upix.com etc.
+
+www[1-9a-ez].example.c*
+
+ matches www1.example.com, www4.example.cc, wwwd.example.cy,
+ wwwz.example.com etc., but not wwww.example.com.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.4.2. The Path Pattern
+
+Privoxy uses Perl compatible regular expressions (through the PCRE library) for
+matching the path.
+
+There is an Appendix with a brief quick-start into regular expressions, and
+full (very technical) documentation on PCRE regex syntax is available on-line
+at http://www.pcre.org/man.txt. You might also find the Perl man page on
+regular expressions (man perlre) useful, which is available on-line at http://
+www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html.
+
+Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the "/", i.e. it
+matches as if it would start with a "^" (regular expression speak for the
+beginning of a line).
+
+Please also note that matching in the path is CASE INSENSITIVE by default, but
+you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the "(?
+-i)" switch: www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.* will match only documents whose
+path starts with PaTtErN in exactly this capitalization.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5. Actions
+
+All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
+somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a "+", and
+turned off if preceded with a "-". So a +action means "do that action", e.g.
++block means "please block URLs that match the following patterns", and -block
+means "don't block URLs that match the following patterns, even if +block
+previously applied."
+
+Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces
+and separated by whitespace, like in {+some-action -some-other-action
+{some-parameter}}, followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which
+they apply. Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up
+a section of the actions file.
+
+There are three classes of actions:
+
+ * Boolean, i.e the action can only be "enabled" or "disabled". Syntax:
+
+ +name # enable action name
+ -name # disable action name
+
+
+ Example: +block
+
+ * Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of
+ action. Syntax:
+
+ +name{param} # enable action and set parameter to param,
+ # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
+ -name # disable action. The parameter can be omitted
+
+
+ Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized
+ action, the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are
+ simply ignored.
+
+ Example: +hide-user-agent{ Mozilla 1.0 }
+
+ * Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions, but they behave
+ differently: If the action applies multiple times to the same URL, but with
+ different parameters, all the parameters from all matches are remembered.
+ This is used for actions that can be executed for the same request
+ repeatedly, like adding multiple headers, or filtering through multiple
+ filters. Syntax:
+
+ +name{param} # enable action and add param to the list of parameters
+ -name{param} # remove the parameter param from the list of parameters
+ # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
+ -name # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list
+
+
+ Examples: +add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text} and +filter{html-annoyances}
+
+If nothing is specified in any actions file, no "actions" are taken. So in this
+case Privoxy would just be a normal, non-blocking, non-anonymizing proxy. You
+must specifically enable the privacy and blocking features you need (although
+the provided default actions files will give a good starting point).
+
+Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. So exceptions to any rules
+you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or in a file that is
+processed later when using multiple actions files). For multi-valued actions,
+the actions are applied in the order they are specified. Actions files are
+processed in the order they are defined in config (the default installation has
+three actions files). It also quite possible for any given URL pattern to match
+more than one pattern and thus more than one set of actions!
+
+The list of valid Privoxy actions are:
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.1. add-header
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Confuse log analysis, custom applications
+
+Effect:
+
+ Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
+
+Type:
+
+ Multi-value.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not
+ checked. It is recommended that you use the "X-" prefix for custom headers.
+
+Notes:
+
+ This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
+ headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
+ "HTTP headers" are, you definitely don't need to worry about this one.
+
+Example usage:
+
+ +add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.2. block
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Block ads or other obnoxious content
+
+Effect:
+
+ Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the
+ requests are not forwarded to the remote server, but answered locally with
+ a substitute page or image, as determined by the handle-as-image and
+ set-image-blocker actions.
+
+Type:
+
+ Boolean.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ N/A
+
+Notes:
+
+ Privoxy sends a special "BLOCKED" page for requests to blocked pages. This
+ page contains links to find out why the request was blocked, and a
+ click-through to the blocked content (the latter only if compiled with the
+ force feature enabled). The "BLOCKED" page adapts to the available screen
+ space -- it displays full-blown if space allows, or miniaturized and
+ text-only if loaded into a small frame or window. If you are using Privoxy
+ right now, you can take a look at the "BLOCKED" page.
+
+ A very important exception occurs if both block and handle-as-image, apply
+ to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
+ set-image-blocker (see below) also applies, the type of image will be
+ determined by its parameter, if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is
+ sent.
+
+ It is important to understand this process, in order to understand how
+ Privoxy deals with ads and other unwanted content.
+
+ The filter action can perform a very similar task, by "blocking" banner
+ images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
+ document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
+ Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse
+ the two.
+
+Example usage (section):
+
+ {+block} # Block and replace with "blocked" page
+ .nasty-stuff.example.com
+
+ {+block +handle-as-image} # Block and replace with image
+ .ad.doubleclick.net
+ .ads.r.us
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.3. crunch-incoming-cookies
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Prevent the web server from setting any cookies on your system
+
+Effect:
+
+ Deletes any "Set-Cookie:" HTTP headers from server replies.
+
+Type:
+
+ Boolean.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ N/A
+
+Notes:
+
+ This action is only concerned with incoming cookies. For outgoing cookies,
+ use crunch-outgoing-cookies. Use both to disable cookies completely.
+
+ It makes no sense at all to use this action in conjunction with the
+ session-cookies-only action, since it would prevent the session cookies
+ from being set. See also filter-content-cookies.
+
+Example usage:
+
+ +crunch-incoming-cookies
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.4. crunch-outgoing-cookies
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Prevent the web server from reading any cookies from your system
+
+Effect:
+
+ Deletes any "Cookie:" HTTP headers from client requests.
+
+Type:
+
+ Boolean.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ N/A
+
+Notes:
+
+ This action is only concerned with outgoing cookies. For incoming cookies,
+ use crunch-incoming-cookies. Use both to disable cookies completely.
+
+ It makes no sense at all to use this action in conjunction with the
+ session-cookies-only action, since it would prevent the session cookies
+ from being read.
+
+Example usage:
+
+ +crunch-outgoing-cookies
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.5. deanimate-gifs
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.
+
+Effect:
+
+ De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
+
+Type:
+
+ Parameterized.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ "last" or "first"
+
+Notes:
+
+ This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
+ the option "first" is given, the first frame of the animation is used as
+ the replacement. If "last" is given, the last frame of the animation is
+ used instead, which probably makes more sense for most banner animations,
+ but also has the risk of not showing the entire last frame (if it is only a
+ delta to an earlier frame).
+
+ You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
+ objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
+ a GIF.
+
+Example usage:
+
+ +deanimate-gifs{last}
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.6. downgrade-http-version
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1
+
+Effect:
+
+ Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
+
+Type:
+
+ Boolean.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ N/A
+
+Notes:
+
+ This is a left-over from the time when Privoxy didn't support important
+ HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the unlikely case that you
+ experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server out there. Not all
+ (optional) HTTP/1.1 features are supported yet, so there is a chance you
+ might need this action.
+
+Example usage (section):
+
+ {+downgrade-http-version}
+ problem-host.example.com
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.7. fast-redirects
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links
+
+Effect:
+
+ Cut off all but the last valid URL from requests.
+
+Type:
+
+ Boolean.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ N/A
+
+Notes:
+
+ Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
+ will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
+ parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs resulting
+ from this scheme typically look like: http://some.place/click-tracker.cgi?
+ target=http://some.where.else.
+
+ Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
+ URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
+ since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go to.
+ Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your browser
+ ask the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds the
+ advertisers.
+
+ This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
+ It is likely to break some sites. You should expect to need possibly many
+ exceptions to this action, if it is enabled by default in default.action.
+ Some sites just don't work without it.
+
+Example usage:
+
+ {+fast-redirects}
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.8. filter
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
+ do fun text replacements, etc.
+
+Effect:
+
+ All files of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which
+ this action applies, are filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular
+ expression based substitutions. (Note: as of version 3.0.3 plain text
+ documents are exempted from filtering, because web servers often use the
+ text/plain MIME type for all files whose type they don't know.)
+
+Type:
+
+ Parameterized.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ The name of a filter, as defined in the filter file (typically
+ default.filter, set by the filterfile option in the config file). When used
+ in its negative form, and without parameters, filtering is completely
+ disabled.
+
+Notes:
+
+ For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
+ in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below
+ for a list.
+
+ Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to slow
+ down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has passed
+ the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way since the
+ page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more noticeable
+ on slower connections.
+
+ This is very powerful feature, but "rolling your own" filters requires a
+ knowledge of regular expressions and HTML.
+
+ The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the buffer-limit
+ option in the main config file. The default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this
+ limit is exceeded, the buffered data, and all pending data, is passed
+ through unfiltered.
+
+ Inadequate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
+ (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data (from
+ HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate the
+ integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might be
+ necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering by
+ defining appropriate -filter sections.
+
+ At this time, Privoxy cannot (yet!) uncompress compressed documents. If you
+ want filtering to work on all documents, even those that would normally be
+ sent compressed, use the prevent-compression action in conjunction with
+ filter.
+
+ Filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the block action, i.e. it
+ can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism works quite
+ differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners based on their size
+ (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat standardized.
+
+ Feedback with suggestions for new or improved filters is particularly
+ welcome!
+
+ The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
+ predefined filter. There are more verbose explanations of what these
+ filters do in the filter file chapter.
+
+Example usage (with filters from the distribution default.filter file). See the
+ Predefined Filters section for more explanation on each:
+
+ +filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
+
+
+ +filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites)
+
+
+ +filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse
+
+
+ +filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content
+
+
+ +filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups)
+
+
+ +filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows
+
+
+ +filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML
+
+
+ +filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective
+
+
+ +filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size
+
+
+ +filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers
+
+
+ +filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)
+
+
+ +filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap
+
+
+ +filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves
+
+
+ +filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizable
+
+
+ +filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets
+
+
+ +filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects
+
+
+ +filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies saveable
+
+
+ +filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!
+
+
+ +filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering (demo only)
+
+
+ +filter{ie-exploits} # Disable some known Internet Explorer bug exploits
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.9. handle-as-image
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images if they
+ get blocked)
+
+Effect:
+
+ This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as
+ images. If the block action also applies, the presence or absence of this
+ mark decides whether an HTML "blocked" page, or a replacement image (as
+ determined by the set-image-blocker action) will be sent to the client as a
+ substitute for the blocked content.
+
+Type:
+
+ Boolean.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ N/A
+
+Notes:
+
+ The below generic example section is actually part of default.action. It
+ marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and
+ should be left intact.
+
+ Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in
+ conjunction with block, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
+ reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
+
+ Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For
+ instance, (in-line) ad frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they
+ won't display properly. Forcing handle-as-image in this situation will not
+ replace the ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
+
+Example usage (sections):
+
+ # Generic image extensions:
+ #
+ {+handle-as-image}
+ /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
+
+ # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
+ # blocked as images:
+ #
+ {+block +handle-as-image}
+ some.nasty-banner-server.com/junk.cgi?output=trash
+
+ # Banner source! Who cares if they also have non-image content?
