1 <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN"[
2 <!entity % dummy "IGNORE">
3 <!entity supported SYSTEM "supported.sgml">
4 <!entity newfeatures SYSTEM "newfeatures.sgml">
5 <!entity p-intro SYSTEM "privoxy.sgml">
6 <!entity seealso SYSTEM "seealso.sgml">
7 <!entity contacting SYSTEM "contacting.sgml">
8 <!entity history SYSTEM "history.sgml">
9 <!entity copyright SYSTEM "copyright.sgml">
10 <!entity license SYSTEM "license.sgml">
11 <!entity p-version "3.0.5">
12 <!entity p-status "BETA">
13 <!entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE">
14 <!entity % p-stable "IGNORE">
15 <!entity % p-text "IGNORE"> <!-- define we are not a text only doc -->
16 <!entity % p-doc "INCLUDE"> <!-- and we are a formal doc -->
17 <!entity % p-supp-userman "INCLUDE"> <!-- Include all from supported.sgml -->
18 <!entity my-copy "©"> <!-- kludge for docbook2man -->
19 <!entity % p-newstuff "INCLUDE"> <!-- exclude stuff from devel versions -->
20 <!entity my-app "<application>Privoxy</application>">
23 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/faq.sgml,v $
26 This file belongs into
27 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
29 $Id: faq.sgml,v 2.21 2006/10/03 14:40:51 fabiankeil Exp $
31 Copyright (C) 2001-2006 Privoxy Developers http://privoxy.org
34 Based partially on the Internet Junkbuster FAQ originally written by and
35 Copyright (C) 1997 Anonymous Coders and Junkbusters Corporation.
36 http://www.junkbusters.com/
38 <Qandaset defaultlabel='qanda'>
53 ========================================================================
54 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
57 Please we keep the info in this file as version independent as possible
58 so we only have to maintain one FAQ. Where significant changes are
59 made to Privoxy configuration, please note the change in such a way that
60 it makes sense to both users of older and newer versions.
61 ========================================================================
67 <article id="index" class="faq">
69 <title>Privoxy Frequently Asked Questions</title>
73 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
74 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
75 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001-2006 by
76 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
80 <pubdate>$Id: faq.sgml,v 2.21 2006/10/03 14:40:51 fabiankeil Exp $</pubdate>
84 Note: this should generate a separate page, and a live link to it.
85 But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave commented
86 unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the copyright
87 statement will be in copyright.smgl.
91 <legalnotice id="legalnotice">
93 text goes here ........
103 <orgname>By: Privoxy Developers</orgname>
112 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
113 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
114 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
119 This FAQ gives quick answers to frequently asked questions about
120 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy</ulink>.
121 It is not a substitute for the
122 <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html"><citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle></ulink>.
124 This works, at least in some situtations:
125 Test: <ulink url="privoxy-user-manual.pdf"><citetitle>User Manual</citetitle></ulink>.
129 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
130 <para>What is Privoxy?</para> &p-intro;
131 <!-- end boilerplate -->
134 Please note that this document is a work in progress. This copy represents
135 the state at the release of version &p-version;.
136 You can find the latest version of the document at <ulink
137 url="http://www.privoxy.org/faq/">http://www.privoxy.org/faq/</ulink>.
138 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> if you want to
139 contact the developers.
143 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
149 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
151 <sect1 id="general"><title>General Information</title>
152 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="who_uses"><title>Who should use Privoxy?</title>
154 Anyone that is interested in security, privacy, or in
155 finer-grained control over their web and Internet experience.
156 Everyone is encouraged to try &my-app;.
160 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="bestchoice"><title>Is Privoxy the best choice for
163 &my-app; is certainly a good choice, especially for those who want more
164 control and security. Those that have the ability to fine-tune their installation
165 will benefit the most. One of <application>Privoxy's</application>
166 strength's is that it is highly configurable giving you the ability to
167 completely personalize your installation. Being familiar with, or at least
168 having an interest in learning about <ulink
169 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Http">HTTP</ulink> and other networking
170 protocols, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html">HTML</ulink>,
171 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol">IP (Internet
172 Protocol)</ulink>, and
173 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
174 Expressions</quote></ulink>
175 will be a big plus and will help you get the most out of &my-app;.
176 A new installation just includes a very basic configuration. The user
177 should take this as a starting point only, and enhance it as he or she
178 sees fit. In fact, the user is encouraged, and expected to, fine-tune the
182 Much of <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration can be done
183 with a <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser">Web browser</ulink>.
184 But there are areas where configuration is done using a
185 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_editors">text editor</ulink>
186 to edit configuration files.
190 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="proxymoron"><title>What is a <quote>proxy</quote>? How does
191 Privoxy work? </title>
193 A <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">web proxy</ulink>
194 is a service, based on a software such as
195 <application>Privoxy</application>, that clients (i.e. browsers) can use
196 instead of connecting directly to web servers on the Internet. The
197 clients then ask the proxy to fetch the objects they need (web pages,
198 images, movies etc) on their behalf, and when the proxy has done so, it
199 hands the results back to the client. It is a <quote>go-between</quote>. See
200 the <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">Wikipedia proxy
201 definition</ulink> for more.
204 There are many reasons to use web proxies, such as security (firewalling),
205 efficiency (caching) and others, and there are any number of proxies
206 to accommodate those needs.
209 <application>Privoxy</application> is a proxy that is primarily focused on privacy
210 protection, ad and junk elimination and freeing the user from restrictions placed on his
211 activities. Sitting between your browser(s) and the Internet,
212 it is in a perfect position to filter outbound personal information that your
213 browser is leaking, as well as inbound junk. It uses a variety of techniques to do
214 this, all of which are under your complete control via the various configuration
219 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newjb"><title>What is this new version of
220 <quote><citetitle>Junkbuster</citetitle></quote>?</title>
222 <!-- Include history.sgml -->
229 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
230 <title id="whyprivoxy">Why <quote>Privoxy</quote>? Why change the name from
231 Junkbuster at all?</title>
233 <ulink url="http://junkbusters.com/">Junkbusters Corporation</ulink>
234 continues to offer their original version of the <application>Internet
235 Junkbuster</application>, so publishing our
236 <application> Junkbuster</application>-derived software under the same name
240 There are also potential legal complications from the continued use of the
241 <application>Junkbuster</application> name, which is a registered trademark of
242 <ulink url="http://junkbusters.com/">Junkbusters Corporation</ulink>.
243 There are, however, no objections from Junkbusters Corporation to the
244 <application>Privoxy</application> project itself, and they, in fact, still
245 share our ideals and goals.
248 The developers also believed that there are so many improvements over the original
249 code, that it was time to make a clean break from the past and make
250 a name in their own right.
253 <application>Privoxy</application> is the
254 <quote><emphasis>Privacy Enhancing Proxy</emphasis></quote>. Also, its content
255 modification and junk suppression gives <emphasis>you</emphasis>, the user, more
256 control, more freedom, and allows you to browse your personal and
257 <quote><emphasis>private</emphasis> edition</quote> of the web.
262 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="differs"><title>How does Privoxy differ
263 from the old Junkbuster?</title>
265 <application>Privoxy</application> picks up where
266 <application>Junkbuster</application> left off. All the old features remain.
267 The new <application>Privoxy</application> still blocks ads and banners,
269 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>, and still
270 helps protect your privacy. But, these are all greatly enhanced, and many,
271 many new features have been added, all in the same vein.
274 The configuration has changed significantly as well. This is something that
275 users will notice right off the bat if upgrading from
276 <application>Junkbuster</application> 2.0.x. The <quote>blocklist</quote>
277 <quote>cookielist</quote>, <quote>imagelist</quote> and much more has been
278 combined into the <quote>actions</quote> files, with a completely different
279 syntax. <![%p-newstuff;[ See the <ulink url="../user-manual/whatsnew.html">What's New</ulink>
280 page for the latest updates.]]>
283 <application>Privoxy</application>'s new features include:
286 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml: -->
292 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whatsanad">
293 <title id="knows">How does Privoxy know what is
294 an ad, and what is not?</title>
296 <application>Privoxy</application>'s approach to blocking ads is twofold:
299 First, there are certain patterns in the <emphasis>locations</emphasis> (URLs)
300 of banner images. This applies to both the path (you wouldn't guess how many
301 web sites serve their banners from a directory called <quote>banners</quote>!)
302 and the host (blocking the big banner hosting services like doublecklick.net
303 already helps a lot). <application>Privoxy</application> takes advantage of this
304 fact by using <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#AF-PATTERNS">URL
305 patterns</ulink> to sort out and block the requests for things that sound
306 like they would be ads or banners.
309 Second, banners tend to come in certain <emphasis>sizes</emphasis>. But you
310 can't tell the size of an image by its URL without downloading it, and if you
311 do, it's too late to save bandwidth. Therefore, <application>Privoxy</application>
312 also inspects the HTML sources of web pages while they are loaded, and replaces
313 references to images with standard banner sizes by dummy references, so that
314 your browser doesn't request them anymore in the first place.
317 Both of this involves a certain amount of guesswork and is, of course, freely
318 and readily configurable.
322 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
323 <title id="mistakes">Can Privoxy make mistakes?
324 This does not sound very scientific.</title>
326 Actually, it's a black art ;-) And yes, it is always possible to have a broad
327 rule accidentally block or change something by mistake. You will almost surely
328 run into such situations at some point. It is tricky writing rules to
329 cover every conceivable possibility, and not occasionally get false positives.
333 But this should not be a big concern since the
334 <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is very flexible, and
335 includes tools to help identify these types of situations so they can be
336 addressed as needed, allowing you to customize your installation.
337 (<link linkend="badsite">See the Troubleshooting section below</link>.)
343 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
344 <title id="configornot">Will I have to configure Privoxy
345 before I can use it?</title>
347 No, not really. The default installation should give you a good starting
348 point, and block <emphasis>most</emphasis> unwanted content.
351 But you will certainly run into situations where there are false positives,
352 or ads not being blocked that you may not want to see. In these cases, you
353 would certainly benefit by customizing <application>Privoxy's</application>
354 configuration to more closely match your individual situation. And we would
355 encourage you to do this. This is where the real power of
356 <application>Privoxy</application> lies!
359 You will have to tell your browser about <application>Privoxy</application>
360 (see the Installation section below).
365 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="browsers2"><title>My browser does the same things as
366 Privoxy. Why should I use
367 Privoxy at all?</title>
369 Modern browsers do indeed have <emphasis>some</emphasis> of the same
370 functionality as <application>Privoxy</application>. Maybe this is
371 adequate for you. But <application>Privoxy</application> is much more
372 versatile and powerful, and can do a number of things that browsers just can't.
375 In addition, a proxy is good choice if you use multiple browsers, or
376 have a LAN with multiple computers. This way all the configuration
377 is in one place, and you don't have to maintain a similar configuration
378 for possibly many browsers.
382 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whytrust"><title>Why should I trust Privoxy?</title>
384 The most important reason is because you have access to
385 <emphasis>everything</emphasis>, and you can control everything. You can
386 check every line of every configuration file yourself. You can check every
387 last bit of source code should you desire. And even if you can't read code,
388 there should be some comfort in knowing that thousands of other people can,
389 and do read it. You can build the software from scratch, if you want, so
390 that you know the executable is clean, and that it is
391 <emphasis>yours</emphasis>. In fact, we encourage this level of scrutiny. It
392 is one reason we use &my-app; ourselves.
396 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="license"><title>Is there is a license or fee? What about a
397 warranty? Registration?</title>
399 <application>Privoxy</application> is licensed under the <ulink
400 url="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU General Public License (GPL)</ulink>.
401 It is free to use, copy, modify or distribute as you wish under the terms of this
402 license. Please see the <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> section for more
403 information on the license and copyright. Or the <filename>LICENSE</filename> file
404 that should be included.
407 There is <emphasis>no warranty</emphasis> of any kind, expressed, implied or otherwise.
408 That is something that would cost real money ;-) There is no registration either.
409 <application>Privoxy</application> really is <emphasis>free</emphasis>
415 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="spyware">
416 <title>Can Privoxy remove spyware? Adware? Viruses?</title>
418 No. &my-app; cannot remove anything. It is not a removal tool. It is a
419 preventative. &my-app; can help prevent contact from sites
420 that use such tactics with approriate configuration rules, and thus could
421 conceivably prevent contamination from such sites.
