X-Git-Url: http://www.privoxy.org/gitweb/?p=privoxy.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=doc%2Fsource%2Fuser-manual.sgml;h=b1ba3ce378ff79fba49a2e5b210eaf6c46189481;hp=f6365fa480dba2f38b6ef59f7bee49aa6e4fbbf3;hb=60523aeb81032f680bc2d568fb710203dec0a454;hpb=2c8dfacae06e570490ad08312d6c5fbcc5086fb1
diff --git a/doc/source/user-manual.sgml b/doc/source/user-manual.sgml
index f6365fa4..b1ba3ce3 100644
--- a/doc/source/user-manual.sgml
+++ b/doc/source/user-manual.sgml
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
+
@@ -9,9 +9,11 @@
+
-
+
+
@@ -34,13 +36,13 @@
This file belongs into
ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
- $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.131 2011/04/19 13:14:10 fabiankeil Exp $
+ $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.206 2016/03/17 10:43:07 fabiankeil Exp $
- Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Privoxy Developers http://www.privoxy.org/
+ Copyright (C) 2001-2014 Privoxy Developers http://www.privoxy.org/
See LICENSE.
========================================================================
- NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
+ NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
anything in this, or other Privoxy documentation.
========================================================================
@@ -55,12 +57,12 @@
- Privoxy Developers
-$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.131 2011/04/19 13:14:10 fabiankeil Exp $
+$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.206 2016/03/17 10:43:07 fabiankeil Exp $
Features
- In addition to the core
- features of ad blocking and
+ In addition to the core
+ features of ad blocking and
cookie management,
Privoxy provides many supplemental
- features,
+ features,
that give the end-user more control, more privacy and more freedom:
@@ -165,14 +167,14 @@ Hal.
- Note:
- On some platforms, the installer may remove previously installed versions, if
+ Note:
+ On some platforms, the installer may remove previously installed versions, if
found. (See below for your platform). In any case be sure to backup
your old configuration if it is valuable to you. See the
-
+
Binary Packages
How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
@@ -180,41 +182,11 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
-
-Red Hat and Fedora RPMs
-
-
- RPMs can be installed with rpm -Uvh privoxy-&p-version;-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.
-
-
-
- If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM:
- rpm --rebuild privoxy-&p-version;-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 if found, before installing Privoxy .
-
-Debian and Ubuntu
DEBs can be installed with apt-get install privoxy ,
- and will use /etc/privoxy for the location of
+ and will use /etc/privoxy for the location of
configuration files.
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.
+ in the same directory as you installed Privoxy in.
Version 3.0.5 beta introduced full Windows service
@@ -256,28 +228,18 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
command: services.msc . If you do not take the manual step
of modifying Privoxy's service settings, it will
not start. Note too that you will need to give Privoxy a user account that
- actually exists, or it will not be permitted to
+ actually exists, or it will not be permitted to
write to its log and configuration files.
-
-Solaris <!--, NetBSD, 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.
-
-OS/2
First, make sure that no previous installations of
- Junkbuster and / or
+ Junkbuster and / or
Privoxy are left on your
system. Check that no Junkbuster
or Privoxy objects are in
@@ -301,72 +263,83 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
Mac OS X
- Unzip the downloaded file (you can either double-click on the zip file
- icon from the Finder, or from the desktop if you downloaded it there).
- Then, double-click on the package installer icon and follow the
- installation process.
+ Installation instructions for the OS X platform depend upon whether
+ you downloaded a ready-built installation package (.pkg or .mpkg) or have
+ downloaded the source code.
+
+Installation from ready-built package
- The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful
- installation (in addition to every time your computer starts up). To
- prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your
- computer starts up, remove or rename the folder named
- /Library/StartupItems/Privoxy .
+ The downloaded file will either be a .pkg (for OS X 10.5 upwards) or a bzipped
+ .mpkg file (for OS X 10.4). The former can be double-clicked as is and the
+ installation will start; double-clicking the latter will unzip the .mpkg file
+ which can then be double-clicked to commence the installation.
- To manually start or stop the privoxy service, use the Privoxy Utility
- for Mac OS X. This application controls the privoxy service (e.g.
- starting and stopping the service as well as uninstalling the software).
+ The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful installation
+ (and thereafter every time your computer starts up) however you will need to
+ configure your web browser(s) to use it. To do so, configure them to use a
+ proxy for HTTP and HTTPS at the address 127.0.0.1:8118.
+
+
+ To prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your computer
+ starts up, remove or rename the file /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.ijbswa.privoxy.plist
+ (on OS X 10.5 and higher) or the folder named
+ /Library/StartupItems/Privoxy (on OS X 10.4 'Tiger').
+
+
+ To manually start or stop the privoxy service, use the scripts startPrivoxy.sh
+ and stopPrivoxy.sh supplied in /Applications/Privoxy. They must be run from an
+ administrator account, using sudo.
-
-
-
-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.
+ To uninstall, run /Applications/Privoxy/uninstall.command as sudo from an
+ administrator account.
FreeBSD
-
+
+Installation from source
- Privoxy is part of FreeBSD's Ports Collection, you can build and install
- it with cd /usr/ports/www/privoxy; make install clean .
+ To build and install the Privoxy source code on OS X you will need to obtain
+ the macsetup module from the Privoxy Sourceforge CVS repository (refer to
+ Sourceforge help for details of how to set up a CVS client to have read-only
+ access to the repository). This module contains scripts that leverage the usual
+ open-source tools (available as part of Apple's free of charge Xcode
+ distribution or via the usual open-source software package managers for OS X
+ (MacPorts, Homebrew, Fink etc.) to build and then install the privoxy binary
+ and associated files. The macsetup module's README file contains complete
+ instructions for its use.
- If you don't use the ports, you can fetch and install
- the package with pkg_add -r privoxy .
+ The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful installation
+ (and thereafter every time your computer starts up) however you will need to
+ configure your web browser(s) to use it. To do so, configure them to use a
+ proxy for HTTP and HTTPS at the address 127.0.0.1:8118.
- The port skeleton and the package can also be downloaded from the
- File Release
- Page , but there's no reason to use them unless you're interested in the
- beta releases which are only available there.
+ To prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your computer
+ starts up, remove or rename the file /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.ijbswa.privoxy.plist
+ (on OS X 10.5 and higher) or the folder named
+ /Library/StartupItems/Privoxy (on OS X 10.4 'Tiger').
-
-
-
-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).
+ To manually start or stop the privoxy service, use the Privoxy Utility
+ for Mac OS X (also part of the macsetup module). This application can start
+ and stop the privoxy service and display its log and configuration files.
- Before installing Privoxy under Gentoo just do
- first emerge --sync to get the latest changes from the
- Portage tree. With emerge privoxy you install the latest
- version.
+ To uninstall, run the macsetup module's uninstall.sh as sudo from an
+ administrator account.
+FreeBSD
+
- Configuration files are in /etc/privoxy , the
- documentation is in /usr/share/doc/privoxy-&p-version;
- and the Log directory is in /var/log/privoxy .
+ Privoxy is part of FreeBSD's Ports Collection, you can build and install
+ it with cd /usr/ports/www/privoxy; make install clean .
The most convenient way to obtain the Privoxy sources
- is to download the source tarball from our
+ is to download the source tarball from our
project download
page .
@@ -386,8 +359,8 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
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 .
-
Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date
-
- As user feedback comes in and development continues, we will make updated versions
- of both the main separate
- package ) and the software itself (including the actions file) available for
- download.
-
If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
@@ -420,7 +386,7 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
In order not to lose your personal changes and adjustments when updating
to the latest default.action file we strongly
- recommend that you use user.action and
+ recommend that you use user.action and
user.filter for your local
customizations of Privoxy . See the
What's New in this Release
+
+&changelog;
+
+
+
+
+Note to Upgraders
+
- Privoxy 3.0.17 is a stable release.
- The changes since 3.0.16 stable are:
+ A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier
+ versions of Privoxy :
-
-
- Fixed last-chunk-detection for responses where the content was small
- enough to be read with the body, causing Privoxy to wait for the
- end of the content until the server closed the connection or the
- request timed out. Reported by "Karsten" in #3028326.
-
-
-
-
- Responses with status code 204 weren't properly detected as body-less
- like RFC2616 mandates. Like the previous bug, this caused Privoxy to
- wait for the end of the content until the server closed the connection
- or the request timed out. Fixes #3022042 and #3025553, reported by a
- user with no visible name. Most likely also fixes a bunch of other
- AJAX-related problem reports that got closed in the past due to
- insufficient information and lack of feedback.
-
-
-
-
- Fixed an ACL bug that made it impossible to build a blacklist.
- Usually the ACL directives are used in a whitelist, which worked
- as expected, but blacklisting is still useful for public proxies
- where one only needs to deny known abusers access.
-
-
-
-
- Added LOG_LEVEL_RECEIVED to log the not-yet-parsed data read from the
- network. This should make debugging various parsing issues a lot easier.
-
-
-
-
- The IPv6 code is enabled by default on Windows versions that support it.
- Patch submitted by oCameLo in #2942729.
-
-
-
-
- In mingw32 versions, the user.filter file is reachable through the
- GUI, just like default.filter is. Feature request 3040263.
-
+
+
+
+ The recommended way to upgrade &my-app; is to backup your old
+ configuration files, install the new ones, verify that &my-app;
+ is working correctly and finally merge back your changes using
+ diff and maybe patch .
+
+
+ There are a number of new features in each &my-app; release and
+ most of them have to be explicitly enabled in the configuration
+ files. Old configuration files obviously don't do that and due
+ to syntax changes using old configuration files with a new
+ &my-app; isn't always possible anyway.
+
+
+
+
+ Note that some installers remove earlier versions completely,
+ including configuration files, therefore you should really save
+ any important configuration files!
+
+
+
+
+ On the other hand, other installers don't overwrite existing configuration
+ files, thinking you will want to do that yourself.
+
+
+
+
+ In the default configuration only fatal errors are logged now.
+ You can change that in the
+
+
+
+
+ Three other config file settings are now off by default:
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
-
-
-Note to Upgraders
-
-
- A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier
- versions of Privoxy :
-
-
+Quickstart to Using Privoxy
- The recommended way to upgrade &my-app; is to backup your old
- configuration files, install the new ones, verify that &my-app;
- is working correctly and finally merge back your changes using
- diff and maybe patch .
-
-
- There are a number of new features in each &my-app; release and
- most of them have to be explicitly enabled in the configuration
- files. Old configuration files obviously don't do that and due
- to syntax changes using old configuration files with a new
- &my-app; isn't always possible anyway.
-
+ Install Privoxy . See the
+
-
- Note that some installers remove earlier versions completely,
- including configuration files, therefore you should really save
- any important configuration files!
+
+ Advanced users and those who want to offer Privoxy
+ service to more than just their local machine should check the
+
-
- On the other hand, other installers don't overwrite existing configuration
- files, thinking you will want to do that yourself.
+
+ Start Privoxy , if the installation program has
+ not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
+ Privoxy .
-
-
- standard.action has been merged into
- the default.action file.
-
-
-
-
- In the default configuration only fatal errors are logged now.
- You can change that in the
-
-
-
-
- Three other config file settings are now off by default:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Quickstart to Using Privoxy
-
-
-
-
-
- Install Privoxy . See the
-
-
-
-
- Advanced users and those who want to offer Privoxy
- service to more than just their local machine should check the
-
-
-
-
- Start Privoxy , if the installation program has
- not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
- Privoxy .
-
-
-
+
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 .
- DO NOT activate proxying for FTP or
+ DO NOT activate proxying for FTP or
any protocols besides HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) unless you intend to prevent your
browser from using these protocols.
-
+
Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad images.
- If using Privoxy to manage
+ If using Privoxy to manage
cookies ,
you should remove any currently stored cookies too.
-
+
- A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for
+ 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
+ configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little
to no initial configuration is required in most cases, you may want
to enable the
web-based action editor though.
@@ -1161,7 +607,7 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
introduction to how Privoxy blocks ads and
banners.
-
+
@@ -1176,33 +622,21 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
Action has hints on how to understand and debug actions that
misbehave
.
-
-
-
+
Please see the section
-
+
Now enjoy surfing with enhanced control, comfort and privacy!
-
+
@@ -1213,35 +647,35 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
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
+ 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.
-
- This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so
+
+ 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. And the more likely that some things
+ more aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block
+ things that were not intended. And the more likely that some things
may not work as 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
+ 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
+ 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
@@ -1253,7 +687,7 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
Actions are specified in Privoxy's configuration,
- followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
+ followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
can actually be URL type
The most important actions for basic ad blocking are:
-
+
- Privoxy 's own built-in BLOCKED page instead to
let you now what has happened (with some exceptions, see below).
-
+
- 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
+ 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.
-
+
- Privoxy's
- normal BLOCKED HTML page. This is useful for file types that are neither
+ Privoxy's
+ normal BLOCKED HTML page. This is useful for file types that are neither
HTML nor images, such as blocking JavaScript files.
-
+
@@ -1338,7 +772,7 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
- pattern - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad
+ pattern - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad
replacement is obvious. This is the default.
@@ -1354,14 +788,14 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
of the user's choosing (advanced usage).
-
+
Advanced users will eventually want to explore &my-app;
- block
blocks a site, page, or unwanted contented. Filters
@@ -1376,7 +810,7 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
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
+ (shortcut: http://p.p/show-status ). This
is an internal page, and does not require Internet access.
@@ -1408,21 +842,21 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
- Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select
+ Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select
Copy Link Location
from the
- pop-up menu.
+ pop-up menu.
-
+
- Set your browser to
+ Set your browser to
http://config.privoxy.org/show-status
-
+
- Find user.action in the top section, and click
+ Find user.action in the top section, and click
on Edit
:
@@ -1432,29 +866,29 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
-
+
[ Screenshot of Actions Files in Use ]
-
-
+
+
You should have a section with only
- Actions:
.
If not, click a Insert new section below
- button, and in the new section that just appeared, click the
+ 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
Enabled
column, then Submit
just below the list.
-
+
Now, in the Submit
(or
OK
if in a pop-up window).
-
+
Now go back to the original page, and press SHIFT-Reload
(or flush all browser caches). The image should be gone now.
-
-
+
+
- This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
+ 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
+ site. For a more extensive explanation of patterns
, and
the entire actions concept, see
@@ -1489,11 +923,11 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
The ideas explained therein also apply to the web-based editor.
- There are also various
- advanced
usage category, and are explained in
- depth in later sections.
+ depth in later sections.
@@ -1509,14 +943,14 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
Before launching Privoxy for the first time, you
will want to configure your browser(s) to use
- Privoxy as a HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)
+ Privoxy as a HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)
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
!
- Please note that Privoxy can only proxy HTTP and
+ Please note that Privoxy can only proxy HTTP and
HTTPS traffic. It will not work with FTP or other protocols.
@@ -1527,35 +961,35 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
-
+
[ Screenshot of Mozilla Proxy Configuration ]
-
-
+
+
With Firefox , this is typically set under:
-
+
Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Network ->Connection -> Settings
-
+
Or optionally on some platforms:
-
+
Edit -> Preferences -> General -> Connection Settings -> Manual Proxy Configuration
-
+
With Netscape (and
Mozilla ), this can be set under:
@@ -1569,7 +1003,7 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
- For Internet Explorer v.5-7 :
+ For Internet Explorer v.5-7 :
@@ -1591,7 +1025,7 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
-
+
[ Screenshot of IE Proxy Configuration ]
@@ -1602,7 +1036,7 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
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. Remove
+ re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. Remove
any cookies ,
if you want Privoxy to manage that. You are now
ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
@@ -1617,39 +1051,40 @@ How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
directory. Except on Win32 where it will try config.txt .