+ ad.doubleclick.net
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.10. hide-forwarded-for-headers
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Improve privacy by hiding the true source of the request
+
+Effect:
+
+ Deletes any existing "X-Forwarded-for:" HTTP header from client requests,
+ and prevents adding a new one.
+
+Type:
+
+ Boolean.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ N/A
+
+Notes:
+
+ It is fairly safe to leave this on.
+
+ This action is scheduled for improvement: It should be able to generate
+ forged "X-Forwarded-for:" headers using random IP addresses from a
+ specified network, to make successive requests from the same client look
+ like requests from a pool of different users sharing the same proxy.
+
+Example usage:
+
+ +hide-forwarded-for-headers
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.11. hide-from-header
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address
+
+Effect:
+
+ Deletes any existing "From:" HTTP header, or replaces it with the specified
+ string.
+
+Type:
+
+ Parameterized.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ Keyword: "block", or any user defined value.
+
+Notes:
+
+ The keyword "block" will completely remove the header (not to be confused
+ with the block action).
+
+ Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
+ server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
+ is actually used by a real person.
+
+ This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send "From:"
+ headers anymore.
+
+Example usage:
+
+ +hide-from-header{block}
+
+
+ or
+
+ +hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.12. hide-referrer
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site
+
+Effect:
+
+ Deletes the "Referer:" (sic) HTTP header from the client request, or
+ replaces it with a forged one.
+
+Type:
+
+ Parameterized.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ + "block" to delete the header completely.
+
+ + "forge" to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are
+ talking to.
+
+ + Any other string to set a user defined referrer.
+
+Notes:
+
+ "forge" is the preferred option here, since some servers will not send
+ images back otherwise, in an attempt to prevent their valuable content from
+ being embedded elsewhere (and hence, without being surrounded by their
+ banners).
+
+ hide-referer is an alternate spelling of hide-referrer and the two can be
+ can be freely substituted with each other. ("referrer" is the correct
+ English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it requires it
+ to be spelled as "referer".)
+
+Example usage:
+
+ +hide-referrer{forge}
+
+
+ or
+
+ +hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.13. hide-user-agent
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Conceal your type of browser and client operating system
+
+Effect:
+
+ Replaces the value of the "User-Agent:" HTTP header in client requests with
+ the specified value.
+
+Type:
+
+ Parameterized.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ Any user-defined string.
+
+Notes:
+
+ +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
+ | Warning |
+ |-----------------------------------------------------------------|
+ |This breaks many web sites that depend on looking at this header |
+ |in order to customize their content for different browsers |
+ |(which, by the way, is NOT a smart way to do that!). |
+ +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+ Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
+ browsers will access the same Privoxy is not recommended. In single-user,
+ single-browser setups, you might use it to delete your OS version
+ information from the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known
+ bugs for your OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to
+ access sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
+ reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not let Mozilla
+ enter, yet forging to a Netscape 6.1 user-agent works just fine. (Must be
+ just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
+
+ This action is scheduled for improvement.
+
+Example usage:
+
+ +hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.14. kill-popups
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Eliminate those annoying pop-up windows (deprecated)
+
+Effect:
+
+ While loading the document, replace JavaScript code that opens pop-up
+ windows with (syntactically neutral) dummy code on the fly.
+
+Type:
+
+ Boolean.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ N/A
+
+Notes:
+
+ This action is basically a built-in, hardwired special-purpose filter
+ action, but there are important differences: For kill-popups, the document
+ need not be buffered, so it can be incrementally rendered while
+ downloading. But kill-popups doesn't catch as many pop-ups as filter
+ {all-popups} does and is not as smart as filter{unsolicited-popups} is.
+
+ Think of it as a fast and efficient replacement for a filter that you can
+ use if you don't want any filtering at all. Note that it doesn't make sense
+ to combine it with any filter action, since as soon as one filter applies,
+ the whole document needs to be buffered anyway, which destroys the
+ advantage of the kill-popups action over its filter equivalent.
+
+ Killing all pop-ups unconditionally is problematic. Many shops and banks
+ rely on pop-ups to display forms, shopping carts etc, and the filter
+ {unsolicited-popups} does a fairly good job of catching only the unwanted
+ ones.
+
+ If the only kind of pop-ups that you want to kill are exit consoles (those
+ really nasty windows that appear when you close an other one), you might
+ want to use filter{js-annoyances} instead.
+
+Example usage:
+
+ +kill-popups
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.15. limit-connect
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Prevent abuse of Privoxy as a TCP proxy relay
+
+Effect:
+
+ Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
+
+Type:
+
+ Parameterized.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes,
+ with the minimum defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
+
+Notes:
+
+ By default, i.e. if no limit-connect action applies, Privoxy only allows
+ HTTP CONNECT requests to port 443 (the standard, secure HTTPS port). Use
+ limit-connect if more fine-grained control is desired for some or all
+ destinations.
+
+ The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
+ ("https://" URLs) through proxies. It works very simply: the proxy connects
+ to the server on the specified port, and then short-circuits its
+ connections to the client and to the remote server. This can be a big
+ security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can be abused as TCP relays
+ very easily.
+
+ If you don't know what any of this means, there probably is no reason to
+ change this one, since the default is already very restrictive.
+
+Example usages:
+
+ +limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need not be specified.
+ +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
+ +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
+ +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK (gaping security hole!)
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.16. prevent-compression
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be passed
+ through filters
+
+Effect:
+
+ Adds a header to the request that asks for uncompressed transfer.
+
+Type:
+
+ Boolean.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ N/A
+
+Notes:
+
+ More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which is
+ generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But for the filter,
+ deanimate-gifs and kill-popups actions to work, Privoxy needs access to the
+ uncompressed data. Unfortunately, Privoxy can't yet(!) uncompress, filter,
+ and re-compress the content on the fly. So if you want to ensure that all
+ websites, including those that normally compress, can be filtered, you need
+ to use this action.
+
+ This will slow down transfers from those websites, though. If you use any
+ of the above-mentioned actions, you will typically want to use
+ prevent-compression in conjunction with them.
+
+ Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for
+ uncompressed documents correctly (they send an empty document body). If you
+ use prevent-compression per default, you'll have to add exceptions for
+ those sites. See the example for how to do that.
+
+Example usage (sections):
+
+ # Set default:
+ #
+ {+prevent-compression}
+ / # Match all sites
+
+ # Make exceptions for ill sites:
+ #
+ {-prevent-compression}
+ www.debianhelp.org
+ www.pclinuxonline.com
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.17. send-vanilla-wafer
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Feed log analysis scripts with useless data.
+
+Effect:
+
+ Sends a cookie with each request stating that you do not accept any
+ copyright on cookies sent to you, and asking the site operator not to track
+ you.
+
+Type:
+
+ Boolean.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ N/A
+
+Notes:
+
+ The vanilla wafer is a (relatively) unique header and could conceivably be
+ used to track you.
+
+ This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
+
+Example usage:
+
+ +send-vanilla-wafer
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.18. send-wafer
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Send custom cookies or feed log analysis scripts with even more useless
+ data.
+
+Effect:
+
+ Sends a custom, user-defined cookie with each request.
+
+Type:
+
+ Multi-value.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ A string of the form "name=value".
+
+Notes:
+
+ Being multi-valued, multiple instances of this action can apply to the same
+ request, resulting in multiple cookies being sent.
+
+ This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
+
+Example usage (section):
+
+ {+send-wafer{UsingPrivoxy=true}}
+ my-internal-testing-server.void
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.19. session-cookies-only
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Allow only temporary "session" cookies (for the current browser session
+ only).
+
+Effect:
+
+ Deletes the "expires" field from "Set-Cookie:" server headers. Most
+ browsers will not store such cookies permanently and forget them in between
+ sessions.
+
+Type:
+
+ Boolean.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ N/A
+
+Notes:
+
+ This is less strict than crunch-incoming-cookies / crunch-outgoing-cookies
+ and allows you to browse websites that insist or rely on setting cookies,
+ without compromising your privacy too badly.
+
+ Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed
+ by session-cookies-only and will forget about them between sessions. This
+ makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require
+ cookies so that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned
+ on for all sites, and is the recommended setting.
+
+ It makes no sense at all to use session-cookies-only together with
+ crunch-incoming-cookies or crunch-outgoing-cookies. If you do, cookies will
+ be plainly killed.
+
+ Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an
+ "expires" field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out
+ to be sure.
+
+ This setting also has no effect on cookies that may have been stored
+ previously by the browser before starting Privoxy. These would have to be
+ removed manually.
+
+ Privoxy also uses the content-cookies filter to block some types of
+ cookies. Content cookies are not effected by session-cookies-only.
+
+Example usage:
+
+ +session-cookies-only
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.20. set-image-blocker
+
+Typical use:
+
+ Choose the replacement for blocked images
+
+Effect:
+
+ This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If both block and
+ handle-as-image also apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an
+ image, then the parameter of this action decides what will be sent as a
+ replacement.
+
+Type:
+
+ Parameterized.
+
+Parameter:
+
+ + "pattern" to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is
+ visually decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners
+ were busted.
+
+ + "blank" to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners
+ disappear completely, but makes it hard to detect where Privoxy has
+ blocked images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if
+ Privoxy has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
+
+ + "target-url" to send a redirect to target-url. You can redirect to any
+ image anywhere, even in your local filesystem (via "file:///" URL).
+
+ A good application of redirects is to use special Privoxy-built-in
+ URLs, which send the built-in images, as target-url. This has the same
+ visual effect as specifying "blank" or "pattern" in the first place,
+ but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of
+ requesting it over and over again.
+
+Notes:
+
+ The URLs for the built-in images are "http://config.privoxy.org/
+ send-banner?type=type", where type is either "blank" or "pattern".
+
+ There is a third (advanced) type, called "auto". It is NOT to be used in
+ set-image-blocker, but meant for use from filters. Auto will select the
+ type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an
+ image.
+
+Example usage:
+
+ Built-in pattern:
+
+ +set-image-blocker{pattern}
+
+
+ Redirect to the BSD devil:
+
+ +set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}
+
+
+ Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
+
+ +set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.5.21. Summary
+
+Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
+misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways a site
+designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header content, and other
+criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard and fast rules for all
+sites. See the Appendix for a brief example on troubleshooting actions.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.6. Aliases
+
+Custom "actions", known to Privoxy as "aliases", can be defined by combining
+other actions. These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
+Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab, "=", "{"
+and "}", but we strongly recommend that you only use "a" to "z", "0" to "9",
+"+", and "-". Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start
+with a "+" or "-" sign, since they are merely textually expanded.
+
+Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they must be defined in a
+special section at the top of the file! And there can only be one such section
+per actions file. Each actions file may have its own alias section, and the
+aliases defined in it are only visible within that file.
