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 buildsource SYSTEM "buildsource.sgml">
8 <!entity contacting SYSTEM "contacting.sgml">
9 <!entity history SYSTEM "history.sgml">
10 <!entity copyright SYSTEM "copyright.sgml">
11 <!entity license SYSTEM "license.sgml">
12 <!entity p-authors SYSTEM "p-authors.sgml">
13 <!entity config SYSTEM "p-config.sgml">
14 <!entity p-version "3.0.7">
15 <!entity p-status "stable">
16 <!entity % p-authors-formal "INCLUDE"> <!-- include additional text, etc -->
17 <!entity % p-not-stable "IGNORE">
18 <!entity % p-stable "INCLUDE">
19 <!entity % p-text "IGNORE"> <!-- define we are not a text only doc -->
20 <!entity % p-doc "INCLUDE"> <!-- and we are a formal doc -->
21 <!entity % p-readme "IGNORE">
22 <!entity % user-man "IGNORE">
23 <!entity % config-file "IGNORE">
24 <!entity % p-supp-userman "IGNORE"> <!-- Omit some from supported.sgml -->
25 <!entity my-copy "©"> <!-- kludge for docbook2man -->
26 <!entity % draft "IGNORE"> <!-- WIP stuff -->
27 <!entity my-app "<application>Privoxy</application>">
30 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml,v $
33 This file belongs into
34 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
36 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.28 2006/12/10 23:42:48 hal9 Exp $
38 Copyright (C) 2001-2007 Privoxy Developers http://www.privoxy.org/
41 ========================================================================
42 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
43 anything in this, or other Privoxy documentation.
44 ========================================================================
51 <title>Privoxy &p-version; User Manual</title>
55 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
56 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
57 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001 - 2007 by
58 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
62 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.28 2006/12/10 23:42:48 hal9 Exp $</pubdate>
66 Note: the following should generate a separate page, and a live link to it,
67 all nicely done. But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave
68 commented unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the
69 copyright/license declarations will be in their own sgml.
82 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
83 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
84 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
90 The <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> gives users information on how to
91 install, configure and use <ulink
92 url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy</ulink>.
95 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
97 <!-- end privoxy.sgml -->
100 You can find the latest version of the <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> at <ulink
101 url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>.
102 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> on how to
103 contact the developers.
107 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
113 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
114 <sect1 label="1" id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
116 This documentation is included with the current &p-status; version of
117 <application>Privoxy</application>, v.&p-version;<![%p-not-stable;[,
118 and is mostly complete at this point. The most up to date reference for the
119 time being is still the comments in the source files and in the individual
120 configuration files. Development of a new version is currently nearing
121 completion, and includes significant changes and enhancements over
122 earlier versions. ]]>.
125 <!-- include only in non-stable versions -->
128 Since this is a &p-status; version, not all new features are well tested. This
129 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with
130 CVS sources). And there <emphasis>may be</emphasis> bugs, though hopefully
135 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
136 <sect2 id="features"><title>Features</title>
138 In addition to the core
139 features of ad blocking and
140 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookie</ulink> management,
141 <application>Privoxy</application> provides many supplemental
142 features<![%p-not-stable;[, some of them currently under development]]>,
143 that give the end-user more control, more privacy and more freedom:
145 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml boilerplate here: -->
147 <!-- end boilerplate -->
152 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
155 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
156 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
159 <application>Privoxy</application> is available both in convenient pre-compiled
160 packages for a wide range of operating systems, and as raw source code.
161 For most users, we recommend using the packages, which can be downloaded from our
162 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Project
168 On some platforms, the installer may remove previously installed versions, if
169 found. (See below for your platform). In any case <emphasis>be sure to backup
170 your old configuration if it is valuable to you.</emphasis> See the <link
171 linkend="upgradersnote">note to upgraders</link> section below.
174 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
175 <sect2 id="installation-packages"><title>Binary Packages</title>
177 How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
180 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
181 <sect3 id="installation-pack-rpm"><title>Red Hat and Fedora RPMs</title>
184 RPMs can be installed with <literal>rpm -Uvh privoxy-&p-version;-1.rpm</literal>,
185 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location
186 of configuration files.
190 Note that on Red Hat, <application>Privoxy</application> will
191 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be automatically started on system boot. You will
192 need to enable that using <command>chkconfig</command>,
193 <command>ntsysv</command>, or similar methods.
197 If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM:
198 <literal>rpm --rebuild privoxy-&p-version;-1.src.rpm</literal>. This
199 will use your locally installed libraries and RPM version.
203 Also note that if you have a <application>Junkbuster</application> RPM installed
204 on your system, you need to remove it first, because the packages conflict.
205 Otherwise, RPM will try to remove <application>Junkbuster</application>
206 automatically if found, before installing <application>Privoxy</application>.
210 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
211 <sect3 id="installation-deb"><title>Debian</title>
213 DEBs can be installed with <literal>apt-get install privoxy</literal>,
214 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location of
219 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
220 <sect3 id="installation-pack-win"><title>Windows</title>
223 Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through
224 the installation process. You will find the configuration files
225 in the same directory as you installed <application>Privoxy</application> in.
228 Version 3.0.4 introduced full <application>Windows</application> service
229 functionality. On Windows only, the <application>Privoxy</application>
230 program has two new command line arguments to install and uninstall
231 <application>Privoxy</application> as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>.
235 <term>Arguments:</term>
238 <replaceable class="parameter">--install</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
241 <replaceable class="parameter">--uninstall</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
247 After invoking <application>Privoxy</application> with
248 <command>--install</command>, you will need to bring up the
249 <application>Windows</application> service console to assign the user you
250 want <application>Privoxy</application> to run under, and whether or not you
251 want it to run whenever the system starts. You can start the
252 <application>Windows</application> services console with the following
253 command: <command>services.msc</command>. If you do not take the manual step
254 of modifying <application>Privoxy's</application> service settings, it will
255 not start. Note too that you will need to give Privoxy a user account that
256 actually exists, or it will not be permitted to
257 write to its log and configuration files.
262 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
263 <sect3 id="installation-pack-bintgz"><title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX</title>
266 Create a new directory, <literal>cd</literal> to it, then unzip and
267 untar the archive. For the most part, you'll have to figure out where
268 things go. <!-- FIXME, more info needed? -->
272 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
273 <sect3 id="installation-os2"><title>OS/2</title>
276 First, make sure that no previous installations of
277 <application>Junkbuster</application> and / or
278 <application>Privoxy</application> are left on your
279 system. Check that no <application>Junkbuster</application>
280 or <application>Privoxy</application> objects are in
286 Then, just double-click the WarpIN self-installing archive, which will
287 guide you through the installation process. A shadow of the
288 <application>Privoxy</application> executable will be placed in your
289 startup folder so it will start automatically whenever OS/2 starts.
293 The directory you choose to install <application>Privoxy</application>
294 into will contain all of the configuration files.
298 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
299 <sect3 id="installation-mac"><title>Mac OSX</title>
301 Unzip the downloaded file (you can either double-click on the file
302 from the finder, or from the desktop if you downloaded it there).
303 Then, double-click on the package installer icon named
304 <literal>Privoxy.pkg</literal>
305 and follow the installation process.
306 <application>Privoxy</application> will be installed in the folder
307 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal>.
308 It will start automatically whenever you start up. To prevent it from
309 starting automatically, remove or rename the folder
310 <literal>/Library/StartupItems/Privoxy</literal>.
313 To start Privoxy by hand, double-click on
314 <literal>StartPrivoxy.command</literal> in the
315 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal> folder.
316 Or, type this command in the Terminal:
320 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
324 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
328 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
329 <sect3 id="installation-amiga"><title>AmigaOS</title>
331 Copy and then unpack the <filename>lha</filename> archive to a suitable location.
332 All necessary files will be installed into <application>Privoxy</application>
333 directory, including all configuration and log files. To uninstall, just
334 remove this directory.
338 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
339 <sect3 id="installattion-gentoo"><title>Gentoo</title>
341 Gentoo source packages (Ebuilds) for <application>Privoxy</application> are
342 contained in the Gentoo Portage Tree (they are not on the download page,
343 but there is a Gentoo section, where you can see when a new
344 <application>Privoxy</application> Version is added to the Portage Tree).
347 Before installing <application>Privoxy</application> under Gentoo just do
348 first <literal>emerge rsync</literal> to get the latest changes from the
349 Portage tree. With <literal>emerge privoxy</literal> you install the latest
353 Configuration files are in <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename>, the
354 documentation is in <filename>/usr/share/doc/privoxy-&p-version;</filename>
355 and the Log directory is in <filename>/var/log/privoxy</filename>.
361 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
362 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Building from Source</title>
365 The most convenient way to obtain the <application>Privoxy</application> sources
366 is to download the source tarball from our
367 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&package_id=10571">project download
372 If you like to live on the bleeding edge and are not afraid of using
373 possibly unstable development versions, you can check out the up-to-the-minute
374 version directly from <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=11118">the
375 CVS repository</ulink>.
377 deprecated...out of business.
378 or simply download <ulink
379 url="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/ijbswa-cvsroot.tar.bz2">the nightly CVS
384 <!-- include buildsource.sgml boilerplate: -->
386 <!-- end boilerplate -->
389 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
390 <sect2 id="installation-keepupdated"><title>Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date</title>
392 As user feedback comes in and development continues, we will make updated versions
393 of both the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link> (as a <ulink
394 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&release_id=103670">separate
395 package</ulink>) and the software itself (including the actions file) available for
400 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
401 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
402 url="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-announce/">subscribe
403 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
407 In order not to lose your personal changes and adjustments when updating
408 to the latest <literal>default.action</literal> file we <emphasis>strongly
409 recommend</emphasis> that you use <literal>user.action</literal> and
410 <literal>user.filter</literal> for your local
411 customizations of <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
412 linkend="actions-file">Chapter on actions files</link> for details.
420 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
422 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
423 <sect1 id="whatsnew">
424 <title>What's New in this Release</title>
426 There are many improvements and new features since <application>Privoxy 3.0.6</application>, the last stable release:
433 Header filtering can be done with dedicated header filters now. As a result
434 the actions <q>filter-client-headers</q> and <q>filter-server-headers</q>
435 that were introduced with <application>Privoxy 3.0.5</application> to apply
436 the content filters to the headers as, well have been removed again.
440 <!-- pre-3.0.6 changes:
443 There are a number of new <link linkend="actions-file">actions</link>:
451 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite</link></literal>
456 <literal><link linkend="crunch-client-header">crunch-client-header</link></literal>
461 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>
466 <literal><link linkend="crunch-server-header">crunch-server-header</link></literal>
471 <literal><link linkend="filter-client-headers">filter-client-headers</link></literal>
476 <literal><link linkend="filter-server-headers">filter-server-headers</link></literal>
481 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>
486 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal>
491 <literal><link linkend="hide-accept-language">hide-accept-language</link></literal>
496 <literal><link linkend="hide-content-disposition">hide-content-disposition</link></literal>
501 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
506 <literal><link linkend="inspect-jpegs">inspect-jpegs</link></literal>
511 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>
516 <literal><link linkend="redirect">redirect</link></literal>
521 <literal><link linkend="treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks">treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</link></literal>
528 In addition, <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects</link></literal>
529 has been significantly improved with enhanced syntax.
532 And <literal><link linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal>
533 has a new option, <literal>conditional block</literal>.
540 <application>MS-Windows</application> versions can now be
542 linkend="installation-pack-win">installed and
543 started as a <emphasis>Windows service</emphasis></link>.
549 <filename>config</filename> has two new options:
551 linkend="enable-remote-http-toggle">enable-remote-http-toggle</link>,
553 linkend="forwarded-connect-retries">forwarded-connect-retries</link>.
556 And there is improved handling of the <link
557 linkend="user-manual">user-manual</link>
558 option, for placing documentation and help files on the local system.
564 There are six new <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>.
570 Actions files problems and suggestions are now being directed to:
571 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=460288">http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=460288</ulink>.
572 Please use this to report such configuration related problems as missed
573 ads, sites that don't function properly due to one action or another,
574 innocent images being blocked, etc.
580 In addition, there are numerous bug fixes and significant enhancements,
581 including error pages should no longer be cached if the problem is fixed,
582 much better DNS error handling, various logging improvements, and
583 configuration updates for better ad blocking and junk elimination.
591 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
593 <sect2 id="upgradersnote">
594 <title>Note to Upgraders</title>
597 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier
598 versions of <application>Privoxy</application>:
606 Some installers may remove earlier versions completely, including
607 configuration files. Save any important configuration files!
612 On the other hand, other installers may not overwrite any existing configuration
613 files, thinking you will want to do that. You may want to manually check
614 your saved files against the newer versions to see if the improvements have
615 merit, or whether there are new options that you may want to consider.
616 There are a number of new features, but most won't be available unless
617 these features are incorporated into your configuration somehow.
622 See the full documentation on
623 <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects</link></literal>
624 which has changed syntax, and will require adjustments to local configs,
625 such as <filename>user.action</filename>. You must reference the new
630 { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
639 The <filename>jarfile</filename>,
640 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookie</ulink> logger, is off by default now.
646 What constitutes a <quote>default</quote> configuration has changed,
647 and you may want to review which actions are <quote>on</quote> by
648 default. This is primarily a matter of emphasis, but some features
649 you may have been used to, may now be <quote>off</quote> by default.
650 There are also a number of new actions and filters you may want to
651 consider, most of which are not fully incorporated into the default
652 settings as yet (see above).
658 The default actions setting is now <literal>Cautious</literal>. Previous
659 releases had a default setting of <literal>Medium</literal>. Experienced
660 users may want to adjust this, as it is fairly conservative by &my-app;
661 standards and past practices. See <ulink
662 url="http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default">
663 http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default</ulink>. New users
664 should try the default settings for a while before turning up the volume.
670 The default setting has filtering turned <emphasis>off</emphasis>, which
671 subsequently means that compression is <emphasis>on</emphasis>. Remember
672 that filtering does not work on compressed pages, so if you use, or want to
673 use, filtering, you will need to force compression off. Example:
677 { +<link linkend="filter">filter</link>{google} +<link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link> }
681 Or if you use a number of filters, or filter many sites, you may just want
682 to turn off compression for all sites in
683 <filename>default.action</filename> (or
684 <filename>user.action</filename>).
691 Also, <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> is
692 off by default now. If you've liked this feature in the past, you may want
693 to turn it back on in <filename>user.action</filename> now.
700 <!-- I think it is best to keep this somewhat vague, in case -->
701 <!-- the situation changes under our feet. -->
702 Some installers may not automatically start
703 <application>Privoxy</application> after installation.
713 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
714 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using Privoxy</title>
720 Install <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
721 linkend="installation">Installation Section</link> below for platform specific
728 Advanced users and those who want to offer <application>Privoxy</application>
729 service to more than just their local machine should check the <link
730 linkend="config">main config file</link>, especially the <link
731 linkend="access-control">security-relevant</link> options. These are
738 Start <application>Privoxy</application>, if the installation program has
739 not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
740 <link linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link>.
746 Set your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application> as HTTP and
747 HTTPS (SSL) <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>
748 by setting the proxy configuration for address of
749 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> and port <literal>8118</literal>.
750 <emphasis>DO NOT</emphasis> activate proxying for <literal>FTP</literal> or
751 any protocols besides HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)! It won't work!
757 Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad images.
758 If using <application>Privoxy</application> to manage
759 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
760 you should remove any currently stored cookies too.
766 A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for
767 most. There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
768 configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little
769 to no initial configuration is required in most cases.
772 See the <link linkend="configuration">Configuration section</link> for more
773 configuration options, and how to customize your installation.
774 You might also want to look at the <link
775 linkend="quickstart-ad-blocking">next section</link> for a quick
776 introduction to how <application>Privoxy</application> blocks ads and
783 If you experience ads that slip through, innocent images that are
784 blocked, or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune
785 <application>Privoxy's</application> behavior, take a look at the <link
786 linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>. As a quick start, you might
787 find the <link linkend="act-examples">richly commented examples</link>
788 helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files through the <ulink
789 url="http://config.privoxy.org">web-based user interface</ulink>. The
790 Appendix <quote><link linkend="actionsanat">Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an
791 Action</link></quote> has hints on how to understand and debug actions that
792 <quote>misbehave</quote>.
798 For easy access to &my-app;'s most important controls, drag the provided
799 <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklets</link> into your browser's
806 Please see the section <link linkend="contact">Contacting the
807 Developers</link> on how to report bugs, problems with websites or to get
814 Now enjoy surfing with enhanced control, comfort and privacy!
822 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
824 <sect2 id="quickstart-ad-blocking">
825 <title>Quickstart to Ad Blocking</title>
827 NOTE: This section is deliberately redundant for those that don't
828 want to read the whole thing (which is getting lengthy).
831 Ad blocking is but one of <application>Privoxy's</application>
832 array of features. Many of these features are for the technically minded advanced
833 user. But, ad and banner blocking is surely common ground for everybody.
836 This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so
837 you can get up to speed quickly without having to read the more extensive
838 information provided below, though this is highly recommended.
841 First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the
842 more aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block
843 things that were not intended. And the more likely that some things
844 may not work as intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want
845 extreme ad free browsing, be prepared to deal with more
846 <quote>problem</quote> sites, and to spend more time adjusting the
847 configuration to solve these unintended consequences. In short, there is
848 not an easy way to eliminate <emphasis>all</emphasis> ads. Either take
849 the easy way and settle for <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads blocked with the
850 default configuration, or jump in and tweak it for your personal surfing
851 habits and preferences.
854 Secondly, a brief explanation of <application>Privoxy's </application>
855 <quote>actions</quote>. <quote>Actions</quote> in this context, are
856 the directives we use to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to perform
857 some task relating to WWW transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell
858 <application>Privoxy</application> to take some <quote>action</quote>. Each
859 action has a unique name and function. While there are many potential
860 <application>actions</application> in <application>Privoxy's</application>
861 arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking. <link
862 linkend="actions">Actions</link>, and <link linkend="actions-file">action
863 configuration files</link>, are explained in depth below.