426 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="otherads">
427 <title>Can I use Privoxy with other ad-blocking software?</title>
429 &my-app; should work fine with other proxies and other software in general.
432 But it is probably not necessary to use &my-app; in conjunction with other
433 ad-blocking products, and this could conceivably cause undesirable results.
434 It would be better to choose one software or the other and work a little to
435 tweak its configuration to your liking.
439 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="jointeam"><title>I would like to help you, what can I do?</title>
441 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="jointeam-work"><title>Would you like to participate?</title>
443 Well, we <emphasis>always</emphasis> need help. There is something for
444 everybody who wants to help us. We welcome new developers, packagers,
445 testers, documentation writers or really anyone with a desire to help in
446 any way. You <emphasis>DO NOT</emphasis> need to be a
447 <quote>programmer</quote>. There are many other tasks available. In fact,
448 the programmers often can't spend as much time programming because of some
449 of the other, more mundane things that need to be done, like checking the
450 Tracker feedback sections.
453 So first thing, <ulink
454 url="https://sourceforge.net/account/register.php">get an account on SourceForge.net</ulink>
455 and mail your id to the <ulink url="mailto:ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net">developers
456 mailing list</ulink>. Then, please read the <ulink
457 url="../developer-manual/index.html">Developer's Manual</ulink>, at least
458 the pertinent sections.
461 Once we have added you to the team, you'll have access to the <ulink
462 url="http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=11118">CVS repository</ulink>, and
463 together we'll find a suitable task for you.
467 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="jointeam-money"><title>Contribute!</title>
469 We, of course, welcome donations and could use money for domain registering,
470 buying software to test <application>Privoxy</application> with, and, of course,
471 for regular world-wide get-togethers (hahaha). If you enjoy the software and feel
472 like helping us with a donation, just <ulink
473 url="mailto: ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net">drop us a note</ulink>.
477 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="jointeam-software"><title>Software</title>
479 If you are a vendor of a web-related software like a browser, web server
480 or proxy, and would like us to ensure that <application>Privoxy</application>
481 runs smoothly with your product, you might consider supplying us with a
482 copy or license. We can't, however, guarantee that we will fix all potential
483 compatibility issues as a result.
493 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
495 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
497 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whichbrowsers">
498 <title>Which browsers are supported by Privoxy?</title>
500 Any browser that can be configured to use a proxy, which
501 should be virtually all browsers, including
502 <application>Firefox</application>, <application>Internet
503 Explorer</application>, and <application>Opera</application> among others.
504 Direct browser support is not an absolute requirement since
505 <application>Privoxy</application> runs as a separate application and talks
506 to the browser in the standardized HTTP protocol, just like a web server
511 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whichos">
512 <title>Which operating systems are supported?</title>
514 Include supported.sgml here:
519 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="email-client">
520 <title>Can I use Privoxy with my email client?</title>
522 As long as there is some way to set a HTTP proxy for the client, then yes,
523 any application can be used, whether it is strictly speaking a
524 <quote>browser</quote> or not. Though this may not be the best approach for
525 dealing with some of the common abuses of HTML in email. See <link
526 linkend="outlook">How can I configure <application>Privoxy</application>
527 with <application>Outlook Express</application>?</link> below for more on
531 Be aware that HTML email presents a number of unique security and privacy
532 related issues, that can require advanced skills to overcome. The developers
533 recommend using email clients that can be configured to convert HTML to plain
534 text for these reasons.
538 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newinstall"><title>Can I install
539 Privoxy over Junkbuster?</title>
541 We recommend you un-install <application>Junkbuster</application>
542 first to minimize conflicts and confusion. You may want to
543 save your old configuration files for future reference. The configuration
544 files and syntax have substantially changed, so you will need to manually
545 port your old patterns. See the <ulink url="../user-manual/upgradersnote.html">note
546 to upgraders</ulink> and <ulink url="../user-manual/installation.html">installation
547 chapter</ulink> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User Manual</ulink>
551 Note: Some installers may automatically un-install
552 <application>Junkbuster</application>, if present!
557 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
558 <title id="firststep">I just installed Privoxy. Is there anything
559 special I have to do now?</title>
562 All browsers must be told to use <application>Privoxy</application>
563 as a proxy by specifying the correct proxy address and port number
564 in the appropriate configuration area for the browser. See below.
565 You should also flush your browser's memory and disk cache to get rid of any
566 cached junk items, and remove any stored
567 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>.
574 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="localhost"><title>What is the proxy address of Privoxy?</title>
576 If you set up the <application>Privoxy</application> to run on
577 the computer you browse from (rather than your ISP's server or some
578 networked computer on a LAN), the proxy will be on <literal>127.0.0.1</literal>
579 (sometimes referred to as <quote>localhost</quote>,
580 which is the special name used by every computer on the Internet to refer
581 to itself) and the port will be 8118 (unless you have <application>Privoxy</application>
582 to run on a different port with the <ulink
583 url="../user-manual/config.html#LISTEN-ADDRESS">listen-address</ulink> config option).
586 When configuring your browser's proxy settings you typically enter
587 the word <quote>localhost</quote> or the IP address <quote>127.0.0.1</quote>
588 in the boxes next to <quote>HTTP</quote> and <quote>Secure</quote> (HTTPS) and
589 then the number <quote>8118</quote> for <quote>port</quote>.
590 This tells your browser to send all web requests to <application>Privoxy</application>
591 instead of directly to the Internet.
594 <application>Privoxy</application> can also be used to proxy for
595 a Local Area Network. In this case, your would enter either the IP
596 address of the LAN host where <application>Privoxy</application>
597 is running, or the equivalent hostname. Port assignment would be
598 same as above. Note that <application>Privoxy</application> doesn't
599 listen on any LAN interfaces by default.
602 <application>Privoxy</application> does not currently handle
603 any other protocols such as FTP, SMTP, IM, IRC, ICQ, etc. Be sure that
604 proxying any of these other protocols is not activated.
608 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="nothing">
609 <title>I just installed Privoxy, and nothing is happening.
610 All the ads are there. What's wrong?</title>
613 Did you configure your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application>
614 as a proxy? It does not sound like it. See above. You might also try flushing
615 the browser's caches to force a full re-reading of pages. You can verify
616 that <application>Privoxy</application> is running, and your browser
617 is correctly configured by entering the special URL:
618 <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>.
619 <!-- Use http://p.p/ instead of http://config.privoxy.org/ here because
620 of potential redirect caching problem (see next Q). -->
621 This should take you to a page titled <quote>This is Privoxy..</quote> with
622 access to <application>Privoxy's</application> internal configuration.
623 If you see this, then you are good to go. If you receive a page saying
624 <quote>Privoxy is not running</quote>, then the browser is not set up to use
625 your <application>Privoxy</application> installation.
626 If you receive anything else (probably nothing at all), it could either
627 be that the browser is not set up correctly, or that
628 <application>Privoxy</application> is not running at all. Check the <ulink
629 url="../user-manual/config.html#LOGFILE">log file</ulink>. For instructions
630 on starting <application>Privoxy</application> and browser configuration,
631 see the <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/startup.html">chapter
632 on starting <application>Privoxy</application></ulink> in the
633 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">User Manual</ulink>.
638 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="notused">
639 <title>I get a <quote>Privoxy is not being used</quote> dummy page although
640 Privoxy is running and being used.</title>
643 First, make sure that Privoxy is <emphasis>really</emphasis> running and
644 being used by visiting <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>. You
645 should see the <application>Privoxy</application> main page. If not, see
646 the <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/startup.html">chapter
647 on starting <application>Privoxy</application></ulink> in the
648 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">User Manual</ulink>.
652 Now if <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> works for you, but
653 other parts of <application>Privoxy</application>'s web interface show
654 the dummy page, your browser has cached a redirection it encountered before
655 <application>Privoxy</application> was being used. You need to clear your
656 browser's cache. Note that shift-reloading the dummy page won't help, since
657 that'll only refresh the dummy page, not the redirection that lead you there.
661 The procedure for clearing the cache varies from browser to browser. For
662 example, <application>Mozilla/Netscape</application> users would click
663 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -->
664 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Cache</guibutton> and
665 then click both <quote><guibutton>Clear Memory Cache</guibutton></quote>
666 and <quote><guibutton>Clear Disk Cache</guibutton></quote>.
667 And, <application>Firefox</application> users would click
668 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Options</guibutton> -->
669 <guibutton>Privacy</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Cache</guibutton> and
670 then click <quote><guibutton>Clear Cache Now</guibutton></quote>.
678 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
680 <sect1 id="configuration"><title>Configuration</title>
681 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
682 <title id="actionsfile">What exactly is an <quote>actions</quote> file?</title>
685 &my-app; utilizes the concept of <quote>
686 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACTIONS">actions</ulink></quote>
687 that are used to manipulate and control web page data.
688 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">Actions files</ulink>
689 are where these <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACTIONS">actions</ulink>
690 that <application>Privoxy</application> could take while processing a certain
691 request, are configured. Typically, you would define a set of default actions
692 that apply globally to all URLs, then add exceptions to these defaults where needed.
693 There is a wide array of actions available that give the user a high degree
694 of control and flexibility on how to process each and every web page.
698 Actions can be defined on a <ulink
699 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#AF-PATTERNS">URL pattern</ulink> basis, i.e.
700 for single URLs, whole web sites, groups or parts thereof etc. Actions can also be
701 grouped together and then applied to requests matching one or more patterns.
702 There are many possible actions that might apply to any given site. As an example,
703 if you are blocking <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>
704 as one of your default actions, but need to accept cookies from a given site,
705 you would need to define an exception for this site in one of your actions
706 files, preferably in <filename>user.action</filename>.
711 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="actionss">
712 <title>The <quote>actions</quote> concept confuses me. Please list
713 some of these <quote>actions</quote>.</title>
715 For a comprehensive discussion of the actions concept, please refer
716 to the <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">actions file
717 chapter</ulink> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User
718 Manual</ulink>. It includes a <ulink
719 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACTIONS">list of all actions</ulink>
720 and an <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACT-EXAMPLES">actions
721 file tutorial</ulink> to get you started.
726 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
727 <title id="actconfig">How are actions files configured? What is the easiest
728 way to do this?</title>
731 Actions files are just text files in a special syntax and can be edited
732 with a text editor. But probably the easiest way is to access
733 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface with your web browser
734 at <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
735 (Shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>) and then select
736 <quote><ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View &
737 change the current configuration</ulink></quote> from the menu.
742 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
743 <title>There are several different <quote>actions</quote> files. What are
744 the differences?</title>
747 are being included by the developers, to be used for
748 different purposes: These are
749 <filename>default.action</filename>, the <quote>main</quote> actions file
750 which is actively maintained by the <application>Privoxy</application>
751 developers and typically sets the default policies, <filename>user.action</filename>, where users are encouraged
752 to make their private customizations, and <filename>standard.action</filename>,
753 which is for internal <application>Privoxy</application> use only.
754 Please see <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">the actions chapter</ulink>
755 in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User Manual</ulink> for a more
756 detailed explanation.
760 Earlier versions included three different versions of the
761 <filename>default.action</filename> file. The new scheme allows for
762 greater flexibility of local configuration, and for browser based
763 selection of pre-defined <quote>aggressiveness</quote> levels.
768 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="getupdates"><title>Where can I get updated Actions Files?</title>
770 Based on your feedback and the continuing development, updates of
771 <filename>default.action</filename> will be
772 made available from time to time on the <ulink
773 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">files section</ulink> of
774 our <ulink url="http://sf.net/projects/ijbswa/">project page</ulink>.
778 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
779 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
780 url="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-announce/">subscribe
781 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
786 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newconfig"><title>Can I use my old config files?</title>
788 The syntax and purpose of configuration files has remained the same
789 throughout the 3.x series. Although each release contains updated,
790 <quote>improved</quote> versions and it is recommended to use the newer
793 If upgrading from version prior to 3.0.4 the syntax for <literal>fast-redirects</literal>
794 has changed. See the <ulink url="../user-manual/whatsnew.html">What's New section</ulink>
795 of the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> for details.]]>
798 But all configuration files have substantially
799 changed from the <application>Junkbuster</application> days, and early
800 versions of <application>Privoxy 2.x</application>. The old files, like
801 <filename>blocklist</filename> will not work at all.
803 <![%p-newstuff;[ <para>
804 Refer to the <ulink url="../user-manual/whatsnew.html">What's New</ulink>
805 page for information on configuration changes that may occur from one release to another.