-
-Red Hat and Fedora
+
+Debian
- A default Red Hat installation may not start &my-app; upon boot. It will use
- the file /etc/privoxy/config as its main configuration
+ We use a script. Note that Debian typically starts &my-app; upon booting per
+ default. It will use the file
+ /etc/privoxy/config as its main configuration
file.
- # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
+ # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
+
+
+
+FreeBSD and ElectroBSD
- Or ...
+ To start Privoxy upon booting, add
+ "privoxy_enable='YES'" to /etc/rc.conf .
+ Privoxy will use
+ /usr/local/etc/privoxy/config as its main
+ configuration file.
-
- # service privoxy start
-
+ If you installed Privoxy into a jail, the
+ paths above are relative to the jail root.
-
-
-
-Debian
- We use a script. Note that Debian typically starts &my-app; upon booting per
- default. It will use the file
- /etc/privoxy/config as its main configuration
- file.
+ To start Privoxy manually, run:
- # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
+ # service privoxy onestart
@@ -1666,22 +1101,28 @@ Click on the &my-app; Icon to start Privoxy . If no co
Privoxy can run with full Windows service functionality.
On Windows only, the &my-app; program has two new command line arguments
- to install and uninstall &my-app; as a service. See the
+ to install and uninstall &my-app; as a service. See the
-Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others
+Generic instructions for Unix derivates (Solaris, NetBSD, HP-UX etc.)
Example Unix startup command:
- # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
+ # /usr/sbin/privoxy --user privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
+
+ Note that if you installed Privoxy through
+ a package manager, the package will probably contain a platform-specific
+ script or configuration file to start Privoxy
+ upon boot.
+
@@ -1697,72 +1138,25 @@ Example Unix startup command:
Mac OS X
- After downloading the privoxy software, unzip the downloaded file by
- double-clicking on the zip file icon. Then, double-click on the
- installer package icon and follow the installation process.
-
-
- The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful
- installation. In addition, the privoxy service will automatically
- start every time your computer starts up.
-
-
- To prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your
- computer starts up, remove or rename the folder named
- /Library/StartupItems/Privoxy.
-
-
- A simple application named Privoxy Utility has been created which
- enables administrators to easily start and stop the privoxy service.
+ The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful installation
+ (and thereafter every time your computer starts up) however you will need to
+ configure your web browser(s) to use it. To do so, configure them to use a
+ proxy for HTTP and HTTPS at the address 127.0.0.1:8118.
- In addition, the Privoxy Utility presents a simple way for
- administrators to edit the various privoxy config files. A method
- to uninstall the software is also available.
+ To prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your computer
+ starts up, remove or rename the file /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.ijbswa.privoxy.plist
+ (on OS X 10.5 and higher) or the folder named
+ /Library/StartupItems/Privoxy (on OS X 10.4 'Tiger').
- An administrator username and password must be supplied in order for
- the Privoxy Utility to perform any of the tasks.
+ To manually start or stop the privoxy service, use the scripts startPrivoxy.sh
+ and stopPrivoxy.sh supplied in /Applications/Privoxy. They must be run from an
+ administrator account, using sudo.
-
-AmigaOS
-
- 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).
-
-
-
-
-Gentoo
-
- A script is again used. It will use the file /etc/privoxy/config
- as its main configuration file.
-
-
-
- /etc/init.d/privoxy start
-
-
-
- Note that Privoxy is not automatically started at
- boot time by default. You can change this with the rc-update
- command.
-
-
-
- rc-update add privoxy default
-
-
-
-
@@ -1872,6 +1266,27 @@ must find a better place for this paragraph
+
+
+ --config-test
+
+
+ Exit after loading the configuration files before binding to
+ the listen address. The exit code signals whether or not the
+ configuration files have been successfully loaded.
+
+
+ If the exit code is 1, at least one of the configuration files
+ is invalid, if it is 0, all the configuration files have been
+ successfully loaded (but may still contain errors that can
+ currently only be detected at run time).
+
+
+ This option doesn't affect the log setting, combination with
+ --no-daemon is recommended if a configured
+ log file shouldn't be used.
+
+
--version
@@ -1879,7 +1294,7 @@ must find a better place for this paragraph
Print version info and exit. Unix only.
-
+
--help
@@ -1887,7 +1302,7 @@ must find a better place for this paragraph
Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
-
+
--no-daemon
@@ -1896,7 +1311,7 @@ must find a better place for this paragraph
Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
leader, and don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
-
+
--pidfile FILE
@@ -1907,7 +1322,7 @@ must find a better place for this paragraph
FILE is non-fatal. If no FILE
option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
-
+
--user USER[.GROUP]
@@ -1923,9 +1338,9 @@ must find a better place for this paragraph
--chroot
- Before changing to the user ID given in the --user option,
+ 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 &my-app;
- process that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
+ process that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
the impact of possible vulnerabilities in &my-app; to the files contained in that hierarchy.
Unix only.
@@ -1935,9 +1350,10 @@ must find a better place for this paragraph
--pre-chroot-nslookup hostname
- Specifies a hostname to look up before doing a chroot. On some systems, initializing the
- resolver library involves reading config files from /etc and/or loading additional shared
- libraries from /lib. On these systems, doing a hostname lookup before the chroot reduces
+ Specifies a hostname (for example www.privoxy.org) to look up before doing a chroot.
+ On some systems, initializing the resolver library involves reading config files from
+ /etc and/or loading additional shared libraries from /lib.
+ On these systems, doing a hostname lookup before the chroot reduces
the number of files that must be copied into the chroot tree.
@@ -1953,23 +1369,23 @@ must find a better place for this paragraph
configfile
- 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,
+ 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.
-
+
- On MS Windows only there are two additional
- command-line options to allow Privoxy to install and
- run as a service . See the
-MS Windows only there are two additional
+ command-line options to allow Privoxy to install and
+ run as a service . See the
+
@@ -1983,21 +1399,21 @@ for details.
Privoxy Configuration
- All Privoxy configuration is stored
+ All Privoxy configuration is stored
in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
- Many important aspects of Privoxy can
+ Many important aspects of Privoxy can
also be controlled easily with a web browser.
-
+
Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser
- Privoxy 's user interface can be reached through the special
+ Privoxy 's user interface can be reached through the special
URL http://config.privoxy.org/
- (shortcut: http://p.p/ ),
+ (shortcut: http://p.p/ ),
which is a built-in page and works without Internet access.
You will see the following section:
@@ -2039,19 +1455,16 @@ for details.
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.
+ file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
- Toggle Privoxy On or Off
is handy for sites that might
+ 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
+ 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 Privoxy with one click from
- your browser.
+ Privoxy acts like a normal forwarding proxy.
@@ -2076,14 +1489,14 @@ for details.
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
+ AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
Privoxy executable.
- The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though
+ 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:
@@ -2097,7 +1510,7 @@ for details.
on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and config.txt
on Windows. This is a required file.
-
+
@@ -2111,23 +1524,23 @@ for details.
It should be the second actions file loaded and shouldn't be edited by the user.
- Multiple actions files may be defined in config . These
- are processed in the order they are defined. Local customizations and locally
+ 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
match-all.action (which you will most probably want
to define sooner or later) are best applied in user.action ,
where you can preserve them across upgrades. The file isn't installed by all
installers, but you can easily create it yourself with a text editor.
-
+
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.
+ various actions files.
-
+
@@ -2135,15 +1548,15 @@ for details.
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.
- default.filter includes various filters made
- available for use by the developers. Some are much more intrusive than
- others, and all should be used with caution. You may define additional
- filter files in config as you can with
- actions files. We suggest user.filter for any
+ whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
+ default.filter includes various filters made
+ available for use by the developers. Some are much more intrusive than
+ others, and all should be used with caution. You may define additional
+ filter files in config as you can with
+ actions files. We suggest user.filter for any
locally defined filters or customizations.
-
+
@@ -2165,15 +1578,15 @@ for details.
- The actions files and filter files
+ The actions files and filter files
can use Perl style
After making any changes, there is no need to restart
Privoxy in order for the changes to take
- effect. Privoxy detects such changes
+ 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
@@ -2182,9 +1595,9 @@ for details.
- While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
- The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
- Also, what constitutes a default
setting, may change, so
+ While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
+ The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
+ Also, what constitutes a default
setting, may change, so
please check all your configuration files on important issues.
]]>
@@ -2220,15 +1633,15 @@ for details.
The actions files are used to define what actions
Privoxy takes for which URLs, and thus determines
how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
- transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof).
+ transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof).
There are a number of such actions, with a wide range of functionality.
Each action does something a little different.
- These actions give us a veritable arsenal of tools with which to exert
- our control, preferences and independence. Actions can be combined so that
+ These actions give us a veritable arsenal of tools with which to exert
+ our control, preferences and independence. Actions can be combined so that
their effects are aggregated when applied against a given set of URLs.
-
+
- There
+ There
are three action files included with Privoxy with
differing purposes:
@@ -2241,7 +1654,7 @@ for details.
content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default.
It should be the first actions file loaded
-
+
default.action - defines many exceptions (both
@@ -2250,15 +1663,15 @@ for details.
work reasonably well as-is for most users. This file is only supposed to
be edited by the developers. It should be the second actions file loaded.
-
+
- user.action - is intended to be for local site
+ 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
+ has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
-
+
Edit Set to Cautious Set to Medium Set to Advanced
@@ -2266,16 +1679,16 @@ for details.
These have increasing levels of aggressiveness and have no
influence on your browsing unless you select them explicitly in the
- editor . A default installation should be pre-set to
+ editor. A default installation should be pre-set to
Cautious . New users should try this for a while before
- adjusting the settings to more aggressive levels. The more aggressive
- the settings, then the more likelihood there is of problems such as sites
+ adjusting the settings to more aggressive levels. The more aggressive
+ the settings, then the more likelihood there is of problems such as sites
not working as they should.
- The Edit button allows you to turn each
+ The Edit button allows you to turn each
action on/off individually for fine-tuning. The Cautious
- button changes the actions list to low/safe settings which will activate
+ button changes the actions list to low/safe settings which will activate
ad blocking and a minimal set of &my-app;'s features, and subsequently
there will be less of a chance for accidental problems. The
Medium button sets the list to a medium level of
@@ -2346,7 +1759,7 @@ for details.
blocks only
blocks only
-
+
Privacy Features
low
@@ -2415,12 +1828,12 @@ for details.
-
+
-
+
- The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
+ 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 processed before
user.action ). The content of these can all be viewed and
@@ -2431,7 +1844,7 @@ for details.
(defined in default.action ),
followed by any exceptions (typically also in
default.action ), which are then followed lastly by any
- local preferences (typically in user .action ).
+ local preferences (typically in user .action ).
Generally, user.action has the last word.
@@ -2441,7 +1854,7 @@ for details.
very careful with using such a
- universal set in user.action or any other actions file after
+ 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
@@ -2450,7 +1863,7 @@ for details.
personal settings across Privoxy upgrades easier.
-
+
Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
just some obnoxious URL whose content you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
@@ -2460,13 +1873,13 @@ for details.
-
+
Finding the Right Mix
Note that some aggressive
your default settings (in the top section of the
actions file) are, the more exceptions for trusted
sites you
@@ -2485,7 +1898,7 @@ for details.
-
+
How to Edit
The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by
@@ -2498,13 +1911,13 @@ for details.
like Cautious
, Medium
or
Advanced
. Warning: the Advanced
setting is more
aggressive, and will be more likely to cause problems for some sites.
- Experienced users only!
+ Experienced users only!
If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
the actions files with your favorite text editor. Look at
- default.action which is richly commented with many
+ default.action which is richly commented with many
good examples.
@@ -2532,12 +1945,12 @@ for details.
If multiple applying sections 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 {
+ E.g. a URL might match a regular section with a heading line of {
+ ,
then later another one with just {
+ , resulting
- in both actions to apply. And there may well be
- cases where you will want to combine actions together. Such a section then
+ in both actions to apply. And there may well be
+ cases where you will want to combine actions together. Such a section then
might look like:
@@ -2564,7 +1977,7 @@ for details.
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
@@ -2572,26 +1985,26 @@ for details.
flexibility. This allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match
against many similar patterns.
-
+
Generally, an URL pattern has the form
- <domain><port>/<path> , where the
- <domain> , the <port>
+ <host><port>/<path> , where the
+ <host> , the <port>
and the <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!
- The pattern matching syntax is different for the domain and path parts of
- the URL. The domain part uses a simple globbing type matching technique,
- while the path part uses more flexible
+ The pattern matching syntax is different for the host and path parts of
+ the URL. The host part uses a simple globbing type matching technique,
+ while the path part uses more flexible
Regular
Expressions
The port part of a pattern is a decimal port number preceded by a colon
- (: ). If the domain part contains a numerical IPv6 address,
+ (: ). If the host part contains a numerical IPv6 address,
it has to be put into angle brackets
(< , > ).
@@ -2601,9 +2014,9 @@ for details.
www.example.com/
- is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to www.example.com ,
+ is a host-only pattern and will match any request to www.example.com ,
regardless of which document on that server is requested. So ALL pages in
- this domain would be covered by the scope of this action. Note that a
+ this domain would be covered by the scope of this action. Note that a
simple example.com is different and would NOT match.
@@ -2612,7 +2025,7 @@ for details.
www.example.com
- means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing / may
+ means exactly the same. For host-only patterns, the trailing / may
be omitted.
@@ -2661,6 +2074,15 @@ for details.
+
+ 10.0.0.1/
+
+ Matches any URL with the host address 10.0.0.1 .
+ (Note that the real URL uses plain brackets, not angle brackets.)
+
+
+
<2001:db8::1>/
@@ -2675,7 +2097,7 @@ for details.
matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
- there is no top-level domain called .html . So its
+ there is no top-level domain called .html . So its
a mistake.
@@ -2684,11 +2106,13 @@ for details.
-The Domain Pattern
+The Host 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.
+ The matching of the host part offers some flexible options: if the
+ host pattern starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
+ The host pattern is often referred to as domain pattern as it is usually
+ used to match domain names and not IP addresses.
For example:
@@ -2726,7 +2150,7 @@ for details.
a domain.) This might be www.example.com ,
news.example.de , or
www.example.net/cgi/testing.pl for instance. All these
- cases are matched.
+ cases are matched.
@@ -2736,12 +2160,12 @@ for details.
Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
themselves. These work similarly to shell globbing type wild-cards:
*
represents zero or more arbitrary characters (this is
- equivalent to the
+ equivalent to the
Regular
Expression
.*
),
?
represents any single character (this is equivalent to the
regular expression syntax of a simple .
), and you can define
- character classes
in square brackets which is similar to
+ character classes
in square brackets which is similar to
the same regular expression technique. All of this can be freely mixed:
@@ -2750,7 +2174,7 @@ for details.
ad*.example.com
- matches adserver.example.com
,
+ matches adserver.example.com
,
ads.example.com
, etc but not sfads.example.com
@@ -2768,7 +2192,7 @@ for details.
matches www.ipix.com ,
- pictures.epix.com , a.b.c.d.e.upix.com etc.
+ pictures.epix.com , a.b.c.d.e.upix.com etc.
@@ -2776,9 +2200,9 @@ for details.
www[1-9a-ez].example.c*
- matches www1.example.com ,
- www4.example.cc , wwwd.example.cy ,
- wwwz.example.com etc., but not
+ matches www1.example.com ,
+ www4.example.cc , wwwd.example.cy ,
+ wwwz.example.com etc., but not
wwww.example.com .