866 Actions are specified in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
867 followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
868 can actually be URL type <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> that use
869 wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs. The
870 actions, together with the URL patterns are called a section.
873 When you connect to a website, the full URL will either match one or more
874 of the sections as defined in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
875 or not. If so, then <application>Privoxy</application> will perform the
876 respective actions. If not, then nothing special happens. Furthermore, web
877 pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web browser will
878 use to load additional components of the page, as it parses the
879 original page's HTML content. An ad image for instance, is just an URL
880 embedded in the page somewhere. The image itself may be on the same server,
881 or a server somewhere else on the Internet. Complex web pages will have many
882 such embedded URLs. &my-app; can deal with each URL individually, so, for
883 instance, the main page text is not touched, but images from such-and-such
888 The most important actions for basic ad blocking are: <literal><link
889 linkend="block">block</link></literal>, <literal><link
890 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
892 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal>,and
893 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>:
901 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> - this is perhaps
902 the single most used action, and is particularly important for ad blocking.
903 This action stops any contact between your browser and any URL patterns
904 that match this action's configuration. It can be used for blocking ads,
905 but also anything that is determined to be unwanted. By itself, it simply
906 stops any communication with the remote server and sends
907 <application>Privoxy</application>'s own built-in BLOCKED page instead to
908 let you now what has happened (with some exceptions, see below).
914 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> -
915 tells <application>Privoxy</application> to treat this URL as an image.
916 <application>Privoxy</application>'s default configuration already does this
917 for all common image types (e.g. GIF), but there are many situations where this
918 is not so easy to determine. So we'll force it in these cases. This is particularly
919 important for ad blocking, since only if we know that it's an image of
920 some kind, can we replace it with an image of our choosing, instead of the
921 <application>Privoxy</application> BLOCKED page (which would only result in
922 a <quote>broken image</quote> icon). There are some limitations to this
923 though. For instance, you can't just brute-force an image substitution for
924 an entire HTML page in most situations.
930 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> -
931 sends an empty document instead of <application>Privoxy's</application>
932 normal BLOCKED HTML page. This is useful for file types that are neither
933 HTML nor images, such as blocking JavaScript files.
940 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> - tells
941 <application>Privoxy</application> what to display in place of an ad image that
942 has hit a block rule. For this to come into play, the URL must match a
943 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action somewhere in the
944 configuration, <emphasis>and</emphasis>, it must also match an
945 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action.
948 The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
952 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad
953 replacement is obvious. This is the default.
958 <emphasis>blank</emphasis> - A very small empty GIF image is displayed.
959 This is the so-called <quote>invisible</quote> configuration option.
964 <emphasis>http://<URL></emphasis> - A redirect to any image anywhere
965 of the user's choosing (advanced usage).
974 The quickest way to adjust any of these settings is with your browser through
975 the special <application>Privoxy</application> editor at <ulink
976 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
977 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>). This
978 is an internal page, and does not require Internet access. Select the
979 appropriate <quote>actions</quote> file, and click
980 <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>. It is best to put personal or
981 local preferences in <filename>user.action</filename> since this is not
982 meant to be overwritten during upgrades, and will over-ride the settings in
983 other files. Here you can insert new <quote>actions</quote>, and URLs for ad
984 blocking or other purposes, and make other adjustments to the configuration.
985 <application>Privoxy</application> will detect these changes automatically.
989 A quick and simple step by step example:
997 Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select
998 <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote> from the
1006 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1011 Find <filename>user.action</filename> in the top section, and click
1012 on <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>:
1015 <!-- image of editor and actions files selections -->
1017 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Actions Files in Use</title>
1020 <imagedata fileref="files-in-use.jpg" format="jpg">
1023 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Actions Files in Use ]</phrase>
1032 You should have a section with only
1033 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> listed under
1034 <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1035 If not, click a <quote><guibutton>Insert new section below</guibutton></quote>
1036 button, and in the new section that just appeared, click the
1037 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button right under the word <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1038 This will bring up a list of all actions. Find
1039 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> near the top, and click
1040 in the <quote>Enabled</quote> column, then <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote>
1041 just below the list.
1046 Now, in the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> actions section,
1047 click the <quote><guibutton>Add</guibutton></quote> button, and paste the URL the
1048 browser got from <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote>.
1049 Remove the <literal>http://</literal> at the beginning of the URL. Then, click
1050 <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote> (or
1051 <quote><guibutton>OK</guibutton></quote> if in a pop-up window).
1056 Now go back to the original page, and press <keycap>SHIFT-Reload</keycap>
1057 (or flush all browser caches). The image should be gone now.
1065 This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
1066 wildcard pattern match to include potentially similar images from the same
1067 site. For a more extensive explanation of <quote>patterns</quote>, and
1068 the entire actions concept, see <link linkend="actions-file">the Actions
1073 For advanced users who want to hand edit their config files, you might want
1074 to now go to the <link linkend="act-examples">Actions Files Tutorial</link>.
1075 The ideas explained therein also apply to the web-based editor.
1078 There are also various
1079 <link linkend="filter">filters</link> that can be used for ad blocking
1080 (filters are a special subset of actions). These
1081 fall into the <quote>advanced</quote> usage category, and are explained in
1082 depth in later sections.
1089 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1092 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1093 <sect1 id="startup">
1094 <title>Starting Privoxy</title>
1096 Before launching <application>Privoxy</application> for the first time, you
1097 will want to configure your browser(s) to use
1098 <application>Privoxy</application> as a HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)
1099 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>. The default is
1100 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions
1101 used port 8000). This is the one configuration step <emphasis>that must be done
1105 Please note that <application>Privoxy</application> can only proxy HTTP and
1106 HTTPS traffic. It will not work with FTP or other protocols.
1109 <!-- image of Mozilla Proxy configuration -->
1111 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1112 Mozilla/Netscape HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) Settings</title>
1115 <imagedata fileref="proxy_setup.jpg" format="jpg">
1118 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Mozilla Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1126 With <application>Firefox</application>, this is typically set under:
1130 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>General</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connection Settings</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Manual Proxy Configuration</guibutton>
1135 Or optionally on some platforms:
1139 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>General</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connection Settings</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Manual Proxy Configuration</guibutton>
1145 With <application>Netscape</application> (and
1146 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under:
1151 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
1152 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
1153 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Proxies</guibutton> -> <guibutton>HTTP Proxy</guibutton>
1158 For <application>Internet Explorer v.5-6</application>:
1162 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Internet Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connections</guibutton> -> <guibutton>LAN Settings</guibutton>
1166 Then, check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info
1167 (Address: 127.0.0.1, Port: 8118). Include HTTPS (SSL), if you want HTTPS
1168 proxy support too (sometimes labeled <quote>Secure</quote>). Make sure any
1169 checkboxes like <quote>Use the same proxy server for all protocols</quote> is
1170 <emphasis>UNCHECKED</emphasis>. You want only HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)!
1173 <!-- image of IE Proxy configuration -->
1175 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1176 Internet Explorer HTTP and HTTPS (Secure) Settings</title>
1179 <imagedata fileref="proxy2.jpg" format="jpg">
1182 <phrase>[ Screenshot of IE Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1190 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
1191 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. Remove
1192 any <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
1193 if you want <application>Privoxy</application> to manage that. You are now
1194 ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
1195 <application>Privoxy</application>!
1199 <application>Privoxy</application> itself is typically started by specifying the
1200 main configuration file to be used on the command line. If no configuration
1201 file is specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application>
1202 will look for a file named <filename>config</filename> in the current
1203 directory. Except on Win32 where it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>.
1206 <sect2 id="start-redhat">
1207 <title>Red Hat and Fedora</title>
1209 A default Red Hat installation may not start &my-app; upon boot. It will use
1210 the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1215 # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
1223 # service privoxy start
1228 <sect2 id="start-debian">
1229 <title>Debian</title>
1231 We use a script. Note that Debian typically starts &my-app; upon booting per
1232 default. It will use the file
1233 <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1238 # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1244 omitting 10/31/06 HB
1246 <sect2 id="start-suse">
1249 We use a script. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename>
1250 as its main configuration file. Note that SuSE starts Privoxy upon booting
1260 <sect2 id="start-windows">
1261 <title>Windows</title>
1263 Click on the &my-app; Icon to start <application>Privoxy</application>. If no configuration file is
1264 specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application> will look
1265 for a file named <filename>config.txt</filename>. Note that Windows will
1266 automatically start &my-app; when the system starts if you chose that option
1270 <application>Privoxy</application> can run with full Windows service functionality.
1271 On Windows only, the &my-app; program has two new command line arguments
1272 to install and uninstall &my-app; as a service. See the
1273 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Windows Installation
1274 instructions</link> for details.
1278 <sect2 id="start-unices">
1279 <title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others</title>
1281 Example Unix startup command:
1285 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
1290 <sect2 id="start-os2">
1293 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
1294 start automatically when the system restarts. You can start it manually by
1295 double-clicking on the <application>Privoxy</application> icon in the
1296 <application>Privoxy</application> folder.
1300 <sect2 id="start-macosx">
1301 <title>Mac OSX</title>
1303 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
1304 start automatically when the system restarts. To start &my-app; manually,
1305 double-click on the <literal>StartPrivoxy.command</literal> icon in the
1306 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal> folder. Or, type this command
1311 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
1315 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
1320 <sect2 id="start-amigaos">
1321 <title>AmigaOS</title>
1323 Start <application>Privoxy</application> (with RUN <>NIL:) in your
1324 <filename>startnet</filename> script (AmiTCP), in
1325 <filename>s:user-startup</filename> (RoadShow), as startup program in your
1326 startup script (Genesis), or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx).
1327 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically quit when you quit your
1328 TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack may display that
1329 <application>Privoxy</application> is still running).
1333 <sect2 id="start-gentoo">
1334 <title>Gentoo</title>
1336 A script is again used. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config
1337 </filename> as its main configuration file.
1341 /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1345 Note that <application>Privoxy</application> is not automatically started at
1346 boot time by default. You can change this with the <literal>rc-update</literal>
1351 rc-update add privoxy default
1359 See the section <link linkend="cmdoptions">Command line options</link> for
1363 must find a better place for this paragraph
1366 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
1367 point. Most of the per site configuration is done in the
1368 <ulink url="actions-file.html"><quote>actions</quote></ulink> files. These are
1369 where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking, and other
1370 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. There are several
1371 such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.
1375 You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites for which you may prefer
1376 persistent cookies, and add these to your actions configuration as needed. By
1377 default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser
1378 session (aka <quote>session cookies</quote>), unless you add them to the
1379 configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will need
1380 to edit <filename>user.action</filename> (or through the web based interface)
1381 and disable this feature. If you use more than one browser, it would make
1382 more sense to let <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which
1383 case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
1387 Another feature where you will probably want to define exceptions for trusted
1388 sites is the popup-killing (through the <ulink
1389 url="actions-file.html#KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></ulink> and
1391 url="actions-file.html#FILTER-POPUPS"><quote>+filter{popups}</quote></ulink>
1392 actions), because your favorite shopping, banking, or leisure site may need
1393 popups (explained below).
1397 <application>Privoxy</application> is HTTP/1.1 compliant, but not all of
1398 the optional 1.1 features are as yet supported. In the unlikely event that
1399 you experience inexplicable problems with browsers that use HTTP/1.1 per default
1400 (like <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.), you might
1401 try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look under <literal>Edit ->
1402 Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
1403 Alternatively, set the <quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote> config option in
1404 <filename>default.action</filename> which will downgrade your browser's HTTP
1405 requests from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0 before processing them.
1409 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
1410 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
1411 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
1412 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote>
1413 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
1414 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1415 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1416 and then follow the link to <quote>View & Change the Current Configuration</quote>.
1417 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
1421 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
1422 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
1423 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
1424 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
1425 to a given URL. In addition to the actions file
1426 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
1427 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> (toggled) from this page.
1431 If you encounter problems, try loading the page without
1432 <application>Privoxy</application>. If that helps, enter the URL where
1433 you have the problems into <ulink url="http://p.p/show-url-info">the browser
1434 based rule tracing utility</ulink>. See which rules apply and why, and
1435 then try turning them off for that site one after the other, until the problem
1436 is gone. When you have found the culprit, you might want to turn the rest on
1441 If the above paragraph sounds gibberish to you, you might want to <link
1442 linkend="actions-file">read more about the actions concept</link>
1443 or even dive deep into the <link linkend="actionsanat">Appendix
1448 If you can't get rid of the problem at all, think you've found a bug in
1449 Privoxy, want to propose a new feature or smarter rules, please see the
1450 section <link linkend="contact"><quote>Contacting the
1451 Developers</quote></link> below.
1456 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1457 <sect2 id="cmdoptions">
1458 <title>Command Line Options</title>
1460 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
1461 command-line options:
1469 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
1472 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
1477 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
1480 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
1485 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
1488 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
1489 leader, and don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
1494 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
1498 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
1499 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failure to create or delete the
1500 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
1501 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
1506 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
1510 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
1511 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
1512 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
1517 <emphasis>--chroot</emphasis>
1521 Before changing to the user ID given in the <emphasis>--user</emphasis> option,
1522 chroot to that user's home directory, i.e. make the kernel pretend to the &my-app;
1523 process that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
1524 the impact of possible vulnerabilities in &my-app; to the files contained in that hierarchy.
1530 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
1533 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
1534 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
1535 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
1536 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
1537 full path to avoid confusion. If no config file is found,
1538 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
1546 On <application>MS Windows</application> only there are two additional
1547 command-line options to allow <application>Privoxy</application> to install and
1548 run as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>. See the
1549 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Window Installation section</link>
1557 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1560 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1561 <sect1 id="configuration"><title>Privoxy Configuration</title>
1563 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is stored
1564 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
1565 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
1566 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
1570 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1573 <title>Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser</title>
1575 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface can be reached through the special
1576 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1577 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1578 which is a built-in page and works without Internet access.
1579 You will see the following section:
1583 <!-- Needs to be put in a table and colorized -->
1586 <bridgehead renderas="sect2"> Privoxy Menu</bridgehead>
1590 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View & change the current configuration</ulink>
1593 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">View the source code version numbers</ulink>
1596 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">View the request headers.</ulink>
1599 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">Look up which actions apply to a URL and why</ulink>
1602 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">Toggle Privoxy on or off</ulink>
1605 ▪ <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/
1606 &p-version;/user-manual/">Documentation</ulink>
1614 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
1615 <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, which is where the ad, banner,
1616 cookie, and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
1617 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
1618 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
1619 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
1623 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
1624 have problems with your current actions and filters. You can in fact use
1625 it as a test to see whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
1626 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
1627 to run as a proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e.
1628 <application>Privoxy</application> acts like a normal forwarding proxy. There
1629 is even a toggle <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklet</link> offered, so
1630 that you can toggle <application>Privoxy</application> with one click from
1636 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1641 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1643 <sect2 id="confoverview">
1644 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
1646 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
1647 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
1648 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
1649 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. <![%p-not-stable;[ The name
1650 and number of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
1651 subject to change as development progresses.]]>
1655 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though
1656 some settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the
1657 principle configuration files are:
1665 The <link linkend="config">main configuration file</link> is named <filename>config</filename>
1666 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
1667 on Windows. This is a required file.
1673 <filename>default.action</filename> (the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>)
1674 is used to define which <quote>actions</quote> relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups,
1675 content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default. It also defines many
1676 exceptions (both positive and negative) from this default set of actions that enable
1677 <application>Privoxy</application> to selectively eliminate the junk, and only the junk, on
1678 as many websites as possible.
1681 Multiple actions files may be defined in <filename>config</filename>. These
1682 are processed in the order they are defined. Local customizations and locally
1683 preferred exceptions to the default policies as defined in
1684 <filename>default.action</filename> (which you will most probably want
1685 to define sooner or later) are probably best applied in
1686 <filename>user.action</filename>, where you can preserve them across
1687 upgrades. <filename>standard.action</filename> is only for
1688 <application>Privoxy's</application> internal use.
1691 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from
1693 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1695 url="http://p.p/show-status">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>) for the
1696 various actions files.
1702 <quote>Filter files</quote> (the <link linkend="filter-file">filter
1703 file</link>) can be used to re-write the raw page content, including
1704 viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript, and whatever else
1705 lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only pre-defined here;
1706 whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
1707 <filename>default.filter</filename> includes various filters made
1708 available for use by the developers. Some are much more intrusive than
1709 others, and all should be used with caution. You may define additional
1710 filter files in <filename>config</filename> as you can with
1711 actions files. We suggest <filename>user.filter</filename> for any
1712 locally defined filters or customizations.
1720 The syntax of all configuration files has remained the same throughout the
1721 3.x series. There have been enhancements, but no changes that would preclude
1722 the use of any configuration file from one version to the next. (There is
1723 one exception: <link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">+fast-redirects</link> which
1724 has enhanced syntax and will require updating any local configs from earlier
1729 All files use the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a
1730 comment (the rest of the line will be ignored) and understand line continuation
1731 through placing a backslash ("<literal>\</literal>") as the very last character
1732 in a line. If the <literal>#</literal> is preceded by a backslash, it looses
1733 its special function. Placing a <literal>#</literal> in front of an otherwise
1734 valid configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
1735 out" that line. Blank lines are ignored.
1739 The actions files and filter files
1740 can use Perl style <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> for
1741 maximum flexibility.
1745 After making any changes, there is no need to restart
1746 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
1747 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> detects such changes
1748 automatically. Note, however, that it may take one or two additional
1749 requests for the change to take effect. When changing the listening address
1750 of <application>Privoxy</application>, these <quote>wake up</quote> requests
1751 must obviously be sent to the <emphasis>old</emphasis> listening address.
1756 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
1757 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
1758 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
1759 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
1765 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1768 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1770 <!-- **************************************************** -->
1771 <!-- Include config.sgml here -->
1772 <!-- This is where the entire config file is detailed. -->
1774 <!-- end include -->
1777 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1781 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1783 <sect1 id="actions-file"><title>Actions Files</title>
1786 The actions files are used to define what <emphasis>actions</emphasis>
1787 <application>Privoxy</application> takes for which URLs, and thus determines
1788 how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
1789 transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof).