809 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="yahoo"><title>How can I make my Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail account work?</title>
811 The default configuration shouldn't impact the usability of any of these services.
812 It will, however, make all <ulink
813 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>
814 temporary, so that your browser will forget your
815 login credentials in between browser sessions. If you would like not to have to log
816 in manually each time you access those websites, simply turn off all cookie handling
817 for them in the <filename>user.action</filename> file. An example for yahoo might
821 <screen># Allow all cookies for Yahoo login:
823 { -<ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</ulink> -<ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</ulink> -<ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</ulink> }
824 .login.yahoo.com</screen>
827 These kinds of sites are often quite complex and heavy with
828 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript">Javascript</ulink> and
829 thus <quote>fragile</quote>. So if <emphasis>still</emphasis> a problem,
831 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ALIASES">alias</ulink> just for such
835 <screen># Gmail is a _fragile_ site:
837 { <literal>fragile</literal> }
838 mail.google.com</screen>
841 Be sure to flush your browser's caches whenever making these kinds of
842 changes, just to make sure the changes <quote>take</quote>.
845 Make sure the domain, host and path are appropriate as well. Your browser can
846 tell you where you are specifically and you should use that information for
847 your configuration settings. Note that above it is not referenced as
848 <literal>gmail.com</literal>, which is a valid domain name.
853 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="configfiles"> <title>What's the difference between the
854 <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> and <quote>Advanced</quote> defaults?</title>
856 Configuring <application>Privoxy</application> is not entirely trivial. To
857 help you get started, we provide you with three different default action
858 <quote>profiles</quote> in the web based actions file editor at <ulink
859 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
860 See the <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html"><citetitle>User
861 Manual</citetitle></ulink> for a list of actions, and how the default
866 Where the defaults are likely to break some sites, exceptions for
867 known popular <quote>problem</quote> sites are included, but in
868 general, the more aggressive your default settings are, the more exceptions
869 you will have to make later. New users are best to start off in
870 <quote>Cautious</quote> setting. This is safest and will have the fewest
871 problems. See the <ulink
872 url="../user-manual/index.html"><citetitle>User Manual</citetitle></ulink>
873 for a more detailed discussion.
877 It should be noted that the <quote>Advanced</quote> profile (formerly known
878 as the <quote>Adventuresome</quote> profile) is more
879 aggressive, and will make use of some of
880 <application>Privoxy's</application> advanced features. Use at your own risk!
885 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="browseconfig"> <title>Why can I change the configuration
886 with a browser? Does that not raise security issues?</title>
888 It may seem strange that regular users can edit the config files with their
889 browsers, although the whole <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> hierarchy
890 belongs to the user <quote>privoxy</quote>, with only 644 permissions.
893 When you use the browser-based editor, <application>Privoxy</application>
894 itself is writing to the config files. Because
895 <application>Privoxy</application> is running as the user <quote>privoxy</quote>,
896 it can update the config files.
899 If you run <application>Privoxy</application> for multiple untrusted users (e.g. in
900 a LAN), you will probably want to turn the web-based editor and remote toggle
901 features off by setting <quote><literal><ulink
902 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions</ulink>
903 0</literal></quote> and <quote><literal><ulink
904 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-REMOTE-TOGGLE">enable-remote-toggle</ulink>
905 0</literal></quote> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html">main configuration file</ulink>.
908 Note that in the default configuration, only local users (i.e. those on
909 <quote>localhost</quote>) can connect to <application>Privoxy</application>,
910 so this is not (normally) a security problem.
915 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
916 <title id="filterfile">What is the <filename>default.filter</filename> file? What is a <quote>filter</quote>?</title>
918 The <ulink url="../user-manual/filter-file.html"><filename>default.filter</filename></ulink>
919 file is where <emphasis>filters</emphasis> as supplied by the developers are defined.
920 Filters are a special subset of actions that can be used to modify or
921 remove, web page content on the fly. Filters apply to <emphasis>anything</emphasis>
922 in the page source (and optionally both client and server headers), including
923 HTML tags, and JavaScript. Regular expressions are used to accomplish this.
924 There are a number of pre-defined filters to deal with common annoyances. The
925 filters are only defined here, to invoke them, you need to use the
927 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER"><literal>filter</literal>
928 action</ulink> in one of the actions files. Filtering is automatically
929 disabled for inappropriate MIME types.
933 If you are familiar with regular expressions, and HTML, you can look at
934 the provided <filename>default.filter</filename> with a text editor and define
935 your own filters. This is potentially a very powerful feature, but
936 requires some expertise in both regular expressions and HTML/HTTP.
937 <![%p-newstuff;[ You should
938 place any modifications to the default filters, or any new ones you create
939 in a separate file, such as <filename>user.filter</filename>, so they won't
940 be overwritten during upgrades.
941 The ability to define multiple filter files
942 in <filename>config</filename> is a new feature as of v. 3.0.5.]]>
946 There is no GUI editor option for this part of the configuration,
947 but you can disable/enable the various pre-defined filters of the included
948 <filename>default.filter</filename> file with the <ulink
949 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">web-based actions file editor</ulink>.
954 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
955 <title id="lanconfig">How can I set up Privoxy to act as a proxy for my
958 By default, <application>Privoxy</application> only responds to requests
959 from <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> (localhost). To have it act as a server for
960 a network, this needs to be changed in the <ulink
961 url="../user-manual/config.html">main configuration file</ulink>. Look for
963 url="../user-manual/config.html#LISTEN-ADDRESS">listen-address</ulink></literal>
964 option, which may be commented out with a <quote>#</quote> symbol. Make sure
965 it is uncommented, and assign it the address of the LAN gateway interface,
966 and port number to use. Assuming your LAN address is 192.168.1.1 and you
967 wish to run <application>Privoxy</application> on port 8118, this line
973 listen-address 192.168.1.1:8118</screen>
977 Save the file, and restart <application>Privoxy</application>. Configure
978 all browsers on the network then to use this address and port number.
982 Alternately, you can have <application>Privoxy</application> listen on
983 all available interfaces:
988 listen-address :8118</screen>
992 And then use <application>Privoxy's</application>
994 url="../user-manual/config.html#PERMIT-ACCESS">permit-access</ulink>
995 feature to limit connections. A firewall in this situation is recommended
1000 The above steps should be the same for any TCP network, regardless of
1005 If you run <application>Privoxy</application> on a LAN with untrusted users,
1006 we recommend that you double-check the <ulink
1007 url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCESS-CONTROL">access control and security</ulink>
1014 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1015 <title id="noseeum">Instead of ads, now I get a checkerboard pattern. I don't want to see anything.</title>
1017 The replacement for blocked images can be controlled with the <ulink
1018 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><literal>set-image-blocker</literal>
1019 action</ulink>. You have the choice of a checkerboard pattern, a transparent 1x1 GIF
1020 image (aka <quote>blank</quote>), or a redirect to a custom image of your choice.
1021 Note that this choice only has effect for images which are blocked as images, i.e.
1022 whose URLs match both a <literal><ulink
1023 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</ulink></literal>
1024 <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><ulink
1025 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">block</ulink></literal> action.
1028 If you want to see nothing, then change the <ulink
1029 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><literal>set-image-blocker</literal>
1030 action</ulink> to <quote>blank</quote>. This can be done by editing the
1031 <filename>user.action</filename> file, or through the <ulink
1032 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">web-based actions file editor</ulink>.
1037 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1038 <title id="whyseeum">Why would anybody want to see a checkerboard pattern?</title>
1040 Remember that <link linkend="whatsanad">telling which image is an ad and which
1041 isn't</link>, is an educated guess. While we hope that the standard configuration
1042 is rather smart, it will make occasional mistakes. The checkerboard image is visually
1043 decent, but it shows you that and where images were blocked, which can be very
1044 helpful in case some navigation aid or otherwise innocent image was
1045 erroneously blocked. It is recommended for new users so they can
1046 <quote>see</quote> what is happening. Some people might also enjoy seeing how
1047 many banners they <emphasis>don't</emphasis> have to see.
1052 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1053 <title id="blockedbytext">I see some images being replaced by a text
1054 instead of the checkerboard image. Why and how do I get rid of this?</title>
1056 This happens when the banners are not embedded in the HTML code of the
1057 page itself, but in separate HTML (sub)documents that are loaded into (i)frames
1058 or (i)layers, and these external HTML documents are blocked. Being non-images
1059 they get replaced by a substitute HTML page rather than a substitute image,
1060 which wouldn't work out technically, since the browser expects and accepts
1061 only HTML when it has requested an HTML document.
1064 The substitute page adapts to the available space and shows itself as a
1065 miniature two-liner if loaded into small frames, or full-blown with a
1066 large red "BLOCKED" banner if space allows.
1069 If you prefer the banners to be blocked by images, you must see to it that
1070 the HTML documents in which they are embedded are not blocked. Clicking
1071 the <quote>See why</quote> link offered in the substitute page will show
1072 you which rule blocked the page. After changing the rule and un-blocking
1073 the HTML documents, the browser will try to load the actual banner images
1074 and the usual image blocking will (hopefully!) kick in.
1079 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="srvany">
1080 <title>Can Privoxy run as a service
1081 on Win2K/NT/XP?</title>
1084 Yes. Version 3.0.5 introduces full <application>Windows</application> service
1085 functionality. See <ulink url="../user-manual/installation.html#installation-pack-win">
1086 the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle></ulink> for details on how to install and configure
1087 <application>Privoxy</application> as a service.
1090 Earlier ]]>3.x versions could run as a system service using <command>srvany.exe</command>.
1091 See the discussion at <ulink
1092 url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=361118&aid=485617&group_id=11118">http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=361118&aid=485617&group_id=11118</ulink>,
1093 for details, and a sample configuration.
1098 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="otherproxy">
1099 <title>How can I make Privoxy work with other
1100 proxies like Squid or Tor?</title>
1102 This can be done and is often useful to combine the benefits of
1103 <application>Privoxy</application> with those of a another proxy.
1105 url="../user-manual/config.html#FORWARDING">forwarding chapter</ulink>
1106 in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User Manual</ulink> which
1107 describes how to do this, and the <link linkend="TOR">
1108 How do I use Privoxy together with
1109 Tor</link> section below.
1113 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="port-80">
1114 <title>Can I just set Privoxy to use port 80
1115 and thus avoid individual browser configuration?</title>
1118 No, its more complicated than that. This only works with special kinds
1119 of proxies known as <quote>transparent</quote> proxies (see below).
1124 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="transparent">
1125 <title>Can Privoxy run as a <quote>transparent
1126 </quote> proxy?</title>
1128 No, <application>Privoxy</application> currently does not have this ability,
1129 though it may be added in a future release. Transparent proxies require
1130 special handling of the request headers beyond what
1131 <application>Privoxy</application> is now capable of.
1135 Chaining <application>Privoxy</application> behind another proxy that has
1136 this ability should work though.
1138 url="../user-manual/config.html#FORWARDING">forwarding chapter</ulink>
1139 in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User Manual</ulink>. As
1140 a transparent proxy to be used for chaining we recommend Transproxy
1141 (<ulink url="http://transproxy.sourceforge.net/">http://transproxy.sourceforge.net/</ulink>).
1146 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="outlook">
1147 <title>How can I configure Privoxy for use with Outlook
1150 <application>Outlook Express</application> uses <application>Internet Explorer</application>
1151 components to both render HTML, and fetch any HTTP requests that may be embedded in an HTML email.
1152 So however you have <application>Privoxy</application> configured to work
1153 with IE, this configuration should automatically be shared.
1157 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="outlook-more">
1158 <title>How can I have separate rules just for HTML mail?</title>
1160 The short answer is, you can't. <application>Privoxy</application> has no way
1161 of knowing which particular application makes a request, so there is no way to
1162 distinguish between web pages and HTML mail.
1163 <application>Privoxy</application> just blindly proxies all requests. In the
1164 case of <application>Outlook Express</application> (see above), OE uses
1165 IE anyway, and there is no way for <application>Privoxy</application> to ever
1166 be able to distinguish between them (nor could any other proxy type application for
1170 For a good discussion of some of the issues involved (including privacy and
1171 security issues), see
1172 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=211118&aid=629518&group_id=11118">http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=211118&aid=629518&group_id=11118</ulink>.