+
+There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
+used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
+decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called "shop",
+you can later change your policy on shops in one place, and your changes will
+take effect everywhere in the actions file where the "shop" alias is used.
+Calling aliases by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
+
+Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though: Privoxy's
+built-in web-based action file editor honors aliases when reading the actions
+files, but it expands them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are
+of course preserved, but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections
+that use aliases with it. This is likely to change in future versions of
+Privoxy.
+
+Now let's define some aliases...
+
+ # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
+ #
+ # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
+ # must be at the top of the actions file!
+ #
+ {{alias}}
+
+ # These aliases just save typing later:
+ # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
+ #
+ +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
+ -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
+ block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
+ mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only -filter{content-cookies}
+
+ # These aliases define combinations of actions
+ # that are useful for certain types of sites:
+ #
+ fragile = -block -filter -crunch-all-cookies -fast-redirects -hide-referrer -kill-popups
+ shop = -crunch-all-cookies -filter{all-popups} -kill-popups
+
+ # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
+ #
+ c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
+ c1 = -crunch-all-cookies
+
+
+...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
+actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
+up for the "/" pattern):
+
+ # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
+ # user data and require minimal interference to work:
+ #
+ {fragile}
+ .office.microsoft.com
+ .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
+ .nytimes.com
+
+ # Shopping sites:
+ # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
+ #
+ {shop}
+ .quietpc.com
+ .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
+ .scan.co.uk
+
+ # These shops require pop-ups:
+ #
+ {shop -kill-popups -filter{all-popups}}
+ .dabs.com
+ .overclockers.co.uk
+
+
+Aliases like "shop" and "fragile" are often used for "problem" sites that
+require some actions to be disabled in order to function properly.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.7. Actions Files Tutorial
+
+The above chapters have shown which actions files there are and how they are
+organized, how actions are specified and applied to URLs, how patterns work,
+and how to define and use aliases. Now, let's look at an example default.action
+and user.action file and see how all these pieces come together:
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.7.1. default.action
+
+Every config file should start with a short comment stating its purpose:
+
+# Sample default.action file <developers@privoxy.org>
+
+
+Then, since this is the default.action file, the first section is a special
+section for internal use that you needn't change or worry about:
+
+##########################################################################
+# Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
+##########################################################################
+
+{{settings}}
+for-privoxy-version=3.0
+
+
+After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example section
+from the above chapter on aliases, that also explains why and how aliases are
+used:
+
+##########################################################################
+# Aliases
+##########################################################################
+{{alias}}
+
+ # These aliases just save typing later:
+ # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
+ #
+ +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
+ -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
+ block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
+ mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only -filter{content-cookies}
+
+ # These aliases define combinations of actions
+ # that are useful for certain types of sites:
+ #
+ fragile = -block -filter -crunch-all-cookies -fast-redirects -hide-referrer -kill-popups
+ shop = -crunch-all-cookies -filter{all-popups} -kill-popups
+
+
+Now come the regular sections, i.e. sets of actions, accompanied by URL
+patterns to which they apply. Remember all actions are disabled when matching
+starts, so we have to explicitly enable the ones we want.
+
+The first regular section is probably the most important. It has only one
+pattern, "/", but this pattern matches all URLs. Therefore, the set of actions
+used in this "default" section will be applied to all requests as a start. It
+can be partly or wholly overridden by later matches further down this file, or
+in user.action, but it will still be largely responsible for your overall
+browsing experience.
+
+Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is no real
+need to disable any actions here, but we will do that nonetheless, to have a
+complete listing for your reference. (Remember: a "+" preceding the action name
+enables the action, a "-" disables!). Also note how this long line has been
+made more readable by splitting it into multiple lines with line continuation.
+
+##########################################################################
+# "Defaults" section:
+##########################################################################
+ { \
+ -add-header \
+ -block \
+ -crunch-incoming-cookies \
+ -crunch-outgoing-cookies \
+ +deanimate-gifs \
+ -downgrade-http-version \
+ +fast-redirects \
+ +filter{js-annoyances} \
+ -filter{js-events} \
+ +filter{html-annoyances} \
+ -filter{content-cookies} \
+ +filter{refresh-tags} \
+ +filter{unsolicited-popups} \
+ -filter{all-popups} \
+ +filter{img-reorder} \
+ +filter{banners-by-size} \
+ -filter{banners-by-link} \
+ +filter{webbugs} \
+ -filter{tiny-textforms} \
+ +filter{jumping-windows} \
+ -filter{frameset-borders} \
+ -filter{demoronizer} \
+ -filter{shockwave-flash} \
+ -filter{quicktime-kioskmode} \
+ -filter{fun} \
+ -filter{crude-parental} \
+ +filter{ie-exploits} \
+ -handle-as-image \
+ +hide-forwarded-for-headers \
+ +hide-from-header{block} \
+ +hide-referrer{forge} \
+ -hide-user-agent \
+ -kill-popups \
+ -limit-connect \
+ +prevent-compression \
+ -send-vanilla-wafer \
+ -send-wafer \
+ +session-cookies-only \
+ +set-image-blocker{pattern} \
+ }
+ / # forward slash will match *all* potential URL patterns.
+
+
+The default behavior is now set. Note that some actions, like not hiding the
+user agent, are part of a "general policy" that applies universally and won't
+get any exceptions defined later. Other choices, like not blocking (which is
+understandably the default!) need exceptions, i.e. we need to specify
+explicitly what we want to block in later sections.
+
+The first of our specialized sections is concerned with "fragile" sites, i.e.
+sites that require minimum interference, because they are either very complex
+or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that make them
+unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will simply use our
+pre-defined fragile alias instead of stating the list of actions explicitly:
+
+##########################################################################
+# Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
+##########################################################################
+
+# "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
+#
+{ fragile }
+.office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
+.windowsupdate.microsoft.com
+
+
+Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically require cookies to log
+in, and pop-up windows for shopping carts or item details. Again, we'll use a
+pre-defined alias:
+
+# Shopping sites:
+#
+{ shop }
+.quietpc.com
+.worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
+.jungle.com
+.scan.co.uk
+
+
+The fast-redirects action, which we enabled per default above, breaks some
+sites. So disable it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
+
+{ -fast-redirects }
+login.yahoo.com
+edit.*.yahoo.com
+.google.com
+.altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
+.altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
+.nytimes.com
+
+
+It is important that Privoxy knows which URLs belong to images, so that if they
+are to be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
+Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it would destroy
+the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it would feed the
+advertisers (in terms of money and information). We can mark any URL as an
+image with the handle-as-image action, and marking all URLs that end in a known
+image file extension is a good start:
+
+##########################################################################
+# Images:
+##########################################################################
+
+# Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
+# blocked further down this file:
+#
+{ +handle-as-image }
+/.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$
+
+
+And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to generate the
+banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the request is for an image.
+Hence we block them and mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
+block-as-image alias defined above. (We could of course just as well use +block
++handle-as-image here.) Remember that the type of the replacement image is
+chosen by the set-image-blocker action. Since all URLs have matched the default
+section with its +set-image-blocker{pattern} action before, it still applies
+and needn't be repeated:
+
+# Known ad generators:
+#
+{ block-as-image }
+ar.atwola.com
+.ad.doubleclick.net
+.ad.*.doubleclick.net
+.a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
+.a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
+bs*.gsanet.com
+bs*.einets.com
+.qkimg.net
+
+
+One of the most important jobs of Privoxy is to block banners. A huge bunch of
+them are already "blocked" by the filter{banners-by-size} action, which we
+enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner images from the pages
+while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request them anymore, and hence
+they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally doesn't catch all
+banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we need a comprehensive
+list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the block action to them.
+
+First comes a bunch of generic patterns, which do most of the work, by matching
+typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes a list of
+individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here to keep the
+example short:
+
+##########################################################################
+# Block these fine banners:
+##########################################################################
+{ +block }
+
+# Generic patterns:
+#
+ad*.
+.*ads.
+banner?.
+count*.
+/.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
+/(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
+
+# Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
+#
+.hitbox.com
+
+
+You wouldn't believe how many advertisers actually call their banner servers
+ads.company.com, or call the directory in which the banners are stored simply
+"banners". So the above generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
+
+But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want to
+block. The pattern .*ads. e.g. catches "nasty-ads.nasty-corp.com" as intended,
+but also "downloads.sourcefroge.net" or "adsl.some-provider.net." So here come
+some well-known exceptions to the +block section above.
+
+Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
+"downloads.sourcefroge.net": Initially, all actions are deactivated, so it
+wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the URL,
+but just deactivates the block action once again. Then it matches .*ads., an
+exception to the general non-blocking policy, and suddenly +block applies. And
+now, it'll match .*loads., where -block applies, so (unless it matches again
+further down) it ends up with no block action applying.
+
+##########################################################################
+# Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
+##########################################################################
+
+# By domain:
+#
+{ -block }
+adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
+adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
+ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
+.edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
+.*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
+
+# By path:
+#
+/.*loads/
+
+# Site-specific:
+#
+www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
+www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv
+
+
+Filtering source code can have nasty side effects, so make an exception for our
+friends at sourceforge.net, and all paths with "cvs" in them. Note that -filter
+disables all filters in one fell swoop!
+
+# Don't filter code!
+#
+{ -filter }
+/.*cvs
+.sourceforge.net
+
+
+The actual default.action is of course more comprehensive, but we hope this
+example made clear how it works.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+8.7.2. user.action
+
+So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies, which
+would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now, you might want to be
+more specific and have customized rules that are more suitable to your personal
+habits and preferences. These would be for narrowly defined situations like
+your ISP or your bank, and should be placed in user.action, which is parsed
+after all other actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any
+previously defined actions. user.action is also a safe place for your personal
+settings, since default.action is actively maintained by the Privoxy developers
+and you'll probably want to install updated versions from time to time.
+
+So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
+user.action:
+
+# My user.action file. <fred@foobar.com>
+
+
+As aliases are local to the actions file that they are defined in, you can't
+use the ones from default.action, unless you repeat them here:
+
+# Aliases are local to the file they are defined in.
+# (Re-)define aliases for this file:
+#
+{{alias}}
+#
+# These aliases just save typing later, and the alias names should
+# be self explanatory.
+#
++crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
+-crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
+ allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
+ allow-popups = -filter{all-popups} -kill-popups
++block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
+-block-as-image = -block
+
+# These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
+# certain types of sites:
+#
+fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referrer -kill-popups
+shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
+
+# Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
+#
+allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}
+
+
+Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and you don't
+want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like to allow persistent
+cookies for these sites. The allow-all-cookies alias defined above does exactly
+that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
+processing of cookies to make them only temporary.