1790 There are a number of such actions, with a wide range of functionality.
1791 Each action does something a little different.
1792 These actions give us a veritable arsenal of tools with which to exert
1793 our control, preferences and independence. Actions can be combined so that
1794 their effects are aggregated when applied against a given set of URLs.
1798 are three action files included with <application>Privoxy</application> with
1806 <filename>default.action</filename> - is the primary action file
1807 that sets the initial values for all actions. It is intended to
1808 provide a base level of functionality for
1809 <application>Privoxy's</application> array of features. So it is
1810 a set of broad rules that should work reasonably well as-is for most users.
1811 This is the file that the developers are keeping updated, and <link
1812 linkend="installation-keepupdated">making available to users</link>.
1813 The user's preferences as set in <filename>standard.action</filename>,
1814 e.g. either <literal>Cautious</literal> (the default),
1815 <literal>Medium</literal>, or <literal>Advanced</literal> (see
1821 <filename>user.action</filename> - is intended to be for local site
1822 preferences and exceptions. As an example, if your ISP or your bank
1823 has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
1824 thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
1829 <filename>standard.action</filename> - is used only by the web based editor
1830 at <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default">
1831 http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default</ulink>,
1832 to set various pre-defined sets of rules for the default actions section
1833 in <filename>default.action</filename>.
1836 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Cautious</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Medium</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Advanced</guibutton>
1839 These have increasing levels of aggressiveness <emphasis>and have no
1840 influence on your browsing unless you select them explicitly in the
1841 editor</emphasis>. A default installation should be pre-set to
1842 <literal>Cautious</literal> (versions prior to 3.0.5 were set to
1843 <literal>Medium</literal>). New users should try this for a while before
1844 adjusting the settings to more aggressive levels. The more aggressive
1845 the settings, then the more likelihood there is of problems such as sites
1846 not working as they should.
1849 The <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button allows you to turn each
1850 action on/off individually for fine-tuning. The <guibutton>Cautious</guibutton>
1851 button changes the actions list to low/safe settings which will activate
1852 ad blocking and a minimal set of &my-app;'s features, and subsequently
1853 there will be less of a chance for accidental problems. The
1854 <guibutton>Medium</guibutton> button sets the list to a medium level of
1855 other features and a low level set of privacy features. The
1856 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> button sets the list to a high level of
1857 ad blocking and medium level of privacy. See the chart below. The latter
1858 three buttons over-ride any changes via with the
1859 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button. More fine-tuning can be done in the
1860 lower sections of this internal page.
1863 It is not recommend to edit the <filename>standard.action</filename> file
1867 The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
1868 <filename>standard.action</filename> are:
1871 <table frame=all><title>Default Configurations</title>
1872 <tgroup cols=4 align=left colsep=1 rowsep=1>
1873 <colspec colname=c1>
1874 <colspec colname=c2>
1875 <colspec colname=c3>
1876 <colspec colname=c4>
1879 <entry>Feature</entry>
1880 <entry>Cautious</entry>
1881 <entry>Medium</entry>
1882 <entry>Advanced</entry>
1887 <!-- <entry>f1</entry> -->
1888 <!-- <entry>f2</entry> -->
1889 <!-- <entry>f3</entry> -->
1890 <!-- <entry>f4</entry> -->
1896 <entry>Ad-blocking Aggressiveness</entry>
1897 <entry>medium</entry>
1903 <entry>Ad-filtering by size</entry>
1910 <entry>Ad-filtering by link</entry>
1916 <entry>Pop-up killing</entry>
1917 <entry>blocks only</entry>
1918 <entry>blocks only</entry>
1919 <entry>blocks only</entry>
1923 <entry>Privacy Features</entry>
1925 <entry>medium</entry>
1926 <entry>medium/high</entry>
1930 <entry>Cookie handling</entry>
1932 <entry>session-only</entry>
1937 <entry>Referer forging</entry>
1945 <entry>GIF de-animation</entry>
1953 <entry>Fast redirects</entry>
1960 <entry>HTML taming</entry>
1967 <entry>JavaScript taming</entry>
1974 <entry>Web-bug killing</entry>
1981 <entry>Image tag reordering</entry>
1997 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
1998 file, and are processed in the order they are defined (e.g.
1999 <filename>default.action</filename> is typically process before
2000 <filename>user.action</filename>). The content of these can all be viewed and
2002 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2003 The over-riding principle when applying actions, is that the last action that
2004 matches a given URL, wins. The broadest, most general rules go first
2005 (defined in <filename>default.action</filename>),
2006 followed by any exceptions (typically also in
2007 <filename>default.action</filename>), which are then followed lastly by any
2008 local preferences (typically in <emphasis>user</emphasis><filename>.action</filename>).
2009 Generally, <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word.
2013 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use
2014 <quote>aliases</quote> in an actions file, you have to place the (optional)
2015 <link linkend="aliases">alias section</link> at the top of that file.
2016 Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally to all
2017 sites and pages (be <emphasis>very careful</emphasis> with using such a
2018 universal set in <filename>user.action</filename> or any other actions file after
2019 <filename>default.action</filename>, because it will override the result
2020 from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
2021 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard
2022 <filename>user.action</filename> as an appendix to <filename>default.action</filename>,
2023 with the advantage that is a separate file, which makes preserving your
2024 personal settings across <application>Privoxy</application> upgrades easier.
2028 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
2029 just some obnoxious URL that you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
2030 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
2031 written to disk), content can be modified, JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
2032 fooled, and much more. See below for a <link linkend="actions">complete list
2036 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2038 <title>Finding the Right Mix</title>
2040 Note that some <link linkend="actions">actions</link>, like cookie suppression
2041 or script disabling, may render some sites unusable that rely on these
2042 techniques to work properly. Finding the right mix of actions is not always easy and
2043 certainly a matter of personal taste. And, things can always change, requiring
2044 refinements in the configuration. In general, it can be said that the more
2045 <quote>aggressive</quote> your default settings (in the top section of the
2046 actions file) are, the more exceptions for <quote>trusted</quote> sites you
2047 will have to make later. If, for example, you want to crunch all cookies per
2048 default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for sites that you
2049 regularly use and that require cookies for actually useful purposes, like maybe
2050 your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
2054 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
2055 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
2056 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
2057 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again :).
2061 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2063 <title>How to Edit</title>
2065 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by
2066 using our browser-based editor, which can be reached from <ulink
2067 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2068 The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single feature on a
2069 per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults like
2070 <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> or <quote>Advanced</quote>.
2071 Warning: the <quote>Advanced</quote> setting is more aggressive, and
2072 will be more likely to cause problems for some sites. Experienced users only!
2076 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
2077 the actions files with your favorite text editor. Look at
2078 <filename>default.action</filename> which is richly commented with many
2084 <sect2 id="actions-apply">
2085 <title>How Actions are Applied to URLs</title>
2087 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections,
2088 like the <quote><link linkend="aliases">alias</link></quote> sections which will
2089 be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on regular sections: They have a
2090 heading line (often split up to multiple lines for readability) which consist
2091 of a list of actions, separated by whitespace and enclosed in curly braces.
2092 Below that, there is a list of URL patterns, each on a separate line.
2096 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
2097 compared to all patterns in each <quote>action file</quote> file. Every time it matches, the list of
2098 applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated, using the heading
2099 of the section in which the pattern is located. If multiple matches for
2100 the same URL set the same action differently, the last match wins. If not,
2101 the effects are aggregated. E.g. a URL might match a regular section with
2102 a heading line of <literal>{
2103 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link> }</literal>,
2104 then later another one with just <literal>{
2105 +<link linkend="block">block</link> }</literal>, resulting
2106 in <emphasis>both</emphasis> actions to apply. And there may well be
2107 cases where you will want to combine actions together. Such a section then
2113 { +<literal>handle-as-image</literal> +<literal>block</literal> }
2114 # Block these as if they were images. Send no block page.
2116 media.example.com/.*banners
2117 .example.com/images/ads/</screen>
2121 You can trace this process for any given URL by visiting <ulink
2122 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>.
2126 Examples and more detail on this is provided in the Appendix, <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">
2127 Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</link> section.
2131 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2132 <sect2 id="af-patterns">
2133 <title>Patterns</title>
2135 As mentioned, <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>patterns</quote>
2136 to determine what <emphasis>actions</emphasis> might apply to which sites and
2137 pages your browser attempts to access. These <quote>patterns</quote> use wild
2138 card type <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> matching to achieve a high degree of
2139 flexibility. This allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match
2140 against many similar patterns.
2144 Generally, a <application>Privoxy</application> pattern has the form
2145 <literal><domain>/<path></literal>, where both the
2146 <literal><domain></literal> and <literal><path></literal> are
2147 optional. (This is why the special <literal>/</literal> pattern matches all
2148 URLs). Note that the protocol portion of the URL pattern (e.g.
2149 <literal>http://</literal>) should <emphasis>not</emphasis> be included in
2150 the pattern. This is assumed already!
2153 The pattern matching syntax is different for the domain and path parts of
2154 the URL. The domain part uses a simple globbing type matching technique,
2155 while the path part uses a more flexible
2156 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2157 Expressions (PCRE)</quote></ulink> based syntax.
2162 <term><literal>www.example.com/</literal></term>
2165 is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2166 regardless of which document on that server is requested. So ALL pages in
2167 this domain would be covered by the scope of this action. Note that a
2168 simple <literal>example.com</literal> is different and would NOT match.
2173 <term><literal>www.example.com</literal></term>
2176 means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing <literal>/</literal> may
2182 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html</literal></term>
2185 matches only the single document <literal>/index.html</literal>
2186 on <literal>www.example.com</literal>.
2191 <term><literal>/index.html</literal></term>
2194 matches the document <literal>/index.html</literal>, regardless of the domain,
2195 i.e. on <emphasis>any</emphasis> web server anywhere.
2200 <term><literal>index.html</literal></term>
2203 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
2204 there is no top-level domain called <literal>.html</literal>. So its
2212 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2213 <sect3><title>The Domain Pattern</title>
2216 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
2217 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
2223 <term><literal>.example.com</literal></term>
2226 matches any domain that <emphasis>ENDS</emphasis> in
2227 <literal>.example.com</literal>
2232 <term><literal>www.</literal></term>
2235 matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
2236 <literal>www.</literal>
2241 <term><literal>.example.</literal></term>
2244 matches any domain that <emphasis>CONTAINS</emphasis> <literal>.example.</literal>.
2245 And, by the way, also included would be any files or documents that exist
2246 within that domain since no path limitations are specified. (Correctly
2247 speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains <literal>example</literal> as
2248 a domain.) This might be <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2249 <literal>news.example.de</literal>, or
2250 <literal>www.example.net/cgi/testing.pl</literal> for instance. All these
2258 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
2259 themselves. These work similarly to shell globbing type wild-cards:
2260 <quote>*</quote> represents zero or more arbitrary characters (this is
2262 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2263 Expression</quote></ulink> based syntax of <quote>.*</quote>),
2264 <quote>?</quote> represents any single character (this is equivalent to the
2265 regular expression syntax of a simple <quote>.</quote>), and you can define
2266 <quote>character classes</quote> in square brackets which is similar to
2267 the same regular expression technique. All of this can be freely mixed:
2272 <term><literal>ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2275 matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
2276 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>
2281 <term><literal>*ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2284 matches all of the above, and then some.
2289 <term><literal>.?pix.com</literal></term>
2292 matches <literal>www.ipix.com</literal>,
2293 <literal>pictures.epix.com</literal>, <literal>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</literal> etc.
2298 <term><literal>www[1-9a-ez].example.c*</literal></term>
2301 matches <literal>www1.example.com</literal>,
2302 <literal>www4.example.cc</literal>, <literal>wwwd.example.cy</literal>,
2303 <literal>wwwz.example.com</literal> etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
2304 <literal>wwww.example.com</literal>.
2311 While flexible, this is not the sophistication of full regular expression based syntax.
2316 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2319 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2320 <sect3><title>The Path Pattern</title>
2323 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl compatible (PCRE)
2324 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2325 Expression</quote></ulink> based syntax
2326 (through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> library) for
2327 matching the path portion (after the slash), and is thus more flexible.
2331 There is an <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link> with a brief quick-start into regular
2332 expressions, and full (very technical) documentation on PCRE regex syntax is available on-line
2333 at <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/man.txt">http://www.pcre.org/man.txt</ulink>.
2334 You might also find the Perl man page on regular expressions (<literal>man perlre</literal>)
2335 useful, which is available on-line at <ulink
2336 url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html</ulink>.
2340 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the <quote>/</quote>,
2341 i.e. it matches as if it would start with a <quote>^</quote> (regular expression speak
2342 for the beginning of a line).
2346 Please also note that matching in the path is <emphasis>CASE INSENSITIVE</emphasis>
2347 by default, but you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
2348 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch: <literal>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</literal> will match
2349 only documents whose path starts with <literal>PaTtErN</literal> in
2350 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
2355 <term><literal>.example.com/.*</literal></term>
2358 Is equivalent to just <quote>.example.com</quote>, since any documents
2359 within that domain are matched with or without the <quote>.*</quote>
2360 regular expression. This is redundant
2365 <term><literal>.example.com/.*/index.html</literal></term>
2368 Will match any page in the domain of <quote>example.com</quote> that is
2369 named <quote>index.html</quote>, and that is part of some path. For
2370 example, it matches <quote>www.example.com/testing/index.html</quote> but
2371 NOT <quote>www.example.com/index.html</quote> because the regular
2372 expression called for at least two <quote>/'s</quote>, thus the path
2373 requirement. It also would match
2374 <quote>www.example.com/testing/index_html</quote>, because of the
2375 special meta-character <quote>.</quote>.
2380 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)?index\.html</literal></term>
2383 This regular expression is conditional so it will match any page
2384 named <quote>index.html</quote> regardless of path which in this case can
2385 have one or more <quote>/'s</quote>. And this one must contain exactly
2386 <quote>.html</quote> (but does not have to end with that!).
2391 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)</literal></term>
2394 This regular expression will match any path of <quote>example.com</quote>
2395 that contains any of the words <quote>ads</quote>, <quote>banner</quote>,
2396 <quote>banners</quote> (because of the <quote>?</quote>) or <quote>junk</quote>.
2397 The path does not have to end in these words, just contain them.
2402 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)/.*\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$</literal></term>
2405 This is very much the same as above, except now it must end in either
2406 <quote>.jpg</quote>, <quote>.jpeg</quote>, <quote>.gif</quote> or <quote>.png</quote>. So this
2407 one is limited to common image formats.
2414 There are many, many good examples to be found in <filename>default.action</filename>,
2415 and more tutorials below in <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>.
2422 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2425 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2427 <sect2 id="actions">
2428 <title>Actions</title>
2430 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
2431 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a
2432 <quote>+</quote>, and turned off if preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. So a
2433 <literal>+action</literal> means <quote>do that action</quote>, e.g.
2434 <literal>+block</literal> means <quote>please block URLs that match the
2435 following patterns</quote>, and <literal>-block</literal> means <quote>don't
2436 block URLs that match the following patterns, even if <literal>+block</literal>
2437 previously applied.</quote>
2442 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
2443 separated by whitespace, like in
2444 <literal>{+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}}</literal>,
2445 followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which they apply.
2446 Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up a section
2447 of the actions file.
2451 Actions fall into three categories:
2458 Boolean, i.e the action can only be <quote>enabled</quote> or
2459 <quote>disabled</quote>. Syntax:
2463 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # enable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
2464 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable></screen>
2467 Example: <literal>+block</literal>
2474 Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of action.
2479 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and set parameter to <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>,
2480 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
2481 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action. The parameter can be omitted</screen>
2484 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized action,
2485 the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are simply ignored.
2488 Example: <literal>+hide-user-agent{ Mozilla 1.0 }</literal>
2494 Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions,
2495 but they behave differently: If the action applies multiple times to the
2496 same URL, but with different parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> the parameters
2497 from <emphasis>all</emphasis> matches are remembered. This is used for actions
2498 that can be executed for the same request repeatedly, like adding multiple
2499 headers, or filtering through multiple filters. Syntax:
2503 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and add <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> to the list of parameters
2504 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # remove the parameter <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> from the list of parameters
2505 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
2506 <replaceable class="parameter">-name</replaceable> # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list</screen>
2509 Examples: <literal>+add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text}</literal> and
2510 <literal>+filter{html-annoyances}</literal>
2518 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no <quote>actions</quote> are
2519 taken. So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
2520 normal, non-blocking, non-anonymizing proxy. You must specifically enable the
2521 privacy and blocking features you need (although the provided default actions
2522 files will give a good starting point).
2526 Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. So exceptions
2527 to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
2528 in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files such
2529 as <filename>user.action</filename>). For multi-valued actions, the actions
2530 are applied in the order they are specified. Actions files are processed in
2531 the order they are defined in <filename>config</filename> (the default
2532 installation has three actions files). It also quite possible for any given
2533 URL to match more than one <quote>pattern</quote> (because of wildcards and
2534 regular expressions), and thus to trigger more than one set of actions! Last
2538 <!-- start actions listing -->
2540 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> actions are:
2544 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2545 <!-- Please note the below defined actions use id's that are -->
2546 <!-- probably linked from other places, so please don't change. -->
2548 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2551 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2553 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="add-header">
2554 <title>add-header</title>
2558 <term>Typical use:</term>
2560 <para>Confuse log analysis, custom applications</para>
2565 <term>Effect:</term>
2568 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
2575 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2577 <para>Multi-value.</para>
2582 <term>Parameter:</term>
2585 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not checked.
2586 It is recommended that you use the <quote><literal>X-</literal></quote> prefix
2596 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
2597 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
2598 <quote>HTTP headers</quote> are, you definitely don't need to worry about this
2605 <term>Example usage:</term>
2608 <screen>+add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}</screen>
2616 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2617 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="block">
2618 <title>block</title>
2622 <term>Typical use:</term>
2624 <para>Block ads or other unwanted content</para>
2629 <term>Effect:</term>
2632 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the
2633 requests are trapped by &my-app; and the requested URL is never retrieved,
2634 but is answered locally with a substitute page or image, as determined by
2636 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2638 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>, and
2640 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> actions.