@@ -2795,7 +2219,7 @@ for details.
-The Path Pattern
+The Path Pattern
Privoxy uses modern
POSIX 1003.2
@@ -2812,13 +2236,13 @@ for details.
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
+ 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
+ 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.
@@ -2829,7 +2253,7 @@ for details.
.example.com/.*
- Is equivalent to just .example.com
, since any documents
+ Is equivalent to just .example.com
, since any documents
within that domain are matched with or without the .*
regular expression. This is redundant
@@ -2843,9 +2267,9 @@ for details.
named index.html
, and that is part of some path. For
example, it matches www.example.com/testing/index.html
but
NOT www.example.com/index.html
because the regular
- expression called for at least two /'s
, thus the path
- requirement. It also would match
- www.example.com/testing/index_html
, because of the
+ expression called for at least two /'s
, thus the path
+ requirement. It also would match
+ www.example.com/testing/index_html
, because of the
special meta-character .
.
@@ -2854,9 +2278,9 @@ for details.
.example.com/(.*/)?index\.html$
- This regular expression is conditional so it will match any page
- named index.html
regardless of path which in this case can
- have one or more /'s
. And this one must contain exactly
+ This regular expression is conditional so it will match any page
+ named index.html
regardless of path which in this case can
+ have one or more /'s
. And this one must contain exactly
.html
(but does not have to end with that!).
@@ -2866,7 +2290,7 @@ for details.
This regular expression will match any path of example.com
- that contains any of the words ads
, banner
,
+ that contains any of the words ads
, banner
,
banners
(because of the ?
) or junk
.
The path does not have to end in these words, just contain them.
@@ -2876,8 +2300,8 @@ for details.
.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)/.*\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$
- This is very much the same as above, except now it must end in either
- .jpg
, .jpeg
, .gif
or .png
. So this
+ This is very much the same as above, except now it must end in either
+ .jpg
, .jpeg
, .gif
or .png
. So this
one is limited to common image formats.
@@ -2885,7 +2309,7 @@ for details.
- There are many, many good examples to be found in default.action ,
+ There are many, many good examples to be found in default.action ,
and more tutorials below in
@@ -2895,18 +2319,18 @@ for details.
-The Tag Pattern
+The Request Tag Pattern
- Tag patterns are used to change the applying actions based on the
- request's tags. Tags can be created with either the
-
- Tag patterns have to start with TAG:
, so &my-app;
- can tell them apart from URL patterns. Everything after the colon
+ Request tag patterns have to start with TAG:
, so &my-app;
+ can tell them apart from other patterns. Everything after the colon
including white space, is interpreted as a regular expression with
path pattern syntax, except that tag patterns aren't left-anchored
automatically (&my-app; doesn't silently add a ^
,
@@ -2922,15 +2346,15 @@ for details.
- Sections can contain URL and tag patterns at the same time,
- but tag patterns are checked after the URL patterns and thus
+ Sections can contain URL and request tag patterns at the same time,
+ but request tag patterns are checked after the URL patterns and thus
always overrule them, even if they are located before the URL patterns.
- Once a new tag is added, Privoxy checks right away if it's matched by one
- of the tag patterns and updates the action settings accordingly. As a result
- tags can be used to activate other tagger actions, as long as these other
+ Once a new request tag is added, Privoxy checks right away if it's matched by one
+ of the request tag patterns and updates the action settings accordingly. As a result
+ request tags can be used to activate other tagger actions, as long as these other
taggers look for headers that haven't already be parsed.
@@ -2954,6 +2378,79 @@ for details.
The Negative Request Tag Patterns
+
+
+ To match requests that do not have a certain request tag, specify a negative tag pattern
+ by prefixing the tag pattern line with either NO-REQUEST-TAG:
+ or NO-RESPONSE-TAG:
instead of TAG:
.
+
+
+
+ Negative request tag patterns created with NO-REQUEST-TAG:
are checked
+ after all client headers are scanned, the ones created with NO-RESPONSE-TAG:
+ are checked after all server headers are scanned. In both cases all the created
+ tags are considered.
+
+
+
+The Client Tag Pattern
+
+
+
+
+
+ This is an experimental feature. The syntax is likely to change in future versions.
+
+
+
+
+ Client tag patterns are not set based on HTTP headers but based on
+ the client's IP address. Users can enable them themselves, but the
+ Privoxy admin controls which tags are available and what their effect
+ is.
+
+
+
+ After a client-specific tag has been defined with the
+
+
+ The tag is set for all requests that come from clients that requested
+ it to be set. Note that "clients" are differentiated by IP address,
+ if the IP address changes the tag has to be requested again.
+
+
+ Clients can request tags to be set by using the CGI interface http://config.privoxy.org/show-client-tags .
+
+
+
+ Example:
+
+
+
+
+# If the admin defined the client-specific-tag circumvent-blocks,
+# and the request comes from a client that previously requested
+# the tag to be set, overrule all previous +block actions that
+# are enabled based on URL to CLIENT-TAG patterns.
+{-block}
+CLIENT-TAG:^circumvent-blocks$
+
+# This section is not overruled because it's located after
+# the previous one.
+{+block{Nobody is supposed to request this.}}
+example.org/blocked-example-page
+
+
+
Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
- separated by whitespace, like in
+ 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.
+ of the actions file.
-
+
Actions fall into three categories:
-
+
Boolean, i.e the action can only be enabled
or
disabled
. Syntax:
@@ -3000,14 +2497,14 @@ for details.
+name # enable action name
-name # disable action name
-
+
Example: +handle-as-image
-
+
Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of action.
Syntax:
@@ -3021,13 +2518,13 @@ for details.
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/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070602 Firefox/2.0.0.4}
-
+
-
+
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
@@ -3042,7 +2539,7 @@ for details.
# 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}
@@ -3061,8 +2558,8 @@ for details.
Later defined action sections always over-ride earlier ones of the same type.
- 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 such
+ 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 such
as user.action ). 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
@@ -3114,7 +2611,7 @@ for details.
Multi-value.
-
+
Parameter:
@@ -3125,14 +2622,14 @@ for details.
-
+
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
+ 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.
@@ -3145,7 +2642,16 @@ for details.
Example usage:
- +add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}
+ # Add a DNT ("Do not track") header to all requests,
+# event to those that already have one.
+#
+# This is just an example, not a recommendation.
+#
+# There is no reason to believe that user-tracking websites care
+# about the DNT header and depending on the User-Agent, adding the
+# header may make user-tracking easier.
+{+add-header{DNT: 1}}
+/
@@ -3175,10 +2681,10 @@ for details.
the
@@ -3197,7 +2703,7 @@ for details.
A block reason that should be given to the user.
-
+
Notes:
@@ -3208,18 +2714,18 @@ for details.
to the blocked content (the latter only if the force feature is available and
enabled).
-
- A very important exception occurs if both
+
+ A very important exception occurs if both
block and
- It is important to understand this process, in order
- to understand how Privoxy deals with
- ads and other unwanted content. Blocking is a core feature, and one
+ It is important to understand this process, in order
+ to understand how Privoxy deals with
+ ads and other unwanted content. Blocking is a core feature, and one
upon which various other features depend.
@@ -3240,12 +2746,12 @@ for details.
# Block and replace with "blocked" page
.nasty-stuff.example.com
-{+block{Doubleclick banners.} +handle-as-image}
+{+block{Doubleclick banners.} +handle-as-image}
# Block and replace with image
.ad.doubleclick.net
.ads.r.us/banners/
-{+block{Layered ads.} +handle-as-empty-document}
+{+block{Layered ads.} +handle-as-empty-document}
# Block and then ignore
adserver.example.net/.*\.js$
@@ -3303,7 +2809,7 @@ for details.
-
+
Notes:
@@ -3355,7 +2861,7 @@ for details.
Type:
- Parameterized.
+ Multi-value.
@@ -3368,7 +2874,7 @@ for details.
-
+
Notes:
@@ -3383,7 +2889,7 @@ for details.
and use their output as input.
- If the request URL gets changed, &my-app; will detect that and use the new
+ If the request URI gets changed, &my-app; will detect that and use the new
one. This can be used to rewrite the request destination behind the client's
back, for example to specify a Tor exit relay for certain requests.
@@ -3405,7 +2911,7 @@ for details.
{+client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}}
/
-
+
@@ -3433,7 +2939,7 @@ for details.
Client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
- tag.
+ tag.
@@ -3442,7 +2948,7 @@ for details.
Type:
- Parameterized.
+ Multi-value.
@@ -3455,7 +2961,7 @@ for details.
-
+
Notes:
@@ -3499,6 +3005,22 @@ TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/
TAG:^User-Agent: Ubuntu APT-HTTP/
TAG:^User-Agent: MPlayer/
+
+
+
+# Tag all requests with the Range header set
+{+client-header-tagger{range-requests}}
+/
+
+# Disable filtering for the tagged requests.
+#
+# With filtering enabled Privoxy would remove the Range headers
+# to be able to filter the whole response. The downside is that
+# it prevents clients from resuming downloads or skipping over
+# parts of multimedia files.
+{-filter -deanimate-gifs}
+TAG:^RANGE-REQUEST$
+
@@ -3540,11 +3062,11 @@ TAG:^User-Agent: MPlayer/
Parameter:
- Any string.
-
+ Any string.
+
-
+
Notes:
@@ -3553,7 +3075,7 @@ TAG:^User-Agent: MPlayer/
browser to decide what to do with the document. The value of this
header can cause the browser to open a download menu instead of
displaying the document by itself, even if the document's format is
- supported by the browser.
+ supported by the browser.
The declared content type can also affect which rendering mode
@@ -3567,13 +3089,13 @@ TAG:^User-Agent: MPlayer/
Content-Type: text/html
, you can use &my-app;
to overwrite it with application/xml
and validate
the web master's claim inside your XHTML-supporting browser.
- If the syntax is incorrect, the browser will complain loudly.
+ If the syntax is incorrect, the browser will complain loudly.
You can also go the opposite direction: if your browser prints
error messages instead of rendering a document falsely declared
as XHTML, you can overwrite the content type with
- text/html
and have it rendered as broken HTML document.
+ text/html
and have it rendered as broken HTML document.
By default content-type-overwrite only replaces
@@ -3591,7 +3113,7 @@ TAG:^User-Agent: MPlayer/
Of course you can apply content-type-overwrite
to a whole site and then make URL based exceptions, but it's a lot
- more work to get the same precision.
+ more work to get the same precision.
@@ -3653,10 +3175,10 @@ new action
Any string.
-
+
-
+
Notes:
@@ -3689,7 +3211,7 @@ new action
Example usage (section):
- # Block the non-existent "Privacy-Violation:" client header
+ # Block the non-existent "Privacy-Violation:" client header
{ +crunch-client-header{Privacy-Violation:} }
/
@@ -3736,10 +3258,10 @@ new action
N/A
-
+
-
+
Notes:
@@ -3823,7 +3345,7 @@ new action
-
+
Notes:
@@ -3836,7 +3358,7 @@ new action
It makes no sense at all to use this action in conjunction
with the
@@ -3890,10 +3412,10 @@ new action
Any string.
-
+
-
+
Notes:
@@ -3974,7 +3496,7 @@ new action
-
+
Notes:
@@ -4042,7 +3564,7 @@ new action
-
+
Notes:
@@ -4110,16 +3632,26 @@ new action
-
+
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 HTTP/1.1 features and requirements are supported yet,
- so there is a chance you might need this action.
+ unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1-related problems with some server
+ out there.
+
+
+ Note that enabling this action is only a workaround. It should not
+ be enabled for sites that work without it. While it shouldn't break
+ any pages, it has an (usually negative) performance impact.
+
+
+ If you come across a site where enabling this action helps, please report it,
+ so the cause of the problem can be analyzed. If the problem turns out to be
+ caused by a bug in Privoxy it should be
+ fixed so the following release works without the work around.
@@ -4137,6 +3669,94 @@ problem-host.example.com
+
+
+external-filter
+
+
+
+ Typical use:
+
+ Modify content using a programming language of your choice.
+
+
+
+
+ Effect:
+
+
+ All instances of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which
+ this action applies, can be filtered on-the-fly through the specified external
+ filter.
+ By default 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:
+
+
+ Multi-value.
+
+
+
+
+ Parameter:
+
+
+ The name of an external content filter, as defined in the
+
+
+ When used in its negative form,
+ and without parameters, all filtering with external
+ filters is completely disabled.
+
+
+
+
+
+ Notes:
+
+
+ External filters are scripts or programs that can modify the content in
+ case common
+
+
+ Currently external filters are executed with &my-app;'s privileges.
+ Only use external filters you understand and trust.
+
+
+
+ This feature is experimental, the
+
+
+
+
+
+ Example usage:
+
+
+ +external-filter{fancy-filter}
+
+
+
+
+
+
fast-redirects
@@ -4190,7 +3810,7 @@ problem-host.example.com
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
@@ -4208,7 +3828,7 @@ problem-host.example.com
This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
If it is enabled by default, you will have to create some exceptions to
- this action. It can lead to failures in several ways:
+ this action. It can lead to failures in several ways:
Not every URLs with other URLs as parameters is evil.
@@ -4249,7 +3869,7 @@ problem-host.example.com
{ +fast-redirects{simple-check} }
- one.example.com
+ one.example.com
{ +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
another.example.com/testing
@@ -4269,7 +3889,7 @@ problem-host.example.com
Typical use:
- Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
+ Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
do fun text replacements, add personalized effects, etc.
@@ -4291,20 +3911,20 @@ problem-host.example.com
Type:
- Parameterized.
+ Multi-value.
-
+
Parameter:
The name of a content filter, as defined in the default.filter is the collection of filters
- supplied by the developers. Locally defined filters should go
+ option in the default.filter is the collection of filters
+ supplied by the developers. Locally defined filters should go
in their own file, such as user.filter .
@@ -4313,12 +3933,12 @@ problem-host.example.com
-
+
Notes:
- For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
+ 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.
@@ -4332,20 +3952,20 @@ problem-host.example.com
Rolling your own
- filters requires a knowledge of
+ filters requires a knowledge of
Regular
- Expressions
HTML
action
is not available.
- The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
+ The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
Inappropriate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
@@ -4356,10 +3976,10 @@ problem-host.example.com
by defining appropriate -filter exceptions.
- Compressed content can't be filtered either, unless &my-app;
- is compiled with zlib support (requires at least &my-app; 3.0.7),
- in which case &my-app; will decompress the content before filtering
- it.
+ Compressed content can't be filtered either, but if &my-app;
+ is compiled with zlib support and a supported compression algorithm
+ is used (gzip or deflate), &my-app; can first decompress the content
+ and then filter it.
If you use a &my-app; version without zlib support, but want filtering to work on
@@ -4368,11 +3988,11 @@ problem-host.example.com
action in conjunction with filter .
- Content filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
+ Content filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
@@ -4390,7 +4010,7 @@ problem-host.example.com
Example usage (with filters from the distribution default.filter file).
- See
@@ -4399,7 +4019,7 @@ problem-host.example.com
- +filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings and timers (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites).
+ +filter{js-events} # Kill JavaScript event bindings and timers (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites).
@@ -4411,15 +4031,15 @@ problem-host.example.com
- +filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups).
+ +filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags if refresh time is larger than 9 seconds.
@@ -4449,6 +4069,10 @@ problem-host.example.com
+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizable.
+
+
+ +filter{iframes} # Removes all detected iframes. Should only be enabled for individual sites.
+
+filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets.
@@ -4522,7 +4146,7 @@ new action
Declares a document as text, even if the Content-Type:
isn't detected as such.