+
+{ allow-all-cookies }
+sourceforge.net
+sunsolve.sun.com
+.slashdot.org
+.yahoo.com
+.msdn.microsoft.com
+.redhat.com
+
+
+Your bank is allergic to some filter, but you don't know which, so you disable
+them all:
+
+{ -filter }
+.your-home-banking-site.com
+
+
+Some file types you may not want to filter for various reasons:
+
+# Technical documentation is likely to contain strings that might
+# erroneously get altered by the JavaScript-oriented filters:
+#
+.tldp.org
+/(.*/)?selfhtml/
+
+# And this stupid host sends streaming video with a wrong MIME type,
+# so that Privoxy thinks it is getting HTML and starts filtering:
+#
+stupid-server.example.com/
+
+
+Example of a simple block action. Say you've seen an ad on your favourite page
+on example.com that you want to get rid of. You have right-clicked the image,
+selected "copy image location" and pasted the URL below while removing the
+leading http://, into a { +block } section. Note that { +handle-as-image } need
+not be specified, since all URLs ending in .gif will be tagged as images by the
+general rules as set in default.action anyway:
+
+{ +block }
+www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.gif
+another.popular.site.net/more/junk/here/
+
+
+The URLs of dynamically generated banners, especially from large banner farms,
+often don't use the well-known image file name extensions, which makes it
+impossible for Privoxy to guess the file type just by looking at the URL. You
+can use the +block-as-image alias defined above for these cases. Note that
+objects which match this rule but then turn out NOT to be an image are
+typically rendered as a "broken image" icon by the browser. Use cautiously.
+
+{ +block-as-image }
+.doubleclick.net
+/Realmedia/ads/
+ar.atwola.com/
+
+
+Now you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine, but you
+were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you were again too
+lazy to give feedback, so you just used the fragile alias on the site, and --
+whoa! -- it worked. The fragile aliases disables those actions that are most
+likely to break a site. Also, good for testing purposes to see if it is Privoxy
+that is causing the problem or not.
+
+{ fragile }
+.forbes.com
+
+
+You like the "fun" text replacements in default.filter, but it is disabled in
+the distributed actions file. (My colleagues on the team just don't have a
+sense of humour, that's why! ;-). So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
+update-safe config, once and for all:
+
+{ +filter{fun} }
+/ # For ALL sites!
+
+
+Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions to the
+filters in default.action for things that really shouldn't be filtered, like
+code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since user.action has the last word, these
+exceptions won't be valid for the "fun" filtering specified here.
+
+You might also worry about how your favourite free websites are funded, and
+find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements to survive. So you
+might want to specifically allow banners for those sites that you feel provide
+value to you:
+
+{ allow-ads }
+.sourceforge.net
+.slashdot.org
+.osdn.net
+
+
+Note that allow-ads has been aliased to -block, -filter{banners-by-size}, and -
+filter{banners-by-link} above.
+
+user.action is generally the best place to define exceptions and additions to
+the default policies of default.action. Some actions are safe to have their
+default policies set here though. So let's set a default policy to have a
+"blank" image as opposed to the checkerboard pattern for ALL sites. "/" of
+course matches all URL paths and patterns:
+
+{ +set-image-blocker{blank} }
+/ # ALL sites
+
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+9. The Filter File
+
+All text substitutions that can be invoked through the filter action must first
+be defined in the filter file, which is typically called default.filter and
+which can be selected through the filterfile config option.
+
+Typical reasons for doing such substitutions are to eliminate common annoyances
+in HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows, exit consoles, crippled windows
+without navigation tools, the infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to suppress images with
+certain width and height attributes (standard banner sizes or web-bugs), or
+just to have fun. The possibilities are endless.
+
+Filtering works on any text-based document type, including HTML, JavaScript,
+CSS etc. (all text/* MIME types, except text/plain). Substitutions are made at
+the source level, so if you want to "roll your own" filters, you should be
+familiar with HTML syntax.
+
+Just like the actions files, the filter file is organized in sections, which
+are called filters here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts
+with the keyword FILTER:, followed by the filter's name, and a short (one line)
+description of what it does. Below that line come the jobs, i.e. lines that
+define the actual text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
+should describe what the filter eliminates. The comment is used in the
+web-based user interface.
+
+Once a filter called name has been defined in the filter file, it can be
+invoked by using an action of the form +filter{name} in any actions file.
+
+A filter header line for a filter called "foo" could look like this:
+
+FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
+
+
+Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that define what
+text replacements the filter executes. They are specified in a syntax that
+imitates Perl's s/// operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you will find
+this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the PCRS man page for the
+subtle differences to Perl behaviour. Most notably, the non-standard option
+letter U is supported, which turns the default to ungreedy matching.
+
+If you are new to regular expressions, you might want to take a look at the
+Appendix on regular expressions, and see the Perl manual for the s///
+operator's syntax and Perl-style regular expressions in general. The below
+examples might also help to get you started.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+9.1. Filter File Tutorial
+
+Now, let's complete our "foo" filter. We have already defined the heading, but
+the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace "foo" with "bar",
+there is only one (trivial) job needed:
+
+s/foo/bar/
+
+
+But wait! Didn't the comment say that all occurrences of "foo" should be
+replaced? Our current job will only take care of the first "foo" on each page.
+For global substitution, we'll need to add the g option:
+
+s/foo/bar/g
+
+
+Our complete filter now looks like this:
+
+FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
+s/foo/bar/g
+
+
+Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see a
+filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
+abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
+
+FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
+
+# Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
+#
+s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg
+
+
+Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses |
+as the delimiter instead of /, because the pattern contains a forward slash,
+which would otherwise have to be escaped by a backslash (\).
+
+Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <script.* enclosed in
+parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and * means: "Match an
+arbitrary number of the element left of myself", this matches "<script",
+followed by any text, i.e. it matches the whole page, from the start of the
+first <script> tag.
+
+That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: document\.referrer matches
+only the exact string "document.referrer". The dot needed to be escaped, i.e.
+preceded by a backslash, to take away its special meaning as a joker, and make
+it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is: Match from the start of the
+first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including, the text
+"document.referrer", if both are present in the page (and appear in that
+order).
+
+But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in
+parentheses, is .*</script>. You already know what .* means, so the whole
+pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a page
+to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text "document.referrer"
+appears somewhere in between.
+
+This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the
+parentheses: The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed
+in parentheses, will be remembered and be available through the variables $1,
+$2, ... in the substitute. The U option switches to ungreedy matching, which
+means that the first .* in the pattern will only "eat up" all text in between "
+<script" and the first occurrence of "document.referrer", and that the second
+.* will only span the text up to the first "</script>" tag. Furthermore, the s
+option says that the match may span multiple lines in the page, and the g
+option again means that the substitution is global.
+
+So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
+"document.referrer". Remember the parts of the script from (and including) the
+start tag up to (and excluding) the string "document.referrer" as $1, and the
+part following that string, up to and including the closing tag, as $2.
+
+Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
+lets look at the substitute: $1"Not Your Business!"$2 is easy to read: The text
+remembered as $1, followed by "Not Your Business!" (including the quotation
+marks!), followed by the text remembered as $2. This produces an exact copy of
+the original string, with the middle part (the "document.referrer") replaced by
+"Not Your Business!".
+
+The whole job now reads: Replace "document.referrer" by "Not Your Business!"
+wherever it appears inside a <script> tag. Note that this job won't break
+JavaScript syntax, since both the original and the replacement are
+syntactically valid string objects. The script just won't have access to the
+referrer information anymore.
+
+We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but this
+time only point out the constructs of special interest:
+
+# The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
+#
+s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig
+
+
+\s stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline, carriage return, form
+feed), so that \s* means: "zero or more whitespace". The ? in .*? makes this
+matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the U option is not set). The
+['"] construct means: "a single or a double quote". Finally, \1 is a
+backreference to the first parenthesis just like $1 above, with the difference
+that in the pattern, a backslash indicates a backreference, whereas in the
+substitute, it's the dollar.
+
+So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
+strings to the "window.status" object with a dummy assignment (using a variable
+name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with real variables in
+scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless descriptions are
+displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when you move your mouse
+over links.
+
+# Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
+#
+s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU
+
+
+Including the OnUnload event binding in the HTML DOM was a CRIME. When I close
+a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta. This job replaces the
+"onunload" attribute in "<body>" tags with the dummy word never. Note that the
+i option makes the pattern matching case-insensitive. Also note that ungreedy
+matching alone doesn't always guarantee a minimal match: In the first
+parenthesis, we had to use [^>]* instead of .* to prevent the match from
+exceeding the <body> tag if it doesn't contain "OnUnload", but the page's
+content does.
+
+The last example is from the fun department:
+
+FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
+
+# Spice the daily news:
+#
+s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig
+
+
+Note the (?!\.com) part (a so-called negative lookahead) in the job's pattern,
+which means: Don't match, if the string ".com" appears directly following
+"microsoft" in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being
+trashed, while still replacing the word everywhere else.
+
+# Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
+#
+s* industry[ -]leading \
+| cutting[ -]edge \
+| customer[ -]focused \
+| market[ -]driven \
+| award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
+| high[ -]performance \
+| solutions[ -]based \
+| unmatched \
+| unparalleled \
+| unrivalled \
+*<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
+*igx
+
+
+The x option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for e.g. the
+liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
+
+You get the idea?
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+9.2. The Pre-defined Filters
+
+The distribution default.filter file contains a selection of pre-defined
+filters for your convenience:
+
+js-annoyances
+
+ The purpose of this filter is to get rid of particularly annoying
+ JavaScript abuse. To that end, it
+
+ + replaces JavaScript references to the browser's referrer information
+ with the string "Not Your Business!". This compliments the
+ hide-referrer action on the content level.
+
+ + removes the bindings to the DOM's unload event which we feel has no
+ right to exist and is responsible for most "exit consoles", i.e. nasty
+ windows that pop up when you close another one.
+
+ + removes code that causes new windows to be opened with undesired
+ properties, such as being full-screen, non-resizable, without location,
+ status or menu bar etc.
+
+js-events
+
+ This is a very radical measure. It removes virtually all JavaScript event
+ bindings, which means that scripts can not react to user actions such as
+ mouse movements or clicks, window resizing etc, anymore.
+
+ We strongly discourage using this filter as a default since it breaks many
+ legitimate scripts. It is meant for use only on extra-nasty sites (should
+ you really need to go there).
+
+html-annoyances
+
+ This filter will undo many common instances of HTML based abuse.
+
+ The BLINK and MARQUEE tags are neutralized (yeah baby!), and browser
+ windows will be created as resizable (as of course they should be!), and
+ will have location, scroll and menu bars -- even if specified otherwise.
+
+content-cookies
+
+ Most cookies are set in the HTTP dialogue, where they can be intercepted by
+ the crunch-incoming-cookies and crunch-outgoing-cookies actions. But web
+ sites increasingly make use of HTML meta tags and JavaScript to sneak
+ cookies to the browser on the content level.
+
+ This filter disables HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets cookies.
+ Use it wherever you would also use the cookie crunch actions.