2648 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2650 <para>Boolean.</para>
2655 <term>Parameter:</term>
2665 <application>Privoxy</application> sends a special <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page
2666 for requests to blocked pages. This page contains links to find out why the request
2667 was blocked, and a click-through to the blocked content (the latter only if compiled with the
2668 force feature enabled). The <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page adapts to the available
2669 screen space -- it displays full-blown if space allows, or miniaturized and text-only
2670 if loaded into a small frame or window. If you are using <application>Privoxy</application>
2671 right now, you can take a look at the
2672 <ulink url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
2676 A very important exception occurs if <emphasis>both</emphasis>
2677 <literal>block</literal> and <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2678 apply to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
2679 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
2680 (see below) also applies, the type of image will be determined by its parameter,
2681 if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is sent.
2684 It is important to understand this process, in order
2685 to understand how <application>Privoxy</application> deals with
2686 ads and other unwanted content. Blocking is a core feature, and one
2687 upon which various other features depend.
2690 The <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
2691 action can perform a very similar task, by <quote>blocking</quote>
2692 banner images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
2693 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
2694 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse the two.
2700 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2704 # Block and replace with "blocked" page
2705 .nasty-stuff.example.com
2707 {+block +handle-as-image}
2708 # Block and replace with image
2712 {+block +handle-as-empty-document}
2713 # Block and then ignore
2714 adserver.exampleclick.net/.*\.js$</screen>
2724 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2725 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-header-filter">
2726 <title>client-header-filter</title>
2730 <term>Typical use:</term>
2733 Rewrite or remove single client headers.
2739 <term>Effect:</term>
2742 All client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
2743 the specified regular expression based substitutions.
2750 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2752 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2757 <term>Parameter:</term>
2760 The name of a client-header filter, as defined in one of the
2761 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
2770 Client-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
2771 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
2772 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
2775 Client-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
2776 and use their output as input.
2779 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
2780 to learn which client-header filters are available by default, and how to
2787 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2791 {+client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}}
2802 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2803 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="content-type-overwrite">
2807 <title>content-type-overwrite</title>
2811 <term>Typical use:</term>
2813 <para>Stop useless download menus from popping up, or change the browser's rendering mode</para>
2818 <term>Effect:</term>
2821 Replaces the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header.
2828 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2830 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2835 <term>Parameter:</term>
2847 The <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header is used by the
2848 browser to decide what to do with the document. The value of this
2849 header can cause the browser to open a download menu instead of
2850 displaying the document by itself, even if the document's format is
2851 supported by the browser.
2854 The declared content type can also affect which rendering mode
2855 the browser chooses. If XHTML is delivered as <quote>text/html</quote>,
2856 many browsers treat it as yet another broken HTML document.
2857 If it is send as <quote>application/xml</quote>, browsers with
2858 XHTML support will only display it, if the syntax is correct.
2861 If you see a web site that proudly uses XHTML buttons, but sets
2862 <quote>Content-Type: text/html</quote>, you can use &my-app;
2863 to overwrite it with <quote>application/xml</quote> and validate
2864 the web master's claim inside your XHTML-supporting browser.
2865 If the syntax is incorrect, the browser will complain loudly.
2868 You can also go the opposite direction: if your browser prints
2869 error messages instead of rendering a document falsely declared
2870 as XHTML, you can overwrite the content type with
2871 <quote>text/html</quote> and have it rendered as broken HTML document.
2874 By default <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal> only replaces
2875 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> headers that look like some kind of text.
2876 If you want to overwrite it unconditionally, you have to combine it with
2877 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>.
2878 This limitation exists for a reason, think twice before circumventing it.
2881 Most of the time it's easier to replace this action with a custom
2882 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
2883 It allows you to activate it for every document of a certain site and it will still
2884 only replace the content types you aimed at.
2887 Of course you can apply <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal>
2888 to a whole site and then make URL based exceptions, but it's a lot
2889 more work to get the same precision.
2895 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
2898 <screen># Check if www.example.net/ really uses valid XHTML
2899 { +content-type-overwrite{application/xml} }
2902 # but leave the content type unmodified if the URL looks like a style sheet
2903 {-content-type-overwrite}
2904 www.example.net/.*\.css$
2905 www.example.net/.*style
2914 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2915 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-client-header">
2919 <title>crunch-client-header</title>
2923 <term>Typical use:</term>
2925 <para>Remove a client header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
2930 <term>Effect:</term>
2933 Deletes every header sent by the client that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
2940 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2942 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2947 <term>Parameter:</term>
2959 This action allows you to block client headers for which no dedicated
2960 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists.
2961 <application>Privoxy</application> will remove every client header that
2962 contains the string you supplied as parameter.
2965 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
2966 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
2967 they contain the same string.
2970 <literal>crunch-client-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
2971 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
2972 parts of them, you should use a
2973 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header filter</link></literal>.
2977 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
2984 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2987 <screen># Block the non-existent "Privacy-Violation:" client header
2988 { +crunch-client-header{Privacy-Violation:} }
2998 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2999 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-if-none-match">
3000 <title>crunch-if-none-match</title>
3006 <term>Typical use:</term>
3008 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
3013 <term>Effect:</term>
3016 Deletes the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header.
3023 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3025 <para>Boolean.</para>
3030 <term>Parameter:</term>
3042 Removing the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header
3043 is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
3044 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote> which
3045 would cause the browser to use a cached copy of the page.
3048 It is also useful to make sure the header isn't used as a cookie
3052 Blocking the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> header shouldn't cause any
3053 caching problems, as long as the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> header
3054 isn't blocked as well.
3057 It is recommended to use this action together with
3058 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
3060 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>.
3066 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3069 <screen># Let the browser revalidate cached documents without being tracked across sessions
3070 { +hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
3071 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
3072 +crunch-if-none-match}
3081 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3082 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-incoming-cookies">
3083 <title>crunch-incoming-cookies</title>
3087 <term>Typical use:</term>
3090 Prevent the web server from setting any cookies on your system
3096 <term>Effect:</term>
3099 Deletes any <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from server replies.
3106 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3108 <para>Boolean.</para>
3113 <term>Parameter:</term>
3125 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> cookies. For
3126 <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> cookies, use
3127 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>.
3128 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable cookies completely.
3131 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3132 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3133 since it would prevent the session cookies from being set. See also
3134 <literal><link linkend="filter-content-cookies">filter-content-cookies</link></literal>.
3140 <term>Example usage:</term>
3143 <screen>+crunch-incoming-cookies</screen>
3151 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3152 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-server-header">
3153 <title>crunch-server-header</title>
3159 <term>Typical use:</term>
3161 <para>Remove a server header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3166 <term>Effect:</term>
3169 Deletes every header sent by the server that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3176 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3178 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3183 <term>Parameter:</term>
3195 This action allows you to block server headers for which no dedicated
3196 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists. <application>Privoxy</application>
3197 will remove every server header that contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3200 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3201 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3202 they contain the same string.
3205 <literal>crunch-server-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3206 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3207 parts of them, you should use a custom
3208 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
3212 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3219 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3222 <screen># Crunch server headers that try to prevent caching
3223 { +crunch-server-header{no-cache} }
3232 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3233 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-outgoing-cookies">
3234 <title>crunch-outgoing-cookies</title>
3238 <term>Typical use:</term>
3241 Prevent the web server from reading any cookies from your system
3247 <term>Effect:</term>
3250 Deletes any <quote>Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from client requests.
3257 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3259 <para>Boolean.</para>
3264 <term>Parameter:</term>
3276 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> cookies. For
3277 <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> cookies, use
3278 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>.
3279 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable cookies completely.
3282 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3283 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3284 since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
3290 <term>Example usage:</term>
3293 <screen>+crunch-outgoing-cookies</screen>
3302 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3303 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="deanimate-gifs">
3304 <title>deanimate-gifs</title>
3308 <term>Typical use:</term>
3310 <para>Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.</para>
3315 <term>Effect:</term>
3318 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
3325 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3327 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3332 <term>Parameter:</term>
3335 <quote>last</quote> or <quote>first</quote>
3344 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
3345 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
3346 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last
3347 frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
3348 most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
3349 last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
3352 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
3353 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
3360 <term>Example usage:</term>
3363 <screen>+deanimate-gifs{last}</screen>
3370 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3371 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="downgrade-http-version">
3372 <title>downgrade-http-version</title>
3376 <term>Typical use:</term>
3378 <para>Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1</para>
3383 <term>Effect:</term>
3386 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
3393 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3395 <para>Boolean.</para>
3400 <term>Parameter:</term>
3412 This is a left-over from the time when <application>Privoxy</application>
3413 didn't support important HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the
3414 unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server
3415 out there. Not all (optional) HTTP/1.1 features are supported yet, so there
3416 is a chance you might need this action.
3422 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3425 <screen>{+downgrade-http-version}
3426 problem-host.example.com</screen>
3434 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3435 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="fast-redirects">
3436 <title>fast-redirects</title>
3440 <term>Typical use:</term>
3442 <para>Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links.</para>
3447 <term>Effect:</term>
3450 Detects redirection URLs and redirects the browser without contacting
3451 the redirection server first.
3458 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3460 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3465 <term>Parameter:</term>
3470 <quote>simple-check</quote> to just search for the string <quote>http://</quote>
3471 to detect redirection URLs.
3476 <quote>check-decoded-url</quote> to decode URLs (if necessary) before searching
3477 for redirection URLs.
3488 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
3489 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
3490 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
3491 resulting from this scheme typically look like:
3492 <quote>http://www.example.org/click-tracker.cgi?target=http%3a//www.example.net/</quote>.
3495 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
3496 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
3497 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
3498 to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
3499 browser asks the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
3503 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
3504 If it is enabled by default, you will have to create some exceptions to
3505 this action. It can lead to failures in several ways:
3508 Not every URLs with other URLs as parameters is evil.
3509 Some sites offer a real service that requires this information to work.
3510 For example a validation service needs to know, which document to validate.
3511 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> assumes that every URL parameter that
3512 looks like another URL is a redirection target, and will always redirect to
3513 the last one. Most of the time the assumption is correct, but if it isn't,
3514 the user gets redirected anyway.
3517 Another failure occurs if the URL contains other parameters after the URL parameter.
3519 <quote>http://www.example.org/?redirect=http%3a//www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3520 contains the redirection URL <quote>http://www.example.net/</quote>,
3521 followed by another parameter. <literal>fast-redirects</literal> doesn't know that
3522 and will cause a redirect to <quote>http://www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3523 Depending on the target server configuration, the parameter will be silently ignored
3524 or lead to a <quote>page not found</quote> error. You can prevent this problem by
3525 first using the <literal><link linkend="redirect">redirect</link></literal> action
3526 to remove the last part of the URL, but it requires a little effort.
3529 To detect a redirection URL, <literal>fast-redirects</literal> only
3530 looks for the string <quote>http://</quote>, either in plain text
3531 (invalid but often used) or encoded as <quote>http%3a//</quote>.
3532 Some sites use their own URL encoding scheme, encrypt the address
3533 of the target server or replace it with a database id. In theses cases
3534 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> is fooled and the request reaches the
3535 redirection server where it probably gets logged.
3541 <term>Example usage:</term>
3545 { +fast-redirects{simple-check} }
3548 { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
3549 another.example.com/testing</screen>
3558 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3559 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter">
3560 <title>filter</title>
3564 <term>Typical use:</term>
3566 <para>Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
3567 do fun text replacements, add personalized effects, etc.</para>
3572 <term>Effect:</term>
3575 All instances of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which
3576 this action applies, can be filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular
3577 expression based substitutions. (Note: as of version 3.0.3 plain text documents
3578 are exempted from filtering, because web servers often use the
3579 <literal>text/plain</literal> MIME type for all files whose type they don't know.)
3586 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3588 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3593 <term>Parameter:</term>
3596 The name of a content filter, as defined in the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>.
3597 Filters can be defined in one or more files as defined by the
3598 <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
3599 option in the <link linkend="config">config file</link>.
3600 <filename>default.filter</filename> is the collection of filters
3601 supplied by the developers. Locally defined filters should go
3602 in their own file, such as <filename>user.filter</filename>.
3605 When used in its negative form,
3606 and without parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> filtering is completely disabled.
3615 For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
3616 in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below for
3620 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
3621 slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
3622 passed the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way
3623 since the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more
3624 noticeable on slower connections.
3627 <quote>Rolling your own</quote>
3628 filters requires a knowledge of
3629 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
3630 Expressions</quote></ulink> and
3631 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html"><quote>HTML</quote></ulink>.
3632 This is very powerful feature, and potentially very intrusive.
3633 Filters should be used with caution, and where an equivalent
3634 <quote>action</quote> is not available.
3637 The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
3638 <literal><link linkend="buffer-limit">buffer-limit</link></literal>
3639 option in the main <link linkend="config">config file</link>. The
3640 default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the buffered
3641 data, and all pending data, is passed through unfiltered.
3644 Inappropriate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
3645 (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data
3646 (from HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate
3647 the integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might
3648 be necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering
3649 by defining appropriate <literal>-filter</literal> exceptions.
3652 Compressed content can't be filtered either, unless &my-app;
3653 is compiled with zlib support (requires at least &my-app; 3.0.7),
3654 in which case &my-app; will decompress the content before filtering
3658 If you use a &my-app; version without zlib support, but want filtering to work on
3659 as much documents as possible, even those that would normally be sent compressed,
3660 you must use the <literal><link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link></literal>
3661 action in conjunction with <literal>filter</literal>.
3664 Content filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
3665 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
3666 action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism
3667 works quite differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners
3668 based on their size (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat
3672 <link linkend="contact">Feedback</link> with suggestions for new or
3673 improved filters is particularly welcome!
3676 The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
3677 predefined filter. There are <link linkend="predefined-filters">more
3678 verbose explanations</link> of what these filters do in the <link
3679 linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>.
3685 <term>Example usage (with filters from the distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file).
3686 See <link linkend="PREDEFINED-FILTERS">the Predefined Filters section</link> for
3687 more explanation on each:</term>
3690 <anchor id="filter-js-annoyances">
3691 <screen>+filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse</screen>
3694 <anchor id="filter-js-events">
3695 <screen>+filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites)</screen>
3698 <anchor id="filter-html-annoyances">
3699 <screen>+filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse</screen>
3702 <anchor id="filter-content-cookies">
3703 <screen>+filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content</screen>
3706 <anchor id="filter-refresh-tags">
3707 <screen>+filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups)</screen>
3710 <anchor id="filter-unsolicited-popups">
3711 <screen>+filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
3714 <anchor id="filter-all-popups">
3715 <screen>+filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
3718 <anchor id="filter-img-reorder">
3719 <screen>+filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective</screen>
3722 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-size">
3723 <screen>+filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size</screen>
3726 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-link">
3727 <screen>+filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers</screen>
3730 <anchor id="filter-webbugs">
3731 <screen>+filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)</screen>
3734 <anchor id="filter-tiny-textforms">
3735 <screen>+filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap</screen>
3738 <anchor id="filter-jumping-windows">
3739 <screen>+filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves</screen>
3742 <anchor id="filter-frameset-borders">
3743 <screen>+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizeable</screen>
3746 <anchor id="filter-demoronizer">
3747 <screen>+filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets</screen>
3750 <anchor id="filter-shockwave-flash">
3751 <screen>+filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects</screen>
3754 <anchor id="filter-quicktime-kioskmode">
3755 <screen>+filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies savable</screen>
3758 <anchor id="filter-fun">
3759 <screen>+filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!</screen>
3762 <anchor id="filter-crude-parental">
3763 <screen>+filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering (demo only)</screen>
3766 <anchor id="filter-ie-exploits">
3767 <screen>+filter{ie-exploits} # Disable some known Internet Explorer bug exploits</screen>
3770 <anchor id="filter-site-specifics">
3771 <screen>+filter{site-specifics} # Custom filters for specific site related problems</screen>
3774 <anchor id="filter-google">
3775 <screen>+filter{google} # Removes text ads and other Google specific improvements</screen>
3778 <anchor id="filter-yahoo">
3779 <screen>+filter{yahoo} # Removes text ads and other Yahoo specific improvements</screen>
3782 <anchor id="filter-msn">
3783 <screen>+filter{msn} # Removes text ads and other MSN specific improvements</screen>
3786 <anchor id="filter-blogspot">
3787 <screen>+filter{blogspot} # Cleans up Blogspot blogs</screen>
3790 <anchor id="filter-no-ping">
3791 <screen>+filter{no-ping} # Removes non-standard ping attributes from anchor and area tags</screen>
3799 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3800 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="force-text-mode">
3801 <title>force-text-mode</title>
3807 <term>Typical use:</term>
3809 <para>Force <application>Privoxy</application> to treat a document as if it was in some kind of <emphasis>text</emphasis> format. </para>
3814 <term>Effect:</term>
3817 Declares a document as text, even if the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> isn't detected as such.
3824 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3826 <para>Boolean.</para>
3831 <term>Parameter:</term>
3843 As explained <literal><link linkend="filter">above</link></literal>,
3844 <application>Privoxy</application> tries to only filter files that are
3845 in some kind of text format. The same restrictions apply to
3846 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite</link></literal>.
3847 <literal>force-text-mode</literal> declares a document as text,
3848 without looking at the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> first.
3852 Think twice before activating this action. Filtering binary data
3853 with regular expressions can cause file damage.
3860 <term>Example usage:</term>
3873 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3874 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-empty-document">
3875 <title>handle-as-empty-document</title>
3881 <term>Typical use:</term>
3883 <para>Mark URLs that should be replaced by empty documents <emphasis>if they get blocked</emphasis></para>
3888 <term>Effect:</term>
3891 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs.
3892 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
3893 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote>
3894 page, or an empty document will be sent to the client as a substitute for the blocked content.