-
+
@@ -4554,7 +4178,7 @@ new action
force-text-mode declares a document as text,
without looking at the Content-Type:
first.
-
+
Think twice before activating this action. Filtering binary data
with regular expressions can cause file damage.
@@ -4562,7 +4186,7 @@ new action
-
+
Example usage:
@@ -4596,7 +4220,7 @@ new action
Overrules the forward directives in the configuration file.
-
+
@@ -4604,7 +4228,7 @@ new action
Type:
- Multi-value.
+ Parameterized.
@@ -4637,6 +4261,32 @@ new action
for socks5 connections (with remote DNS resolution).
+
+
+ forward-webserver 127.0.0.1:80
to use the HTTP
+ server listening at 127.0.0.1 port 80 without adjusting the
+ request headers.
+
+
+ This makes it more convenient to use Privoxy to make
+ existing websites available as onion services as well.
+
+
+ Many websites serve content with hardcoded URLs and
+ can't be easily adjusted to change the domain based
+ on the one used by the client.
+
+
+ Putting Privoxy between Tor and the webserver (or an stunnel
+ that forwards to the webserver) allows to rewrite headers and
+ content to make client and server happy at the same time.
+
+
+ Using Privoxy for webservers that are only reachable through
+ onion addresses and whose location is supposed to be secret
+ is not recommended and should not be necessary anyway.
+
+
@@ -4650,7 +4300,7 @@ new action
file, but without the URL pattern. It can be used as replacement, but normally it's only
used in cases where matching based on the request URL isn't sufficient.
-
+
Please read the description for the
If the ports are missing or invalid, default values will be used. This might change
in the future and you shouldn't rely on it. Otherwise incorrect syntax causes Privoxy
- to exit.
+ to exit. Due to design limitations, invalid parameter syntax isn't detected until the
+ action is used the first time.
Use the show-url-info CGI page
@@ -4668,21 +4319,23 @@ new action
-
+
Example usage:
-# Always use direct connections for requests previously tagged as
+# Use an ssh tunnel for requests previously tagged as
# User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2.0
and make sure
# resuming downloads continues to work.
+#
# This way you can continue to use Tor for your normal browsing,
# without overloading the Tor network with your FreeBSD ports updates
# or downloads of bigger files like ISOs.
+#
# Note that HTTP headers are easy to fake and therefore their
# values are as (un)trustworthy as your clients and users.
-{+forward-override{forward .} \
+{+forward-override{forward-socks5 10.0.0.2:2222 .} \
-hide-if-modified-since \
-overwrite-last-modified \
}
@@ -4762,7 +4415,7 @@ new action
# Block all documents on example.org that end with ".js",
-# but send an empty document instead of the usual HTML message.
+# but send an empty document instead of the usual HTML message.
{+block{Blocked JavaScript} +handle-as-empty-document}
example.org/.*\.js$
@@ -4815,14 +4468,14 @@ example.org/.*\.js$
-
+
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.
+ be left intact.
Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
@@ -4896,10 +4549,10 @@ new action
Keyword: block
, or any user defined value.
-
+
-
+
Notes:
@@ -4925,7 +4578,7 @@ new action
to a rare language, you should consider that it helps to
make your requests unique and thus easier to trace.
If you don't plan to change this header frequently,
- you should stick to a common language.
+ you should stick to a common language.
@@ -4982,10 +4635,10 @@ new action
Keyword: block
, or any user defined value.
-
+
-
+
Notes:
@@ -5054,7 +4707,7 @@ new action
Effect:
- Deletes the If-Modified-Since:
HTTP client header or modifies its value.
+ Deletes the If-Modified-Since:
HTTP client header or modifies its value.
@@ -5072,10 +4725,10 @@ new action
Keyword: block
, or a user defined value that specifies a range of hours.
-
+
-
+
Notes:
@@ -5163,12 +4816,12 @@ new action
-
+
Notes:
- The keyword block
will completely remove the header
+ The keyword block
will completely remove the header
(not to be confused with the
@@ -5249,7 +4902,7 @@ new action
-
+
Notes:
@@ -5278,12 +4931,12 @@ new action
will work with referrer checks, as long as content and valid referring page
are on the same host. Most of the time that's the case.
-
+
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
.)
+ requires it to be spelled as referer
.)
@@ -5339,16 +4992,16 @@ new action
-
+
Notes:
-
+
This can lead to problems on web sites that depend on looking at this header in
order to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
way, is NOT the right thing to do: good web sites
- work browser-independently).
+ work browser-independently).
@@ -5357,17 +5010,14 @@ new action
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 :-).
+ 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).
- More information on known user-agent strings can be found at
+ More information on known user-agent strings can be found at
http://www.user-agents.org/
- and
+ and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent .
@@ -5423,7 +5073,7 @@ new action
-
+
Notes:
@@ -5466,6 +5116,94 @@ new action
+
+
+
+limit-cookie-lifetime
+
+
+
+ Typical use:
+
+ Limit the lifetime of HTTP cookies to a couple of minutes or hours.
+
+
+
+
+ Effect:
+
+
+ Overwrites the expires field in Set-Cookie server headers if it's above the specified limit.
+
+
+
+
+
+ Type:
+
+
+ Parameterized.
+
+
+
+
+ Parameter:
+
+
+ The lifetime limit in minutes, or 0.
+
+
+
+
+
+ Notes:
+
+
+ This action reduces the lifetime of HTTP cookies coming from the
+ server to the specified number of minutes, starting from the time
+ the cookie passes Privoxy.
+
+
+ Cookies with a lifetime below the limit are not modified.
+ The lifetime of session cookies is set to the specified limit.
+
+
+ The effect of this action depends on the server.
+
+
+ In case of servers which refresh their cookies with each response
+ (or at least frequently), the lifetime limit set by this action
+ is updated as well.
+ Thus, a session associated with the cookie continues to work with
+ this action enabled, as long as a new request is made before the
+ last limit set is reached.
+
+
+ However, some servers send their cookies once, with a lifetime of several
+ years (the year 2037 is a popular choice), and do not refresh them
+ until a certain event in the future, for example the user logging out.
+ In this case this action may limit the absolute lifetime of the session,
+ even if requests are made frequently.
+
+
+ If the parameter is 0
, this action behaves like
+
+
+
+
+
+ Example usages:
+
+
+ +limit-cookie-lifetime{60}
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
prevent-compression
@@ -5506,7 +5244,7 @@ new action
-
+
Notes:
@@ -5526,7 +5264,7 @@ new action
Most text-based instances compress very well, the size is seldom decreased by less than 50%,
for markup-heavy instances like news feeds saving more than 90% of the original size isn't
- unusual.
+ unusual.
Not using compression will therefore slow down the transfer, and you should only
@@ -5591,7 +5329,7 @@ new action
Effect:
- Deletes the Last-Modified:
HTTP server header or modifies its value.
+ Deletes the Last-Modified:
HTTP server header or modifies its value.
@@ -5610,10 +5348,10 @@ new action
One of the keywords: block
, reset-to-request-time
and randomize
-
+
-
+
Notes:
@@ -5629,7 +5367,7 @@ new action
between the original value and the current time. In theory the server
could send each document with a different Last-Modified:
header to track visits without using cookies. Randomize
- makes it impossible and the browser can still revalidate cached documents.
+ makes it impossible and the browser can still revalidate cached documents.
reset-to-request-time
overwrites the value of the
@@ -5645,7 +5383,7 @@ new action
of the request, the random range becomes zero and the value stays the same.
Therefore you should later randomize it a second time with
It is also recommended to use this action together with
@@ -5712,7 +5450,7 @@ new action
-
+
Notes:
@@ -5723,9 +5461,19 @@ new action
single pcrs command to the original URL.
- This action will be ignored if you use it together with
-
+
+ Requests can't be blocked and redirected at the same time,
+ applying this action together with
+
+
+ This action can be combined with
@@ -5750,7 +5498,7 @@ new action
example.com/stylesheet\.css
# Create a short, easy to remember nickname for a favorite site
-# (relies on the browser accept and forward invalid URLs to &my-app;)
+# (relies on the browser to accept and forward invalid URLs to &my-app;)
{ +redirect{http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html} }
a
@@ -5768,6 +5516,19 @@ undeadly.org/cgi\?action=article&sid=\d*$
{+redirect{s@^http://[^/]*/results\.aspx\?q=([^&]*).*@http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=$1@}}
search.msn.com//results\.aspx\?q=
+# Redirect http://example.com/&bla=fasel&toChange=foo (and any other value but "bar")
+# to http://example.com/&bla=fasel&toChange=bar
+#
+# The URL pattern makes sure that the following request isn't redirected again.
+{+redirect{s@toChange=[^&]+@toChange=bar@}}
+example.com/.*toChange=(?!bar)
+
+# Add a shortcut to look up illumos bugs
+{+redirect{s@^http://i([0-9]+)/.*@https://www.illumos.org/issues/$1@}}
+# Redirected URL = http://i4974/
+# Redirect Destination = https://www.illumos.org/issues/4974
+i[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]*/
+
# Redirect remote requests for this manual
# to the local version delivered by Privoxy
{+redirect{s@^http://www@http://config@}}
@@ -5808,7 +5569,7 @@ www.privoxy.org/user-manual/
Type:
- Parameterized.
+ Multi-value.
@@ -5821,7 +5582,7 @@ www.privoxy.org/user-manual/
-
+
Notes:
@@ -5891,7 +5652,7 @@ example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
Type:
- Parameterized.
+ Multi-value.
@@ -5904,7 +5665,7 @@ example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
-
+
Notes:
@@ -5936,6 +5697,14 @@ example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
# Tag every request with the content type declared by the server
{+server-header-tagger{content-type}}
/
+
+# If the response has a tag starting with 'image/' enable an external
+# filter that only applies to images.
+#
+# Note that the filter is not available by default, it's just a
+#
@@ -5955,7 +5724,7 @@ example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
Allow only temporary session
cookies (for the current
- browser session only ).
+ browser session only ).
@@ -5987,12 +5756,12 @@ example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
-
+
Notes:
- This is less strict than
@@ -6000,7 +5769,7 @@ example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
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
+ that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
sites, and is the recommended setting.
@@ -6019,9 +5788,9 @@ example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
These would have to be removed manually.
- Privoxy also uses
- the Privoxy also uses
+ the session-cookies-only .
@@ -6095,7 +5864,7 @@ example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
target-url
to
send a redirect to target-url . You can redirect
- to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem via file:///
URL.
+ to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem via file:///
URL.
(But note that not all browsers support redirecting to a local file system).
@@ -6154,12 +5923,12 @@ example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
-
+
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
+ 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 =
,
- {
and }
, but we strongly
+ {
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
@@ -6208,3670 +5977,2748 @@ example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
with it.
-
-
- 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 = +
-
-
-
- ...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
- # Gmail is really mail.google.com, not gmail.com
- mail.google.com
-
- # Shopping sites:
- # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
- #
- {shop}
- .quietpc.com
- .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
- mybank.example.com
-
- # These shops require pop-ups:
- #
- {-filter{all-popups} -filter{unsolicited-popups}}
- .dabs.com
- .overclockers.co.uk
-
-
-
- Aliases like shop
and fragile
are typically used for
- problem
sites that require more than one action to be disabled
- in order to function properly.
-
-
-
-
-
-Actions Files Tutorial
-
- The above chapters have shown match-all.action , default.action
- and user.action file and see how all these pieces come together:
-
-
-
-match-all.action
-
- Remember all actions are disabled when matching starts ,
- so we have to explicitly enable the ones we want.
-
-
-
- While the match-all.action file only contains a
- single section, it is probably the most important one. It has only one
- pattern, /
, but this pattern
- default
section will
- be applied to all requests as a start . It can be partly or
- wholly overridden by other actions files like default.action
- and 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 need to disable any actions here. (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.
-
-
-
-
-{ \
- +
-
-
-
- The default behavior is now set.
-
-
-
-
-default.action
-
-
- If you aren't a developer, there's no need for you to edit the
- default.action file. It is maintained by
- the &my-app; developers and if you disagree with some of the
- sections, you should overrule them in your user.action .
-
-
-
- Understanding the default.action file can
- help you with your user.action , though.
-
-
-
- The first section in this file is a special section for internal use
- that prevents older &my-app; versions from reading the file:
-
-
-
-
-##########################################################################
-# Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
-##########################################################################
-{{settings}}
-for-privoxy-version=3.0.11
-
-
-
- After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
- section from the above
-
-
-
-##########################################################################
-# Aliases
-##########################################################################
-{{alias}}
-
- # These aliases just save typing later:
- # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
- #
- +crunch-all-cookies = +
-
-
-
- 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
-mail.google.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 match-all.action ,
- breaks some sites. So disable it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
-
-
-
-
-{ -
-
-
-
- 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 information about you. We can mark any
- URL as an image with the
-
-
-
-##########################################################################
-# Images:
-##########################################################################
-
-# Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
-# blocked further down this file:
-#
-{ +
-
-
-
- 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 + here.)
- Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
- +
- 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
-.qkimg.net
-
-
-
- One of the most important jobs of Privoxy
- is to block banners. Many of these can be blocked
- by the
-
- First comes many 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:
-##########################################################################
-{
-
-
-
- It's quite remarkable 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
- ads l.some-provider.net.
So here come some
- well-known exceptions to the +
- 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 .*ads. , an exception to the
- general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
- .*loads. , where again further down) it ends up
- with no
-
-
-
-##########################################################################
-# Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
-##########################################################################
-
-# By domain:
-#
-{ -
-
-
-
- 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
- -
- disables all filters in one fell swoop!
-
-
-
-
-# Don't filter code!
-#
-{ -
-
-
-
- The actual default.action is of course much more
- comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
-
-
-
-
-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@example.com>
-
-
-
- As 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}
-+block-as-image = +block{Blocked as image.} +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
-shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
-
-# Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
-#
-allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}
-
-# Alias for specific file types that are text, but might have conflicting
-# MIME types. We want the browser to force these to be text documents.
-handle-as-text = -
-
-
-
-
- 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
- .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:
-
-
-
-
-{ -
-
-
-
- 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 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:
-
-
-
-
-{ +
-
-
-
- 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
- .fastclick.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 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. We later find other regular sites
- that misbehave, and add those to our personalized list of troublemakers:
-
-
-
-
-{ fragile }
- .forbes.com
- webmail.example.com
- .mybank.com
-
-
-
- You like the fun
text replacements in default.filter ,
- but it is disabled in the distributed actions file.
- So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
- update-safe config, once and for all:
-
-
-
-
-{ +
-
-
-
- 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
- - ,
- - , and
- - above.
-
-
-
- Invoke another alias here to force an over-ride of the MIME type
- application/x-sh which typically would open a download type
- dialog. In my case, I want to look at the shell script, and then I can save
- it should I choose to.
-
-
-
-
-{ handle-as-text }
- /.*\.sh$
-
-
-
- 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:
-
-
-
-
-{ +
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Filter Files
-
-
- On-the-fly text substitutions need
- to be defined in a filter file
. Once defined, they
- can then be invoked as an action
.
-
-
-
- &my-app; supports three different filter actions:
-
-
-
- &my-app; also supports two tagger actions:
-
-
-
-
- Multiple filter files can be defined through the config directive. The filters
- as supplied by the developers are located in
- default.filter . It is recommended that any locally
- defined or modified filters go in a separately defined file such as
- user.filter .
-
-
-
- Common tasks for content filters 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.
-
-
-
- Enabled content filters are applied to any content whose
- Content Type
header is recognised as a sign
- of text-based content, with the exception of text/plain .