1176 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="sneaky-cookies">
1177 <title>I sometimes notice cookies sneaking through. How?</title>
1180 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">Cookies</ulink> can be
1181 set in several ways. The classic method is via the
1182 <literal>Set-Cookie</literal> HTTP header. This is straightforward, and an
1183 easy one to manipulate, such as the &my-app; concept of
1184 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</ulink>.
1185 There is also the possibility of using
1186 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript">Javascript</ulink> to
1187 set cookies (&my-app; calls these <literal>content-cookies</literal>). This
1188 is trickier because the syntax can vary widely, and thus requires a certain
1189 amount of guesswork. It is not realistic to catch all of these short of
1190 disabling Javascript, which would break many sites. And lastly, if the
1191 cookies are embedded in a HTTPS/SSL secure session via Javascript, they are beyond
1192 <application>Privoxy's</application> reach.
1195 All in all, &my-app; can help manage cookies in general, can help minimize
1196 the loss of privacy posed by cookies, but can't realistically stop all
1201 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="evil-cookies">
1202 <title>Are all cookies bad? Why?</title>
1204 No, in fact there are many beneficial uses of
1206 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>. Cookies are just a
1207 method that browsers can use to store data between pages, or between browser
1208 sessions. Sometimes there is a good reason for this, and the user's life is a
1209 bit easier as a result. But there is a long history of some websites taking
1210 advantage of this layer of trust, and using the data they glean from you and
1211 your browsing habits for their own purposes, and maybe to your potential
1212 detriment. Such sites are using you and storing their data on your system.
1213 That is why the security conscious watch from whom those cookies come, and why
1214 they really <emphasis>need</emphasis> to be there.
1218 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">Wikipedia cookie
1219 definition</ulink> for more.
1223 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="allow-cookies">
1224 <title>How can I allow permanent cookies for my trusted sites?</title>
1227 There are several actions that relate to cookies. The default behavior is to
1228 allow only <quote>session cookies</quote>, which means the cookies only last
1229 for the current browser session. This eliminates most kinds of abuse related
1230 to cookies. But there may be cases where we want cookies to last.
1233 To disable all cookie actions, so that cookies are allowed unrestricted,
1234 both in and out, for <literal>example.com</literal>:
1238 { -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies -session-cookies-only -filter{content-cookies} }
1239 .example.com</screen>
1242 Place the above in <filename>user.action</filename>. Note some of these may
1243 be off by default anyway, so this might be redundant, but there is no harm
1244 being explicit in what you want to happen. <filename>user.action</filename>
1245 includes an alias for this situation, called
1246 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal>.
1250 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="multiples">
1251 <title>Can I have separate configurations for different users?</title>
1253 Each instance of <application>Privoxy</application> has its own
1254 configuration, including such attributes as the TCP port that it listens on.
1255 What you can do is run multiple instances of <application>Privoxy</application>, each with
1256 a unique <literal>listen-address</literal> and configuration path, and then
1257 each of these can have their own configurations. Think of it as per-port
1261 Simple enough for a few users, but for large installations, consider having
1262 groups of users that might share like configurations.
1266 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whitelists">
1267 <title>Can I set-up Privoxy as a whitelist of
1268 <quote>good</quote> sites?</title>
1270 Sure. There are a couple of things you can do for simple whitelisting.
1271 Here's one real easy one:
1274 ############################################################
1276 ############################################################
1277 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">+block</ulink> }
1278 / # Block *all* URLs
1280 ############################################################
1282 ############################################################
1283 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">-block</ulink> }
1286 games.example.com</screen>
1288 This allows access to only those three sites by first blocking all URLs, and
1289 then subsequently allowing three specific exceptions.
1292 A more interesting approach is <application>Privoxy's</application>
1293 <literal>trustfile</literal> concept, which incorporates the notion of
1294 <quote>trusted referrers</quote>. See the <ulink
1295 url="../user-manual/config.html#TRUSTFILE">User Manual Trust</ulink>
1299 These are fairly simple approaches and are not completely foolproof. There
1300 are various other configuration options that should be disabled (described
1301 elsewhere here and in <ulink url="../user-manual/">the User Manual</ulink>)
1302 so that users can't modify their own configuration and easily circumvent the
1307 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="no-adblock">
1308 <title>How can I turn off ad-blocking?</title>
1310 Ad blocking is hard-coded into the default configuration files. It has been
1311 assumed that everyone using &my-app; is interested in this feature. If you want
1312 to do without this, there are several approaches you can take: You can
1313 manually undo the many block rules in <filename>default.action</filename>. Or
1314 even easier, just create your own <filename>default.action</filename> file
1315 from scratch without the many ad blocking rules, and corresponding exceptions.
1316 Or lastly, if you are not concerned about the additional blocks that are
1317 done for privacy reasons, you can very easily over-ride
1318 <emphasis>all</emphasis> blocking with the following very simple rule in
1319 <filename>user.action</filename>:
1323 # Unblock everybody, everywhere
1324 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">-block</ulink> }
1325 / # UN-Block *all* URLs
1329 Or even a more comprehensive reversing of various ad related actions:
1333 # Unblock everybody, everywhere, and turn off appropriate filtering, etc
1334 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">-block</ulink> \
1335 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE">-filter{banners-by-size}</ulink> \
1336 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE">-filter{banners-by-link}</ulink> \
1337 <literal>allow-popups</literal> \
1339 / # UN-Block *all* URLs and allow ads
1343 This last <quote>action</quote> in this compound statement,
1344 <literal>allow-popups</literal>, is an <ulink
1345 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ALIASES">alias</ulink> that disables
1346 various pop-up blocking features.
1350 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="templates">
1351 <title>How can I have custom template pages, like the
1352 <emphasis>BLOCKED</emphasis> page?</title>
1354 All the template pages are installed in a sub-directory appropriately named:
1355 <filename>templates</filename>. These are specialized text files utilized
1356 by &my-app; and can easily be modified using any text editor. Knowing something
1357 about HTML will of course be helpful. You cannot rename any of these files,
1358 or create completely new templates, that is not possible. But you can change
1359 the page content to whatever you like. Be forewarned that these files are
1360 subject to being overwritten during upgrades, so be sure to save any
1365 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="blockall">
1366 <title>How can I remove the <quote>Go There Anyway</quote> link from
1367 the <emphasis>BLOCKED</emphasis> page?</title>
1369 Editing the template page (see above) may dissuade some users, but this
1370 method is easily circumvented. Where you want this level of control, you should
1371 build &my-app; from source, and enable various features that are
1372 available as compile-time options. You should use
1373 <command>configure</command> as follows:
1377 ./configure --disable-toggle --disable-editor --disable-force
1381 This will create an executable with hard-coded security features so that
1382 &my-app; does not allow easy bypassing of blocks or changing the current
1383 configuration. Some of these features can also by toggled on/off via options
1384 in <application>Privoxy's</application> main
1386 url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCESS-CONTROL">config</ulink> file. But
1387 compiled-in compliance is a much better method of ensuring that a block is
1391 Default builds of &my-app; are typically built with these features
1398 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1401 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1403 <sect1 id="misc"><title>Miscellaneous</title>
1405 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1406 <title id="slowsme">How much does Privoxy slow my browsing down? This
1407 has to add extra time to browsing.</title>
1409 How much of an impact depends on many things, including the CPU of the host
1410 system, how aggressive the configuration is, which specific actions are being triggered,
1411 the size of the page, the bandwidth of the connection, etc.
1414 Overall, it should not slow you down any in real terms, and may actually help
1415 speed things up since ads, banners and other junk are not typically being
1416 retrieved and displayed. The actual processing time required by
1417 <application>Privoxy</application> itself for each page, is relatively small
1418 in the overall scheme of things, and happens very quickly. This is typically
1419 more than offset by time saved not downloading and rendering ad images (if ad
1420 blocking is being used).
1424 <quote>Filtering</quote> content via the <literal><ulink
1425 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER">filter</ulink></literal> or
1427 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</ulink></literal>
1428 actions will certainly cause a perceived slowdown, since the entire document
1429 needs to be buffered before displaying. And on very large documents, filtering may have
1430 some measurable impact. How much depends on the page size, the actual
1431 definition of the filter(s), etc. See below. Most other actions have little
1432 to no impact on speed.
1435 Also, when filtering is enabled, typically there is a disabling of
1436 compression, (see <ulink
1437 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</ulink>).
1438 This can have an impact on speed as well. Again, the page size, etc. will
1439 determine how much of an impact.
1445 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="loadingtimes"><title>I notice considerable
1446 delays in page requests compared to the old Junkbuster. What's wrong?</title>
1448 If you use any <literal><ulink
1449 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER">filter</ulink></literal> action,
1450 such as filtering banners by size, web-bugs etc, or the <literal><ulink
1451 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</ulink></literal>
1452 action, the entire document must be loaded into memory in order for the filtering
1453 mechanism to work, and nothing is sent to the browser during this time.
1456 The loading time typically does not really change much in real numbers, but
1457 the feeling is different, because most browsers are able to start rendering
1458 incomplete content, giving the user a feeling of "it works". This effect is
1459 more noticeable on slower dialup connections. Extremely large documents
1460 may have some impact on the time to load the page where there is filtering
1461 being done. But overall, the difference should be very minimal. If there is a
1462 big impact, then probably some other situation is contributing (like
1463 anti-virus software).
1466 Filtering is automatically disabled for inappropriate MIME types. But note
1467 that if the web server mis-reports the MIME type, then content that should
1468 not be filtered, could be. <application>Privoxy</application> only knows how
1469 to differentiate filterable content because of the MIME type as reported by
1470 the server, or because of some configuration setting that enables/disables
1476 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="configurl"><title>What are "http://config.privoxy.org/" and
1477 "http://p.p/"?</title>
1479 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink> is the
1480 address of <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in user interface, and
1481 <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> is a shortcut for it.
1484 Since <application>Privoxy</application> sits between your web browser and the Internet,
1485 it can simply intercept requests for these addresses and answer them with its built-in
1486 <quote>web server</quote>.
1489 This also makes for a good test for your browser configuration: If entering the
1490 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1491 takes you to a page saying <quote>This is Privoxy ...</quote>, everything is OK.
1492 If you get a page saying <quote>Privoxy is not working</quote> instead, then
1493 your browser didn't use <application>Privoxy</application> for the request,
1494 hence it could not be intercepted, and you have accessed the <emphasis>real</emphasis>
1495 web site at config.privoxy.org.
1498 With recent versions of <application>Privoxy</application> (version 2.9.x and
1499 later), the user interface features information on the run time status, the
1500 configuration, and even a built-in editor for the <ulink
1501 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">actions files</ulink>.
1505 Note that the built-in URLs from earlier versions of <application>Junkbuster</application>
1506 / <application>Privoxy</application>, http://example.com/show-proxy-args and http://i.j.b/,
1507 are no longer supported. If you still use such an old version, you should really consider
1508 upgrading to &p-version;.
1513 out of date 09/02/06 HB
1514 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="blocklist"><title>Do you still maintain the blocklists?</title>
1516 No. The patterns for blocking now reside (among other things) in the <ulink
1517 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">actions files</ulink>, which are
1518 actively maintained instead. See next question ...
1522 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newads"><title>How can I submit new ads, or report
1525 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> for
1526 various ways to interact with the developers.
1531 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newads2"><title>If I do submit missed ads, will
1532 they be included in future updates?</title>
1534 Whether such submissions are eventually included in the
1535 <filename>default.action</filename> configuration file depends on how
1536 significant the issue is. We of course want to address any potential
1537 problem with major, high-profile sites such as <citetitle>Google</citetitle>,
1538 <citetitle>Yahoo</citetitle>, etc. Any site with global or regional reach,
1539 has a good chance of being a candidate. But at the other end of the spectrum
1540 are any number of smaller, low-profile sites such as for local clubs or
1541 schools. Since their reach and impact are much less, they are best handled by
1542 inclusion in the user's <filename>user.action</filename>, and thus would be
1543 unlikely to be included.
1549 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="noonecares"><title>Why doesn't anyone answer my support
1552 Rest assured that it has been read and considered. Why it is not answered,
1553 could be for various reasons, including no one has a good answer for it, no
1554 one has had time to yet investigate it thoroughly, it has been reported
1555 numerous times already, or because not enough information was provided to help
1556 us help you. Your efforts are not wasted, and we do appreciate them.