3895 The <emphasis>empty</emphasis> document isn't literally empty, but actually contains a single space.
3902 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3904 <para>Boolean.</para>
3909 <term>Parameter:</term>
3921 Some browsers complain about syntax errors if JavaScript documents
3922 are blocked with <application>Privoxy's</application>
3923 default HTML page; this option can be used to silence them.
3924 And of course this action can also be used to eliminate the &my-app;
3925 BLOCKED message in frames.
3928 The content type for the empty document can be specified with
3929 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{}</link></literal>,
3930 but usually this isn't necessary.
3936 <term>Example usage:</term>
3939 <screen># Block all documents on example.org that end with ".js",
3940 # but send an empty document instead of the usual HTML message.
3941 {+block +handle-as-empty-document}
3951 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3952 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-image">
3953 <title>handle-as-image</title>
3957 <term>Typical use:</term>
3959 <para>Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images <emphasis>if they do get blocked</emphasis>, rather than HTML pages)</para>
3964 <term>Effect:</term>
3967 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
3968 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
3969 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
3970 page, or a replacement image (as determined by the <literal><link
3971 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> action) will be sent to the
3972 client as a substitute for the blocked content.
3979 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3981 <para>Boolean.</para>
3986 <term>Parameter:</term>
3998 The below generic example section is actually part of <filename>default.action</filename>.
3999 It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
4003 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
4004 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
4005 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
4008 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (in-line) ad
4009 frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
4010 Forcing <literal>handle-as-image</literal> in this situation will not replace the
4011 ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
4017 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
4020 <screen># Generic image extensions:
4023 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
4025 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
4026 # blocked as images:
4028 {+block +handle-as-image}
4029 some.nasty-banner-server.com/junk.cgi?output=trash
4031 # Banner source! Who cares if they also have non-image content?
4041 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4042 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-accept-language">
4043 <title>hide-accept-language</title>
4049 <term>Typical use:</term>
4051 <para>Pretend to use different language settings.</para>
4056 <term>Effect:</term>
4059 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> HTTP header in client requests.
4066 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4068 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4073 <term>Parameter:</term>
4076 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4085 Faking the browser's language settings can be useful to make a
4086 foreign User-Agent set with
4087 <literal><link linkend="hide-user-agent">hide-user-agent</link></literal>
4091 However some sites with content in different languages check the
4092 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> to decide which one to take by default.
4093 Sometimes it isn't possible to later switch to another language without
4094 changing the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header first.
4097 Therefore it's a good idea to either only change the
4098 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header to languages you understand,
4099 or to languages that aren't wide spread.
4102 Before setting the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header
4103 to a rare language, you should consider that it helps to
4104 make your requests unique and thus easier to trace.
4105 If you don't plan to change this header frequently,
4106 you should stick to a common language.
4112 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4115 <screen># Pretend to use Canadian language settings.
4116 {+hide-accept-language{en-ca} \
4117 +hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenBSD i386; en-CA; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060628 Firefox/1.5.0.4} \
4127 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4128 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-content-disposition">
4129 <title>hide-content-disposition</title>
4135 <term>Typical use:</term>
4137 <para>Prevent download menus for content you prefer to view inside the browser.</para>
4142 <term>Effect:</term>
4145 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header set by some servers.
4152 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4154 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4159 <term>Parameter:</term>
4162 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4171 Some servers set the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header for
4172 documents they assume you want to save locally before viewing them.
4173 The <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header contains the file name
4174 the browser is supposed to use by default.
4177 In most browsers that understand this header, it makes it impossible to
4178 <emphasis>just view</emphasis> the document, without downloading it first,
4179 even if it's just a simple text file or an image.
4182 Removing the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header helps
4183 to prevent this annoyance, but some browsers additionally check the
4184 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> header, before they decide if they can
4185 display a document without saving it first. In these cases, you have
4186 to change this header as well, before the browser stops displaying
4190 It is also possible to change the server's file name suggestion
4191 to another one, but in most cases it isn't worth the time to set
4198 <term>Example usage:</term>
4201 <screen># Disarm the download link in Sourceforge's patch tracker
4203 +content-type-overwrite{text/plain}\
4204 +hide-content-disposition{block} }
4205 .sourceforge.net/tracker/download\.php</screen>
4213 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4214 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-if-modified-since">
4215 <title>hide-if-modified-since</title>
4221 <term>Typical use:</term>
4223 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
4228 <term>Effect:</term>
4231 Deletes the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> HTTP client header or modifies its value.
4238 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4240 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4245 <term>Parameter:</term>
4248 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or a user defined value that specifies a range of hours.
4257 Removing this header is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
4258 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the
4259 browser to use a cached copy of the page.
4262 Instead of removing the header, <literal>hide-if-modified-since</literal> can
4263 also add or subtract a random amount of time to/from the header's value.
4264 You specify a range of minutes where the random factor should be chosen from and
4265 <application>Privoxy</application> does the rest. A negative value means
4266 subtracting, a positive value adding.
4269 Randomizing the value of the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> makes
4270 sure it isn't used as a cookie replacement, but you will run into
4271 caching problems if the random range is too high.
4274 It is a good idea to only use a small negative value and let
4275 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>
4276 handle the greater changes.
4279 It is also recommended to use this action together with
4280 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>.
4286 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4289 <screen># Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
4290 { +hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
4291 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
4292 +crunch-if-none-match}
4301 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4302 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-forwarded-for-headers">
4303 <title>hide-forwarded-for-headers</title>
4309 <term>Typical use:</term>
4311 <para>Improve privacy by hiding the true source of the request</para>
4316 <term>Effect:</term>
4319 Deletes any existing <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> HTTP header from client requests,
4320 and prevents adding a new one.
4327 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4329 <para>Boolean.</para>
4334 <term>Parameter:</term>
4346 It is fairly safe to leave this on.
4349 This action is scheduled for improvement: It should be able to generate forged
4350 <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> headers using random IP addresses from a specified network,
4351 to make successive requests from the same client look like requests from a pool of different
4352 users sharing the same proxy.
4358 <term>Example usage:</term>
4361 <screen>+hide-forwarded-for-headers</screen>
4369 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4370 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-from-header">
4371 <title>hide-from-header</title>
4375 <term>Typical use:</term>
4377 <para>Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address</para>
4382 <term>Effect:</term>
4385 Deletes any existing <quote>From:</quote> HTTP header, or replaces it with the
4393 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4395 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4400 <term>Parameter:</term>
4403 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4412 The keyword <quote>block</quote> will completely remove the header
4413 (not to be confused with the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
4417 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
4418 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
4419 is actually used by a real person.
4422 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send
4423 <quote>From:</quote> headers anymore.
4429 <term>Example usage:</term>
4432 <screen>+hide-from-header{block}</screen> or
4433 <screen>+hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}</screen>
4441 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4442 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-referrer">
4443 <title>hide-referrer</title>
4444 <anchor id="hide-referer">
4447 <term>Typical use:</term>
4449 <para>Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site</para>
4454 <term>Effect:</term>
4457 Deletes the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) HTTP header from the client request,
4458 or replaces it with a forged one.
4465 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4467 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4472 <term>Parameter:</term>
4476 <para><quote>conditional-block</quote> to delete the header completely if the host has changed.</para>
4479 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header unconditionally.</para>
4482 <para><quote>forge</quote> to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are talking to.</para>
4485 <para>Any other string to set a user defined referrer.</para>
4495 <literal>conditional-block</literal> is the only parameter,
4496 that isn't easily detected in the server's log file. If it blocks the
4497 referrer, the request will look like the visitor used a bookmark or
4498 typed in the address directly.
4501 Leaving the referrer unmodified for requests on the same host
4502 allows the server owner to see the visitor's <quote>click path</quote>,
4503 but in most cases she could also get that information by comparing
4504 other parts of the log file: for example the User-Agent if it isn't
4505 a very common one, or the user's IP address if it doesn't change between
4509 Always blocking the referrer, or using a custom one, can lead to
4510 failures on servers that check the referrer before they answer any
4511 requests, in an attempt to prevent their valuable content from being
4512 embedded or linked to elsewhere.
4515 Both <literal>conditional-block</literal> and <literal>forge</literal>
4516 will work with referrer checks, as long as content and valid referring page
4517 are on the same host. Most of the time that's the case.
4520 <literal>hide-referer</literal> is an alternate spelling of
4521 <literal>hide-referrer</literal> and the two can be can be freely
4522 substituted with each other. (<quote>referrer</quote> is the
4523 correct English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it
4524 requires it to be spelled as <quote>referer</quote>.)
4530 <term>Example usage:</term>
4533 <screen>+hide-referrer{forge}</screen> or
4534 <screen>+hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}</screen>
4542 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4543 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-user-agent">
4544 <title>hide-user-agent</title>
4548 <term>Typical use:</term>
4550 <para>Conceal your type of browser and client operating system</para>
4555 <term>Effect:</term>
4558 Replaces the value of the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> HTTP header
4559 in client requests with the specified value.
4566 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4568 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4573 <term>Parameter:</term>
4576 Any user-defined string.
4586 This can lead to problems on web sites that depend on looking at this header in
4587 order to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
4588 way, is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> the right thing to do: good web sites
4589 work browser-independently).
4591 <ulink url="http://www.javascriptkit.com/javaindex.shtml">smart way to do
4597 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
4598 browsers will access the same <application>Privoxy</application> is
4599 <emphasis>not recommended</emphasis>. In single-user, single-browser
4600 setups, you might use it to delete your OS version information from
4601 the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known bugs for your
4602 OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to access
4603 sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
4604 reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not
4605 let <application>Mozilla</application> enter, yet forging to a
4606 <application>Netscape 6.1</application> user-agent works just fine.
4607 (Must be just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
4610 This action is scheduled for improvement.
4616 <term>Example usage:</term>
4619 <screen>+hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}</screen>
4627 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4628 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="inspect-jpegs">
4629 <title>inspect-jpegs</title>
4635 <term>Typical use:</term>
4637 <para>To protect against the MS buffer over-run in JPEG processing</para>
4642 <term>Effect:</term>
4645 Protect against a known exploit
4652 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4654 <para>Boolean.</para>
4659 <term>Parameter:</term>
4671 See Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-028. JPEG images are one of the most
4672 common image types found across the Internet. The exploit as described can
4673 allow execution of code on the target system, giving an attacker access
4674 to the system in question by merely planting an altered JPEG image, which
4675 would have no obvious indications of what lurks inside. This action
4676 prevents unwanted intrusion.
4683 <term>Example usage:</term>
4685 <para><screen>+inspect-jpegs</screen></para>
4694 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4695 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="kill-popups">
4696 <title>kill-popups<anchor id="kill-popup"></title>
4700 <term>Typical use:</term>
4702 <para>Eliminate those annoying pop-up windows (deprecated)</para>
4707 <term>Effect:</term>
4710 While loading the document, replace JavaScript code that opens
4711 pop-up windows with (syntactically neutral) dummy code on the fly.
4718 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4720 <para>Boolean.</para>
4725 <term>Parameter:</term>
4737 This action is basically a built-in, hardwired special-purpose filter
4738 action, but there are important differences: For <literal>kill-popups</literal>,
4739 the document need not be buffered, so it can be incrementally rendered while
4740 downloading. But <literal>kill-popups</literal> doesn't catch as many pop-ups as
4742 linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>all-popups</replaceable>}</link></literal>
4743 does and is not as smart as <literal><link
4744 linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>unsolicited-popups</replaceable>}</link>
4748 Think of it as a fast and efficient replacement for a filter that you
4749 can use if you don't want any filtering at all. Note that it doesn't make
4750 sense to combine it with any <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> action,
4751 since as soon as one <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> applies,
4752 the whole document needs to be buffered anyway, which destroys the advantage of
4753 the <literal>kill-popups</literal> action over its filter equivalent.
4756 Killing all pop-ups unconditionally is problematic. Many shops and banks rely on
4757 pop-ups to display forms, shopping carts etc, and the <literal><link
4758 linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>unsolicited-popups</replaceable>}</link>
4759 </literal> does a better job of catching only the unwanted ones.
4762 If the only kind of pop-ups that you want to kill are exit consoles (those
4763 <emphasis>really nasty</emphasis> windows that appear when you close an other
4764 one), you might want to use
4766 linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>js-annoyances</replaceable>}</literal>
4770 This action is most appropriate for browsers that don't have any controls
4771 for unwanted pop-ups. Not recommended for general usage.
4776 An alternate spelling is <literal>+kill-popup</literal>, which is
4784 <term>Example usage:</term>
4786 <para><screen>+kill-popups</screen></para>
4793 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4794 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="limit-connect">
4795 <title>limit-connect</title>
4799 <term>Typical use:</term>
4801 <para>Prevent abuse of <application>Privoxy</application> as a TCP proxy relay or disable SSL for untrusted sites</para>
4806 <term>Effect:</term>
4809 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
4816 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4818 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4823 <term>Parameter:</term>
4826 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
4827 defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
4836 By default, i.e. if no <literal>limit-connect</literal> action applies,
4837 <application>Privoxy</application> only allows HTTP CONNECT
4838 requests to port 443 (the standard, secure HTTPS port). Use
4839 <literal>limit-connect</literal> if more fine-grained control is desired
4840 for some or all destinations.
4843 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
4844 (<quote>https://</quote> URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
4845 the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
4846 short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
4847 This can be a big security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can be
4848 abused as TCP relays very easily.
4851 <application>Privoxy</application> relays HTTPS traffic without seeing
4852 the decoded content. Websites can leverage this limitation to circumvent &my-app;'s
4853 filters. By specifying an invalid port range you can disable HTTPS entirely.
4854 If you plan to disable SSL by default, consider enabling
4855 <literal><link linkend="treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks ">treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</link></literal>
4856 as well, to be able to quickly create exceptions.
4862 <term>Example usages:</term>
4864 <!-- I had trouble getting the spacing to look right in my browser -->
4865 <!-- I probably have the wrong font setup, bollocks. -->
4866 <!-- Apparently the emphasis tag uses a proportional font no matter what -->
4868 <screen>+limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need not be specified.
4869 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
4870 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
4871 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK
4872 +limit-connect{,} # No HTTPS/SSL traffic is allowed</screen>
4879 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4880 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="prevent-compression">
4881 <title>prevent-compression</title>
4885 <term>Typical use:</term>
4888 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
4889 passed through <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>s.
4895 <term>Effect:</term>
4898 Removes the Accept-Encoding header which can be used to ask for compressed transfer.
4905 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4907 <para>Boolean.</para>
4912 <term>Parameter:</term>
4924 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
4925 is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But the <literal><link
4926 linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>, <literal><link linkend="deanimate-gifs">deanimate-gifs</link></literal>
4927 and <literal><link linkend="kill-popups">kill-popups</link></literal> actions need
4928 access to the uncompressed data.
4931 When compiled with zlib support (available since &my-app; 3.0.7), content that should be
4932 filtered is decompressed on-the-fly and you don't have to worry about this action.
4933 If you are using an older &my-app; version, or one that hasn't been compiled with zlib
4934 support, this action can be used to convince the server to send the content uncompressed.
4937 Most text-based instances compress very well, the size is seldom decreased by less than 50%,
4938 for markup-heavy instances like news feeds saving more than 90% of the original size isn't
4942 Not using compression will therefore slow down the transfer, and you should only
4943 enable this action if you really need it. As of &my-app; 3.0.7 it's disabled in all
4944 predefined action settings.
4947 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
4948 documents correctly. Broken PHP applications tend to send an empty document body,
4949 some IIS versions only send the beginning of the content. If you enable
4950 <literal>prevent-compression</literal> per default, you might want to add
4951 exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
4957 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
4961 # Selectively turn off compression, and enable a filter
4963 { +filter{tiny-textforms} +prevent-compression }
4964 # Match only these sites
4969 # Or instead, we could set a universal default:
4971 { +prevent-compression }
4974 # Then maybe make exceptions for broken sites:
4976 { -prevent-compression }
4977 .compusa.com/</screen>
4986 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4987 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="overwrite-last-modified">
4988 <title>overwrite-last-modified</title>
4994 <term>Typical use:</term>
4996 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
5001 <term>Effect:</term>
5004 Deletes the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> HTTP server header or modifies its value.
5011 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5013 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5018 <term>Parameter:</term>
5021 One of the keywords: <quote>block</quote>, <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote>
5022 and <quote>randomize</quote>
5031 Removing the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header is useful for filter
5032 testing, where you want to force a real reload instead of getting status
5033 code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the browser to reuse the old
5034 version of the page.
5037 The <quote>randomize</quote> option overwrites the value of the
5038 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with a randomly chosen time
5039 between the original value and the current time. In theory the server
5040 could send each document with a different <quote>Last-Modified:</quote>
5041 header to track visits without using cookies. <quote>Randomize</quote>
5042 makes it impossible and the browser can still revalidate cached documents.
5045 <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote> overwrites the value of the
5046 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with the current time. You could use
5047 this option together with
5048 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>
5049 to further customize your random range.
5052 The preferred parameter here is <quote>randomize</quote>. It is safe
5053 to use, as long as the time settings are more or less correct.
5054 If the server sets the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header to the time
5055 of the request, the random range becomes zero and the value stays the same.
5056 Therefore you should later randomize it a second time with
5057 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>,
5061 It is also recommended to use this action together with
5062 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>.
5068 <term>Example usage:</term>
5071 <screen># Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
5072 { +hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
5073 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
5074 +crunch-if-none-match}
5083 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5084 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="redirect">
5085 <title>redirect</title>
5091 <term>Typical use:</term>
5094 Redirect requests to other sites.
5100 <term>Effect:</term>
5103 Convinces the browser that the requested document has been moved
5104 to another location and the browser should get it from there.
5111 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5113 <para>Parameterized</para>
5118 <term>Parameter:</term>
5121 An absolute URL or a single pcrs command.
5130 Requests to which this action applies are answered with a
5131 HTTP redirect to URLs of your choosing. The new URL is
5132 either provided as parameter, or derived by applying a
5133 single pcrs command to the original URL.