- Use the
-
-
- Substitutions are made at the source level, so if you want to roll
- your own
filters, you should first be familiar with HTML syntax,
- and, of course, regular expressions.
-
-
-
- Just like the filters
- here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with one of the
- keywords FILTER: ,
- CLIENT-HEADER-FILTER: or SERVER-HEADER-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
- +name }
-
-
- Filter definitions start with a header line that contains the filter
- type, the filter name and the filter description.
- A content 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 documentation 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
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.
-
-
-
-
-
-Filter File Tutorial
-
- Now, let's complete our foo
content 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 back-reference to the first parenthesis just like $1 above,
- with the difference that in the pattern , a backslash indicates
- a back-reference, 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?
-
-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
-
-
-
- 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-resizeable, without location, status or menu bar etc.
-
-
-
-
-
- Use with caution. This is an aggressive filter, and can break sites that
- rely heavily on JavaScript.
-
-
-
-
-
- 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. Use with caution!
-
-
- 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
- resizeable (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 dialog, where they can be intercepted
- by the
-
-
- This filter disables most HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets
- cookies. It cannot detect all clever uses of these types of code, so it
- should not be relied on as an absolute fix. 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, PrivoxyWindowOpen() ,
- during the loading and rendering phase of each HTML page access, and
- restoring the function afterward.
-
-
- This is recommended only for browsers that cannot perform this function
- reliably themselves. And be aware that some sites require such windows
- in order to function normally. Use with caution.
-
-
-
-
-
- all-popups
-
- Attempt to prevent all pop-up windows from opening.
- Note this should be used with even 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.
-
-
- Recommended only for those who require extreme ad blocking. The default
- block rules should catch 95+% of all ads without this filter enabled.
-
-
-
-
-
- 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 user 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. Use with caution.
-
-
-
-
-
- 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 can cause 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 weird garbage characters
- sometimes appear on some pages, or user agents that don't correct for this on
- the fly.
-
-
-
-
-
-
- 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
-
- An experimental 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.
-
-
-
-
-
- google
-
- A CSS based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation
- and the toolbar advertisement.
-
-
-
-
-
- yahoo
-
- Another CSS based block, this time for Yahoo text ads. And removes
- a width limitation as well.
-
-
-
-
-
- msn
-
- Another CSS based block, this time for MSN text ads. And removes
- tracking URLs, as well as a width limitation.
-
-
-
-
-
- blogspot
-
- Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this one!
-
-
- This filter also intentionally removes some navigation stuff and sets the
- page width to 100%. As a result, some rounded corners
would
- appear to early or not at all and as fixing this would require a browser
- that understands background-size (CSS3), they are removed instead.
-
-
-
-
-
- xml-to-html
-
- Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from xml to html.
-
-
-
-
-
- html-to-xml
-
- Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from html to xml.
-
-
-
-
-
- no-ping
-
- Removes the non-standard ping attribute from
- anchor and area HTML tags.
-
-
-
-
-
- hide-tor-exit-notation
-
- Client-header filter to remove the Tor exit node notation
- found in Host and Referer headers.
-
-
- If &my-app; and Tor are chained and &my-app;
- is configured to use socks4a, one can use http://www.example.org.foobar.exit/
- to access the host www.example.org
through the
- Tor exit node foobar
.
-
-
- As the HTTP client isn't aware of this notation, it treats the
- whole string www.example.org.foobar.exit
as host and uses it
- for the Host
and Referer
headers. From the
- server's point of view the resulting headers are invalid and can cause problems.
-
-
- An invalid Referer
header can trigger hot-linking
- protections, an invalid Host
header will make it impossible for
- the server to find the right vhost (several domains hosted on the same IP address).
-
-
- This client-header filter removes the foo.exit
part in those headers
- to prevent the mentioned problems. Note that it only modifies
- the HTTP headers, it doesn't make it impossible for the server
- to detect your Tor exit node based on the IP address
- the request is coming from.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Privoxy's Template Files
-
- All Privoxy built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the
- 404 - No Such Domain
- error pageBLOCKED
- pageweb-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 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. It
- is possible to edit the templates with a normal text editor, should you want
- to customize them. (Not recommended for the casual
- user ). Should you create your own custom templates, you should use
- the config setting
-
- 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
- is 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 Privoxy
- and the source for it can be found and edited in the
- cgi-style.css template.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
-Requests
-
-
- &contacting;
-
-
-Privoxy Copyright, License and History
-
-
- ©right;
-
-
-
-License
-
- &license;
-
-History
-
- &history;
-
-Authors
-
- &p-authors;
-
-See Also
-
- &seealso;
-
-Appendix
-
-
-
-
-Regular Expressions
-
- Privoxy uses Perl-style regular
- expressions
in its 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/.* .
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.
-
-
-
- And now something a little more complex:
-
-
-
- /.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/ /
), 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) [ ]
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://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html
-
-
-
- For information on regular expression based substitutions and their applications
- in filters, please see the
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-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. This feature can be turned off/on in the main
- config file. When toggled off
, 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
-
-
-
-
-
+
+
+ Now let's define some aliases...
- These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
+
+ # 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 = +
-
-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).
+ ...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):
+
- 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.
+
+ # 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
+ # Gmail is really mail.google.com, not gmail.com
+ mail.google.com
+
+ # Shopping sites:
+ # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
+ #
+ {shop}
+ .quietpc.com
+ .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
+ mybank.example.com
+
+ # These shops require pop-ups:
+ #
+ {-filter{all-popups} -filter{unsolicited-popups}}
+ .dabs.com
+ .overclockers.co.uk
-
+ Aliases like shop
and fragile
are typically used for
+ problem
sites that require more than one action to be disabled
+ in order to function properly.
+
+
+
+
+
+Actions Files Tutorial
+
+ The above chapters have shown match-all.action , default.action
+ and user.action file and see how all these pieces come together:
+
-
-
- Privoxy - Enable
-
-
+
+match-all.action
+
+ Remember all actions are disabled when matching starts ,
+ so we have to explicitly enable the ones we want.
+
-
-
- Privoxy - Disable
-
-
+
+ While the match-all.action file only contains a
+ single section, it is probably the most important one. It has only one
+ pattern, /
, but this pattern
+ default
section will
+ be applied to all requests as a start . It can be partly or
+ wholly overridden by other actions files like default.action
+ and user.action , but it will still be largely responsible
+ for your overall browsing experience.
+
-
-
- Privoxy - Toggle Privoxy (Toggles between enabled and disabled)
-
-
+
+ Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
+ no need to disable any actions here. (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.
+
-
-
- Privoxy- View Status
-
-
-
-
-
- Privoxy - Why?
-
-
-
+
+
+{ \
+ +
- Credit: The site which gave us the general idea for these bookmarklets is
- www.bookmarklets.com . They
- have more information about bookmarklets.
+ The default behavior is now set.
+
+
+default.action
-
+
+ If you aren't a developer, there's no need for you to edit the
+ default.action file. It is maintained by
+ the &my-app; developers and if you disagree with some of the
+ sections, you should overrule them in your user.action .
+
-
+
+ Understanding the default.action file can
+ help you with your user.action , though.
+
+
+ The first section in this file is a special section for internal use
+ that prevents older &my-app; versions from reading the file:
+
-
-
-Chain of Events
- Let's take a quick look at how some of Privoxy's
- core features are triggered, and the ensuing sequence of events when a web
- page is requested by your browser:
+
+##########################################################################
+# Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
+##########################################################################
+{{settings}}
+for-privoxy-version=3.0.11
-
-
-
- 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
- and
- +handle-as-empty-document
- are then checked, and if there is no match, an
- HTML BLOCKED
page is sent back to the browser. Otherwise, if
- it does match, an image is returned for the former, and an empty text
- document for the latter. The type of image would depend 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).
-
-
-
-
- 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 any +filter
action
- 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 and any other filter files) are
- processed against the buffered content. Filters are applied in the order
- they are specified in one of the filter files. 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 a +filter
action
- 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 (possibly 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
- separate request (this is easily viewable in Privoxy's
- logs). And each such request is in turn processed just as above. Note that a
- complex web page will have many, many such embedded URLs. If these
- secondary requests are to a different server, then quite possibly a very
- differing set of actions is triggered.
-
-
-
-
+ After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
+ section from the above
+
+
+
+##########################################################################
+# Aliases
+##########################################################################
+{{alias}}
+
+ # These aliases just save typing later:
+ # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
+ #
+ +crunch-all-cookies = +
+
- NOTE: This is somewhat of a simplistic overview of what happens with each URL
- request. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, we have focused on
- Privoxy's core features only.
+ 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
+mail.google.com
+
-
-
-Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action
+
+ 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:
+
- The way Privoxy applies
- 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
-
+# Shopping sites:
+#
+{ shop }
+.quietpc.com
+.worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
+.jungle.com
+.scan.co.uk
- 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 config file settings, and may need to be
- turned on
.)
+ The match-all.action ,
+ breaks some sites. So disable it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
+
- Another easy troubleshooting step to try is if you have done any
- customization of your installation, revert back to the installed
- defaults and see if that helps. There are times the developers get complaints
- about one thing or another, and the problem is more related to a customized
- configuration issue.
+
+{ -
- 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.
+ 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 information about you. We can mark any
+ URL as an image with the
- 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
- one of the filter files 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.
+
+##########################################################################
+# Images:
+##########################################################################
+
+# Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
+# blocked further down this file:
+#
+{ +
- Let's try an example, google.com ,
- and look at it one section at a time in a sample configuration (your real
- configuration may vary):
+ 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 + here.)
+ Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
+ +
+ action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:
- Matches for http://www.google.com:
+# 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
+.qkimg.net
+
- In file: default.action [ View ] [ Edit ]
+
+ One of the most important jobs of Privoxy
+ is to block banners. Many of these can be blocked
+ by the
+
+ First comes many 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:
+
- {+change-x-forwarded-for{block}
- +deanimate-gifs {last}
- +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
- +filter {refresh-tags}
- +filter {img-reorder}
- +filter {banners-by-size}
- +filter {webbugs}
- +filter {jumping-windows}
- +filter {ie-exploits}
- +hide-from-header {block}
- +hide-referrer {forge}
- +session-cookies-only
- +set-image-blocker {pattern}
-/
-
- { -session-cookies-only }
- .google.com
+
+
+##########################################################################
+# Block these fine banners:
+##########################################################################
+{ [ View ] [ Edit ]
-(no matches in this file)
-
+# Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
+#
+.hitbox.com
- This is telling us how we have defined our
- actions
, and
- which ones match for our test case, google.com
.
- Displayed is all the actions that are available to us. Remember,
- the + sign denotes on
. -
- denotes off
. So some are on
here, but many
- are off
. Each example we try may provide a slightly different
- end result, depending on our configuration directives.
+ It's quite remarkable 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.
- The first listing
- is for 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 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
+ ads l.some-provider.net.
So here come some
+ well-known exceptions to the +
+ 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 .*ads. , an exception to the
+ general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
+ .*loads. , where again further down) it ends up
+ with no
+
+
+
+##########################################################################
+# Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
+##########################################################################
+
+# By domain:
+#
+{ -
+
+
+
+ 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
+ -
+ disables all filters in one fell swoop!
- But we have defined additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
- rules, and then we 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, at
- least that is how it is in this example. 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
or mail.google.com
. But it would not
- match www.google.de
! So, apparently, we have these two actions
- defined as exceptions to the general rules at the top somewhere in the lower
- part of our default.action file, and
- google.com
is referenced somewhere in these latter sections.
+
+# Don't filter code!
+#
+{ -
- Then, for our user.action file, we again have no hits.
- So there is nothing google-specific that we might have added to our own, local
- configuration. If there was, those actions would over-rule any actions from
- previously processed files, such as default.action .
- user.action typically has the last word. This is the
- best place to put hard and fast exceptions,
+ The actual default.action is of course much more
+ comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
-
- And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
- Privoxy is applying all its actions
- to google.com
:
+
-
+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.
+
- Final results:
-
- -add-header
- -block
- +change-x-forwarded-for{block}
- -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
- -content-type-overwrite
- -crunch-client-header
- -crunch-if-none-match
- -crunch-incoming-cookies
- -crunch-outgoing-cookies
- -crunch-server-header
- +deanimate-gifs {last}
- -downgrade-http-version
- -fast-redirects
- -filter {js-events}
- -filter {content-cookies}
- -filter {all-popups}
- -filter {banners-by-link}
- -filter {tiny-textforms}
- -filter {frameset-borders}
- -filter {demoronizer}
- -filter {shockwave-flash}
- -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
- -filter {fun}
- -filter {crude-parental}
- -filter {site-specifics}
- -filter {js-annoyances}
- -filter {html-annoyances}
- +filter {refresh-tags}
- -filter {unsolicited-popups}
- +filter {img-reorder}
- +filter {banners-by-size}
- +filter {webbugs}
- +filter {jumping-windows}
- +filter {ie-exploits}
- -filter {google}
- -filter {yahoo}
- -filter {msn}
- -filter {blogspot}
- -filter {no-ping}
- -force-text-mode
- -handle-as-empty-document
- -handle-as-image
- -hide-accept-language
- -hide-content-disposition
- +hide-from-header {block}
- -hide-if-modified-since
- +hide-referrer {forge}
- -hide-user-agent
- -limit-connect
- -overwrite-last-modified
- -prevent-compression
- -redirect
- -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
- -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
- -session-cookies-only
- +set-image-blocker {pattern}
+
+ So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
+ user.action :
+
+
+
- Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
- fast-redirects
and session-cookies-only
,
- which are activated specifically for this site in our configuration,
- and thus show in the Final Results
.
+
+# My user.action file. <fred@example.com>
- Now another example, ad.doubleclick.net
:
+ As 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}
++block-as-image = +block{Blocked as image.} +handle-as-image
+-block-as-image = -block
- { +block{Domains starts with "ad"} }
- ad*.
+# These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
+# certain types of sites:
+#
+fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referrer
+shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
- { +block{Domain contains "ad"} }
- .ad.
+# Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
+#
+allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}
+
+# Alias for specific file types that are text, but might have conflicting
+# MIME types. We want the browser to force these to be text documents.
+handle-as-text = -
- { +block{Doubleclick banner server} +handle-as-image }
- .[a-vx-z]*.doubleclick.net
-
- We'll just show the interesting part here - the explicit matches. It is
- matched three different times. Two +block{}
sections,
- and a +block{} +handle-as-image
,
- which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
- +block-as-image
. (Aliases
are defined in
- the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
- than one action.)
+ 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.
- 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 +block-as-image
just
- simplifies the process and make it more readable.
+
+{ allow-all-cookies }
+ sourceforge.net
+ .yahoo.com
+ .msdn.microsoft.com
+ .redhat.com
- One last example. Let's try http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/
.