+
+refresh tags
+
+ Disable any refresh tags if the interval is greater than nine seconds (so
+ that redirections done via refresh tags are not destroyed). This is useful
+ for dial-on-demand setups, or for those who find this HTML feature
+ annoying.
+
+unsolicited-popups
+
+ This filter attempts to prevent only "unsolicited" pop-up windows from
+ opening, yet still allow pop-up windows that the user has explicitly chosen
+ to open. It was added in version 3.0.1, as an improvement over earlier such
+ filters.
+
+ Technical note: The filter works by redefining the window.open JavaScript
+ function to a dummy function during the loading and rendering phase of each
+ HTML page access, and restoring the function afterwards.
+
+all-popups
+
+ Attempt to prevent all pop-up windows from opening. Note this should be
+ used with more discretion than the above, since it is more likely to break
+ some sites that require pop-ups for normal usage. Use with caution.
+
+img-reorder
+
+ This is a helper filter that has no value if used alone. It makes the
+ banners-by-size and banners-by-link (see below) filters more effective and
+ should be enabled together with them.
+
+banners-by-size
+
+ This filter removes image tags purely based on what size they are.
+ Fortunately for us, many ads and banner images tend to conform to certain
+ standardized sizes, which makes this filter quite effective for ad
+ stripping purposes.
+
+ Occasionally this filter will cause false positives on images that are not
+ ads, but just happen to be of one of the standard banner sizes.
+
+banners-by-link
+
+ This is an experimental filter that attempts to kill any banners if their
+ URLs seem to point to known or suspected click trackers. It is currently
+ not of much value and is not recommended for use by default.
+
+webbugs
+
+ Webbugs are small, invisible images (technically 1X1 GIF images), that are
+ used to track users across websites, and collect information on them. As an
+ HTML page is loaded by the browser, an embedded image tag causes the
+ browser to contact a third-party site, disclosing the tracking information
+ through the requested URL and/or cookies for that third-party domain,
+ without the use ever becoming aware of the interaction with the third-party
+ site. HTML-ized spam also uses a similar technique to verify email
+ addresses.
+
+ This filter removes the HTML code that loads such "webbugs".
+
+tiny-textforms
+
+ A rather special-purpose filter that can be used to enlarge textareas
+ (those multi-line text boxes in web forms) and turn off hard word wrap in
+ them. It was written for the sourceforge.net tracker system where such
+ boxes are a nuisance, but it can be handy on other sites, too.
+
+ It is not recommended to use this filter as a default.
+
+jumping-windows
+
+ Many consider windows that move, or resize themselves to be abusive. This
+ filter neutralizes the related JavaScript code. Note that some sites might
+ not display or behave as intended when using this filter.
+
+frameset-borders
+
+ Some web designers seem to assume that everyone in the world will view
+ their web sites using the same browser brand and version, screen resolution
+ etc, because only that assumption could explain why they'd use static frame
+ sizes, yet prevent their frames from being resized by the user, should they
+ be too small to show their whole content.
+
+ This filter removes the related HTML code. It should only be applied to
+ sites which need it.
+
+demoronizer
+
+ Many Microsoft products that generate HTML use non-standard extensions
+ (read: violations) of the ISO 8859-1 aka Latin-1 character set. This causes
+ those HTML documents to display with errors on standard-compliant
+ platforms.
+
+ This filter translates the MS-only characters into Latin-1 equivalents. It
+ is not necessary when using MS products, and will cause corruption of all
+ documents that use 8-bit character sets other than Latin-1. It's mostly
+ worthwhile for Europeans on non-MS platforms, if wierd garbage characters
+ sometimes appear on some pages.
+
+shockwave-flash
+
+ A filter for shockwave haters. As the name suggests, this filter strips
+ code out of web pages that is used to embed shockwave flash objects.
+
+quicktime-kioskmode
+
+ Change HTML code that embeds Quicktime objects so that kioskmode, which
+ prevents saving, is disabled.
+
+fun
+
+ Text replacements for subversive browsing fun. Make fun of your favorite
+ Monopolist or play buzzword bingo.
+
+crude-parental
+
+ A demonstration-only filter that shows how Privoxy can be used to delete
+ web content on a keyword basis.
+
+ie-exploits
+
+ A collection of text replacements to disable malicious HTML and JavaScript
+ code that exploits known security holes in Internet Explorer.
+
+ Presently, it only protects against Nimda and a cross-site scripting bug,
+ and would need active maintenance to provide more substantial protection.
+
+site-specifics
+
+ Some web sites have very specific problems, the cure for which doesn't
+ apply anywhere else, or could even cause damage on other sites.
+
+ This is a collection of such site-specific cures which should only be
+ applied to the sites they were intended for, which is what the supplied
+ default.action file does. Users shouldn't need to change anything regarding
+ this filter.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+10. Templates
+
+All Privoxy built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the "404 - No Such Domain"
+error page, the "BLOCKED" page and all pages of its web-based user interface,
+are generated from templates. (Privoxy must be running for the above links to
+work as intended.)
+
+These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the configuration directory
+called templates. On Unixish platforms, this is typically /etc/privoxy/
+templates/.
+
+The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called
+symbols or exports), which Privoxy fills at run time. You can edit the
+templates with a normal text editor, should you want to customize them. (Not
+recommended for the casual user). Note that just like in configuration files,
+lines starting with # are ignored when the templates are filled in.
+
+The place-holders are of the form @name@, and you will find a list of available
+symbols, which vary from template to template, in the comments at the start of
+each file. Note that these comments are not always accurate, and that it's
+probably best to look at the existing HTML code to find out which symbols are
+supported and what they are filled in with.
+
+A special application of this substitution mechanism is to make whole blocks of
+HTML code disappear when a specific symbol is set. We use this for many
+purposes, one of them being to include the beta warning in all our user
+interface (CGI) pages when Privoxy in in an alpha or beta development stage:
+
+<!-- @if-unstable-start -->
+
+ ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
+
+<!-- if-unstable-end@ -->
+
+
+If the "unstable" symbol is set, everything in between and including
+@if-unstable-start and if-unstable-end@ will disappear, leaving nothing but an
+empty comment:
+
+<!-- -->
+
+
+There's also an if-then-else construct and an #include mechanism, but you'll
+sure find out if you are inclined to edit the templates ;-)
+
+All templates refer to a style located at http://config.privoxy.org/
+send-stylesheet. This is, of course, locally served by Privoxy and the source
+for it can be found and edited in the cgi-style.css template.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+11. 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:
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+11.1. 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.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+11.2. Report 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.
+
+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.
+The appendix of the user manual also has helpful information on action
+debugging. 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, chances are that the bug has 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, but this is not required for reporting.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+11.3. 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.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+11.4. Report Ads or Other Actions-Related Problems
+
+Please send feedback on ads that slipped through, innocent images that were
+blocked, and any other problems relating to the default.action file through our
+actions feedback mechanism located at http://www.privoxy.org/actions/. On this
+page, you will also find a bookmark which will take you back there from any
+troubled site and even pre-fill the form!
+
+New, improved default.action files will 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.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+11.5. 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.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+12. Privoxy Copyright, License and History
+
+Copyright © 2001 - 2004 by Privoxy Developers <developers@privoxy.org>
+
+Some source code is based on code Copyright © 1997 by Anonymous Coders and
+Junkbusters, Inc. and licensed under the GNU General Public License.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+12.1. 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, 59 Temple Place - Suite
+330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, 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. 59 Temple Place - Suite 330
+ Boston, MA 02111-1307
+ USA
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+12.2. History
+
+In the beginning, there was the Internet Junkbuster, by Anonymous Coders and
+Junkbusters Corporation. It 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 users to consume ads, give up autonomy over their browsing, and for
+spying on them, kept 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.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+12.3. Authors
+
+Current Developement Team:
+
+ Hal Burgiss (docs)
+ Andreas Oesterhelt
+ David Schmidt (OS/2, Mac OSX ports)
+
+
+
+Current and Former Project Contributors:
+
+ Johny Agotnes
+ Rodrigo Barbosa (RPM specfiles)
+ Moritz Barsnick
+ Brian Dessent
+ Mattes Dolak
+ Jon Foster
+ Karsten Hopp (Red Hat)
+ Alexander Lazic
+ Daniel Leite
+ Gábor Lipták
+ Adam Lock (Win32)
+ Guy Laroche
+ Haroon Rafique
+ Roland Rosenfeld (Debian)
+ Georg Sauthoff (Gentoo)
+ Thomas Steudten
+ Joerg Strohmayer (Amiga)
+ Rodney Stromlund
+ Sviatoslav Sviridov
+ Sarantis Paskalis
+ Stefan Waldherr
+
+Based in part on code originally developed by:
+
+ Junkbusters Corp.
+ Anonymous Coders
+
+Thanks to the many people who have tested Privoxy, reported bugs, or made
+suggestions. These include (in alphabetical order):
+
+ Ken Arromdee
+ Devin Bayer
+ Reiner Buehl
+ Andrew J. Caines
+ Clifford Caoile
+ Michael T. Davis
+ Brian Dessent
+ Peter E
+ Aaron Hamid
+ Magnus Holmgren
+ Don Libes
+ Paul Lieverse
+ David Mediavilla
+ Oliver Stoeneberg
+ Roberto Ragusa
+ Maynard Riley
+ Bart Schelstraete
+ Darren Wiebe
+ Jamie Zawinski
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+13. See Also
+
+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://www.privoxy.org/actions/, to submit "misses" to the developers.
+
+http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/ijbswa/contrib/, cool and fun
+ideas from Privoxy users.
+
+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://www.waldherr.org/junkbuster/, Stefan Waldherr's version of Junkbuster,
+from which Privoxy was derived.
+
+http://privacy.net/analyze/, 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://www.privoxy.org/developer-manual/, the Privoxy developer manual.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+14. Appendix
+
+14.1. Regular Expressions
+
+Privoxy uses Perl-style "regular expressions" in its actions files and filter
+file, through the PCRE and PCRS libraries.
+
+If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what "regular
+expressions" are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
+introduction only. A full explanation would require a book ;-)
+
+Regular expressions provide a language to describe patterns that can be run
+against strings of characters (letter, numbers, etc), to see if they match the
+string or not. The patterns are themselves (sometimes complex) strings of
+literal characters, combined with wild-cards, and other special characters,
+called meta-characters. The "meta-characters" have special meanings and are
+used to build complex patterns to be matched against. Perl Compatible Regular
+Expressions are an especially convenient "dialect" of the regular expression
+language.
+
+To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
+characters when listing files with the dir command in DOS. *.* matches all
+filenames. The "special" character here is the asterisk which matches any and
+all characters. We can be more specific and use ? to match just individual
+characters. So "dir file?.text" would match "file1.txt", "file2.txt", etc. We
+are pattern matching, using a similar technique to "regular expressions"!
+
+Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
+powerful. There are many more "special characters" and ways of building complex
+patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones, and then some
+examples:
+
+. - Matches any single character, e.g. "a", "A", "4", ":", or "@".