5136 This action will be ignored if you use it together with
5137 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>.
5138 It can be combined with
5139 <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects{check-decoded-url}</link></literal>
5140 to redirect to a decoded version of a rewritten URL.
5143 Use this action carefully, make sure not to create redirection loops
5144 and be aware that using your own redirects might make it
5145 possible to fingerprint your requests.
5151 <term>Example usages:</term>
5154 <screen># Replace example.com's style sheet with another one
5155 { +redirect{http://localhost/css-replacements/example.com.css} }
5156 example.com/stylesheet\.css
5158 # Create a short, easy to remember nickname for a favorite site
5159 # (relies on the browser accept and forward invalid URLs to &my-app;)
5160 { +redirect{http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html} }
5163 # Always use the expanded view for Undeadly.org articles
5164 # (Note the $ at the end of the URL pattern to make sure
5165 # the request for the rewritten URL isn't redirected as well)
5166 {+redirect{s@$@&mode=expanded@}}
5167 undeadly.org/cgi\?action=article&sid=\d*$</screen>
5176 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5177 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-vanilla-wafer">
5178 <title>send-vanilla-wafer</title>
5182 <term>Typical use:</term>
5185 Feed log analysis scripts with useless data.
5191 <term>Effect:</term>
5194 Sends a cookie with each request stating that you do not accept any copyright
5195 on cookies sent to you, and asking the site operator not to track you.
5202 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5204 <para>Boolean.</para>
5209 <term>Parameter:</term>
5221 The vanilla wafer is a (relatively) unique header and could conceivably be used to track you.
5224 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
5230 <term>Example usage:</term>
5233 <screen>+send-vanilla-wafer</screen>
5242 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5243 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-wafer">
5244 <title>send-wafer</title>
5248 <term>Typical use:</term>
5251 Send custom cookies or feed log analysis scripts with even more useless data.
5257 <term>Effect:</term>
5260 Sends a custom, user-defined cookie with each request.
5267 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5269 <para>Multi-value.</para>
5274 <term>Parameter:</term>
5277 A string of the form <quote><replaceable class="option">name</replaceable>=<replaceable
5278 class="parameter">value</replaceable></quote>.
5287 Being multi-valued, multiple instances of this action can apply to the same request,
5288 resulting in multiple cookies being sent.
5291 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
5296 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5299 <screen>{+send-wafer{UsingPrivoxy=true}}
5300 my-internal-testing-server.void</screen>
5308 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5309 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="server-header-filter">
5310 <title>server-header-filter</title>
5314 <term>Typical use:</term>
5317 Rewrite or remove single server headers.
5323 <term>Effect:</term>
5326 All server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly
5327 through the specified regular expression based substitutions.
5334 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
5336 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5341 <term>Parameter:</term>
5344 The name of a server-header filter, as defined in one of the
5345 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
5354 Server-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
5355 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
5356 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
5359 Server-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
5360 and use their output as input.
5363 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
5364 to learn which server-header filters are available by default, and how to
5370 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5374 {+server-header-filter{html-to-xml}}
5375 example.org/xml-instance-that-is-delivered-as-html
5377 {+server-header-filter{xml-to-html}}
5378 example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
5388 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5389 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="session-cookies-only">
5390 <title>session-cookies-only</title>
5394 <term>Typical use:</term>
5397 Allow only temporary <quote>session</quote> cookies (for the current
5398 browser session <emphasis>only</emphasis>).
5404 <term>Effect:</term>
5407 Deletes the <quote>expires</quote> field from <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote>
5408 server headers. Most browsers will not store such cookies permanently and
5409 forget them in between sessions.
5416 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5418 <para>Boolean.</para>
5423 <term>Parameter:</term>
5435 This is less strict than <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> /
5436 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal> and allows you to browse
5437 websites that insist or rely on setting cookies, without compromising your privacy too badly.
5440 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed by
5441 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal> and will forget about them between sessions.
5442 This makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
5443 that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
5444 sites, and is the recommended setting.
5447 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>
5448 together with <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> or
5449 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>. If you do, cookies
5450 will be plainly killed.
5453 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an <quote>expires</quote>
5454 field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out to be sure.
5457 This setting also has no effect on cookies that may have been stored
5458 previously by the browser before starting <application>Privoxy</application>.
5459 These would have to be removed manually.
5462 <application>Privoxy</application> also uses
5463 the <link linkend="filter-content-cookies">content-cookies filter</link>
5464 to block some types of cookies. Content cookies are not effected by
5465 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>.
5471 <term>Example usage:</term>
5474 <screen>+session-cookies-only</screen>
5482 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5483 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="set-image-blocker">
5484 <title>set-image-blocker</title>
5488 <term>Typical use:</term>
5490 <para>Choose the replacement for blocked images</para>
5495 <term>Effect:</term>
5498 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If <emphasis>both</emphasis>
5499 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><link
5500 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> <emphasis>also</emphasis>
5501 apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an image,
5502 <emphasis>then</emphasis> the parameter of this action decides what will be
5503 sent as a replacement.
5510 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5512 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5517 <term>Parameter:</term>
5522 <quote>pattern</quote> to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is visually
5523 decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners were busted.
5528 <quote>blank</quote> to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners disappear
5529 completely, but makes it hard to detect where <application>Privoxy</application> has blocked
5530 images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if <application>Privoxy</application>
5531 has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
5536 <quote><replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable></quote> to
5537 send a redirect to <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>. You can redirect
5538 to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem via <quote>file:///</quote> URL.
5539 (But note that not all browsers support redirecting to a local file system).
5542 A good application of redirects is to use special <application>Privoxy</application>-built-in
5543 URLs, which send the built-in images, as <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>.
5544 This has the same visual effect as specifying <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote> in
5545 the first place, but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of requesting
5546 it over and over again.
5557 The URLs for the built-in images are <quote>http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=<replaceable
5558 class="parameter">type</replaceable></quote>, where <replaceable class="parameter">type</replaceable> is
5559 either <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote>.
5562 There is a third (advanced) type, called <quote>auto</quote>. It is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> to be
5563 used in <literal>set-image-blocker</literal>, but meant for use from <link linkend="filter-file">filters</link>.
5564 Auto will select the type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an image.
5570 <term>Example usage:</term>
5576 <screen>+set-image-blocker{pattern}</screen>
5579 Redirect to the BSD devil:
5582 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}</screen>
5585 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
5588 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}</screen>
5596 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5597 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks">
5598 <title>treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</title>
5604 <term>Typical use:</term>
5606 <para>Block forbidden connects with an easy to find error message.</para>
5611 <term>Effect:</term>
5614 If this action is enabled, <application>Privoxy</application> no longer
5615 makes a difference between forbidden connects and ordinary blocks.
5622 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5624 <para>Boolean</para>
5629 <term>Parameter:</term>
5639 By default <application>Privoxy</application> answers
5640 <link linkend="limit-connect">forbidden <quote>Connect</quote> requests</link>
5641 with a short error message inside the headers. If the browser doesn't display
5642 headers (most don't), you just see an empty page.
5645 With this action enabled, <application>Privoxy</application> displays
5646 the message that is used for ordinary blocks instead. If you decide
5647 to make an exception for the page in question, you can do so by
5648 following the <quote>See why</quote> link.
5651 For <quote>Connect</quote> requests the clients tell
5652 <application>Privoxy</application> which host they are interested
5653 in, but not which document they plan to get later. As a result, the
5654 <quote>Go there anyway</quote> link becomes rather useless:
5655 it lets the client request the home page of the forbidden host
5656 through unencrypted HTTP, still using the port of the last request.
5659 If you previously configured <application>Privoxy</application> to do the
5660 request through a SSL tunnel, everything will work. Most likely you haven't
5661 and the server will respond with an error message because it is expecting
5668 <term>Example usage:</term>
5671 <screen>+treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</screen>
5679 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5681 <title>Summary</title>
5683 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
5684 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
5685 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
5686 content, and other criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard
5687 and fast rules for all sites. See the <link
5688 linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link> for a brief example on troubleshooting
5694 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5695 <sect2 id="aliases">
5696 <title>Aliases</title>
5698 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
5699 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other actions.
5700 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
5701 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab,
5703 <quote>{</quote> and <quote>}</quote>, but we <emphasis>strongly
5704 recommend</emphasis> that you only use <quote>a</quote> to <quote>z</quote>,
5705 <quote>0</quote> to <quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and <quote>-</quote>.
5706 Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start with a
5707 <quote>+</quote> or <quote>-</quote> sign, since they are merely textually
5711 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they <emphasis>must be
5712 defined in a special section at the top of the file!</emphasis>
5713 And there can only be one such section per actions file. Each actions file may
5714 have its own alias section, and the aliases defined in it are only visible
5718 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
5719 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
5720 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called
5721 <quote>shop</quote>, you can later change your policy on shops in
5722 <emphasis>one</emphasis> place, and your changes will take effect everywhere
5723 in the actions file where the <quote>shop</quote> alias is used. Calling aliases
5724 by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
5727 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though:
5728 <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in web-based action file
5729 editor honors aliases when reading the actions files, but it expands
5730 them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are of course preserved,
5731 but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
5736 Now let's define some aliases...
5741 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
5743 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
5744 # must be at the top of the actions file!
5748 # These aliases just save typing later:
5749 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5751 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5752 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5753 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
5754 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
5756 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5757 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5759 fragile = -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> -<link linkend="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link>
5761 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link>
5763 # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
5765 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
5766 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies</screen>
5770 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
5771 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
5772 up for the <quote>/</quote> pattern):
5777 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
5778 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
5781 .office.microsoft.com
5782 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
5783 # Gmail is really mail.google.com, not gmail.com
5787 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
5791 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
5794 # These shops require pop-ups:
5796 {-kill-popups -filter{all-popups} -filter{unsolicited-popups}}
5798 .overclockers.co.uk</screen>
5802 Aliases like <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote> are typically used for
5803 <quote>problem</quote> sites that require more than one action to be disabled
5804 in order to function properly.
5810 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5811 <sect2 id="act-examples">
5812 <title>Actions Files Tutorial</title>
5814 The above chapters have shown <link linkend="actions-file">which actions files
5815 there are and how they are organized</link>, how actions are <link
5816 linkend="actions">specified</link> and <link linkend="actions-apply">applied
5817 to URLs</link>, how <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> work, and how to
5818 define and use <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link>. Now, let's look at an
5819 example <filename>default.action</filename> and <filename>user.action</filename>
5820 file and see how all these pieces come together:
5823 <sect3><title>default.action</title>
5826 Every config file should start with a short comment stating its purpose:
5830 <screen># Sample default.action file <ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net></screen>
5834 Then, since this is the <filename>default.action</filename> file, the
5835 first section is a special section for internal use that you needn't
5836 change or worry about:
5841 ##########################################################################
5842 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
5843 ##########################################################################
5846 for-privoxy-version=3.0</screen>
5850 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
5851 section from the above <link linkend="aliases">chapter on aliases</link>,
5852 that also explains why and how aliases are used:
5857 ##########################################################################
5859 ##########################################################################
5862 # These aliases just save typing later:
5863 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5865 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5866 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5867 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
5868 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
5870 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5871 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5873 fragile = -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link>
5874 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link></screen>
5878 Now come the regular sections, i.e. sets of actions, accompanied
5879 by URL patterns to which they apply. Remember <emphasis>all actions
5880 are disabled when matching starts</emphasis>, so we have to explicitly
5881 enable the ones we want.
5885 The first regular section is probably the most important. It has only
5886 one pattern, <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, but this pattern
5887 <link linkend="af-patterns">matches all URLs</link>. Therefore, the
5888 set of actions used in this <quote>default</quote> section <emphasis>will
5889 be applied to all requests as a start</emphasis>. It can be partly or
5890 wholly overridden by later matches further down this file, or in user.action,
5891 but it will still be largely responsible for your overall browsing
5896 Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
5897 no real need to disable any actions here, but we will do that nonetheless,
5898 to have a complete listing for your reference. (Remember: a <quote>+</quote>
5899 preceding the action name enables the action, a <quote>-</quote> disables!).
5900 Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
5901 multiple lines with line continuation.
5906 ##########################################################################
5907 # "Defaults" section:
5908 ##########################################################################
5910 -<link linkend="ADD-HEADER">add-header</link> \
5911 -<link linkend="CLIENT-HEADER-FILTER">client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}</link> \
5912 -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> \
5913 -<link linkend="CONTENT-TYPE-OVERWRITE">content-type-overwrite</link> \
5914 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-CLIENT-HEADER">crunch-client-header</link> \
5915 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-IF-NONE-MATCH">crunch-if-none-match</link> \
5916 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> \
5917 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-SERVER-HEADER">crunch-server-header</link> \
5918 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link> \
5919 +<link linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</link> \
5920 -<link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION">downgrade-http-version</link> \
5921 -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects{check-decoded-url}</link> \
5922 -<link linkend="FILTER-JS-ANNOYANCES">filter{js-annoyances}</link> \
5923 -<link linkend="FILTER-JS-EVENTS">filter{js-events}</link> \
5924 +<link linkend="FILTER-HTML-ANNOYANCES">filter{html-annoyances}</link> \
5925 -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link> \
5926 +<link linkend="FILTER-REFRESH-TAGS">filter{refresh-tags}</link> \
5927 -<link linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{unsolicited-popups}</link> \
5928 -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> \
5929 -<link linkend="FILTER-IMG-REORDER">filter{img-reorder}</link> \
5930 -<link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE">filter{banners-by-size}</link> \
5931 -<link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-LINK">filter{banners-by-link}</link> \
5932 +<link linkend="FILTER-WEBBUGS">filter{webbugs}</link> \
5933 -<link linkend="FILTER-TINY-TEXTFORMS">filter{tiny-textforms}</link> \
5934 -<link linkend="FILTER-JUMPING-WINDOWS">filter{jumping-windows}</link> \
5935 -<link linkend="FILTER-FRAMESET-BORDERS">filter{frameset-borders}</link> \
5936 -<link linkend="FILTER-DEMORONIZER">filter{demoronizer}</link> \
5937 -<link linkend="FILTER-SHOCKWAVE-FLASH">filter{shockwave-flash}</link> \
5938 -<link linkend="FILTER-QUICKTIME-KIOSKMODE">filter{quicktime-kioskmode}</link> \
5939 -<link linkend="FILTER-FUN">filter{fun}</link> \
5940 -<link linkend="FILTER-CRUDE-PARENTAL">filter{crude-parental}</link> \
5941 +<link linkend="FILTER-IE-EXPLOITS">filter{ie-exploits}</link> \
5942 -<link linkend="FILTER-GOOGLE">filter{google}</link> \
5943 -<link linkend="FILTER-YAHOO">filter{yahoo}</link> \
5944 -<link linkend="FILTER-MSN">filter{msn}</link> \
5945 -<link linkend="FILTER-BLOGSPOT">filter{blogspot}</link> \
5946 -<link linkend="FILTER-NO-PING">filter{no-ping}</link> \
5947 -<link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> \
5948 -<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-EMPTY-DOCUMENT">handle-as-empty-document</link> \
5949 -<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> \
5950 -<link linkend="HIDE-ACCEPT-LANGUAGE">hide-accept-language</link> \
5951 -<link linkend="HIDE-CONTENT-DISPOSITION">hide-content-disposition</link> \
5952 -<link linkend="HIDE-IF-MODIFIED-SINCE">hide-if-modified-since</link> \
5953 +<link linkend="HIDE-FORWARDED-FOR-HEADERS">hide-forwarded-for-headers</link> \
5954 +<link linkend="HIDE-FROM-HEADER">hide-from-header{block}</link> \
5955 +<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer{forge}</link> \
5956 -<link linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT">hide-user-agent</link> \
5957 -<link linkend="INSPECT-JPEGS">inspect-jpegs</link> \
5958 -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> \
5959 -<link linkend="LIMIT-CONNECT">limit-connect</link> \
5960 +<link linkend="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link> \
5961 -<link linkend="OVERWRITE-LAST-MODIFIED">overwrite-last-modified</link> \
5962 -<link linkend="REDIRECT">redirect</link> \
5963 -<link linkend="SEND-VANILLA-WAFER">send-vanilla-wafer</link> \
5964 -<link linkend="SEND-WAFER">send-wafer</link> \
5965 -<link linkend="SERVER-HEADER-FILTER">server-header-filter{xml-to-html}</link> \
5966 -<link linkend="SERVER-HEADER-FILTER">server-header-filter{html-to-xml}</link> \
5967 +<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> \
5968 +<link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER">set-image-blocker{pattern}</link> \
5969 -<link linkend="TREAT-FORBIDDEN-CONNECTS-LIKE-BLOCKS">treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</link> \
5971 / # forward slash will match *all* potential URL patterns.</screen>
5975 The default behavior is now set. Note that some actions, like not hiding
5976 the user agent, are part of a <quote>general policy</quote> that applies
5977 universally and won't get any exceptions defined later. Other choices,
5978 like not blocking (which is <emphasis>understandably</emphasis> the
5979 default!) need exceptions, i.e. we need to specify explicitly what we
5980 want to block in later sections.