- This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
+ Your bank is allergic to some filter, but you don't know which, so you disable them all:
-
- Matches for http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
-
- In file: default.action [ View ] [ Edit ]
-
- {-add-header
- -block
- +change-x-forwarded-for{block}
- -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
- -content-type-overwrite
- -crunch-client-header
- -crunch-if-none-match
- -crunch-incoming-cookies
- -crunch-outgoing-cookies
- -crunch-server-header
- +deanimate-gifs
- -downgrade-http-version
- +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
- -filter {js-events}
- -filter {content-cookies}
- -filter {all-popups}
- -filter {banners-by-link}
- -filter {tiny-textforms}
- -filter {frameset-borders}
- -filter {demoronizer}
- -filter {shockwave-flash}
- -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
- -filter {fun}
- -filter {crude-parental}
- -filter {site-specifics}
- -filter {js-annoyances}
- -filter {html-annoyances}
- +filter {refresh-tags}
- -filter {unsolicited-popups}
- +filter {img-reorder}
- +filter {banners-by-size}
- +filter {webbugs}
- +filter {jumping-windows}
- +filter {ie-exploits}
- -filter {google}
- -filter {yahoo}
- -filter {msn}
- -filter {blogspot}
- -filter {no-ping}
- -force-text-mode
- -handle-as-empty-document
- -handle-as-image
- -hide-accept-language
- -hide-content-disposition
- +hide-from-header{block}
- +hide-referer{forge}
- -hide-user-agent
- -overwrite-last-modified
- +prevent-compression
- -redirect
- -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
- -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
- +session-cookies-only
- +set-image-blocker{blank} }
- /
-
- { +block{Path contains "ads".} +handle-as-image }
- /ads
-
+{ -
- Ooops, the /adsl/
is matching /ads
in our
- configuration! But we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the
- blank page. It is actually triggering two different actions here, and
- the effects are aggregated so that the URL is blocked, and &my-app; is told
- to treat the block as if it were an image. But this is, of course, all wrong.
- We could now add a new action below this (or better in our own
- user.action file) that explicitly
- un blocks (
- {-block}
) paths with
- adsl
in them (remember, last match in the configuration
- wins). There are various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
+ 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/
- { -block }
- /adsl
-
+# 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 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:
- Now the page displays ;-)
- Remember to flush your browser's caches when making these kinds of changes to
- your configuration to insure that you get a freshly delivered page! Or, try
- using Shift+Reload .
+
+{ +
- But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
- we did with:
+ 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{Path starts with "ads".} +handle-as-image }
- /ads
-
+{ +block-as-image }
+ .doubleclick.net
+ .fastclick.net
+ /Realmedia/ads/
+ ar.atwola.com/
- That actually was very helpful 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 of default.action 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
:
+ 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 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. We later find other regular sites
+ that misbehave, and add those to our personalized list of troublemakers:
-
-
- { shop }
- .quietpc.com
- .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
- .jungle.com
- .scan.co.uk
+
+{ fragile }
.forbes.com
-
+ webmail.example.com
+ .mybank.com
- { shop }
is an alias
that expands to
- { -filter -session-cookies-only }
.
- Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
-
+ You like the fun
text replacements in default.filter ,
+ but it is disabled in the distributed actions file.
+ So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
+ update-safe config, once and for all:
-
+
+{ +
+
- { -filter }
- # Disable ALL filter actions for sites in this section
- .forbes.com
- developer.ibm.com
- localhost
-
+
+ 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.
- This would turn off all filtering for these sites. This is best
- put in user.action , for local site
- exceptions. Note that when a simple domain pattern is used by itself (without
- the subsequent path portion), all sub-pages within that domain are included
- automatically in the scope of the action.
+ 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:
- 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).
+
+{ allow-ads }
+ .sourceforge.net
+ .slashdot.org
+ .osdn.net
- { fragile }
is an alias that disables most
- actions that are the most likely to cause trouble. This can be used as a
- last resort for problem sites.
-
+ Note that allow-ads has been aliased to
+ - ,
+ - , and
+ - above.
+
+
-
+ Invoke another alias here to force an over-ride of the MIME type
+ application/x-sh which typically would open a download type
+ dialog. In my case, I want to look at the shell script, and then I can save
+ it should I choose to.
+
- { fragile }
- # Handle with care: easy to break
- mail.google.
- mybank.example.com
+
+
+{ handle-as-text }
+ /.*\.sh$
-
- Remember to flush caches! Note that the
- mail.google reference lacks the TLD portion (e.g.
- .com
). This will effectively match any TLD with
- google in it, such as mail.google.de. ,
- just as an example.
+ 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:
-
- 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.
+
+
+
+{ +
+
+Filter Files
- Revision 2.86 2008/08/16 10:12:23 fabiankeil
- Merge two sentences and move the URL to the end of the item.
+
+ On-the-fly text substitutions need
+ to be defined in a filter file
. Once defined, they
+ can then be invoked as an action
.
+
- Revision 2.85 2008/08/16 10:04:59 fabiankeil
- Some more syntax fixes. This version actually builds.
+
+ &my-app; supports three different pcrs-based filter actions:
+
- Revision 2.84 2008/08/16 09:42:45 fabiankeil
- Turns out building docs works better if the syntax is valid.
+
+ &my-app; also supports two tagger actions:
+
- Revision 2.83 2008/08/16 09:32:02 fabiankeil
- Mention changes since 3.0.9 beta.
+
+ Finally &my-app; supports the
+
- Revision 2.82 2008/08/16 09:00:52 fabiankeil
- Fix example URL pattern (once more with feeling).
- Revision 2.81 2008/08/16 08:51:28 fabiankeil
- Update version-related entities.
+
+ Multiple filter files can be defined through the config directive. The filters
+ as supplied by the developers are located in
+ default.filter . It is recommended that any locally
+ defined or modified filters go in a separately defined file such as
+ user.filter .
+
- Revision 2.80 2008/07/18 16:54:30 fabiankeil
- Remove erroneous whitespace in documentation link.
- Reported by John Chronister in #2021611.
+
+ Common tasks for content filters 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.
+
- Revision 2.79 2008/06/27 18:00:53 markm68k
- remove outdated startup information for mac os x
+
+ Enabled content filters are applied to any content whose
+ Content Type
header is recognised as a sign
+ of text-based content, with the exception of text/plain .
+ Use the
- Revision 2.78 2008/06/21 17:03:03 fabiankeil
- Fix typo.
+
+ Substitutions are made at the source level, so if you want to roll
+ your own
filters, you should first be familiar with HTML syntax,
+ and, of course, regular expressions.
+
- Revision 2.77 2008/06/14 13:45:22 fabiankeil
- Re-add a colon I unintentionally removed a few revisions ago.
+
+ Just like the filters
+ here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with one of the
+ keywords FILTER: ,
+ CLIENT-HEADER-FILTER: or SERVER-HEADER-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 .
+
- Revision 2.76 2008/06/14 13:21:28 fabiankeil
- Prepare for the upcoming 3.0.9 beta release.
+
+ Once a filter called name has been defined
+ in the filter file, it can be invoked by using an action of the form
+ +name }
- Revision 2.75 2008/06/13 16:06:48 fabiankeil
- Update the "What's New in this Release" section with
- the ChangeLog entries changelog2doc.pl could handle.
+
+ Filter definitions start with a header line that contains the filter
+ type, the filter name and the filter description.
+ A content filter header line for a filter called foo
could look
+ like this:
+
- Revision 2.74 2008/05/26 15:55:46 fabiankeil
- - Update "default profiles" table.
- - Add some more pcrs redirect examples and note that
- enabling debug 128 helps to get redirects working.
+
+ FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
+
- Revision 2.73 2008/05/23 14:43:18 fabiankeil
- Remove previously out-commented block that caused syntax problems.
+
+ 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 documentation for the subtle differences to Perl behaviour.
+
- Revision 2.72 2008/05/12 10:26:14 fabiankeil
- Synchronize content filter descriptions with the ones in default.filter.
+
+ Most notably, the non-standard option letter U is supported,
+ which turns the default to ungreedy matching (add ? to
+ quantifiers to turn them greedy again).
+
- Revision 2.71 2008/04/10 17:37:16 fabiankeil
- Actually we use "modern" POSIX 1003.2 regular
- expressions in path patterns, not PCRE.
+
+ The non-standard option letter D (dynamic) allows
+ to use the variables $host, $origin (the IP address the request came from),
+ $path and $url. They will be replaced with the value they refer to before
+ the filter is executed.
+
- Revision 2.70 2008/04/10 15:59:12 fabiankeil
- Add another section to the client-header-tagger example that shows
- how to actually change the action settings once the tag is created.
+
+ Note that '$' is a bad choice for a delimiter in a dynamic filter as you
+ might end up with unintended variables if you use a variable name
+ directly after the delimiter. Variables will be resolved without
+ escaping anything, therefore you also have to be careful not to chose
+ delimiters that appear in the replacement text. For example '<' should
+ be save, while '?' will sooner or later cause conflicts with $url.
+
- Revision 2.69 2008/03/29 12:14:25 fabiankeil
- Remove send-wafer and send-vanilla-wafer actions.
+
+ The non-standard option letter T (trivial) prevents
+ parsing for backreferences in the substitute. Use it if you want to include
+ text like '$&' in your substitute without quoting.
+
- Revision 2.68 2008/03/28 15:13:43 fabiankeil
- Remove inspect-jpegs action.
+
+ If you are new to
+ Regular
+ Expressions
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.
+
- Revision 2.67 2008/03/27 18:31:21 fabiankeil
- Remove kill-popups action.
- Revision 2.66 2008/03/06 16:33:47 fabiankeil
- If limit-connect isn't used, don't limit CONNECT requests to port 443.
+
- Revision 2.65 2008/03/04 18:30:40 fabiankeil
- Remove the treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks action. We now
- use the "blocked" page for forbidden CONNECT requests by default.
+Filter File Tutorial
+
+ Now, let's complete our foo
content 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:
+
- Revision 2.64 2008/03/01 14:10:28 fabiankeil
- Use new block syntax. Still needs some polishing.
+
+ s/foo/bar/
+
- Revision 2.63 2008/02/22 05:50:37 markm68k
- fix merge problem
+
+ 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:
+
- Revision 2.62 2008/02/11 11:52:23 hal9
- Fix entity ... s/&/&
+
+ s/foo/bar/g
+
- Revision 2.61 2008/02/11 03:41:47 markm68k
- more updates for mac os x
+
+ Our complete filter now looks like this:
+
+
+ FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
+s/foo/bar/g
+
- Revision 2.60 2008/02/11 03:40:25 markm68k
- more updates for mac os x
+
+ 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:
+
- Revision 2.59 2008/02/11 00:52:34 markm68k
- reflect new changes for mac os x
- Revision 2.58 2008/02/03 21:37:40 hal9
- Apply patch from Mark: s/OSX/OS X/
+
+
+FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
- Revision 2.57 2008/02/03 19:10:14 fabiankeil
- Mention forward-socks5.
+# 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
+
- Revision 2.56 2008/01/31 19:11:35 fabiankeil
- Let the +client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation} example apply
- to all requests as "tainted" Referers aren't limited to exit TLDs.
+
+ 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 (\ ).
+
- Revision 2.55 2008/01/19 21:26:37 hal9
- Add IE7 to configuration section per Gerry.
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 2.54 2008/01/19 17:52:39 hal9
- Re-commit to fix various minor issues for new release.
+
+ 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).
+
- Revision 2.53 2008/01/19 15:03:05 hal9
- Doc sources tagged for 3.0.8 release.
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 2.52 2008/01/17 01:49:51 hal9
- Change copyright notice for docs s/2007/2008/. All these will be rebuilt soon
- enough.
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 2.51 2007/12/23 16:48:24 fabiankeil
- Use more precise example descriptions for the mysterious domain patterns.
+
+ 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 .
+
- Revision 2.50 2007/12/08 12:44:36 fabiankeil
- - Remove already commented out pre-3.0.7 changes.
- - Update the "new log defaults" paragraph.
+
+ 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!" .
+
- Revision 2.49 2007/12/06 18:21:55 fabiankeil
- Update hide-forwarded-for-headers description.
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 2.48 2007/11/24 19:07:17 fabiankeil
- - Mention request rewriting.
- - Enable the conditional-forge paragraph.
- - Minor rewordings.
+
+ We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but
+ this time only point out the constructs of special interest:
+
- Revision 2.47 2007/11/18 14:59:47 fabiankeil
- A few "Note to Upgraders" updates.
+
+
+# The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
+#
+s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig
+
- Revision 2.46 2007/11/17 17:24:44 fabiankeil
- - Use new action defaults.
- - Minor fixes and rewordings.
+
+ \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 back-reference to the first parenthesis just like $1 above,
+ with the difference that in the pattern , a backslash indicates
+ a back-reference, whereas in the substitute , it's the dollar.
+
- Revision 2.45 2007/11/16 11:48:46 hal9
- Fix one typo, and add a couple of small refinements.
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 2.44 2007/11/15 03:30:20 hal9
- Results of spell check.
+
+
+# Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
+#
+s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU
+
- Revision 2.43 2007/11/14 18:45:39 fabiankeil
- - Mention some more contributors in the "New in this Release" list.
- - Minor rewordings.
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 2.42 2007/11/12 03:32:40 hal9
- Updates for "What's New" and "Notes to Upgraders". Various other changes in
- preparation for new release. User Manual is almost ready.
+
+ The last example is from the fun department:
+
- Revision 2.41 2007/11/11 16:32:11 hal9
- This is primarily syncing What's New and Note to Upgraders sections with the many
- new features and changes (gleaned from memory but mostly from ChangeLog).
+
+
+FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
- Revision 2.40 2007/11/10 17:10:59 fabiankeil
- In the first third of the file, mention several times that
- the action editor is disabled by default in 3.0.7 beta and later.
+# Spice the daily news:
+#
+s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig
+
- Revision 2.39 2007/11/05 02:34:49 hal9
- Various changes in preparation for the upcoming release. Much yet to be done.
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 2.38 2007/09/22 16:01:42 fabiankeil
- Update embedded show-url-info output.
+
+
+# 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
+
- Revision 2.37 2007/08/27 16:09:55 fabiankeil
- Fix pre-chroot-nslookup description which I failed to
- copy and paste properly. Reported by Stephen Gildea.
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 2.36 2007/08/26 16:47:14 fabiankeil
- Add Stephen Gildea's pre-chroot-nslookup patch [#1276666],
- extensive comments moved to user manual.
+
+ You get the idea?
+
+The Pre-defined Filters
- Revision 2.33 2007/07/27 10:57:35 hal9
- Add references for user-agent strings for hide-user-agenet
+
- Revision 2.30 2007/04/25 15:10:36 fabiankeil
- - Describe installation for FreeBSD.
- - Start to document taggers and tag patterns.
- - Don't confuse devils and daemons.
+
+The distribution default.filter file contains a selection of
+pre-defined filters for your convenience:
+
- Revision 2.29 2007/04/05 11:47:51 fabiankeil
- Some updates regarding header filtering,
- handling of compressed content and redirect's
- support for pcrs commands.
+
+
+ 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
+
+
+
+ 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-resizeable, without location, status or menu bar etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+ Use with caution. This is an aggressive filter, and can break sites that
+ rely heavily on JavaScript.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.28 2006/12/10 23:42:48 hal9
- Fix various typos reported by Adam P. Thanks.
+
+ 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. Use with caution!
+
+
+ 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).
+
+
+
- Revision 2.27 2006/11/14 01:57:47 hal9
- Dump all docs prior to 3.0.6 release. Various minor changes to faq and user
- manual.
+
+ 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
+ resizeable (as of course they should be!), and will have location,
+ scroll and menu bars -- even if specified otherwise.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.26 2006/10/24 11:16:44 hal9
- Add new filters.
+
+ content-cookies
+
+ Most cookies are set in the HTTP dialog, where they can be intercepted
+ by the
+
+
+ This filter disables most HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets
+ cookies. It cannot detect all clever uses of these types of code, so it
+ should not be relied on as an absolute fix. Use it wherever you would also
+ use the cookie crunch actions.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.25 2006/10/18 10:50:33 hal9
- Add note that since filters are off in Cautious, compression is ON. Turn off
- compression to make filters work on all sites.
+
+ 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.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.24 2006/10/03 11:13:54 hal9
- More references to the new filters. Include html this time around.
+
+ 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, PrivoxyWindowOpen() ,
+ during the loading and rendering phase of each HTML page access, and
+ restoring the function afterward.