+
+? - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE times. Either/
+or.
+
++ - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE times.
+
+* - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE times.
+
+\ - The "escape" character denotes that the following character should be taken
+literally. This is used where one of the special characters (e.g. ".") needs to
+be taken literally and not as a special meta-character. Example: "example
+\.com", makes sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded
+to its meta-character meaning of any single character).
+
+[] - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if any of the enclosed
+characters are encountered. For instance, "[0-9]" matches any numeric digit
+(zero through nine). As an example, we can combine this with "+" to match any
+digit one of more times: "[0-9]+".
+
+() - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression, or multiple
+sub-expressions.
+
+| - The "bar" character works like an "or" conditional statement. A match is
+successful if the sub-expression on either side of "|" matches. As an example:
+"/(this|that) example/" uses grouping and the bar character and would match
+either "this example" or "that example", and nothing else.
+
+These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
+Privoxy, and is a long way from a definitive list. This is enough to get us
+started with a few simple examples which may be more illuminating:
+
+/.*/banners/.* - A simple example that uses the common combination of "." and
+"*" to denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at
+all. So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression
+pattern (".*") another literal forward slash, the string "banners", another
+forward slash, and lastly another ".*". We are building a directory path here.
+This will match any file with the path that has a directory named "banners" in
+it. The ".*" matches any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward
+slashes, so it might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this
+could match: "/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif", or just "/
+banners/annoying.html", or almost an infinite number of other possible
+combinations, just so it has "banners" in the path somewhere.
+
+A now something a little more complex:
+
+/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/ - We have several literal forward
+slashes again ("/"), so we are building another expression that is a file path
+statement. We have another ".*", so we are matching against any conceivable
+sub-path, just so it matches our expression. The only true literal that must
+match our pattern is adv, together with the forward slashes. What comes after
+the "adv" string is the interesting part.
+
+Remember the "?" means the preceding expression (either a literal character or
+anything grouped with "(...)" in this case) can exist or not, since this means
+either zero or one match. So "((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))" is optional, as
+are the individual sub-expressions: "(er)", "(ing|ements?)", and the "s". The "
+|" means "or". We have two of those. For instance, "(ing|ements?)", can expand
+to match either "ing" OR "ements?". What is being done here, is an attempt at
+matching as many variations of "advertisement", and similar, as possible. So
+this would expand to match just "adv", or "advert", or "adverts", or
+"advertising", or "advertisement", or "advertisements". You get the idea. But
+it would not match "advertizements" (with a "z"). We could fix that by changing
+our regular expression to: "/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/", which
+would then match either spelling.
+
+/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g) - Again another path statement with forward
+slashes. Anything in the square brackets "[]" can be matched. This is using
+"0-9" as a shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the
+same as saying "0123456789". So any digit matches. The "+" means one or more of
+the preceding expression must be included. The preceding expression here is
+what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit one through nine.
+Then, at the end, we have a grouping: "(gif|jpe?g)". This includes a "|", so
+this needs to match the expression on either side of that bar character also. A
+simple "gif" on one side, and the other side will in turn match either "jpeg"
+or "jpg", since the "?" means the letter "e" is optional and can be matched
+once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to match image GIF or
+JPEG type image file. It must include the literal string "advert", then one or
+more digits, and a "." (which is now a literal, and not a special character,
+since it is escaped with "\"), and lastly either "gif", or "jpeg", or "jpg".
+Some possible matches would include: "//advert1.jpg", "/nasty/ads/
+advert1234.gif", "/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg". It would not match
+"advert1.gif" (no leading slash), or "/adverts232.jpg" (the expression does not
+include an "s"), or "/advert1.jsp" ("jsp" is not in the expression anywhere).
+
+We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
+can understand the default Privoxy configuration files, and maybe use this
+knowledge to customize your own installation. There is much, much more that can
+be done with regular expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you
+can learn more on your own :/
+
+More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions: http://www.perldoc.com/
+perl5.6/pod/perlre.html
+
+For information on regular expression based substitutions and their
+applications in filters, please see the filter file tutorial in this manual.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+14.2. Privoxy's Internal Pages
+
+Since Privoxy proxies each requested web page, it is easy for Privoxy to trap
+certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to Privoxy, and see how
+it is configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these rules and
+other configuration options, and even turn Privoxy's filtering off, all with a
+web browser.
+
+The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access to Privoxy.
+Of course, Privoxy must be running to access these. If not, you will get a
+friendly error message. Internet access is not necessary either.
+
+ * Privoxy main page:
+
+ http://config.privoxy.org/
+
+ There is a shortcut: http://p.p/ (But it doesn't provide a fall-back to a
+ real page, in case the request is not sent through Privoxy)
+
+ * Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
+ editing of actions files:
+
+ http://config.privoxy.org/show-status
+
+ * Show the source code version numbers:
+
+ http://config.privoxy.org/show-version
+
+ * Show the browser's request headers:
+
+ http://config.privoxy.org/show-request
+
+ * Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
+
+ http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info
+
+ * Toggle Privoxy on or off. In this case, "Privoxy" continues to run, but
+ only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking place:
+
+ http://config.privoxy.org/toggle
+
+ Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
+
+ http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable
+
+ http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable
+
+These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+14.2.1. Bookmarklets
+
+Below are some "bookmarklets" to allow you to easily access a "mini" version of
+some of Privoxy's special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer,
+but should work equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which
+support JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not
+by clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
+
+To save them, right-click the link and choose "Add to Favorites" (IE) or "Add
+Bookmark" (Netscape). You will get a warning that the bookmark "may not be
+safe" - just click OK. Then you can run the Bookmarklet directly from your
+favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access, you can put them on the "Links"
+bar (IE) or the "Personal Toolbar" (Netscape), and run them with a single
+click.
+
+ * Privoxy - Enable
+
+ * Privoxy - Disable
+
+ * Privoxy - Toggle Privoxy (Toggles between enabled and disabled)
+
+ * Privoxy- View Status
+
+ * Privoxy - Submit Actions File Feedback
+
+ * Privoxy - Why?
+
+Credit: The site which gave us the general idea for these bookmarklets is
+www.bookmarklets.com. They have more information about bookmarklets.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+14.3. Chain of Events
+
+Let's take a quick look at the basic sequence of events when a web page is
+requested by your browser and Privoxy is on duty:
+
+ * First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send the
+ request to Privoxy, which will in turn, relay the request to the remote web
+ server after passing the following tests:
+
+ * Privoxy traps any request for its own internal CGI pages (e.g http://p.p/)
+ and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
+
+ * Next, Privoxy checks to see if the URL matches any "+block" patterns. If
+ so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be
+ contacted. "+handle-as-image" is then checked and if it does not match, an
+ HTML "BLOCKED" page is sent back. Otherwise, if it does match, an image is
+ returned. The type of image depends on the setting of "+set-image-blocker"
+ (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
+
+ * Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the trust file, then
+ that is done.
+
+ * If the URL pattern matches the "+fast-redirects" action, it is then
+ processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
+
+ * Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
+ of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. "+hide-user-agent", etc.),
+ headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and their
+ parameters.
+
+ * Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web
+ page and related data).
+
+ * First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
+ things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
+ filtered as determined by the "+crunch-incoming-cookies",
+ "+session-cookies-only", and "+downgrade-http-version" actions.
+
+ * If the "+kill-popups" action applies, and it is an HTML or JavaScript
+ document, the popup-code in the response is filtered on-the-fly as it is
+ received.
+
+ * If a "+filter" or "+deanimate-gifs" action applies (and the document type
+ fits the action), the rest of the page is read into memory (up to a
+ configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from default.filter) are
+ processed against the buffered content. Filters are applied in the order
+ they are specified in the default.filter file. Animated GIFs, if present,
+ are reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
+ setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by Privoxy
+ back to your browser.
+
+ If neither "+filter" or "+deanimate-gifs" matches, then Privoxy passes the
+ raw data through to the client browser as it becomes available.
+
+ * As the browser receives the now (probably filtered) page content, it reads
+ and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page source,
+ e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
+ frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a new
+ request. And each such request is in turn processed as above. Note that a
+ complex web page may have many such embedded URLs.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+14.4. Anatomy of an Action
+
+The way Privoxy applies actions and filters to any given URL can be complex,
+and not always so easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need
+to be able to see just what Privoxy is doing. Especially, if something Privoxy
+is doing is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to
+look at the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled
+with regular expressions whose consequences are not always so obvious.
+
+One quick test to see if Privoxy is causing a problem or not, is to disable it
+temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting step. See the
+Bookmarklets section on a quick and easy way to do this (be sure to flush
+caches afterward!). Looking at the logs is a good idea too.
+
+Privoxy also provides the http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info page that can
+show us very specifically how actions are being applied to any given URL. This
+is a big help for troubleshooting.
+
+First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then Privoxy will tell
+us how the current configuration will handle it. This will not help with
+filtering effects (i.e. the "+filter" action) from the default.filter file
+since this is handled very differently and not so easy to trap! It also will
+not tell you about any other URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are
+testing. For instance, images such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw
+page source of HTML pages. So you will only get info for the actual URL that is
+pasted into the prompt area -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about
+embedded URLs like ads, you will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use
+your browser's "View Page Source" option for this. Or right click on the ad,
+and grab the URL.
+
+Let's try an example, google.com, and look at it one section at a time:
+
+ Matches for http://google.com:
+
+ In file: default.action [ View ] [ Edit ]
+
+{-add-header
+ -block
+ -crunch-outgoing-cookies
+ -crunch-incoming-cookies
+ +deanimate-gifs{last}
+ -downgrade-http-version
+ +fast-redirects
+ -filter{popups}
+ -filter{fun}
+ -filter{shockwave-flash}
+ -filter{crude-parental}
+ +filter{html-annoyances}
+ +filter{js-annoyances}
+ +filter{content-cookies}
+ +filter{webbugs}
+ +filter{refresh-tags}
+ +filter{nimda}
+ +filter{banners-by-size}
+ +hide-forwarded-for-headers
+ +hide-from-header{block}
+ +hide-referer{forge}
+ -hide-user-agent
+ -handle-as-image
+ -kill-popups
+ -limit-connect
+ +prevent-compression
+ -send-vanilla-wafer
+ -send-wafer
+ +session-cookies-only
+ +set-image-blocker{pattern} }
+/
+
+ { -session-cookies-only }
+ .google.com
+
+ { -fast-redirects }
+ .google.com
+
+In file: user.action [ View ] [ Edit ]
+(no matches in this file)
+
+
+This tells us how we have defined our "actions", and which ones match for our
+example, "google.com". The first listing is any matches for the standard.action
+file. No hits at all here on "standard". Then next is "default", or our
+default.action file. The large, multi-line listing, is how the actions are set
+to match for all URLs, i.e. our default settings. If you look at your "actions"
+file, this would be the section just below the "aliases" section near the top.