5984 The first of our specialized sections is concerned with <quote>fragile</quote>
5985 sites, i.e. sites that require minimum interference, because they are either
5986 very complex or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that
5987 make them unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will simply use
5988 our pre-defined <literal>fragile</literal> alias instead of stating the list
5989 of actions explicitly:
5994 ##########################################################################
5995 # Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
5996 ##########################################################################
5998 # "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
6001 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
6002 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
6003 mail.google.com</screen>
6007 Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically
6008 require cookies to log in, and pop-up windows for shopping
6009 carts or item details. Again, we'll use a pre-defined alias:
6018 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
6020 .scan.co.uk</screen>
6023 <!-- No longer needed BEGIN OF COMMENTED OUT BLOCK
6026 Then, there are sites which rely on pop-up windows (yuck!) to work.
6027 Since we made pop-up-killing our default above, we need to make exceptions
6028 now. <ulink url="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla</ulink> users, who
6029 can turn on smart handling of unwanted pop-ups in their browsers, can
6031 -<literal><link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link></literal> (and
6032 -<literal><link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link></literal>) above
6033 and hence don't need this section. Anyway, disabling an already disabled
6034 action doesn't hurt, so we'll define our exceptions regardless of what was
6035 chosen in the defaults section:
6040 # These sites require pop-ups too :(
6042 { -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link> }
6045 .deutsche-bank-24.de</screen>
6048 END OF COMMENTED OUT BLOCK -->
6051 The <literal><link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link></literal>
6052 action, which we enabled per default above, breaks some sites. So disable
6053 it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
6058 { -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> }
6062 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
6063 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
6064 .nytimes.com</screen>
6068 It is important that <application>Privoxy</application> knows which
6069 URLs belong to images, so that <emphasis>if</emphasis> they are to
6070 be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
6071 Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it
6072 would destroy the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it
6073 would feed the advertisers (in terms of money <emphasis>and</emphasis>
6074 information). We can mark any URL as an image with the <literal><link
6075 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action,
6076 and marking all URLs that end in a known image file extension is a
6082 ##########################################################################
6084 ##########################################################################
6086 # Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
6087 # blocked further down this file:
6089 { +<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> }
6090 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$</screen>
6094 And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to
6095 generate the banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the
6096 request is for an image. Hence we block them <emphasis>and</emphasis>
6097 mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
6098 <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above. (We could of
6099 course just as well use <literal>+<link linkend="block">block</link>
6100 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> here.)
6101 Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
6102 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
6103 action. Since all URLs have matched the default section with its
6104 <literal>+<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link>{pattern}</literal>
6105 action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:
6110 # Known ad generators:
6115 .ad.*.doubleclick.net
6116 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6117 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6123 One of the most important jobs of <application>Privoxy</application>
6124 is to block banners. Many of these can be <quote>blocked</quote>
6125 by the <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{banners-by-size}</literal>
6126 action, which we enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner
6127 images from the pages while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request
6128 them anymore, and hence they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally
6129 doesn't catch all banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we
6130 need a comprehensive list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the
6131 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action to them.
6134 First comes many generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
6135 matching typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes
6136 a list of individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here
6137 to keep the example short:
6142 ##########################################################################
6143 # Block these fine banners:
6144 ##########################################################################
6145 { <link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link> }
6153 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
6154 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
6156 # Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
6158 .hitbox.com</screen>
6162 It's quite remarkable how many advertisers actually call their banner
6163 servers ads.<replaceable>company</replaceable>.com, or call the directory
6164 in which the banners are stored simply <quote>banners</quote>. So the above
6165 generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
6168 But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want
6169 to block. The pattern <literal>.*ads.</literal> e.g. catches
6170 <quote>nasty-<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.nasty-corp.com</quote> as intended,
6171 but also <quote>downlo<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.sourcefroge.net</quote> or
6172 <quote><emphasis>ads</emphasis>l.some-provider.net.</quote> So here come some
6173 well-known exceptions to the <literal>+<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6177 Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
6178 <quote>downloads.sourcefroge.net</quote>: Initially, all actions are deactivated,
6179 so it wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the
6180 URL, but just deactivates the <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6181 action once again. Then it matches <literal>.*ads.</literal>, an exception to the
6182 general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
6183 <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link></literal> applies. And now, it'll match
6184 <literal>.*loads.</literal>, where <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">-block</link></literal>
6185 applies, so (unless it matches <emphasis>again</emphasis> further down) it ends up
6186 with no <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal> action applying.
6191 ##########################################################################
6192 # Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
6193 ##########################################################################
6197 { -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
6198 adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
6199 adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
6200 adobe. # (has nothing to do with ads either)
6201 ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
6202 .edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
6203 .*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
6211 www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
6212 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv</screen>
6216 Filtering source code can have nasty side effects,
6217 so make an exception for our friends at sourceforge.net,
6218 and all paths with <quote>cvs</quote> in them. Note that
6219 <literal>-<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link></literal>
6220 disables <emphasis>all</emphasis> filters in one fell swoop!
6225 # Don't filter code!
6227 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6232 .sourceforge.net</screen>
6236 The actual <filename>default.action</filename> is of course much more
6237 comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
6242 <sect3><title>user.action</title>
6245 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies,
6246 which would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now,
6247 you might want to be more specific and have customized rules that
6248 are more suitable to your personal habits and preferences. These would
6249 be for narrowly defined situations like your ISP or your bank, and should
6250 be placed in <filename>user.action</filename>, which is parsed after all other
6251 actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any previously
6252 defined actions. <filename>user.action</filename> is also a
6253 <emphasis>safe</emphasis> place for your personal settings, since
6254 <filename>default.action</filename> is actively maintained by the
6255 <application>Privoxy</application> developers and you'll probably want
6256 to install updated versions from time to time.
6260 So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
6261 <filename>user.action</filename>:
6265 <!-- brief sample user.action here -->
6269 # My user.action file. <fred@foobar.com></screen>
6273 As <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link> are local to the actions
6274 file that they are defined in, you can't use the ones from
6275 <filename>default.action</filename>, unless you repeat them here:
6280 # Aliases are local to the file they are defined in.
6281 # (Re-)define aliases for this file:
6285 # These aliases just save typing later, and the alias names should
6286 # be self explanatory.
6288 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
6289 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6290 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
6291 allow-popups = -filter{all-popups} -kill-popups
6292 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
6293 -block-as-image = -block
6295 # These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
6296 # certain types of sites:
6298 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referrer -kill-popups
6299 shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
6301 # Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
6303 allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}
6305 # Alias for specific file types that are text, but might have conflicting
6306 # MIME types. We want the browser to force these to be text documents.
6307 handle-as-text = -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> +-<link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{text/plain}</link> +-<link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-CONTENT-DISPOSITION">hide-content-disposition</link></screen>
6312 Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and
6313 you don't want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like
6314 to allow persistent cookies for these sites. The
6315 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal> alias defined above does exactly
6316 that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
6317 processing of cookies to make them only temporary.
6322 { allow-all-cookies }
6326 .redhat.com</screen>
6330 Your bank is allergic to some filter, but you don't know which, so you disable them all:
6335 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6336 .your-home-banking-site.com</screen>
6340 Some file types you may not want to filter for various reasons:
6345 # Technical documentation is likely to contain strings that might
6346 # erroneously get altered by the JavaScript-oriented filters:
6351 # And this stupid host sends streaming video with a wrong MIME type,
6352 # so that Privoxy thinks it is getting HTML and starts filtering:
6354 stupid-server.example.com/</screen>
6358 Example of a simple <link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> action. Say you've
6359 seen an ad on your favourite page on example.com that you want to get rid of.
6360 You have right-clicked the image, selected <quote>copy image location</quote>
6361 and pasted the URL below while removing the leading http://, into a
6362 <literal>{ +block }</literal> section. Note that <literal>{ +handle-as-image
6363 }</literal> need not be specified, since all URLs ending in
6364 <literal>.gif</literal> will be tagged as images by the general rules as set
6365 in default.action anyway:
6370 { +<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
6371 www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor\.gif
6372 another.popular.site.net/more/junk/here/</screen>
6376 The URLs of dynamically generated banners, especially from large banner
6377 farms, often don't use the well-known image file name extensions, which
6378 makes it impossible for <application>Privoxy</application> to guess
6379 the file type just by looking at the URL.
6380 You can use the <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above for
6382 Note that objects which match this rule but then turn out NOT to be an
6383 image are typically rendered as a <quote>broken image</quote> icon by the
6384 browser. Use cautiously.
6393 ar.atwola.com/</screen>
6397 Now you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine,
6398 but you were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you
6399 were again too lazy to give <link linkend="contact">feedback</link>, so
6400 you just used the <literal>fragile</literal> alias on the site, and
6401 -- <emphasis>whoa!</emphasis> -- it worked. The <literal>fragile</literal>
6402 aliases disables those actions that are most likely to break a site. Also,
6403 good for testing purposes to see if it is <application>Privoxy</application>
6404 that is causing the problem or not. We later find other regular sites
6405 that misbehave, and add those to our personalized list of troublemakers:
6413 .mybank.com</screen>
6417 You like the <quote>fun</quote> text replacements in <filename>default.filter</filename>,
6418 but it is disabled in the distributed actions file. (My colleagues on the team just
6419 don't have a sense of humour, that's why! ;-). So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
6420 update-safe config, once and for all:
6425 { +<link linkend="filter-fun">filter{fun}</link> }
6426 / # For ALL sites!</screen>
6430 Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions
6431 to the filters in <filename>default.action</filename> for things that
6432 really shouldn't be filtered, like code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since
6433 <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word, these exceptions
6434 won't be valid for the <quote>fun</quote> filtering specified here.
6438 You might also worry about how your favourite free websites are
6439 funded, and find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements
6440 to survive. So you might want to specifically allow banners for those
6441 sites that you feel provide value to you:
6453 Note that <literal>allow-ads</literal> has been aliased to
6454 <literal>-<link linkend="block">block</link></literal>,
6455 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-size">filter{banners-by-size}</link></literal>, and
6456 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-link">filter{banners-by-link}</link></literal> above.
6460 Invoke another alias here to force an over-ride of the MIME type <literal>
6461 application/x-sh</literal> which typically would open a download type
6462 dialog. In my case, I want to look at the shell script, and then I can save
6463 it should I choose to.
6473 <filename>user.action</filename> is generally the best place to define
6474 exceptions and additions to the default policies of
6475 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some actions are safe to have their
6476 default policies set here though. So let's set a default policy to have a
6477 <quote>blank</quote> image as opposed to the checkerboard pattern for
6478 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> sites. <quote>/</quote> of course matches all URL
6484 { +<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker{blank}</link> }
6485 / # ALL sites</screen>
6491 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6495 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6497 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6499 <sect1 id="filter-file">
6500 <title>Filter Files</title>
6503 On-the-fly text substitutions need
6504 to be defined in a <quote>filter file</quote>. Once defined, they
6505 can then be invoked as an <quote>action</quote>.
6509 &my-app; supports three different filter actions:
6510 <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> to
6511 rewrite the content that is send to the client,
6512 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header-filter</link></literal>
6513 to rewrite headers that are send by the client, and
6514 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header-filter</link></literal>
6515 to rewrite headers that are send by the server, and
6519 Multiple filter files can be defined through the <literal> <link
6520 linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal> config directive. The filters
6521 as supplied by the developers will be found in
6522 <filename>default.filter</filename>. It is recommended that any locally
6523 defined or modified filters go in a separately defined file such as
6524 <filename>user.filter</filename>.
6529 Command tasks for content filters are to eliminate common annoyances in
6530 HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows,
6531 exit consoles, crippled windows without navigation tools, the
6532 infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to suppress images with certain
6533 width and height attributes (standard banner sizes or web-bugs),
6534 or just to have fun.
6538 Content filtering works on any text-based document type, including
6539 HTML, JavaScript, CSS etc. (all <literal>text/*</literal>
6540 MIME types, <emphasis>except</emphasis> <literal>text/plain</literal>).
6541 Substitutions are made at the source level, so if you want to <quote>roll
6542 your own</quote> filters, you should first be familiar with HTML syntax,
6543 and, of course, regular expressions.
6547 Just like the <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, the
6548 filter file is organized in sections, which are called <emphasis>filters</emphasis>
6549 here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with one of the
6550 <emphasis>keywords</emphasis> <literal>FILTER:</literal>,
6551 <literal>CLIENT-HEADER-FILTER:</literal> or <literal>SERVER-HEADER-FILTER:</literal>
6552 followed by the filter's <emphasis>name</emphasis>, and a short (one line)
6553 <emphasis>description</emphasis> of what it does. Below that line
6554 come the <emphasis>jobs</emphasis>, i.e. lines that define the actual
6555 text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
6556 should describe what the filter <emphasis>eliminates</emphasis>. The
6557 comment is used in the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
6558 user interface</ulink>.
6562 Once a filter called <replaceable>name</replaceable> has been defined
6563 in the filter file, it can be invoked by using an action of the form
6564 +<literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>name</replaceable>}</literal>
6565 in any <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>.
6569 A content filter header line for a filter called <quote>foo</quote> could look
6574 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"</screen>
6578 Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that
6579 define what text replacements the filter executes. They are specified
6580 in a syntax that imitates <ulink url="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</ulink>'s
6581 <literal>s///</literal> operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you
6582 will find this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the
6583 PCRS documentation for the subtle differences to Perl behaviour. Most
6584 notably, the non-standard option letter <literal>U</literal> is supported,
6585 which turns the default to ungreedy matching.
6590 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
6591 Expressions</quote></ulink>, you might want to take a look at
6592 the <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>, and
6593 see the <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl
6595 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlop.html">the
6596 <literal>s///</literal> operator's syntax</ulink> and <ulink
6597 url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl-style regular
6598 expressions</ulink> in general.
6599 The below examples might also help to get you started.
6603 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6605 <sect2><title>Filter File Tutorial</title>
6607 Now, let's complete our <quote>foo</quote> content filter. We have already defined
6608 the heading, but the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace
6609 <quote>foo</quote> with <quote>bar</quote>, there is only one (trivial) job
6614 <screen>s/foo/bar/</screen>
6618 But wait! Didn't the comment say that <emphasis>all</emphasis> occurrences
6619 of <quote>foo</quote> should be replaced? Our current job will only take
6620 care of the first <quote>foo</quote> on each page. For global substitution,
6621 we'll need to add the <literal>g</literal> option:
6625 <screen>s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6629 Our complete filter now looks like this:
6632 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
6633 s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6637 Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see
6638 a filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
6639 abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
6645 FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
6647 # Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
6649 s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg</screen>
6653 Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses
6654 <literal>|</literal> as the delimiter instead of <literal>/</literal>, because
6655 the pattern contains a forward slash, which would otherwise have to be escaped
6656 by a backslash (<literal>\</literal>).
6660 Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <literal><script.*</literal>
6661 enclosed in parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and <literal>*</literal>
6662 means: <quote>Match an arbitrary number of the element left of myself</quote>, this
6663 matches <quote><script</quote>, followed by <emphasis>any</emphasis> text, i.e.
6664 it matches the whole page, from the start of the first <script> tag.
6668 That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: <literal>document\.referrer</literal>
6669 matches only the exact string <quote>document.referrer</quote>. The dot needed to
6670 be <emphasis>escaped</emphasis>, i.e. preceded by a backslash, to take away its
6671 special meaning as a joker, and make it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is:
6672 Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including,
6673 the text <quote>document.referrer</quote>, if <emphasis>both</emphasis> are present
6674 in the page (and appear in that order).
6678 But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in parentheses,
6679 is <literal>.*</script></literal>. You already know what <literal>.*</literal>
6680 means, so the whole pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script>
6681 tag in a page to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text
6682 <quote>document.referrer</quote> appears somewhere in between.
6686 This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the parentheses:
6687 The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed in parentheses, will be
6688 remembered and be available through the variables <literal>$1, $2, ...</literal> in
6689 the substitute. The <literal>U</literal> option switches to ungreedy matching, which means
6690 that the first <literal>.*</literal> in the pattern will only <quote>eat up</quote> all
6691 text in between <quote><script</quote> and the <emphasis>first</emphasis> occurrence
6692 of <quote>document.referrer</quote>, and that the second <literal>.*</literal> will
6693 only span the text up to the <emphasis>first</emphasis> <quote></script></quote>
6694 tag. Furthermore, the <literal>s</literal> option says that the match may span
6695 multiple lines in the page, and the <literal>g</literal> option again means that the
6696 substitution is global.
6700 So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
6701 <quote>document.referrer</quote>. Remember the parts of the script from
6702 (and including) the start tag up to (and excluding) the string
6703 <quote>document.referrer</quote> as <literal>$1</literal>, and the part following
6704 that string, up to and including the closing tag, as <literal>$2</literal>.
6708 Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
6709 lets look at the substitute: <literal>$1"Not Your Business!"$2</literal> is
6710 easy to read: The text remembered as <literal>$1</literal>, followed by
6711 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> (<emphasis>including</emphasis>
6712 the quotation marks!), followed by the text remembered as <literal>$2</literal>.
6713 This produces an exact copy of the original string, with the middle part
6714 (the <quote>document.referrer</quote>) replaced by <literal>"Not Your
6715 Business!"</literal>.
6719 The whole job now reads: Replace <quote>document.referrer</quote> by
6720 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> wherever it appears inside a
6721 <script> tag. Note that this job won't break JavaScript syntax,
6722 since both the original and the replacement are syntactically valid
6723 string objects. The script just won't have access to the referrer
6724 information anymore.
6728 We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but
6729 this time only point out the constructs of special interest:
6734 # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
6736 s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig</screen>
6740 <literal>\s</literal> stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline,
6741 carriage return, form feed), so that <literal>\s*</literal> means: <quote>zero
6742 or more whitespace</quote>. The <literal>?</literal> in <literal>.*?</literal>
6743 makes this matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the <literal>U</literal>
6744 option is not set). The <literal>['"]</literal> construct means: <quote>a single
6745 <emphasis>or</emphasis> a double quote</quote>. Finally, <literal>\1</literal> is
6746 a back-reference to the first parenthesis just like <literal>$1</literal> above,
6747 with the difference that in the <emphasis>pattern</emphasis>, a backslash indicates
6748 a back-reference, whereas in the <emphasis>substitute</emphasis>, it's the dollar.
6752 So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
6753 strings to the <quote>window.status</quote> object with a dummy assignment
6754 (using a variable name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with
6755 real variables in scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless
6756 descriptions are displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when
6757 you move your mouse over links.
6762 # Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
6764 s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU</screen>
6769 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">OnUnload
6770 event binding</ulink> in the HTML DOM was a <emphasis>CRIME</emphasis>.
6771 When I close a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta.
6772 This job replaces the <quote>onunload</quote> attribute in
6773 <quote><body></quote> tags with the dummy word <literal>never</literal>.