+
+
+ This is recommended only for browsers that cannot perform this function
+ reliably themselves. And be aware that some sites require such windows
+ in order to function normally. Use with caution.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.23 2006/10/02 22:43:53 hal9
- Contains new filter definitions from Fabian, and few other miscellaneous
- touch-ups.
+
+ all-popups
+
+ Attempt to prevent all pop-up windows from opening.
+ Note this should be used with even more discretion than the above, since
+ it is more likely to break some sites that require pop-ups for normal
+ usage. Use with caution.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.22 2006/09/22 01:27:55 hal9
- Final commit of probably various minor changes here and there. Unless
- something changes this should be ready for pending release.
+
+ 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.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.21 2006/09/20 03:21:36 david__schmidt
- Just the tiniest tweak. Wafer thin!
+
+ 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.
+
+
+ Recommended only for those who require extreme ad blocking. The default
+ block rules should catch 95+% of all ads without this filter enabled.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.20 2006/09/10 14:53:54 hal9
- Results of spell check. User manual has some updates to standard.actions file
- info.
+
+ 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.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.19 2006/09/08 12:19:02 fabiankeil
- Adjust hide-if-modified-since example values
- to reflect the recent changes.
+
+ 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 user 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
.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.18 2006/09/08 02:38:57 hal9
- Various changes:
- -Fix a number of broken links.
- -Migrate the new Windows service command line options, and reference as
- needed.
- -Rebuild so that can be used with the new "user-manual" config capabilities.
- -Etc.
+
+ 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.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.17 2006/09/05 13:25:12 david__schmidt
- Add Windows service invocation stuff (duplicated) in FAQ and in user manual under Windows startup. One probably ought to reference the other.
+
+ 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. Use with caution.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.16 2006/09/02 12:49:37 hal9
- Various small updates for new actions, filterfiles, etc.
+
+ 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.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.15 2006/08/30 11:15:22 hal9
- More work on the new actions, especially filter-*-headers, and What's New
- section. User Manual is close to final form for 3.0.4 release. Some tinkering
- and proof reading left to do.
+
+ demoronizer
+
+ Many Microsoft products that generate HTML use non-standard extensions (read:
+ violations) of the ISO 8859-1 aka Latin-1 character set. This can cause 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 weird garbage characters
+ sometimes appear on some pages, or user agents that don't correct for this on
+ the fly.
+
+
+
+
- Revision 2.14 2006/08/29 10:59:36 hal9
- Add a "Whats New in this release" Section. Further work on multiple filter
- files, and assorted other minor changes.
+
+ 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.
+
+
+
+
+
- Revision 2.13 2006/08/22 11:04:59 hal9
- Silence warnings and errors. This should build now. New filters were only
- stubbed in. More to be done.
+
+ quicktime-kioskmode
+
+ Change HTML code that embeds Quicktime objects so that kioskmode, which
+ prevents saving, is disabled.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.12 2006/08/14 08:40:39 fabiankeil
- Documented new actions that were part of
- the "minor Privoxy improvements".
+
+ fun
+
+ Text replacements for subversive browsing fun. Make fun of your favorite
+ Monopolist or play buzzword bingo.
+
+
+
- Revision 2.11 2006/07/18 14:48:51 david__schmidt
- Reorganizing the repository: swapping out what was HEAD (the old 3.1 branch)
- with what was really the latest development (the v_3_0_branch branch)
+
+ crude-parental
+
+ A demonstration-only filter that shows how Privoxy
+ can be used to delete web content on a keyword basis.
+
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.43 2005/05/23 09:59:10 hal9
- Fix typo 'loose'
+
+ ie-exploits
+
+ An experimental 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.
+
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.42 2004/12/04 14:39:57 hal9
- Fix two minor typos per bug SF report.
+
+ 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.
+
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.41 2004/03/23 12:58:42 oes
- Fixed an inaccuracy
+
+ google
+
+ A CSS based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation
+ and the toolbar advertisement.
+
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.40 2004/02/27 12:48:49 hal9
- Add comment re: redirecting to local file system for set-image-blocker may
- is dependent on browser.
+
+ yahoo
+
+ Another CSS based block, this time for Yahoo text ads. And removes
+ a width limitation as well.
+
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.39 2004/01/30 22:31:40 oes
- Added a hint re bookmarklets to Quickstart section
+
+ msn
+
+ Another CSS based block, this time for MSN text ads. And removes
+ tracking URLs, as well as a width limitation.
+
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.38 2004/01/30 16:47:51 oes
- Some minor clarifications
+
+ blogspot
+
+ Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this one!
+
+
+ This filter also intentionally removes some navigation stuff and sets the
+ page width to 100%. As a result, some rounded corners
would
+ appear to early or not at all and as fixing this would require a browser
+ that understands background-size (CSS3), they are removed instead.
+
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.37 2004/01/29 22:36:11 hal9
- Updates for no longer filtering text/plain, and demoronizer default settings,
- and copyright notice dates.
+
+ xml-to-html
+
+ Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from xml to html.
+
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.36 2003/12/10 02:26:26 hal9
- Changed the demoronizer filter description.
+
+ html-to-xml
+
+ Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from html to xml.
+
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.35 2003/11/06 13:36:37 oes
- Updated link to nightly CVS tarball
+
+ no-ping
+
+ Removes the non-standard ping attribute from
+ anchor and area HTML tags.
+
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.34 2003/06/26 23:50:16 hal9
- Add a small bit on filtering and problems re: source code being corrupted.
+
+ hide-tor-exit-notation
+
+ Client-header filter to remove the Tor exit node notation
+ found in Host and Referer headers.
+
+
+ If &my-app; and Tor are chained and &my-app;
+ is configured to use socks4a, one can use http://www.example.org.foobar.exit/
+ to access the host www.example.org
through the
+ Tor exit node foobar
.
+
+
+ As the HTTP client isn't aware of this notation, it treats the
+ whole string www.example.org.foobar.exit
as host and uses it
+ for the Host
and Referer
headers. From the
+ server's point of view the resulting headers are invalid and can cause problems.
+
+
+ An invalid Referer
header can trigger hot-linking
+ protections, an invalid Host
header will make it impossible for
+ the server to find the right vhost (several domains hosted on the same IP address).
+
+
+ This client-header filter removes the foo.exit
part in those headers
+ to prevent the mentioned problems. Note that it only modifies
+ the HTTP headers, it doesn't make it impossible for the server
+ to detect your Tor exit node based on the IP address
+ the request is coming from.
+
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.33 2003/05/08 18:17:33 roro
- Use apt-get instead of dpkg to install Debian package, which is more
- solid, uses the correct and most recent Debian version automatically.
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.32 2003/04/11 03:13:57 hal9
- Add small note about only one filterfile (as opposed to multiple actions
- files).
+External filter syntax
+
+ External filters are scripts or programs that can modify the content in
+ case common
+
+ External filters can be written in any language the platform &my-app; runs
+ on supports.
+
+
+ They are controlled with the
+
+
+ The header looks like any other filter, but instead of pcrs jobs, external
+ filters contain a single job which can be a program or a shell script (which
+ may call other scripts or programs).
+
+
+ External filters read the content from STDIN and write the rewritten
+ content to STDOUT. The environment variables PRIVOXY_URL, PRIVOXY_PATH,
+ PRIVOXY_HOST, PRIVOXY_ORIGIN can be used to get some details about the
+ client request.
+
+
+ &my-app; will temporary store the content to filter in the
+
+
+
+EXTERNAL-FILTER: cat Pointless example filter that doesn't actually modify the content
+/bin/cat
- Revision 1.123.2.30 2003/03/24 12:58:56 hal9
- Add new section on Predefined Filters.
+# Incorrect reimplementation of the filter above in POSIX shell.
+#
+# Note that it's a single job that spans multiple lines, the line
+# breaks are not passed to the shell, thus the semicolons are required.
+#
+# If the script isn't trivial, it is recommended to put it into an external file.
+#
+# In general, writing external filters entirely in POSIX shell is not
+# considered a good idea.
+EXTERNAL-FILTER: cat2 Pointless example filter that despite its name may actually modify the content
+while read line; \
+do \
+ echo "$line"; \
+done
+
+EXTERNAL-FILTER: rotate-image Rotate an image by 180 degree. Test filter with limited value.
+/usr/local/bin/convert - -rotate 180 -
+
+EXTERNAL-FILTER: citation-needed Adds a "[citation needed]" tag to an image. The coordinates may need adjustment.
+/usr/local/bin/convert - -pointsize 16 -fill white -annotate +17+418 "[citation needed]" -
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.29 2003/03/20 02:45:29 hal9
- More problems with \-\-chroot causing markup problems :(
+
+
+ Currently external filters are executed with &my-app;'s privileges!
+ Only use external filters you understand and trust.
+
+
+
+ External filters are experimental and the syntax may change in the future.
+
+
- Revision 1.123.2.27 2003/03/18 19:37:14 oes
- s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
+
- Revision 1.123.2.26 2003/03/17 16:50:53 oes
- Added documentation for new chroot option
- Revision 1.123.2.25 2003/03/15 18:36:55 oes
- Adapted to the new filters
- Revision 1.123.2.24 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
- Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
- Add faq on cookies.
+
- Revision 1.123.2.23 2002/10/21 02:32:01 hal9
- Updates to the user.action examples section. A few new ones.
+
+Privoxy's Template Files
+
+ All Privoxy built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the
+ 404 - No Such Domain
+ error pageBLOCKED
+ pageweb-based
+ user interface , are generated from templates .
+ (Privoxy must be running for the above links to work as
+ intended.)
+
- Revision 1.123.2.22 2002/10/12 00:51:53 hal9
- Add demoronizer to filter section.
+
+ These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the templates . On Unixish platforms,
+ this is typically
+ /etc/privoxy/templates/
- Revision 1.123.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
- s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
+
+ The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called symbols
+ or exports), which Privoxy fills at run time. It
+ is possible to edit the templates with a normal text editor, should you want
+ to customize them. (Not recommended for the casual
+ user ). Should you create your own custom templates, you should use
+ the config setting
+
+ Note that just like in configuration files, lines starting
+ with # are ignored when the templates are filled in.
+
- Revision 1.123.2.20 2002/10/10 03:49:21 hal9
- Add notes to session-cookies-only and Quickstart about pre-existing
- cookies. Also, note content-cookies work differently.
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 1.123.2.19 2002/09/26 01:25:36 hal9
- More explanation on Privoxy patterns, more on content-cookies and SSL.
+
+ 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
+ is in an alpha or beta development stage:
+
- Revision 1.123.2.18 2002/08/22 23:47:58 hal9
- Add 'Documentation' to Privoxy Menu shot in Configuration section to match
- CGIs.
+
+
+<!-- @if-unstable-start -->
- Revision 1.123.2.17 2002/08/18 01:13:05 hal9
- Spell checked (only one typo this time!).
+ ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
- Revision 1.123.2.16 2002/08/09 19:20:54 david__schmidt
- Update to Mac OS X startup script name
+<!-- if-unstable-end@ -->
+
- Revision 1.123.2.15 2002/08/07 17:32:11 oes
- Converted some internal links from ulink to link for PDF creation; no content changed
+
+ 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:
+
- Revision 1.123.2.14 2002/08/06 09:16:13 oes
- Nits re: actions file download
+
+ <!-- -->
+
- Revision 1.123.2.13 2002/08/02 18:23:19 g_sauthoff
- Just 2 small corrections to the Gentoo sections
+
+ 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 ;-)
+
- Revision 1.123.2.12 2002/08/02 18:17:21 g_sauthoff
- Added 2 Gentoo sections
+
+ All templates refer to a style located at
+ http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet Privoxy
+ and the source for it can be found and edited in the
+ cgi-style.css template.
+
- Revision 1.123.2.11 2002/07/26 15:20:31 oes
- - Added version info to title
- - Added info on new filters
- - Revised parts of the filter file tutorial
- - Added info on where to get updated actions files
+
- Revision 1.123.2.10 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
- Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
+
- Revision 1.123.2.9 2002/07/11 03:40:28 david__schmidt
- Updated Mac OS X sections due to installation location change
- Revision 1.123.2.8 2002/06/09 16:36:32 hal9
- Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
+
- Revision 1.123.2.7 2002/06/09 00:29:34 hal9
- Touch ups on filtering, in actions section and Anatomy.
+Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
+Requests
- Revision 1.123.2.6 2002/06/06 23:11:03 hal9
- Fix broken link. Linkchecked all docs.
+
+ &contacting;
+
- Revision 1.123.2.5 2002/05/29 02:01:02 hal9
- This is break out of the entire config section from u-m, so it can
- eventually be used to generate the comments, etc in the main config file
- so that these are in sync with each other.
+Privoxy Copyright, License and History
- Revision 1.123.2.1 2002/05/26 17:04:25 hal9
- -Spellcheck, very minor edits, and sync across branches
+
+ ©right;
+
- Revision 1.123 2002/05/24 23:19:23 hal9
- Include new image (Proxy setup). More fun with guibutton.
- Minor corrections/clarifications here and there.
+
+ 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 and included in
+ the next section.
+
- Revision 1.122 2002/05/24 13:24:08 oes
- Added Bookmarklet for one-click pre-filled access to show-url-info
+
+License
+
+
- Revision 1.121 2002/05/23 23:20:17 oes
- - Changed more (all?) references to actions to the
- from s since the new doc CSS
- renders them red (bad in TOC).
+</sect2>
+<!-- ~ End section ~ -->
- Revision 1.120 2002/05/23 19:16:43 roro
- Correct Debian specials (installation and startup).
- Revision 1.119 2002/05/22 17:17:05 oes
- Added Security hint
+<!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
- Revision 1.118 2002/05/21 04:54:55 hal9
- -New Section: Quickstart to Ad Blocking
- -Reformat Actions Anatomy to match new CGI layout
+<sect2 id="history"><title>History
+
+ &history;
+
+ Authors
+
+ &p-authors;
+
+See Also
+
+ &seealso;
+
+Appendix
- Revision 1.109 2002/05/14 17:23:11 oes
- Renamed the prevent-*-cookies actions, extended aliases section and moved it before the example AFs
- Revision 1.108 2002/05/14 15:29:12 oes
- Completed proofreading the actions chapter
+
+
+Regular Expressions
+
+ Privoxy uses Perl-style regular
+ expressions
in its PCRE and
+
+ PCRS libraries.
+
- Revision 1.107 2002/05/12 03:20:41 hal9
- Small clarifications for 127.0.0.1 vs localhost for listen-address since this
- apparently an important distinction for some OS's.
+
+ 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 ;-)
+
- Revision 1.106 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
- This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
- are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
- changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 1.105 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
- Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
+
+ 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
!
+
- Revision 1.104 2002/05/04 08:44:45 swa
- bumped version
+
+ 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:
+
- Revision 1.103 2002/05/04 00:40:53 hal9
- -Remove the TOC first page kludge. It's fixed proper now in ldp.dsl.in.
- -Some minor additions to Quickstart.
+
+
+ . - 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:
+
- Revision 1.94 2002/04/26 05:24:36 hal9
- -Add most of Andreas suggestions to Chain of Events section.
- -A few other minor corrections and touch up.
+
+ /.*/banners/.* .
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.
+
- Revision 1.92 2002/04/25 18:55:13 hal9
- More catchups on new actions files, and new actions names.
- Other assorted cleanups, and minor modifications.
+
+ And now something a little more complex:
+
- Revision 1.91 2002/04/24 02:39:31 hal9
- Add 'Chain of Events' section.
+
+ /.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/ /
), 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.