1562 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="ip"><title>How can I hide my IP address?</title>
1564 If you run both the browser and &my-app; locally, you cannot hide your IP
1565 address with <application>Privoxy</application> or ultimately any other
1566 software alone. The server needs to know your IP address so that it knows
1567 where to send the responses back.
1570 There are many publicly usable "anonymous" proxies out there, which
1571 provide a further level of indirection between you and the web server.
1574 However, these proxies are called "anonymous" because you don't need
1575 a password, not because they would offer any real anonymity.
1576 Most of them will log your IP address and make it available to the
1577 authorities in case you violate the law of the country they run in. In fact
1578 you can't even rule out that some of them only exist to *collect* information
1579 on (those suspicious) people with a more than average preference for privacy.
1582 Your best bet is to chain <application>Privoxy</application>
1583 with <ulink url="http://tor.eff.org/">Tor</ulink>,
1584 an <ulink url="http://www.eff.org/">EFF</ulink> supported onion routing system.
1585 The configuration details can be found in
1586 <ulink url="#TOR">How do I use <application>Privoxy</application> together with <application>Tor</application> section</ulink>
1591 There is, however, even in the single-machine case the possibility to make the
1592 server believe that your machine is in fact a shared proxy serving a large
1593 LAN, and we are looking into that.
1595 I assume this is about sending fake forward IP addresses?
1596 David and I looked into it and considered it a waste of time to implement.
1601 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1602 <title id="anonforsure">Can Privoxy guarantee I am anonymous?</title>
1604 No. Your chances of remaining anonymous are greatly improved, but unless you
1605 <ulink url="#TOR">chain <application>Privoxy</application> with <application>Tor</application></ulink>
1606 or a similar system and know what you're doing when it comes to configuring
1607 the rest of your system, it would be safest to assume that everything you do
1608 on the Web can be traced back to you.
1611 <application>Privoxy</application> can remove various information about you,
1612 and allows <emphasis>you</emphasis> more freedom to decide which sites
1613 you can trust, and what details you want to reveal. But it neither
1614 hides your IP address, nor can it guarantee that the rest of the system
1615 behaves correctly. There are several possibilities how a web sites can find
1616 out who you are, even if you are using a strict <application>Privoxy</application>
1617 configuration and chained it with <application>Tor</application>.
1620 Most of <application>Privoxy's</application> protection can be easily subverted
1621 by an insecure browser configuration, therefore you should use a browser that can
1622 be configured to only execute code from trusted sites, and be careful which sites you trust.
1623 For example there is no point in having <application>Privoxy</application>
1624 modify the User-Agent header, if websites can get all the information they want
1625 through JavaScript, ActiveX, Flash, Java etc.
1628 A few browsers disclose the user's email address in certain situations, such
1629 as when transferring a file by FTP. <application>Privoxy</application>
1630 does not filter FTP. If you need this feature, or are concerned about the
1631 mail handler of your browser disclosing your email address, you might
1632 consider products such as <application>NSClean</application>.
1635 Browsers available only as binaries could use non-standard headers to give
1636 out any information they can have access to: see the manufacturer's license
1637 agreement. It's impossible to anticipate and prevent every breach of privacy
1638 that might occur. The professionally paranoid prefer browsers available as
1639 source code, because anticipating their behavior is easier. Trust the source,
1645 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1646 <title id="proxytest">A test site says I am not using a Proxy.</title>
1648 Good! Actually, they are probably testing for some other kinds of proxies.
1649 Hiding yourself completely would require additional steps.
1653 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="tor"><title>How do I use Privoxy
1654 together with Tor?</title>
1656 Before you configure <application>Privoxy</application> to use <application>Tor</application>
1657 (<ulink url="http://tor.eff.org/">http://tor.eff.org/</ulink>),
1658 please follow the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> chapters
1659 <ulink url="../user-manual/installation.html">2. Installation</ulink> and
1660 <ulink url="../user-manual/startup.html">5. Startup</ulink> to make sure
1661 <application>Privoxy</application> itself is setup correctly.
1664 If it is, refer to <ulink url="http://tor.eff.org/documentation.html.en">Tor's
1665 extensive documentation</ulink> to learn how to install <application>Tor</application>,
1666 and make sure <application>Tor</application>'s logfile says that
1667 <quote>Tor has successfully opened a circuit</quote> and it
1668 <quote>looks like client functionality is working</quote>.
1671 If either <application>Tor</application> or <application>Privoxy</application>
1672 isn't working, their combination most likely will neither. Testing them on their
1673 own will also help you to direct problem reports to the right audience.
1674 If <application>Privoxy</application> isn't working, don't bother the
1675 <application>Tor</application> developers. If <application>Tor</application>
1676 isn't working, don't send bug reports to the <application>Privoxy</application> Team.
1679 If you verified that <application>Privoxy</application> and <application>Tor</application>
1680 are working, it is time to connect them. As far as <application>Privoxy</application>
1681 is concerned, <application>Tor</application> is just another proxy that can be reached
1682 by socks4 or socks4a. Most likely you are interested in <application>Tor</application>
1683 to increase your anonymity level, therefore you should use socks4a,
1684 to make sure <application>Privoxy's</application> DNS requests are
1685 done through <application>Tor</application> and thus invisible to your local network.
1690 Since <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.5, its
1691 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html">main configuration file</ulink>
1692 is already prepared for <application>Tor</application>, if you are using a
1693 default <application>Tor</application> configuration and run it on the same
1694 system as &my-app;, you just have to edit the
1695 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#FORWARDING">forwarding section</ulink>
1696 and uncomment the line:
1700 # forward-socks4a / 127.0.0.1:9050 .
1704 This is enough to reach the Internet, but additionally you should
1705 uncomment the following forward rules, to make sure your local network is still
1706 reachable through Privoxy:
1710 # forward 192.168.*.*/ .
1711 # forward 10.*.*.*/ .
1712 # forward 127.*.*.*/ .
1716 Unencrypted connections to systems in these address ranges will
1717 be as (un)secure as the local network is, but the alternative is
1718 that you can't reach the network at all.
1719 If you also want to be able to reach servers in your local
1720 network by using their names, you will need additional
1721 exceptions that look like this:
1725 # forward localhost/ .
1729 Save the modified configuration file and open
1730 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status/</ulink>
1731 in your browser, confirm that <application>Privoxy</application> has reloaded its configuration
1732 and that there are no other forward lines, unless you know that you need them. If everything looks good,
1734 <ulink url="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#head-0e1cc2ac330ede8c6ad1ac0d0db0ac163b0e6143">Tor
1735 Faq 4.2</ulink> to learn how to verify that you are really using <application>Tor</application>.
1738 Afterwards, please take the time to at least skim through the rest
1739 of <application>Tor's</application> documentation. Make sure you understand
1740 what <application>Tor</application> does, why it is no replacement for
1741 application level security, and why you shouldn't use it for unencrypted logins.
1745 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1746 <title id="sitebreak">Might some things break because header information or
1747 content is being altered?</title>
1750 Definitely. It is common for sites to use browser type, browser version,
1751 HTTP header content, and various other techniques in order to dynamically
1752 decide what to display and how to display it. What you see, and what I see,
1753 might be very different. There are many, many ways that this can be handled,
1754 so having hard and fast rules, is tricky.
1758 <quote>User-Agent</quote> is often used in this way to identify
1759 the browser, and adjust content accordingly. Changing this now (at least not
1760 further than removing the OS information) is not recommended, since so many
1761 sites do look for it. You may get undesirable results by changing just this
1766 Also, different browsers use different encodings of Russian and Czech
1767 characters, certain web servers convert pages on-the-fly according to the
1768 User Agent header. Giving a <quote>User Agent</quote> with the wrong
1769 operating system or browser manufacturer causes some sites in these languages
1770 to be garbled; Surfers to Eastern European sites should change it to
1771 something closer. And then some page access counters work by looking at the
1772 <quote>Referer</quote> header; they may fail or break if unavailable. The
1773 weather maps of Intellicast have been blocked by their server when no
1774 <quote>Referer</quote> or cookie is provided, is another example. (But you
1775 can forge both headers without giving information away). There are
1776 many other ways things that can go wrong when trying to fool a web server. The
1777 results of which could inadvertently cause pages to load incorrectly,
1778 partially, or even not at all. And there may be no obvious clues as to just
1779 what went wrong, or why. Nowhere will there be a message that says
1780 <quote><emphasis>Turn off <literal>fast-redirects</literal> or else!</emphasis>
1785 Similar thoughts apply to modifying JavaScript, and, to a lesser degree,
1790 If you have problems with a site, you will have to adjust your configuration
1791 accordingly. Cookies are probably the most likely adjustment that may
1792 be required, but by no means the only one.
1798 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1799 <title id="caching">Can Privoxy act as a <quote>caching</quote> proxy to
1800 speed up web browsing?</title>
1802 No, it does not have this ability at all. You want something like
1803 <ulink url="http://www.squid-cache.org/">Squid</ulink> for this. And, yes,
1804 before you ask, <application>Privoxy</application> can co-exist
1805 with other kinds of proxies like <application>Squid</application>.
1806 See the <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#FORWARDING">forwarding
1807 chapter</ulink> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">user
1808 manual</ulink> for details.
1812 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1813 <title id="firewall">What about as a firewall? Can Privoxy protect me?</title>
1815 Not in the way you mean, or in the way a true firewall can.
1816 <application>Privoxy</application> can help protect your privacy, but not
1817 protect you from intrusion attempts. It is, of course, perfectly possible
1818 and recommended to use <emphasis>both</emphasis>.
1822 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1823 <title id="wasted">I have large empty spaces / a checkerboard pattern now where
1824 ads used to be. Why?</title>
1826 It would be technically possible eliminate the banners in a way that frees
1827 their screen estate in many cases, by doing all banner blocking with filters,
1828 i.e. eliminating the whole image references from the HTML pages instead
1829 of letting them stay in, and blocking the resulting requests for the
1833 But this would consume considerable CPU resources, would likely destroy
1834 the layout of many web pages which rely on the banners consuming a certain
1835 amount of screen space, and would fail in other cases, where the screen space
1836 is reserved e.g. by tables anyway. Also, making the banners disappear without
1837 a visual trace complicates troubleshooting.
1840 So we won't support this in the default configuration, but you can of course
1841 define appropriate filters yourself.
1845 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1846 <title id="ssl">How can Privoxy filter Secure (HTTPS) URLs?</title>
1848 Since secure HTTP connections are encrypted SSL sessions between your browser
1849 and the secure site, and are meant to be reliably <emphasis>secure</emphasis>,
1850 there is little that <application>Privoxy</application> can do but hand the raw
1851 gibberish data though from one end to the other unprocessed.
1854 The only exception to this is blocking by host patterns, as the client needs
1855 to tell <application>Privoxy</application> the name of the remote server,
1856 so that <application>Privoxy</application> can establish the connection.
1857 If that name matches a host-only pattern, the connection will be blocked.
1860 As far as ad blocking is concerned, this is less of a restriction than it may
1861 seem, since ad sources are often identifiable by the host name, and often
1862 the banners to be placed in an encrypted page come unencrypted nonetheless
1863 for efficiency reasons, which exposes them to the full power of
1864 <application>Privoxy</application>'s ad blocking.
1867 <quote>Content cookies</quote> (those that are embedded in the actual HTML or
1868 JS page content, see <literal><ulink
1869 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</ulink></literal>),
1870 in an SSL transaction will be impossible to block under these conditions.
1871 Fortunately, this does not seem to be a very common scenario since most
1872 cookies come by traditional means.
1877 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1878 <title id="secure">Privoxy runs as a <quote>server</quote>. How
1879 secure is it? Do I need to take any special precautions?</title>
1881 There are no known exploits that might affect
1882 <application>Privoxy</application>. On Unix-like systems,
1883 <application>Privoxy</application> can run as a non-privileged
1884 user, which is how we recommend it be run. Also, by default
1885 <application>Privoxy</application> only listens to requests
1886 from <quote>localhost</quote> only. The server aspect of
1887 <application>Privoxy</application> is not itself directly exposed to the
1888 Internet in this configuration. If you want to have
1889 <application>Privoxy</application> serve as a LAN proxy, this will have to
1890 be opened up to allow for LAN requests. In this case, we'd recommend
1891 you specify only the LAN gateway address, e.g. 192.168.1.1, in the main
1892 <application>Privoxy</application> configuration file and check all <ulink
1893 url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCESS-CONTROL">access control and security
1894 options</ulink>. All LAN hosts can then use this as their proxy address
1895 in the browser proxy configuration, but <application>Privoxy</application>
1896 will not listen on any external interfaces. ACLs can be defined in addition,
1897 and using a firewall is always good too. Better safe than sorry.