+This will apply to all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end
+of the listing -- "/".
+
+But we can define additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
+rules, and then list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions would
+apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit matches for
+".google.com". The first is negating our previous cookie setting, which was for
+"+session-cookies-only" (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent
+cookies for google. The second turns off any "+fast-redirects" action, allowing
+this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading dot here --
+".google.com". This will match any hosts and sub-domains, in the google.com
+domain also, such as "www.google.com". So, apparently, we have these two
+actions defined somewhere in the lower part of our default.action file, and
+"google.com" is referenced somewhere in these latter sections.
+
+Then, for our user.action file, we again have no hits.
+
+And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
+Privoxy is applying all its "actions" to "google.com":
+
+ Final results:
+
+ -add-header
+ -block
+ -crunch-outgoing-cookies
+ -crunch-incoming-cookies
+ +deanimate-gifs{last}
+ -downgrade-http-version
+ -fast-redirects
+ -filter{popups}
+ -filter{fun}
+ -filter{shockwave-flash}
+ -filter{crude-parental}
+ +filter{html-annoyances}
+ +filter{js-annoyances}
+ +filter{content-cookies}
+ +filter{webbugs}
+ +filter{refresh-tags}
+ +filter{nimda}
+ +filter{banners-by-size}
+ +hide-forwarded-for-headers
+ +hide-from-header{block}
+ +hide-referer{forge}
+ -hide-user-agent
+ -handle-as-image
+ -kill-popups
+ -limit-connect
+ +prevent-compression
+ -send-vanilla-wafer
+ -send-wafer
+ -session-cookies-only
+ +set-image-blocker{pattern}
+
+
+Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to "fast-redirects"
+and "session-cookies-only".
+
+Now another example, "ad.doubleclick.net":
+
+ { +block +handle-as-image }
+ .ad.doubleclick.net
+
+ { +block +handle-as-image }
+ ad*.
+
+ { +block +handle-as-image }
+ .doubleclick.net
+
+
+We'll just show the interesting part here, the explicit matches. It is matched
+three different times. Each as an "+block +handle-as-image", which is the
+expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as: "+imageblock". (
+"Aliases" are defined in the first section of the actions file and typically
+used to combine more than one action.)
+
+Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
+image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively would
+also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys though ;-)
+Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious URL to be invisible, it should be
+defined as "ad.doubleclick.net" is done here -- as both a "+block" and an
+"+handle-as-image". The custom alias "+imageblock" just simplifies the process
+and make it more readable.
+
+One last example. Let's try "http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/". This one is
+giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
+
+ Matches for http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
+
+ In file: default.action [ View ] [ Edit ]
+
+ {-add-header
+ -block
+ -crunch-incoming-cookies
+ -crunch-outgoing-cookies
+ +deanimate-gifs
+ -downgrade-http-version
+ +fast-redirects
+ +filter{html-annoyances}
+ +filter{js-annoyances}
+ +filter{kill-popups}
+ +filter{webbugs}
+ +filter{nimda}
+ +filter{banners-by-size}
+ +filter{hal}
+ +filter{fun}
+ +hide-forwarded-for-headers
+ +hide-from-header{block}
+ +hide-referer{forge}
+ -hide-user-agent
+ -handle-as-image
+ +kill-popups
+ +prevent-compression
+ -send-vanilla-wafer
+ -send-wafer
+ +session-cookies-only
+ +set-image-blocker{blank} }
+ /
+
+ { +block +handle-as-image }
+ /ads
+
+
+Ooops, the "/adsl/" is matching "/ads"! But we did not want this at all! Now we
+see why we get the blank page. We could now add a new action below this that
+explicitly does not block ("{-block}") paths with "adsl". There are various
+ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
+
+ { -block }
+ /adsl
+
+
+Now the page displays ;-) Be sure to flush your browser's caches when making
+such changes. Or, try using Shift+Reload.
+
+But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like we did
+with:
+
+ { +block +handle-as-image }
+ /ads
+
+
+That actually was very telling and pointed us quickly to where the problem was.
+If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default rules in
+the first section is causing the problem. This would require some guesswork,
+and maybe a little trial and error to isolate the offending rule. One likely
+cause would be one of the "{+filter}" actions. These tend to be harder to
+troubleshoot. Try adding the URL for the site to one of aliases that turn off
+"+filter":
+
+ {shop}
+ .quietpc.com
+ .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
+ .jungle.com
+ .scan.co.uk
+ .forbes.com
+
+
+"{shop}" is an "alias" that expands to "{ -filter -session-cookies-only }". Or
+you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
+
+ {-filter}
+ .forbes.com
+
+
+This would turn off all filtering for that site. This would probably be most
+appropriately put in user.action, for local site exceptions.
+
+Images that are inexplicably being blocked, may well be hitting the "+filter
+{banners-by-size}" rule, which assumes that images of certain sizes are ad
+banners (works well most of the time since these tend to be standardized).
+
+"{fragile}" is an alias that disables most actions. This can be used as a last
+resort for problem sites. Remember to flush caches! If this still does not
+work, you will have to go through the remaining actions one by one to find
+which one(s) is causing the problem.
- # Reverse it for these two sites, which don't work right without it.
- {-fast-redirects}
- www.ukc.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wac\.cgi\?
- login.yahoo.com
-
- Turn on page filtering, with one exception for sourceforge:
-
- # Run everything through the default filter file (re_filterfile):
- {+filter}
-
- # But please don't re_filter code from sourceforge!
- {-filter}
- .cvs.sourceforge.net
-
- Now some URLs that we want "blocked", ie we won't see them. Many of
- these use regular expressions that will expand to match multiple URLs:
-
- # Blocklist:
- {+block}
- /.*/(.*[-_.])?ads?[0-9]?(/|[-_.].*|\.(gif|jpe?g))
- /.*/(.*[-_.])?count(er)?(\.cgi|\.dll|\.exe|[?/])
- /.*/(ng)?adclient\.cgi
- /.*/(plain|live|rotate)[-_.]?ads?/
- /.*/(sponsor)s?[0-9]?/
- /.*/_?(plain|live)?ads?(-banners)?/
- /.*/abanners/
- /.*/ad(sdna_image|gifs?)/
- /.*/ad(server|stream|juggler)\.(cgi|pl|dll|exe)
- /.*/adbanners/
- /.*/adserver
- /.*/adstream\.cgi
- /.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/
- /.*/banner_?ads/
- /.*/banners?/
- /.*/banners?\.cgi/
- /.*/cgi-bin/centralad/getimage
- /.*/images/addver\.gif
- /.*/images/marketing/.*\.(gif|jpe?g)
- /.*/popupads/
- /.*/siteads/
- /.*/sponsor.*\.gif
- /.*/sponsors?[0-9]?/
- /.*/advert[0-9]+\.jpg
- /Media/Images/Adds/
- /ad_images/
- /adimages/
- /.*/ads/
- /bannerfarm/
- /grafikk/annonse/
- /graphics/defaultAd/
- /image\.ng/AdType
- /image\.ng/transactionID
- /images/.*/.*_anim\.gif # alvin brattli
- /ip_img/.*\.(gif|jpe?g)
- /rotateads/
- /rotations/
- /worldnet/ad\.cgi
- /cgi-bin/nph-adclick.exe/
- /.*/Image/BannerAdvertising/
- /.*/ad-bin/
- /.*/adlib/server\.cgi
- /autoads/
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-Aliases
-
- Custom "actions", known to Junkbuster as "aliases", can be defined by
- combining other "actions". These can in turn be invoked just like the
- built-in "actions". Currently, an alias can contain any character
- except space, tab, "=", "{" or "}". But please use only "a"- "z",
- "0"-"9", "+", and "-". Alias names are not case sensitive, and must be
- defined before anything else in actionsfile! And there can only be one
- set of "aliases" defined.
-
- Now let's define a few aliases:
-
- # Useful customer aliases we can use later. These must come first!
- {{alias}}
- +no-cookies = +no-cookies-set +no-cookies-read
- -no-cookies = -no-cookies-set -no-cookies-read
- fragile = -block -no-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-refere
- r -no-popups
- shop = -no-cookies -filter -fast-redirects
- +imageblock = +block +image
- #For people who don't like to type too much: ;-)
- c0 = +no-cookies
- c1 = -no-cookies
- c2 = -no-cookies-set +no-cookies-read
- c3 = +no-cookies-set -no-cookies-read
- #... etc. Customize to your heart's content.
-
- Some examples using our "shop" and "fragile" aliases from above:
-
- # These sites are very complex and require
- # minimal interference.
- {fragile}
- .office.microsoft.com
- .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
- .nytimes.com
- # Shopping sites - still want to block ads.
- {shop}
- .quietpc.com
- .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
- .jungle.com
- .scan.co.uk
- # These shops require pop-ups
- {shop -no-popups}
- .dabs.com
- .overclockers.co.uk
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-The Filter File
-
- The filter file defines what filtering of web pages Junkbuster does.
- The default filter file is re_filterfile, located in the config
- directory. In this file, any document content, whether viewable text
- or embedded non-visible content, can be changed.
-
- This file uses regular expressions to alter or remove any string in
- the target page. Some examples from the included default
- re_filterfile:
-
- Stop web pages from displaying annoying messages in the status bar by
- deleting such references:
-
- # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless buzzwo
- rds.
- # Again, check it out on http://www.airport-cgn.de/.
- s/status='.*?';*//ig
-
- Just for kicks, replace any occurrence of "Microsoft" with
- "MicroSuck":
-
- s/microsoft(?!.com)/MicroSuck/ig
-
- Kill those auto-refresh tags:
-
- # Kill refresh tags. I like to refresh myself. Manually.
- # check it out on http://www.airport-cgn.de/ and go to the arrivals p
- age.
- #
- s/<meta[^>]*http-equiv[^>]*refresh.*URL=([^>]*?)"?>/<link rev="x-refr
- esh" href=$1>/i
- s/<meta[^>]*http-equiv="?page-enter"?[^>]*content=[^>]*>/<!--no page
- enter for me-->/i
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-Quickstart to Using Junkbuster
-
- Install package, then run and enjoy! Junbuster accepts only one
- command line option -- the configuration file to be used. Example Unix
- startup command:
-
-
- # /usr/sbin/junkbuster /etc/junkbuster/config &
-
-
- If no configuration file is specified on the command line, Junkbuster
- will look for a file named config in the current directory. Except on
- Amiga where it will look for AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/config and Win32
- where it will try junkbstr.txt. If no file is specified on the command
- line and no default configuration file can be found, Junkbuster will
- fail to start.
-
- Be sure your browser is set to use the proxy which is by default at
- localhost, port 8000. With Netscape (and Mozilla), this can be set
- under Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Proxies -> HTTP Proxy. For
- Internet Explorer: Tools > Internet Properties -> Connections -> LAN
- Setting. Then, check "Use Proxy" and fill in the appropriate info
- (Address: localhost, Port: 8000). Include if HTTPS proxy support too.