+
- Revision 1.90 2002/04/23 21:41:25 hal9
- Linuxconf is deprecated on RH, substitute chkconfig.
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 1.89 2002/04/23 21:05:28 oes
- Added hint for startup on Red Hat
+
+ /.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g) [ ]
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).
+
- Revision 1.88 2002/04/23 05:37:54 hal9
- Add AmigaOS install stuff.
+
+ 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 :/
+
- Revision 1.87 2002/04/23 02:53:15 david__schmidt
- Updated Mac OS X installation section
- Added a few English tweaks here an there
+
+ More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
+ http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html
+
- Revision 1.86 2002/04/21 01:46:32 hal9
- Re-write actions section.
+
+ For information on regular expression based substitutions and their applications
+ in filters, please see the
+
- Revision 1.85 2002/04/18 21:23:23 hal9
- Fix ugly typo (mine).
+
- Revision 1.84 2002/04/18 21:17:13 hal9
- Spell Redhat correctly (ie Red Hat). A few minor grammar corrections.
- Revision 1.83 2002/04/18 18:21:12 oes
- Added RPM install detail
+
+
+Privoxy's Internal Pages
- Revision 1.82 2002/04/18 12:04:50 oes
- Cosmetics
+
+ 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.
- Revision 1.81 2002/04/18 11:50:24 oes
- Extended Install section - needs fixing by packagers
+
- Revision 1.80 2002/04/18 10:45:19 oes
- Moved text to buildsource.sgml, renamed some filters, details
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 1.79 2002/04/18 03:18:06 hal9
- Spellcheck, and minor touchups.
+
+
- Revision 1.78 2002/04/17 18:04:16 oes
- Proofreading part 2
+
+
+ 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 )
+
+
- Revision 1.77 2002/04/17 13:51:23 oes
- Proofreading, part one
+
+
+ Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
+ editing of actions files:
+
+
+
+ http://config.privoxy.org/show-status
+
+
+
- Revision 1.76 2002/04/16 04:25:51 hal9
- -Added 'Note to Upgraders' and re-ordered the 'Quickstart' section.
- -Note about proxy may need requests to re-read config files.
+
+
+ Show the source code version numbers:
+
+
+
+ http://config.privoxy.org/show-version
+
+
+
- Revision 1.75 2002/04/12 02:08:48 david__schmidt
- Remove OS/2 building info... it is already in the developer-manual
+
+
+ Show the browser's request headers:
+
+
+
+ http://config.privoxy.org/show-request
+
+
+
- Revision 1.74 2002/04/11 00:54:38 hal9
- Add small section on submitting actions.
+
+
+ Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
+
+
+
+ http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info
+
+
+
- Revision 1.73 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
- generated
+
+
+ Toggle Privoxy on or off. This feature can be turned off/on in the main
+ config file. When toggled off
, 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
+
+
+
- Revision 1.72 2002/04/10 04:06:19 hal9
- Added actions feedback to Bookmarklets section
+
+
- Revision 1.71 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
- Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
+
- Revision 1.70 2002/04/08 20:53:56 swa
- ?
- Revision 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9
- -Add privoxy-man-page.sgml, for man page.
- -Add authors.sgml for AUTHORS (and p-authors.sgml)
- -Reworked various aspects of various docs.
- -Added additional comments to sub-docs.
+
+
+Chain of Events
+
+ Let's take a quick look at how some of Privoxy's
+ core features are triggered, and the ensuing sequence of events when a web
+ page is requested by your browser:
+
- Revision 1.68 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
- consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
+
+
+
+
+ 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
+ and
+ +handle-as-empty-document
+ are then checked, and if there is no match, an
+ HTML BLOCKED
page is sent back to the browser. Otherwise, if
+ it does match, an image is returned for the former, and an empty text
+ document for the latter. The type of image would depend 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).
+
+
+
+
+ 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 any +filter
action
+ 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 and any other filter files) are
+ processed against the buffered content. Filters are applied in the order
+ they are specified in one of the filter files. 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 a +filter
action
+ 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 (possibly 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
+ separate request (this is easily viewable in Privoxy's
+ logs). And each such request is in turn processed just as above. Note that a
+ complex web page will have many, many such embedded URLs. If these
+ secondary requests are to a different server, then quite possibly a very
+ differing set of actions is triggered.
+
+
- Revision 1.67 2002/04/04 17:27:57 swa
- more single file to be included at multiple points. make maintaining easier
+
+
+
+ NOTE: This is somewhat of a simplistic overview of what happens with each URL
+ request. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, we have focused on
+ Privoxy's core features only.
+
- Revision 1.66 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
- Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
- based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
- definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
- eventually be set by Makefile.
- More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
+
- Revision 1.65 2002/04/03 19:52:07 swa
- enhance squid section due to user suggestion
- Revision 1.64 2002/04/03 03:53:43 hal9
- A few minor bug fixes, and touch ups. Ready for review.
+
+
+Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action
- Revision 1.63 2002/04/01 16:24:49 hal9
- Define entities to include boilerplate text. See doc/source/*.
+
+ The way Privoxy applies
+ 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
+
- Revision 1.62 2002/03/30 04:15:53 hal9
- - Fix privoxy.org/config links.
- - Paste in Bookmarklets from Toggle page.
- - Move Quickstart nearer top, and minor rework.
+
+ 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 (be sure to flush caches afterward!). Looking at the
+ logs is a good idea too. (Note that both the toggle feature and logging are
+ enabled via config file settings, and may need to be
+ turned on
.)
+
+
+ Another easy troubleshooting step to try is if you have done any
+ customization of your installation, revert back to the installed
+ defaults and see if that helps. There are times the developers get complaints
+ about one thing or another, and the problem is more related to a customized
+ configuration issue.
+
- Revision 1.61 2002/03/29 01:31:08 hal9
- Minor update.
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 1.60 2002/03/27 01:57:34 hal9
- Added more to Anatomy section.
+
+ 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
+ one of the filter files 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.
+
- Revision 1.59 2002/03/27 00:54:33 hal9
- Touch up intro for new name.
+
+ Let's try an example, google.com ,
+ and look at it one section at a time in a sample configuration (your real
+ configuration may vary):
+
- Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
- we have a new homepage!
+
+
+ Matches for http://www.google.com:
- Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
- A few minor catch ups with name change.
+ In file: default.action [ View ] [ Edit ]
- Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
- configure needs to be generated.
+ {+change-x-forwarded-for{block}
+ +deanimate-gifs {last}
+ +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
+ +filter {refresh-tags}
+ +filter {img-reorder}
+ +filter {banners-by-size}
+ +filter {webbugs}
+ +filter {jumping-windows}
+ +filter {ie-exploits}
+ +hide-from-header {block}
+ +hide-referrer {forge}
+ +session-cookies-only
+ +set-image-blocker {pattern}
+/
- Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
- we are too lazy to make a block-built
- privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
+ { -session-cookies-only }
+ .google.com
- Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
- name change related issue.
+ { -fast-redirects }
+ .google.com
- Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
- name change. changed filenames.
+In file: user.action [ View ] [ Edit ]
+(no matches in this file)
+
+
- Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
- name change
+
+ This is telling us how we have defined our
+ actions
, and
+ which ones match for our test case, google.com
.
+ Displayed is all the actions that are available to us. Remember,
+ the + sign denotes on
. -
+ denotes off
. So some are on
here, but many
+ are off
. Each example we try may provide a slightly different
+ end result, depending on our configuration directives.
+
+
+ The first listing
+ is for 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 -- /
.
+
- Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
- renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
- fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
- "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
- comments and remarks to history untouched.
+
+ But we have defined additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
+ rules, and then we 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, at
+ least that is how it is in this example. 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
or mail.google.com
. But it would not
+ match www.google.de
! So, apparently, we have these two actions
+ defined as exceptions to the general rules at the top somewhere in the lower
+ part of our default.action file, and
+ google.com
is referenced somewhere in these latter sections.
+
- Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
- Touch up.
+
+ Then, for our user.action file, we again have no hits.
+ So there is nothing google-specific that we might have added to our own, local
+ configuration. If there was, those actions would over-rule any actions from
+ previously processed files, such as default.action .
+ user.action typically has the last word. This is the
+ best place to put hard and fast exceptions,
+
- Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
- New section in Appendix.
+
+ And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
+ Privoxy is applying all its actions
+ to google.com
:
- Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
- Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
+
- Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
- correct feedback channels
+
+
- Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
- Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
+ Final results:
- Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
- more distros
+ -add-header
+ -block
+ +change-x-forwarded-for{block}
+ -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
+ -content-type-overwrite
+ -crunch-client-header
+ -crunch-if-none-match
+ -crunch-incoming-cookies
+ -crunch-outgoing-cookies
+ -crunch-server-header
+ +deanimate-gifs {last}
+ -downgrade-http-version
+ -fast-redirects
+ -filter {js-events}
+ -filter {content-cookies}
+ -filter {all-popups}
+ -filter {banners-by-link}
+ -filter {tiny-textforms}
+ -filter {frameset-borders}
+ -filter {demoronizer}
+ -filter {shockwave-flash}
+ -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
+ -filter {fun}
+ -filter {crude-parental}
+ -filter {site-specifics}
+ -filter {js-annoyances}
+ -filter {html-annoyances}
+ +filter {refresh-tags}
+ -filter {unsolicited-popups}
+ +filter {img-reorder}
+ +filter {banners-by-size}
+ +filter {webbugs}
+ +filter {jumping-windows}
+ +filter {ie-exploits}
+ -filter {google}
+ -filter {yahoo}
+ -filter {msn}
+ -filter {blogspot}
+ -filter {no-ping}
+ -force-text-mode
+ -handle-as-empty-document
+ -handle-as-image
+ -hide-accept-language
+ -hide-content-disposition
+ +hide-from-header {block}
+ -hide-if-modified-since
+ +hide-referrer {forge}
+ -hide-user-agent
+ -limit-connect
+ -overwrite-last-modified
+ -prevent-compression
+ -redirect
+ -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
+ -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
+ -session-cookies-only
+ +set-image-blocker {pattern}
+
- Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
- New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
+
+ Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
+ fast-redirects
and session-cookies-only
,
+ which are activated specifically for this site in our configuration,
+ and thus show in the Final Results
.
+
- Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
- Added imageblock{pattern}.
+
+ Now another example, ad.doubleclick.net
:
+
- Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
- looks better
+
+
- Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
- Fix a few markup problems for jade.
+ { +block{Domains starts with "ad"} }
+ ad*.
- Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
- provide correct feedback channels
+ { +block{Domain contains "ad"} }
+ .ad.
- Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
- Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
+ { +block{Doubleclick banner server} +handle-as-image }
+ .[a-vx-z]*.doubleclick.net
+
+
- Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
- Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
+
+ We'll just show the interesting part here - the explicit matches. It is
+ matched three different times. Two +block{}
sections,
+ and a +block{} +handle-as-image
,
+ which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
+ +block-as-image
. (Aliases
are defined in
+ the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
+ than one action.)
+
- Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
- jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
+
+ 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 +block-as-image
just
+ simplifies the process and make it more readable.
+
- Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
- Add new - - user option.
+
+ One last example. Let's try http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/
.
+ This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
+
- Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
- Added section on command line options.
+
+
- Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
- Changed default port to 8118
+ Matches for http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
- Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
- Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
+ In file: default.action [ View ] [ Edit ]
- Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
- AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
- AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
- command line.
+ {-add-header
+ -block
+ +change-x-forwarded-for{block}
+ -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
+ -content-type-overwrite
+ -crunch-client-header
+ -crunch-if-none-match
+ -crunch-incoming-cookies
+ -crunch-outgoing-cookies
+ -crunch-server-header
+ +deanimate-gifs
+ -downgrade-http-version
+ +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
+ -filter {js-events}
+ -filter {content-cookies}
+ -filter {all-popups}
+ -filter {banners-by-link}
+ -filter {tiny-textforms}
+ -filter {frameset-borders}
+ -filter {demoronizer}
+ -filter {shockwave-flash}
+ -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
+ -filter {fun}
+ -filter {crude-parental}
+ -filter {site-specifics}
+ -filter {js-annoyances}
+ -filter {html-annoyances}
+ +filter {refresh-tags}
+ -filter {unsolicited-popups}
+ +filter {img-reorder}
+ +filter {banners-by-size}
+ +filter {webbugs}
+ +filter {jumping-windows}
+ +filter {ie-exploits}
+ -filter {google}
+ -filter {yahoo}
+ -filter {msn}
+ -filter {blogspot}
+ -filter {no-ping}
+ -force-text-mode
+ -handle-as-empty-document
+ -handle-as-image
+ -hide-accept-language
+ -hide-content-disposition
+ +hide-from-header{block}
+ +hide-referer{forge}
+ -hide-user-agent
+ -overwrite-last-modified
+ +prevent-compression
+ -redirect
+ -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
+ -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
+ +session-cookies-only
+ +set-image-blocker{blank} }
+ /
- Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
- Just tweaking
+ { +block{Path contains "ads".} +handle-as-image }
+ /ads
+
+
- Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
- Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
+
+ Ooops, the /adsl/
is matching /ads
in our
+ configuration! But we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the
+ blank page. It is actually triggering two different actions here, and
+ the effects are aggregated so that the URL is blocked, and &my-app; is told
+ to treat the block as if it were an image. But this is, of course, all wrong.
+ We could now add a new action below this (or better in our own
+ user.action file) that explicitly
+ un blocks (
+ {-block}
) paths with
+ adsl
in them (remember, last match in the configuration
+ wins). There are various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
+
- Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
- Update OS/2 build section
+
+
- Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
- Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
- will work - no other changes are needed.
+ { -block }
+ /adsl
+
+
- Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
- Added a very short section on Templates
+
+ Now the page displays ;-)
+ Remember to flush your browser's caches when making these kinds of changes to
+ your configuration to insure that you get a freshly delivered page! Or, try
+ using Shift+Reload .
+
- Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
- Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
+
+ But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
+ we did with:
+
- Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
- Touch ups for *.action files.
+
+
- Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
- Fix typo.
+ { +block{Path starts with "ads".} +handle-as-image }
+ /ads
+
+
- Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
- Updates for recent changes.
+
+ That actually was very helpful 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 of default.action 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
:
+
- Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
- Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
+
+
- Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
- Correct 2 minor errors
+ { shop }
+ .quietpc.com
+ .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
+ .jungle.com
+ .scan.co.uk
+ .forbes.com
+
+
- Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
- *** empty log message ***
+
+ { shop }
is an alias
that expands to
+ { -filter -session-cookies-only }
.
+ Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
- Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
- Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
+
- Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
- wrong url in documentation
+
+
- Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
- Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
+ { -filter }
+ # Disable ALL filter actions for sites in this section
+ .forbes.com
+ developer.ibm.com
+ localhost
+
+
- Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
- Very minor changes.
+
+ This would turn off all filtering for these sites. This is best
+ put in user.action , for local site
+ exceptions. Note that when a simple domain pattern is used by itself (without
+ the subsequent path portion), all sub-pages within that domain are included
+ automatically in the scope of the action.
+
- Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
- Ditto :/
+
+ 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).
+
- Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
- Ditto.
+
+ { fragile }
is an alias that disables most
+ actions that are the most likely to cause trouble. This can be used as a
+ last resort for problem sites.
+
+
+
- Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
- A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
+ { fragile }
+ # Handle with care: easy to break
+ mail.google.
+ mybank.example.com
+
- Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
- Some additions, and re-arranging.
- Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
- Diddling.
+
+ Remember to flush caches! Note that the
+ mail.google reference lacks the TLD portion (e.g.
+ .com
). This will effectively match any TLD with
+ google in it, such as mail.google.de. ,
+ just as an example.
+
+
+ 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.
+
- Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
- Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
+
- Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
- cosmetics
+