1902 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="turnoff">
1903 <title>How can I temporarily disable Privoxy?</title>
1905 The easiest way is to access <application>Privoxy</application> with your
1906 browser by using the remote toggle URL: <ulink
1907 url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>.
1908 See the <ulink url="../user-manual/appendix.html#BOOKMARKLETS">Bookmarklets section</ulink>
1909 of the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> for an easy way to access this
1914 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="reallyoff">
1915 <title>When <quote>disabled</quote> is Privoxy totally
1916 out of the picture?</title>
1918 No, this just means all filtering and actions are disabled.
1919 <application>Privoxy</application> is still acting as a proxy, but just not
1920 doing any of the things that <application>Privoxy</application> would
1921 normally be expected to do. It is still a <quote>middle-man</quote> in
1922 the interaction between your browser and web sites.
1926 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="crunch">
1927 <title>My logs show Privoxy <quote>crunches</quote>
1928 ads, but also its own internal CGI pages. What is a <quote>crunch</quote>?</title>
1930 A <quote>crunch</quote> simply means <application>Privoxy</application> intercepted
1931 <emphasis>something</emphasis>, nothing more. Often this is indeed ads or
1932 banners, but <application>Privoxy</application> uses the same mechanism for
1933 trapping requests for its own internal pages. For instance, a request for
1934 <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration page at: <ulink
1935 url="http://config.privoxy.org">http://config.privoxy.org</ulink>, is
1936 intercepted (i.e. it does not go out to the 'net), and the familiar CGI
1937 configuration is returned to the browser, and the log consequently will show
1938 a <quote>crunch</quote>.
1942 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="downloads">
1943 <title>Can Privoxy effect files that I download
1944 from a webserver? FTP server?</title>
1946 From the webserver's perspective, there is no difference between
1947 viewing a document (i.e. a page), and downloading a file. The same is true of
1948 <application>Privoxy</application>. If there is a match for a <literal><ulink
1949 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">block</ulink></literal> pattern,
1950 it will still be blocked, and of course this is obvious.
1953 Filtering is potentially more of a concern since the results are not always
1954 so obvious, and the effects of filtering are there whether the file is simply
1955 viewed, or downloaded. And potentially whether the content is some obnoxious
1956 advertisement, or Mr. Jimmy's latest/greatest source code jewel. Of course,
1957 one of these presumably is <quote>bad</quote> content that we don't want, and
1958 the other is <quote>good</quote> content that we do want.
1959 <application>Privoxy</application> is blind to the differences, and can only
1960 distinguish <quote>good from bad</quote> by the configuration parameters
1961 <emphasis>we</emphasis> give it.
1964 <application>Privoxy</application> knows the differences in files according
1965 to the <quote>Document Type</quote> as reported by the webserver. If this is
1966 reported accurately (e.g. <quote>application/zip</quote> for a zip archive),
1967 then <application>Privoxy</application> knows to ignore these where
1968 appropriate. <application>Privoxy</application> potentially can filter HTML
1969 as well as plain text documents, subject to configuration parameters of
1970 course. Also, documents that are of an unknown type (generally assumed to be
1971 <quote>text/plain</quote>) can be filtered, as will those that might be
1972 incorrectly reported by the webserver. If such a file is a downloaded file
1973 that is intended to be saved to disk, then any content that might have been
1974 altered by filtering, will be saved too, for these (probably rare) cases.
1977 Note that versions later than 3.0.2 do NOT filter document types reported as
1978 <quote>text/plain</quote>. Prior to this, <application>Privoxy</application>
1979 did filter this document type.
1982 In short, filtering is <quote>ON</quote> if a) the Document Type as reported
1983 by the webserver is appropriate <emphasis>and</emphasis> b) the configuration
1984 allows it (or at least does not disallow it). That's it. There is no magic
1985 cookie anywhere to say this is <quote>good</quote> and this is
1986 <quote>bad</quote>. It's the configuration that let's it all happen or not.
1989 If you download text files, you probably do not want these to be filtered,
1990 particularly if the content is source code, or other critical content. Source
1991 code sometimes might be mistaken for Javascript (i.e. the kind that might
1992 open a pop-up window). It is recommended to turn off filtering for download
1993 sites (particularly if the content may be plain text files and you are using
1994 version 3.0.2 or earlier) in your <filename>user.action</filename> file. And
1995 also, for any site or page where making <emphasis>any</emphasis> changes at
1996 all to the content is to be avoided.
1999 <application>Privoxy</application> does not do FTP at all, only HTTP
2000 and HTTPS (SSL) protocols, so please don't try.
2004 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="downloads2">
2005 <title>I just downloaded a Perl script, and Privoxy
2006 altered it! Yikes, what is wrong!</title>
2012 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="hostsfile">
2013 <title>Should I continue to use a <quote>HOSTS</quote> file for ad-blocking?</title>
2015 One time-tested technique to defeat common ads is to trick the local DNS
2016 system by giving a phony IP address for the ad generator in the local
2017 <filename>HOSTS</filename> file, typically using <literal>127.0.0.1</literal>, aka
2018 <literal>localhost</literal>. This effectively blocks the ad.
2021 There is no reason to use this technique in conjunction with
2022 <application>Privoxy</application>. <application>Privoxy</application>
2023 does essentially the same thing, much more elegantly and with much more
2024 flexibility. A large <filename>HOSTS</filename> file, in fact, not only
2025 duplicates effort, but may get in the way. It is recommended to remove
2026 such entries from your <filename>HOSTS</filename> file. If you think
2027 your hosts list is neglected by <application>Privoxy's </application>
2028 configuration, consider adding your list to your <filename>user.action</filename> file:
2035 ads.galore.example.com
2036 etc.example.com</screen>
2040 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="seealso">
2041 <title>Where can I find more information about Privoxy
2042 and related issues?</title>
2043 <!-- Include seealso.sgml boilerplate: -->
2045 <!-- end boilerplate -->
2050 <ulink url="../user-manual/seealso.html">user-manual</ulink> for
2056 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="microsuck">
2057 <title>I've noticed that Privoxy changes <quote>Microsoft</quote> to
2058 <quote>MicroSuck</quote>! Why are you manipulating my browsing?</title>
2061 We're not. The text substitutions that you are seeing are disabled
2062 in the default configuration as shipped. You have either manually
2063 activated the <quote><literal>fun</literal></quote> filter which
2064 is clearly labeled <quote>Text replacements for subversive browsing
2065 fun!</quote> or you are using an older Privoxy version and have implicitly
2066 activated it by choosing the <quote>Adventuresome</quote> profile in the
2067 web-based editor. Please upgrade!
2074 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2076 <sect1 id="trouble">
2077 <title>Troubleshooting</title>
2079 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
2080 <title id="refused">I cannot connect to any websites. Or, I am getting
2081 <quote>connection refused</quote> message with every web page. Why?</title>
2088 <application>Privoxy</application> is not running. Solution: verify
2089 that &my-app; is installed correctly, has not died, and is running.
2091 <listitem><para>Or your browser is configured for a different port than what
2092 <application>Privoxy</application> is using. Solution: verify that &my-app;
2093 and your browser are set to the same port (<literal>listen-address</literal>).
2095 <listitem><para>Or if using a forwarding rule, you have a configuration problem or a
2096 problem with a host in the forwarding chain. Solution: temporarily alter your
2097 configuration and take the forwarders out of the equation.
2100 Or you have a firewall that is interfering and blocking you. Solution:
2101 try disabling or removing the firewall as a test.
2108 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
2109 <title id="flushit">I just added a new rule, but the steenkin ad is
2110 still getting through. How?</title>
2112 If the ad had been displayed before you added its URL, it will probably be
2113 held in the browser's cache for some time, so it will be displayed without
2114 the need for any request to the server, and <application>Privoxy</application>
2115 will not be in the picture. The best thing to do is try flushing the browser's
2116 caches. And then try again.
2120 If this doesn't help, you probably have an error in the rule you
2121 applied. Try pasting the full URL of the offending ad into <ulink
2122 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
2123 and see if it really matches your new rule. Blocking ads is like blocking
2124 spam: a lot of tinkering is required to stay ahead of the game.
2129 <sect2 id="badsite" renderas="sect3">
2130 <title >One of my favorite sites does not work with Privoxy.
2131 What can I do?</title>
2134 First verify that it is indeed a <application>Privoxy</application> problem,
2135 by toggling off <application>Privoxy</application> through <ulink
2136 url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>,
2137 and then shift-reloading the problem page (i.e. holding down the shift key
2138 while clicking reload. Alternatively, flush your browser's disk and memory
2143 If still a problem, go to <ulink
2144 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
2145 and paste the full URL of the page in question into the prompt. See which actions
2146 are being applied to the URL, and which matches in which actions files are
2147 responsible for that. Now, armed with this information, go to <ulink
2148 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
2149 and select the appropriate actions files for editing.
2152 You can now either look for a section which disables the actions that
2153 you suspect to cause the problem and add a pattern for your site there,
2154 or make up a completely new section for your site. In any case, the recommended
2155 way is to disable only the prime suspect, reload the problem page, and only
2156 if the problem persists, disable more and more actions until you have
2157 identified the culprit. You may or may not want to turn the other actions
2158 on again. Remember to flush your browser's caches in between any such changes!
2161 Alternately, if you are comfortable with a text editor, you can accomplish
2162 the same thing by editing the appropriate actions file. Probably the easiest
2163 way to deal with such problems when editing by hand is to add your
2164 site to a <literal>{ fragile }</literal> section in <filename>user.action</filename>,
2165 which is an alias that turns off most <quote>dangerous</quote>
2166 actions, but is also likely to turn off more actions then needed, and thus lower
2167 your privacy and protection more than necessary,
2170 Troubleshooting actions is discussed in more detail in the <ulink
2171 url="../user-manual/appendix.html#ACTIONSANAT">User Manual appendix,
2172 Troubleshooting: the Anatomy of an Action</ulink>.
2173 There is also an <ulink
2174 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACT-EXAMPLES">actions tutorial</ulink>
2175 with general configuration information and examples.
2181 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2182 <sect2 id="dun" renderas="sect3">
2183 <title>After installing Privoxy, I have to log in
2184 every time I start IE. What gives?</title>
2187 This is a quirk that effects the installation of
2188 <application>Privoxy</application>, in conjunction with Internet Explorer and
2189 Internet Connection Sharing on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The symptoms may
2190 appear to be corrupted or invalid DUN settings, or passwords.
2194 When setting up an NT based Windows system with
2195 <application>Privoxy</application> you may find that things do not seem to be
2196 doing what you expect. When you set your system up you will probably have set
2197 up Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) with Dial up Networking (DUN) when
2198 logged in with administrator privileges. You will probably have made this DUN
2199 connection available to other accounts that you may have set-up on your
2200 system. E.g. Mum or Dad sets up the system and makes accounts suitably
2201 configured for the kids.
2205 When setting up <application>Privoxy</application> in this environment you
2206 will have to alter the proxy set-up of Internet Explorer (IE) for the
2207 specific DUN connection on which you wish to use
2208 <application>Privoxy</application>. When you do this the ICS DUN set-up
2209 becomes user specific. In this instance you will see no difference if you
2210 change the DUN connection under the account used to set-up the connection.
2211 However when you do this from another user you will notice that the DUN
2212 connection changes to make available to "Me only". You will also find that
2213 you have to store the password under each different user!
2217 The reason for this is that each user's set-up for IE is user specific. Each
2218 set-up DUN connection and each LAN connection in IE store the settings for
2219 each user individually. As such this enforces individual configurations
2220 rather than common ones. Hence the first time you use a DUN connection after
2221 re-booting your system it may not perform as you expect, and prompt you for
2222 the password. Just set and save the password again and all should be OK.
2226 [Thanks to Ray Griffith for this submission.]
2231 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2232 <sect2 id="ftp" renderas="sect3">
2233 <title>I cannot connect to any FTP sites. Privoxy
2234 is blocking me.</title>
2236 <application>Privoxy</application> cannot act as a proxy for FTP traffic,
2237 so do not configure your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application>
2238 as an FTP proxy. The same is true for <emphasis>any protocol other than HTTP
2239 or HTTPS (SSL)</emphasis>.