-
- The included default configuration files should give a reasonable
- starting point, though may be somewhat aggressive in blocking junk.
- You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites that require
- cookies, and add these to actionsfile as needed. By default, most of
- these will be blocked until you add them to the configuration. If you
- want the browser to handle this instead, you will need to edit
- actionsfile and disable this feature. If you use more than one
- browser, it would make more sense to let Junkbuster handle this. In
- which case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
-
- If a particular site shows problems loading properly, try adding it to
- the {fragile} section of actionsfile. This will turn off most actions
- for this site.
-
- HTTP/1.1 support is not fully implemented. If browsers that support
- HTTP/1.1 (like Mozilla or recent versions of I.E.) experience
- problems, you might try to force HTTP/1.0 compatiblity. For Mozilla,
- look under Edit -> Preferences -> Debug -> Networking. Or set the
- "+downgrade" config option in actionsfile.
-
- After running Junkbuster for a while, you can start to fine tune the
- configuration to suit your personal, or site, preferences and
- requirements. There are many, many aspects that can be customized.
- "Actions" (from actionsfile) can be adjusted by pointing your browser
- to [21]http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/config/, and then follow the link
- to "edit the actions list". (This is an internal page and does not
- require Internet access.)
-
- In fact, various aspects of Junkbuster configuration can be viewed
- from this page, including current configuration parameters, source
- code version numbers, the browser's request headers, and "actions"
- that apply to a given URL. In addition to the actionsfile editor
- mentioned above, Junkbuster can also be turned "on" and "off" from
- this page.
-
- If you encounter problems, please verify it is a Junkbuster bug, by
- disabling Junkbuster, and then trying the same page. Also, try another
- browser if possible to eliminate browser or site problems. Before
- reporting it as a bug, see if there is not a configuration option that
- is enabled that is causing the page not to load. You can then add an
- exception for that page or site. If a bug, please report it to the
- developers (see below).
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-Contact the Developers
-
- Feature requests and other questions should be posted to the
- [22]Feature request page at SourceForge. There is also an archive
- there.
-
- Anyone interested in actively participating in development and related
- discussions can join the appropriate mailing list [23]here. Archives
- are available here too.
-
- Please report bugs, using the form at [24]Sourceforge. Please try to
- verify that it is a Junkbuster bug, and not a browser or site bug
- first. Also, check to make sure this is not already a known bug.
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-Copyright and History
-
-License
-
- Internet Junkbuster is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
- modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
- published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
- License, or (at your option) any later version.
-
- 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
- [25]the Free Software Foundation, Inc, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
- Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-History
-
- Junkbuster was originally written by Anonymous Coders and
- [26]JunkBusters Corporation, and was released as free open-source
- software under the GNU GPL. [27]Stefan Waldherr made many
- improvements, and started the [28]SourceForge project to rekindle
- development. The last stable release was v2.0.2, which has now grown
- whiskers ;-).
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-See also
-
- [29]http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa
-
- [30]http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/
-
- [31]http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/config/
-
- [32]http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/cookies.html
-
- [33]http://www.waldherr.org/junkbuster/
-
- [34]http://privacy.net/analyze/
-
- [35]http://www.squid-cache.org/
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-Appendix
-
-Regular Expressions
-
- Junkbuster can use "regular expressions" in various config files.
- Assuming support for "pcre" (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions) is
- compiled in, which is the default. Such configuration directives do
- not require regular expressions, but they can be used to increase
- flexibility by matching a pattern with wildcards against URLs.
-
- If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what "regular
- expressions" are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
- introduction only. A full explanation would require a book ;-)
-
- "Regular expressions" is a way of matching one character expression
- against another to see if it matches or not. One of the "expressions"
- is a literal string of readable characters (letter, numbers, etc), and
- the other is a complex string of literal characters combined with
- wildcards, and other special characters, called metacharacters. The
- "metacharacters" have special meanings and are used to build the
- complex pattern to be matched against. Perl Compatible Regular
- Expressions is an enhanced form of the regular expression language
- with backward compatibility.
-
- To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wildcard
- characters when listing files with the dir command in DOS. *.* matches
- all filenames. The "special" character here is the asterik which
- matches any and all characters. We can be more specific and use ? to
- match just individual characters. So "dir file?.text" would match
- "file1.txt", "file2.txt", etc. We are pattern matching, using a
- similar technique to "regular expressions"!
-
- Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much
- more powerful. There are many more "special characters" and ways of
- building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common
- ones, and then some examples:
-
- . - Matches any single character, e.g. "a", "A", "4", ":", or "@".
-
- ? - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
- times. Either/or.
-
- + - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
- times.
-
- * - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
- times.
-
- \ - The "escape" character denotes that the following character should
- be taken literally. This is used where one of the special characters
- (e.g. ".") needs to be taken literally and not as a special
- metacharacter.
-
- [] - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if any of the
- enclosed characters are encountered.
-
- () - Pararentheses are used to group a sub-expression, or multiple
- sub-expressions.
-
- | - The "bar" character works like an "or" conditional statement. A
- match is successful if the sub-expression on either side of "|"
- matches.
-
- s/string1/string2/g - This is used to rewrite strings of text.
- "string1" is replaced by "string2" in this example.
-
- These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching
- URLs with Junkbuster, and is a long way from a definitive list. This
- is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may be
- more illuminating:
-
- /.*/banners/.* - A simple example that uses the common combination of
- "." and "*" to denote any character, zero or more times. In other
- words, any string at all. So we start with a literal forward slash,
- then our regular expression pattern (".*") another literal forward
- slash, the string "banners", another forward slash, and lastly another
- ".*". We are building a directory path here. This will match any file
- with the path that has a directory named "banners" in it. The ".*"
- matches any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward
- slashes, so it might expand into a much longer looking path. For
- example, this could match:
- "/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif", or just
- "/banners/annoying.html", or almost an infinite number of other
- possible combinations, just so it has "banners" in the path somewhere.
-
- A now something a little more complex:
-
- /.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/ - We have several literal
- forward slashes again ("/"), so we are building another expression
- that is a file path statement. We have another ".*", so we are
- matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so it matches our
- expression. The only true literal that must match our pattern is adv,
- together with the forward slashes. What comes after the "adv" string
- is the interesting part.
-
- Remember the "?" means the preceding expression (either a literal
- character or anything grouped with "(...)" in this case) can exist or
- not, since this means either zero or one match. So
- "((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))" is optional, as are the individual
- sub-expressions: "(er)", "(ing|ements?)", and the "s". The "|" means
- "or". We have two of those. For instance, "(ing|ements?)", can expand
- to match either "ing" OR "ements?". What is being done here, is an
- attempt at matching as many variations of "advertisement", and
- similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just "adv", or
- "advert", or "adverts", or "advertising", or "advertisement", or
- "advertisements". You get the idea. But it would not match
- "advertizements" (with a "z"). We could fix that by changing our
- regular expression to: "/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/",
- which would then match either spelling.
-
- /.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g) - Again another path statement with
- forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets "[]" can be matched.
- This is using "0-9" as a shorthand expression to mean any digit one
- through nine. It is the same as saying "0123456789". So any digit
- matches. The "+" means one or more of the preceding expression must be
- included. The preceding expression here is what is in the square
- brackets -- in this case, any digit one through nine. Then, at the
- end, we have a grouping: "(gif|jpe?g)". This includes a "|", so this
- needs to match the expression on either side of that bar character
- also. A simple "gif" on one side, and the other side will in turn
- match either "jpeg" or "jpg", since the "?" means the letter "e" is
- optional and can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an
- expression here to match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must
- include the literal string "advert", then one or more digits, and a
- "." (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is
- escaped with "\"), and lastly either "gif", or "jpeg", or "jpg". Some
- possible matches would include: "//advert1.jpg",
- "/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif", "/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg". It
- would not match "advert1.gif" (no leading slash), or "/adverts232.jpg"
- (the expression does not include an "s"), or "/advert1.jsp" ("jsp" is
- not in the expression anywhere).
-
- s/microsoft(?!.com)/MicroSuck/i - This is a substitution. "MicroSuck"
- will replace any occurence of "microsoft". The "i" at the end of the
- expression means ignore case. The "(?!.com)" means the match should
- fail if "microsoft" is followed by ".com". In other words, this acts
- like a "NOT" modifier. In case this is a hyperlink, we don't want to
- break it ;-).
-
- We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so
- that you can understand the default Junkbuster configuration files,
- and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own installation. There
- is much, much more that can be done with regular expressions. Now that
- you know enough to get started, you can learn more on your own :/
-
- More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
- [36]http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html
-
- Done.
-
-References
-
- 1. http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/user-manual/
- 2. file://localhost/home/hal/junkbuster/current/doc/source/tmp.html#INTRODUCTION
- 3. file://localhost/home/hal/junkbuster/current/doc/source/tmp.html#INSTALLATION
- 4. file://localhost/home/hal/junkbuster/current/doc/source/tmp.html#CONFIGURATION
- 5. file://localhost/home/hal/junkbuster/current/doc/source/tmp.html#QUICKSTART
- 6. file://localhost/home/hal/junkbuster/current/doc/source/tmp.html#CONTACT
- 7. file://localhost/home/hal/junkbuster/current/doc/source/tmp.html#COPYRIGHT
- 8. file://localhost/home/hal/junkbuster/current/doc/source/tmp.html#SEEALSO
- 9. file://localhost/home/hal/junkbuster/current/doc/source/tmp.html#APPENDIX
- 10. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/
- 11. http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/ijbswa/current/
- 12. http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?sh=1&button=Search&key=emxrt.zip&stype=all&sort=type&dir=%2Fpub%2Fos2%2Fdev%2Femx%2Fv0.9d
- 13. http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?sh=1&key=gnupack&stype=all&sort=type&dir=%2Fpub%2Fos2%2Fapps
- 14. http://www.gnu.org/
- 15. http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/config/
- 16. file://localhost/home/hal/junkbuster/current/doc/source/tmp.html#ACTIONSFILE
- 17. http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/config/
- 18. http://i.j.b/show-url-info
- 19. http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html
- 20. file://localhost/home/hal/junkbuster/current/doc/source/tmp.html#REGEX
- 21. http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/config/
- 22. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=361118&group_id=11118&func=browse
- 23. http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=11118
- 24. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=111118
- 25. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
- 26. http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/ijbfaq.html
- 27. http://www.waldherr.org/junkbuster/
- 28. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/
- 29. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa
- 30. http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/
- 31. http://ijbswa.sourceforge.net/config/
- 32. http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/cookies.html
- 33. http://www.waldherr.org/junkbuster/
- 34. http://privacy.net/analyze/
- 35. http://www.squid-cache.org/
- 36. http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html
projects / privoxy.git / blobdiff