2242 Most browsers understand FTP as well as HTTP. If you connect to a site, with
2243 a URL like <literal>ftp://ftp.example.com</literal>, your browser is making
2244 an FTP connection, and not a HTTP connection. So while your browser may
2245 speak FTP, <application>Privoxy</application> does not, and cannot proxy
2249 To complicate matters, some systems may have a generic <quote>proxy</quote>
2250 setting, which will enable various protocols, including
2251 <emphasis>both</emphasis> HTTP and FTP proxying! So it is possible to
2252 accidentally enable FTP proxying in these cases. And of course, if this
2253 happens, <application>Privoxy</application> will indeed cause problems since
2254 it does not know FTP. <![%p-newstuff;[Newer version will give a sane error
2255 message if a FTP connection is attempted.]]> Just disable the FTP setting
2256 and all will be well again.
2259 Will <application>Privoxy</application> ever proxy FTP traffic? Unlikely.
2260 There just is not much reason, and the work to make this happen is more than
2265 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2266 <sect2 id="osxie" renderas="sect3">
2267 <title>In Mac OSX, I can't configure Microsoft Internet Explorer to use
2268 Privoxy as the HTTP proxy.</title>
2270 Microsoft Internet Explorer (in versions like 5.1) respects system-wide
2271 network settings. In order to change the HTTP proxy, open System
2272 Preferences, and click on the Network icon. In the settings pane that
2273 comes up, click on the Proxies tab. Ensure the "Web Proxy (HTTP)" checkbox
2274 is checked and enter <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> in the entry field.
2275 Enter <literal>8118</literal> in the Port field. The next time you start
2276 IE, it should reflect these values.
2280 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2281 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="osxuninstall">
2282 <title>In Mac OSX, I dragged the Privoxy folder to the trash in order to
2283 uninstall it. Now the finder tells me I don't have sufficient privileges to
2284 empty the trash.</title>
2286 Just dragging the <application>Privoxy</application> folder to the trash is
2287 not enough to delete it. <application>Privoxy</application> supplies an
2288 <application>uninstall.command</application> file that takes care of
2289 these details. Open the trash, drag the <application>uninstall.command</application>
2290 file out of the trash and double-click on it. You will be prompted for
2291 confirmation and the administration password.
2294 The trash may still appear full after this command; emptying the trash
2295 from the desktop should make it appear empty again.
2300 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2301 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="osximages">
2302 <title>In Mac OSX Panther (10.3), images often fail to load and/or I
2303 experience random delays in page loading. I'm using
2304 <literal>localhost</literal> as my browser's proxy setting.</title>
2306 We believe this is due to an IPv6-related bug in OSX, but don't fully
2307 understand the issue yet. In any case, changing the proxy setting to
2308 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> instead of <literal>localhost</literal>
2309 works around the problem.
2313 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2314 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="blankpage">
2315 <title>I get a completely blank page at one site. <quote>View Source</quote>
2316 shows only: <markup><![CDATA[<html><body></body></html>]]></markup>. Without
2317 Privoxy the page loads fine.</title>
2319 Chances are that the site suffers from a bug in
2320 <ulink url="http://www.php.net/"><application>PHP</application></ulink>,
2321 which results in empty pages being sent if the client explicitly requests
2322 an uncompressed page, like <application>Privoxy</application> does.
2323 This bug has been fixed in PHP 4.2.3.
2326 To find out if this is in fact the source of the problem, try adding
2327 the site to a <literal>-prevent-compression</literal> section in
2328 <filename>user.action</filename>:
2331 # Make exceptions for ill-behaved sites:
2333 {-prevent-compression}
2334 .example.com</screen>
2336 If that works, you may also want to report the problem to the
2337 site's webmasters, telling them to use zlib.output_compression
2338 instead of ob_gzhandler in their PHP applications (workaround)
2339 or upgrade to PHP 4.2.3 or later (fix).
2343 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2344 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="error503">
2345 <title>Why am I getting a 503 Error (WSAECONNREFUSED) on every page?</title>
2347 More than likely this is a problem with your TCP/IP networking. ZoneAlarm has
2348 been reported to cause this symptom -- even if not running. The solution is
2349 to either fight the ZA configuration, or uninstall ZoneAlarm, and then find
2350 something better behaved in its place. Other personal firewall type products
2351 may cause similar type problems if not configured correctly.
2355 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="nohostname">
2356 <title>My logs show many <quote>Unable to get my own hostname</quote> lines.
2359 <application>Privoxy</application> tries to get the hostname of the system
2360 its running on from the IP address of the system interface it is bound to
2361 (from the <filename>config</filename> file
2362 <emphasis>listen-address</emphasis> setting). If the system cannot supply
2363 this information, <application>Privoxy</application> logs this condition.
2366 Typically, this would be considered a minor system configuration error. It is
2367 not a fatal error to <application>Privoxy</application> however, but may
2368 result in a much slower response from <application>Privoxy</application> on
2369 some platforms due to DNS timeouts.
2372 This can be caused by a problem with the local <filename>HOSTS</filename>
2373 file. If this file has been changed from the original, try reverting it to
2374 see if that helps. Make sure what ever name(s) are used for the local system,
2375 that they resolve both ways.
2379 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="inuse">
2380 <title>When I try to launch Privoxy, I get an
2381 error message <quote>port 8118 is already in use</quote> (or similar wording).
2384 Port 8118 is <application>Privoxy's</application> default TCP
2385 <quote>listening</quote> port. Typically this message would mean that there
2386 is already one instance of <application>Privoxy</application> running, and
2387 your system is actually trying to start a second
2388 <application>Privoxy</application> on the same port, which will not work.
2389 (You can have multiple instances but they must be assigned different ports.)
2390 How and why this might happen varies from platform to platform, but you need
2391 to check your installation and start-up procedures.
2395 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="demoronizer">
2397 Pages with UTF-8 fonts are garbled.
2400 This is caused by the <quote>demoronizer</quote> filter. You should either
2401 upgrade <application>Privoxy</application>, or at least upgrade to the most
2402 recent <filename>default.action</filename> file available from <ulink
2403 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">SourceForge</ulink>.
2404 Or you can simply disable the demoronizer filter.
2408 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="demoronizer2">
2410 Why are binary files (such as images) corrupted when Privoxy
2414 This may also be caused by the <quote>demoronizer</quote> filter,
2415 in conjunction with a web server that is misreporting a file type. Binary
2416 files are exempted from <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering
2417 (unless the web server by mistake says the file is something else). Either
2418 upgrade <application>Privoxy</application>, or go to the most recent
2419 <filename>default.action</filename> file available from <ulink
2420 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">SourceForge</ulink>.
2424 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="demoronizer3">
2426 What is the <quote>demoronizer</quote> and why is it there?
2429 The original demoronizer was a Perl script that cleaned up HTML pages which
2430 were created with certain Microsoft products. MS has used proprietary extensions
2431 to standardized font encodings (ISO 8859-1), which has caused problems for pages
2432 that are viewed with non-Microsoft products (and are expecting to see a
2433 standard set of fonts). The demoronizer corrected these errors so the pages
2434 displayed correctly. <application>Privoxy</application> borrowed from this
2435 script, introducing a filter based on the original demoronizer, which in turn could
2436 correct these errors on the fly.
2439 But this is only needed in some situations, and will cause serious problems in some
2443 If you are using Microsoft products, you do not need it. If you need to view
2444 pages with UTF-8 characters (such as Cyrillic or Chinese), then it will
2445 cause corruption of the fonts, and thus <emphasis>should not be on</emphasis>.
2448 On the other hand, if you use non-Microsoft products, and you occasionally
2449 notice wierd characters on pages, you might want to try it.
2453 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="windowopen">
2455 Why do I keep seeing <quote>PrivoxyWindowOpen()</quote> in raw source code?
2458 <application>Privoxy</application> is attempting to disable malicious
2459 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript">Javascript</ulink>
2460 in this case, with the <literal>unsolicited-popups</literal>
2461 filter. <application>Privoxy</application> cannot tell very well
2462 <quote>good</quote> code snippets from <quote>bad</quote> code snippets.
2465 If you see this in HTML source, and the page displays without problems, then
2466 this is good, and likely some pop-up window was disabled. If you see this
2467 where it is causing a problem, such as a downloaded program source code file,
2468 then you should set an exception for this site or page such that the
2469 integrity of the page stays in tact by disabling all filtering.
2473 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="dnserrors">
2475 I am getting too many DNS errors like <quote>404 No Such Domain</quote>. Why
2476 can't Privoxy do this better?
2479 There are potentially several factors here. First of all, the DNS resolution
2480 is done by the underlying operating system -- not
2481 <application>Privoxy</application> itself. <application>Privoxy</application>
2482 merely initiates the process and hands it off, and then later reports
2483 whatever the outcome was. And tries to give a coherent message if there seems
2484 to be a problem. In some cases, this might otherwise be mitigated by the
2485 browser itself which might try some work-arounds and alternate approaches (e.g
2486 adding <quote>www.</quote> to the URL). In other cases, if
2487 <application>Privoxy</application> is being chained with another proxy, this
2488 could complicate the issue, and cause undue
2489 delays and timeouts. In the case of a <quote>socks4a</quote> proxy, the socks
2490 server handles all the DNS. <application>Privoxy</application> would just be
2491 the <quote>messenger</quote> which is reporting whatever problem occurred
2492 downstream, and not the root cause of the error.
2496 In any case, v. 3.0.5 includes various improvements to help
2497 <application>Privoxy</application> better handle these cases.
2501 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="allcpu">
2503 At one site Privoxy just hangs, and starts taking
2504 all CPU. Why is this?
2507 This is probably a manifestation of the <quote>100% cpu</quote> problem that
2508 occurs on pages containing many (thousands upon thousands) of blank lines. The blank lines
2509 are in the raw HTML source of the page, and the browser just ignores them. But the
2510 pattern matching in <application>Privoxy's</application> page filtering
2511 mechanism is trying to match against absurdly long strings and this becomes
2512 very CPU-intensive, taking a long, long time to complete. Until a better
2513 solution comes along, disable filtering on these pages, particularly the
2514 <literal>js-annoyances</literal> and <literal>unsolicited-popups</literal>
2519 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="slowcrawl">
2520 <title>I just installed Privoxy, and all my
2521 browsing has slowed to a crawl. What gives? </title>
2523 This should not happen, and for the overwhelming number of users world-wide,
2524 it does not happen. I would suspect some inadvertent interaction of software
2525 components such as anti-virus software, spyware protectors, personal
2526 firewalls or similar components. Try disabling (or uninstalling) these one
2527 at a time and see if that helps.
2534 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2535 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests</title>
2536 <!-- Include contacting.sgml -->
2538 <!-- end contacting -->
2541 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2542 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Privoxy Copyright, License and History</title>
2544 <!-- Include copyright.sgml -->
2550 Portions of this document are <quote>borrowed</quote> from the original
2551 <application>Junkbuster</application> (tm) FAQ, and modified as
2552 appropriate for <application>Privoxy</application>.
2555 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2556 <sect2><title>License</title>
2557 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
2559 <!-- end copyright -->
2561 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2563 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2564 <sect2><title>History</title>
2565 <!-- Include history.sgml -->
2571 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2574 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2576 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See also</title>
2578 <!-- Include seealso.sgml -->
2589 Tue 09/11/01 06:38:14 PM EST: Test SGML doc by Hal Burgiss.
2591 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
2592 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
2593 Public License as published by the Free Software
2594 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
2595 your option) any later version.
2597 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
2598 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
2599 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
2600 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
2601 License for more details.
2603 The GNU General Public License should be included with
2604 this file. If not, you can view it at
2605 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
2606 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
2607 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
2610 Revision 2.21 2006/10/03 14:40:51 fabiankeil
2611 Added links from the Tor faq to the
2612 configuration chapter in the User Manual.
2614 Revision 2.20 2006/09/26 10:12:37 fabiankeil
2617 Revision 2.19 2006/09/22 10:54:32 hal9
2618 Change references to 3.0.4 to 3.0.5 and minor adjustments.
2620 Revision 2.18 2006/09/22 01:27:55 hal9
2621 Final commit of probably various minor changes here and there. Unless
2622 something changes this should be ready for pending release.
2624 Revision 2.17 2006/09/17 14:56:32 hal9
2625 This includes yet several more new FAQs, some improved wording, enhanced
2626 mark-up, various hyper links to wikipedia to explain key terminology to the
2627 uninitiated, etc. This is ready for release IMO pending final tagging of cvs
2628 and Privoxy version stamping.
2630 Revision 2.16 2006/09/10 15:30:46 hal9
2633 Revision 2.15 2006/09/08 23:05:07 hal9
2634 Fix broken links. Add faq on hosts files. Move most of new windows service
2635 feature to user manual and reference in faq. Various other small changes.
2637 Revision 2.14 2006/09/05 13:25:12 david__schmidt
2638 Add Windows service invocation stuff (duplicated) in FAQ and in user manual under Windows startup. One probably ought to reference the other.
2640 Revision 2.13 2006/09/04 19:20:33 fabiankeil
2641 Adjusted anonymity related sections to match reality.
2642 Added a section about using Privoxy with Tor.
2644 Revision 2.12 2006/09/03 14:15:30 hal9
2645 Various updates, including 7 or 8 new FAQs, and updates/changes to various
2646 other ones to better reflect improvements, additions and changes for the
2647 upcoming release. This is close to final form for 3.0.4 IMHO.
2649 Revision 2.11 2006/07/18 14:48:50 david__schmidt
2650 Reorganizing the repository: swapping out what was HEAD (the old 3.1 branch)
2651 with what was really the latest development (the v_3_0_branch branch)
2653 Revision 1.61.2.41 2004/04/05 13:44:05 oes
2654 Fixed allow-all-cookies alias name; closes SR #929746
2656 Revision 1.61.2.40 2004/01/30 17:00:33 oes
2657 Added OSX Panther problem
2659 Revision 1.61.2.39 2004/01/29 22:53:08 hal9
2660 Minor changes for exempting docs of text/plain. Change copyright date.
2662 Revision 1.61.2.38 2003/12/10 03:39:45 hal9
2663 Added FAQs for: demoronizer, related problems and why its included. Also,
2664 port 8118 already in use questions, and PrivoxyWindowOpen() questions. All in
2665 troubleshooting section.
2667 Revision 1.61.2.37 2003/10/17 11:01:50 oes
2668 Added Q&A for "not being used" page problem
2670 Revision 1.61.2.36 2003/06/26 23:49:20 hal9
2671 More on the filter/source code problem.
2673 Revision 1.61.2.35 2003/06/26 13:38:08 hal9
2674 Add FAQ on whether configuring Privoxy is necessary or not.
2676 Revision 1.61.2.34 2003/06/26 03:00:03 hal9
2677 Sorry, found another copyright date.
2679 Revision 1.61.2.33 2003/06/26 02:57:05 hal9
2680 Fix typo (finally!) and very minor modifications.
2682 Revision 1.61.2.32 2003/06/26 02:52:04 hal9
2685 Revision 1.61.2.31 2003/06/25 01:27:51 hal9
2686 Fix copyright, and a few nits.
2688 Revision 1.61.2.30 2003/06/25 01:13:52 hal9
2691 - FAQ on "Unable to get my own hostname"
2692 - Another one on filtering effects on text files.
2694 Revision 1.61.2.29 2003/06/15 21:32:58 hal9
2695 Add to the 4.17 (filtering effects on downloaded files).
2697 Revision 1.61.2.28 2003/03/18 19:37:21 oes
2698 s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
2700 Revision 1.61.2.27 2002/12/01 06:31:58 hal9
2701 Add faq on win32 error 503 due to ZoneAlarm.
2703 Revision 1.61.2.26 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
2704 Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
2707 Revision 1.61.2.25 2002/10/29 03:21:50 hal9
2708 Add 3 Q/A's relating to HTML in email. Other minor touchups.
2710 Revision 1.61.2.24 2002/10/15 12:50:22 oes
2711 s/Advanced/Radical/ (stupid me)
2713 Revision 1.61.2.23 2002/10/15 12:38:56 oes
2714 Added Microsuck faq; more detail for PHP problem
2716 Revision 1.61.2.22 2002/10/12 01:13:13 hal9
2717 Updates for demoronizer, more commentary on Radical profile, and update on
2718 the srvany.exe/icon fix.
2720 Revision 1.61.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
2721 s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
2723 Revision 1.61.2.20 2002/09/26 01:22:45 hal9
2724 Small additions for LAN setup, content-cookies/SSL, and FTP non-support.
2726 Revision 1.61.2.19 2002/08/25 23:31:56 hal9
2727 Fix one grammatical error. Add brief FAQ relating to tranparent proxies (ie
2728 port 80 setting). Add FAQ on effects of Privoxy on downloaded files
2729 (especially filtering).
2731 Revision 1.61.2.18 2002/08/14 16:39:37 hal9
2732 Fix wrong tag on FAQ addition.
2734 Revision 1.61.2.17 2002/08/14 00:01:18 hal9
2737 Revision 1.61.2.16 2002/08/13 00:10:38 hal9
2738 Add faq to troubleshooting re: blank page syndrome, ie {-prevent-compression}.
2740 Revision 1.61.2.15 2002/08/10 11:34:22 oes
2741 Add disclaimer about probably being out-of-date
2743 Revision 1.61.2.14 2002/08/07 02:53:43 hal9
2744 Fix some minor markup errors, and move one OSX Q/A to troubleshooting section.
2746 Revision 1.61.2.13 2002/08/06 11:55:32 oes
2747 Added missing close tag
2749 Revision 1.61.2.12 2002/08/06 11:43:46 david__schmidt
2750 Updated OSX uninstall FAQ... we have an uninstall script now.
2752 Revision 1.61.2.11 2002/08/06 08:54:03 oes
2753 Style police: Fixed formatting details
2755 Revision 1.61.2.10 2002/08/02 14:00:25 david__schmidt
2756 Made the OSX removal commands far less dangerous
2758 Revision 1.61.2.9 2002/08/02 13:14:45 oes
2759 Added warning about sudo rm -r for Mac OSX deinstallation; moved this item to install section
2761 Revision 1.61.2.8 2002/08/02 02:01:42 david__schmidt
2762 Add FAQ item for MSIE on OSX HTTP proxy confusion
2764 Revision 1.61.2.7 2002/08/02 01:46:01 david__schmidt
2765 Added FAQ item for Mac OSX uninstall woes
2767 Revision 1.61.2.6 2002/07/30 20:04:56 hal9
2768 Fix typo: 'schould'.
2770 Revision 1.61.2.5 2002/07/26 15:22:58 oes
2771 - Updated to reflect changes in standard.action
2772 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
2774 Revision 1.61.2.4 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
2775 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
2777 Revision 1.61.2.3 2002/06/09 16:36:33 hal9
2778 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
2780 Revision 1.61.2.2 2002/06/06 02:51:34 hal9
2781 Fix typo in URL http:/config.privoxy.org
2783 Revision 1.61.2.1 2002/06/05 23:10:43 hal9
2784 Add new FAQ re: DUN/IE. Change release date from May to June :)
2786 Revision 1.61 2002/05/25 12:37:25 hal9
2787 Various minor changes and edits.
2789 Revision 1.60 2002/05/22 17:17:48 oes
2790 Proofread & added more links into u-m
2792 Revision 1.59 2002/05/15 04:03:30 hal9
2793 Fix ulink -> link markup.
2795 Revision 1.58 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
2796 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
2797 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
2798 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
2800 Revision 1.57 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
2801 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
2803 Revision 1.56 2002/05/04 08:44:44 swa
2806 Revision 1.55 2002/05/04 00:41:56 hal9
2807 -Remove TOC/first page kludge in favor of proper handling via dsl file.
2809 Revision 1.54 2002/05/03 05:06:44 hal9
2810 Add brief Q/A on transparent proxies.
2812 Revision 1.53 2002/05/03 01:34:52 hal9
2813 Fix section numbering for new sections (due to TOC kludge).
2815 Revision 1.52 2002/04/29 03:08:43 hal9
2816 -Added new Q/A on new actions file set up (pointer to u-m)
2817 -Fixed a few broken links and converted old actions as a result of
2820 Revision 1.51 2002/04/26 17:24:31 swa
2821 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
2823 Revision 1.50 2002/04/26 05:25:23 hal9
2824 Mass commit to catch a few scattered fixes.
2826 Revision 1.49 2002/04/12 10:10:18 swa
2829 Revision 1.48 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
2832 Revision 1.47 2002/04/10 04:05:32 hal9
2835 Revision 1.45 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
2836 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
2838 Revision 1.44 2002/04/07 21:24:29 hal9
2839 Touch up on name change.
2841 Revision 1.43 2002/04/04 21:59:53 hal9
2842 Added NT/W2K service/icon situation.
2844 Revision 1.42 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
2845 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
2847 Revision 1.41 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
2848 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
2849 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
2850 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
2851 eventually be set by Makefile.
2852 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
2854 Revision 1.40 2002/04/03 04:22:03 hal9
2855 Fixed several typos.
2857 Revision 1.39 2002/04/03 03:53:03 hal9
2858 Revert some changes, and then make some news, to layout, and appearance.
2860 Revision 1.38 2002/04/02 03:49:10 hal9
2861 Major changes to doc structure and layout. Sections are not automatically
2862 numbered now. TOC is on page by itself.
2864 Revision 1.37 2002/04/01 16:24:07 hal9
2865 -Rework of supported Q/A.
2866 -Set up entities to include boilerplate text.
2868 Revision 1.36 2002/03/31 23:18:47 hal9
2869 More on dealing with BLOCKED.
2871 Revision 1.35 2002/03/30 04:14:19 hal9
2872 Fix privoxy.org/config links.
2874 Revision 1.34 2002/03/29 04:35:56 hal9
2877 Revision 1.33 2002/03/29 01:31:48 hal9
2878 Several new Q/A's and other touch ups.
2880 Revision 1.32 2002/03/27 00:57:03 hal9
2881 Touch ups for name change.
2883 Revision 1.31 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
2884 we have a new homepage!
2886 Revision 1.30 2002/03/25 16:39:22 hal9
2887 A few new sections. Made all links relative to user-manual.
2889 Revision 1.29 2002/03/25 05:23:57 hal9
2890 Moved section, and touch ups.
2892 Revision 1.28 2002/03/25 04:27:33 hal9
2893 New section related to name change.
2895 Revision 1.25 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
2896 we are too lazy to make a block-built
2897 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
2899 Revision 1.24 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
2900 name change related issue.
2902 Revision 1.23 2002/03/24 12:33:01 swa
2905 Revision 1.22 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
2906 name change. changed filenames.
2908 Revision 1.21 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
2911 Revision 1.20 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
2912 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
2913 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
2914 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
2915 comments and remarks to history untouched.
2917 Revision 1.19 2002/03/21 17:01:54 hal9
2920 Revision 1.18 2002/03/18 16:40:31 hal9
2923 Revision 1.17 2002/03/18 03:53:53 hal9
2926 Revision 1.16 2002/03/17 21:32:56 hal9
2927 A few more additions.
2929 Revision 1.15 2002/03/17 07:25:59 hal9
2930 Correcting some of my typos, and some additions.
2932 Revision 1.14 2002/03/17 02:39:13 hal9
2933 A little more added ...
2935 Revision 1.13 2002/03/17 00:22:20 hal9
2936 Adding new stuff, and trying to incorporate stuff from old faq.
2938 Revision 1.12 2002/03/11 20:13:21 swa
2941 Revision 1.11 2002/03/11 18:42:27 swa
2944 Revision 1.10 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
2945 correct feedback channels
2947 Revision 1.9 2002/03/10 23:34:04 swa
2948 more info on not hiding ip address
2950 Revision 1.8 2002/03/09 15:55:48 swa
2951 added default config section
2953 Revision 1.7 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
2956 Revision 1.6 2002/03/07 13:16:31 oes
2957 Committing changes by Stefan
2959 Revision 1.5 2002/03/02 15:50:04 swa
2960 2.9.11 version. more input for docs.
2962 Revision 1.4 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
2963 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
2964 will work - no other changes are needed.
2966 Revision 1.3 2001/09/23 10:13:48 swa
2967 upload process established. run make webserver and
2968 the documentation is moved to the webserver. documents
2969 are now linked correctly.
2971 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:20:17 swa
2972 merged standards into developer manual
2974 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
2975 source files for junkbuster documentation
2977 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
2978 first proposal of a structure.
2980 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
2981 docs should have an author.
2983 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
2984 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.