6774 Note that the <literal>i</literal> option makes the pattern matching
6775 case-insensitive. Also note that ungreedy matching alone doesn't always guarantee
6776 a minimal match: In the first parenthesis, we had to use <literal>[^>]*</literal>
6777 instead of <literal>.*</literal> to prevent the match from exceeding the
6778 <body> tag if it doesn't contain <quote>OnUnload</quote>, but the page's
6783 The last example is from the fun department:
6788 FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
6790 # Spice the daily news:
6792 s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig</screen>
6796 Note the <literal>(?!\.com)</literal> part (a so-called negative lookahead)
6797 in the job's pattern, which means: Don't match, if the string
6798 <quote>.com</quote> appears directly following <quote>microsoft</quote>
6799 in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being trashed, while
6800 still replacing the word everywhere else.
6805 # Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
6807 s* industry[ -]leading \
6809 | customer[ -]focused \
6810 | market[ -]driven \
6811 | award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
6812 | high[ -]performance \
6813 | solutions[ -]based \
6817 *<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
6822 The <literal>x</literal> option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for
6823 e.g. the liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
6831 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6833 <sect2 id="predefined-filters"><title>The Pre-defined Filters</title>
6837 Note each filter is also listed in the +filter action section above. Please
6838 keep these listings in sync.
6843 The distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file contains a selection of
6844 pre-defined filters for your convenience:
6849 <term><emphasis>js-annoyances</emphasis></term>
6852 The purpose of this filter is to get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.
6857 replaces JavaScript references to the browser's referrer information
6858 with the string "Not Your Business!". This compliments the <literal><link
6859 linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal> action on the content level.
6864 removes the bindings to the DOM's
6865 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">unload
6866 event</ulink> which we feel has no right to exist and is responsible for most <quote>exit consoles</quote>, i.e.
6867 nasty windows that pop up when you close another one.
6872 removes code that causes new windows to be opened with undesired properties, such as being
6873 full-screen, non-resizeable, without location, status or menu bar etc.
6879 Use with caution. This is an aggressive filter, and can break sites that
6880 rely heavily on JavaScript.
6886 <term><emphasis>js-events</emphasis></term>
6889 This is a very radical measure. It removes virtually all JavaScript event bindings, which
6890 means that scripts can not react to user actions such as mouse movements or clicks, window
6891 resizing etc, anymore. Use with caution!
6894 We <emphasis>strongly discourage</emphasis> using this filter as a default since it breaks
6895 many legitimate scripts. It is meant for use only on extra-nasty sites (should you really
6902 <term><emphasis>html-annoyances</emphasis></term>
6905 This filter will undo many common instances of HTML based abuse.
6908 The <literal>BLINK</literal> and <literal>MARQUEE</literal> tags
6909 are neutralized (yeah baby!), and browser windows will be created as
6910 resizeable (as of course they should be!), and will have location,
6911 scroll and menu bars -- even if specified otherwise.
6917 <term><emphasis>content-cookies</emphasis></term>
6920 Most cookies are set in the HTTP dialog, where they can be intercepted
6922 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>
6923 and <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>
6924 actions. But web sites increasingly make use of HTML meta tags and JavaScript
6925 to sneak cookies to the browser on the content level.
6928 This filter disables most HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets
6929 cookies. It cannot detect all clever uses of these types of code, so it
6930 should not be relied on as an absolute fix. Use it wherever you would also
6931 use the cookie crunch actions.
6937 <term><emphasis>refresh tags</emphasis></term>
6940 Disable any refresh tags if the interval is greater than nine seconds (so
6941 that redirections done via refresh tags are not destroyed). This is useful
6942 for dial-on-demand setups, or for those who find this HTML feature
6949 <term><emphasis>unsolicited-popups</emphasis></term>
6952 This filter attempts to prevent only <quote>unsolicited</quote> pop-up
6953 windows from opening, yet still allow pop-up windows that the user
6954 has explicitly chosen to open. It was added in version 3.0.1,
6955 as an improvement over earlier such filters.
6958 Technical note: The filter works by redefining the window.open JavaScript
6959 function to a dummy function, <literal>PrivoxyWindowOpen()</literal>,
6960 during the loading and rendering phase of each HTML page access, and
6961 restoring the function afterward.
6964 This is recommended only for browsers that cannot perform this function
6965 reliably themselves. And be aware that some sites require such windows
6966 in order to function normally. Use with caution.
6972 <term><emphasis>all-popups</emphasis></term>
6975 Attempt to prevent <emphasis>all</emphasis> pop-up windows from opening.
6976 Note this should be used with even more discretion than the above, since
6977 it is more likely to break some sites that require pop-ups for normal
6978 usage. Use with caution.
6984 <term><emphasis>img-reorder</emphasis></term>
6987 This is a helper filter that has no value if used alone. It makes the
6988 <literal>banners-by-size</literal> and <literal>banners-by-link</literal>
6989 (see below) filters more effective and should be enabled together with them.
6995 <term><emphasis>banners-by-size</emphasis></term>
6998 This filter removes image tags purely based on what size they are. Fortunately
6999 for us, many ads and banner images tend to conform to certain standardized
7000 sizes, which makes this filter quite effective for ad stripping purposes.
7003 Occasionally this filter will cause false positives on images that are not ads,
7004 but just happen to be of one of the standard banner sizes.
7007 Recommended only for those who require extreme ad blocking. The default
7008 block rules should catch 95+% of all ads <emphasis>without</emphasis> this filter enabled.
7014 <term><emphasis>banners-by-link</emphasis></term>
7017 This is an experimental filter that attempts to kill any banners if
7018 their URLs seem to point to known or suspected click trackers. It is currently
7019 not of much value and is not recommended for use by default.
7025 <term><emphasis>webbugs</emphasis></term>
7028 Webbugs are small, invisible images (technically 1X1 GIF images), that
7029 are used to track users across websites, and collect information on them.
7030 As an HTML page is loaded by the browser, an embedded image tag causes the
7031 browser to contact a third-party site, disclosing the tracking information
7032 through the requested URL and/or cookies for that third-party domain, without
7033 the user ever becoming aware of the interaction with the third-party site.
7034 HTML-ized spam also uses a similar technique to verify email addresses.
7037 This filter removes the HTML code that loads such <quote>webbugs</quote>.
7043 <term><emphasis>tiny-textforms</emphasis></term>
7046 A rather special-purpose filter that can be used to enlarge textareas (those
7047 multi-line text boxes in web forms) and turn off hard word wrap in them.
7048 It was written for the sourceforge.net tracker system where such boxes are
7049 a nuisance, but it can be handy on other sites, too.
7052 It is not recommended to use this filter as a default.
7058 <term><emphasis>jumping-windows</emphasis></term>
7061 Many consider windows that move, or resize themselves to be abusive. This filter
7062 neutralizes the related JavaScript code. Note that some sites might not display
7063 or behave as intended when using this filter. Use with caution.
7069 <term><emphasis>frameset-borders</emphasis></term>
7072 Some web designers seem to assume that everyone in the world will view their
7073 web sites using the same browser brand and version, screen resolution etc,
7074 because only that assumption could explain why they'd use static frame sizes,
7075 yet prevent their frames from being resized by the user, should they be too
7076 small to show their whole content.
7079 This filter removes the related HTML code. It should only be applied to sites
7086 <term><emphasis>demoronizer</emphasis></term>
7089 Many Microsoft products that generate HTML use non-standard extensions (read:
7090 violations) of the ISO 8859-1 aka Latin-1 character set. This can cause those
7091 HTML documents to display with errors on standard-compliant platforms.
7094 This filter translates the MS-only characters into Latin-1 equivalents.
7095 It is not necessary when using MS products, and will cause corruption of
7096 all documents that use 8-bit character sets other than Latin-1. It's mostly
7097 worthwhile for Europeans on non-MS platforms, if weird garbage characters
7098 sometimes appear on some pages, or user agents that don't correct for this on
7101 My version of Mozilla (ancient) shows litte square boxes for quote
7102 characters, and apostrophes on moronized pages. So many pages have this, I
7103 can read them fine now. HB 08/27/06
7110 <term><emphasis>shockwave-flash</emphasis></term>
7113 A filter for shockwave haters. As the name suggests, this filter strips code
7114 out of web pages that is used to embed shockwave flash objects.
7122 <term><emphasis>quicktime-kioskmode</emphasis></term>
7125 Change HTML code that embeds Quicktime objects so that kioskmode, which
7126 prevents saving, is disabled.
7132 <term><emphasis>fun</emphasis></term>
7135 Text replacements for subversive browsing fun. Make fun of your favorite
7136 Monopolist or play buzzword bingo.
7142 <term><emphasis>crude-parental</emphasis></term>
7145 A demonstration-only filter that shows how <application>Privoxy</application>
7146 can be used to delete web content on a keyword basis.
7152 <term><emphasis>ie-exploits</emphasis></term>
7155 An experimental collection of text replacements to disable malicious HTML and JavaScript
7156 code that exploits known security holes in Internet Explorer.
7159 Presently, it only protects against Nimda and a cross-site scripting bug, and
7160 would need active maintenance to provide more substantial protection.
7166 <term><emphasis>site-specifics</emphasis></term>
7169 Some web sites have very specific problems, the cure for which doesn't apply
7170 anywhere else, or could even cause damage on other sites.
7173 This is a collection of such site-specific cures which should only be applied
7174 to the sites they were intended for, which is what the supplied
7175 <filename>default.action</filename> file does. Users shouldn't need to change
7176 anything regarding this filter.
7182 <term><emphasis>google</emphasis></term>
7185 A CSS based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation
7186 and the toolbar advertisement.
7192 <term><emphasis>yahoo</emphasis></term>
7195 Another CSS based block, this time for Yahoo text ads. And removes
7196 a width limitation as well.
7202 <term><emphasis>msn</emphasis></term>
7205 Another CSS based block, this time for MSN text ads. And removes
7206 tracking URLs, as well as a width limitation.
7212 <term><emphasis>blogspot</emphasis></term>
7215 Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this one!
7218 This filter also intentionally removes some navigation stuff and sets the
7219 page width to 100%. As a result, some rounded <quote>corners</quote> would
7220 appear to early or not at all and as fixing this would require a browser
7221 that understands background-size (CSS3), they are removed instead.
7227 <term><emphasis>xml-to-html</emphasis></term>
7230 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from xml to html.
7236 <term><emphasis>html-to-xml</emphasis></term>
7239 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from html to xml.
7245 <term><emphasis>no-ping</emphasis></term>
7248 Removes the non-standard <literal>ping</literal> attribute from
7249 anchor and area HTML tags.
7255 <term><emphasis>hide-tor-exit-notation</emphasis></term>
7258 Client-header filter to remove the <command>Tor</command> exit node notation
7259 found in Host and Referer headers.
7262 If &my-app; and <command>Tor</command> are chained and &my-app;
7263 is configured to use socks4a, one can use <quote>http://www.example.org.foobar.exit/</quote>
7264 to access the host <quote>www.example.org</quote> through the
7265 <command>Tor</command> exit node <quote>foobar</quote>.
7268 As the HTTP client isn't aware of this notation, it treats the
7269 whole string <quote>www.example.org.foobar.exit</quote> as host and uses it
7270 for the <quote>Host</quote> and <quote>Referer</quote> headers. From the
7271 server's point of view the resulting headers are invalid and can cause problems.
7274 An invalid <quote>Referer</quote> header can trigger <quote>hot-linking</quote>
7275 protections, an invalid <quote>Host</quote> header will make it impossible for
7276 the server to find the right vhost (several domains hosted on the same IP address).
7279 This client-header filter removes the <quote>foo.exit</quote> part in those headers
7280 to prevent the mentioned problems. Note that it only modifies
7281 the HTTP headers, it doesn't make it impossible for the server
7282 to detect your <command>Tor</command> exit node based on the IP address
7283 the request is coming from.
7290 <term><emphasis> </emphasis></term>
7304 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7308 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7310 <sect1 id="templates">
7311 <title>Privoxy's Template Files</title>
7313 All <application>Privoxy</application> built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the
7314 <ulink url="http://show-the-404-error.page"><quote>404 - No Such Domain</quote>
7315 error page</ulink>, the <ulink
7316 url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
7318 and all pages of its <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
7319 user interface</ulink>, are generated from <emphasis>templates</emphasis>.
7320 (<application>Privoxy</application> must be running for the above links to work as
7325 These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the <link linkend="confdir">configuration
7326 directory</link> called <filename>templates</filename>. On Unixish platforms,
7328 <ulink url="file:///etc/privoxy/templates/"><filename>/etc/privoxy/templates/</filename></ulink>.
7332 The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called symbols
7333 or exports), which <application>Privoxy</application> fills at run time. You can
7334 edit the templates with a normal text editor, should you want to customize them.
7335 (<emphasis>Not recommended for the casual user</emphasis>). Note that
7336 just like in configuration files, lines starting with <literal>#</literal> are
7337 ignored when the templates are filled in.
7341 The place-holders are of the form <literal>@name@</literal>, and you will
7342 find a list of available symbols, which vary from template to template,
7343 in the comments at the start of each file. Note that these comments are not
7344 always accurate, and that it's probably best to look at the existing HTML
7345 code to find out which symbols are supported and what they are filled in with.
7349 A special application of this substitution mechanism is to make whole
7350 blocks of HTML code disappear when a specific symbol is set. We use this
7351 for many purposes, one of them being to include the beta warning in all
7352 our user interface (CGI) pages when <application>Privoxy</application>
7353 is in an alpha or beta development stage:
7358 <!-- @if-unstable-start -->
7360 ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
7362 <!-- if-unstable-end@ --></screen>
7366 If the "unstable" symbol is set, everything in between and including
7367 <literal>@if-unstable-start</literal> and <literal>if-unstable-end@</literal>
7368 will disappear, leaving nothing but an empty comment:
7372 <screen><!-- --></screen>
7376 There's also an if-then-else construct and an <literal>#include</literal>
7377 mechanism, but you'll sure find out if you are inclined to edit the
7382 All templates refer to a style located at
7383 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet"><literal>http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet</literal></ulink>.
7384 This is, of course, locally served by <application>Privoxy</application>
7385 and the source for it can be found and edited in the
7386 <filename>cgi-style.css</filename> template.
7391 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7395 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7397 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
7400 <!-- Include contacting.sgml boilerplate: -->
7402 <!-- end boilerplate -->
7406 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7409 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7410 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Privoxy Copyright, License and History</title>
7412 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
7414 <!-- end copyright -->
7416 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7417 <sect2><title>License</title>
7418 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
7420 <!-- end copyright -->
7422 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7425 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7427 <sect2 id="history"><title>History</title>
7428 <!-- Include history.sgml: -->
7430 <!-- end history -->
7433 <sect2 id="authors"><title>Authors</title>
7434 <!-- Include p-authors.sgml: -->
7436 <!-- end authors -->
7441 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7444 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7445 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See Also</title>
7446 <!-- Include seealso.sgml: -->
7448 <!-- end seealso -->
7453 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7454 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
7457 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7459 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
7461 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl-style <quote>regular
7462 expressions</quote> in its <link linkend="actions-file">actions
7463 files</link> and <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>,
7464 through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> and
7467 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/">PCRS</ulink> libraries.
7469 <application>PCRS</application> libraries.
7473 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
7474 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
7475 introduction only. A full explanation would require a <ulink
7476 url="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/">book</ulink> ;-)
7480 Regular expressions provide a language to describe patterns that can be
7481 run against strings of characters (letter, numbers, etc), to see if they
7482 match the string or not. The patterns are themselves (sometimes complex)
7483 strings of literal characters, combined with wild-cards, and other special
7484 characters, called meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have
7485 special meanings and are used to build complex patterns to be matched against.
7486 Perl Compatible Regular Expressions are an especially convenient
7487 <quote>dialect</quote> of the regular expression language.
7491 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
7492 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
7493 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
7494 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
7495 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
7496 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
7497 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
7498 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
7502 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
7503 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
7504 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
7505 and then some examples:
7510 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
7511 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
7513 </simplelist></para>
7517 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
7520 </simplelist></para>
7524 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
7527 </simplelist></para>
7531 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
7534 </simplelist></para>
7538 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
7539 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
7540 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
7541 not as a special meta-character. Example: <quote>example\.com</quote>, makes
7542 sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded to its
7543 meta-character meaning of any single character).
7545 </simplelist></para>
7549 <emphasis>[ ]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
7550 any of the enclosed characters are encountered. For instance, <quote>[0-9]</quote>
7551 matches any numeric digit (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine
7552 this with <quote>+</quote> to match any digit one of more times: <quote>[0-9]+</quote>.
7554 </simplelist></para>
7558 <emphasis>( )</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
7559 or multiple sub-expressions.
7561 </simplelist></para>
7565 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
7566 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
7567 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches. As an example:
7568 <quote>/(this|that) example/</quote> uses grouping and the bar character
7569 and would match either <quote>this example</quote> or <quote>that
7570 example</quote>, and nothing else.
7572 </simplelist></para>
7575 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
7576 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
7577 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
7578 be more illuminating:
7582 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
7583 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
7584 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
7585 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
7586 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
7587 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
7588 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
7589 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
7590 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
7591 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
7592 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
7593 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
7594 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
7595 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
7600 And now something a little more complex:
7604 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
7605 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
7606 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
7607 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
7608 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
7609 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
7610 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
7615 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
7616 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
7617 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
7618 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
7619 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
7620 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
7621 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
7622 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
7623 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
7624 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
7625 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
7626 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
7627 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
7628 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
7629 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
7630 changing our regular expression to:
7631 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
7636 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
7637 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
7638 <quote>[ ]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
7639 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
7640 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
7641 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
7642 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
7643 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
7644 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
7645 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
7646 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
7647 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
7648 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
7649 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
7650 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
7651 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
7652 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
7653 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
7654 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
7655 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
7656 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
7657 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
7658 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
7659 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
7660 in the expression anywhere).
7664 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
7665 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
7666 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
7667 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
7668 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
7673 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
7674 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html</ulink>
7678 For information on regular expression based substitutions and their applications
7679 in filters, please see the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file tutorial</link>
7684 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7687 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7689 <title>Privoxy's Internal Pages</title>
7692 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
7693 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
7694 trap certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
7695 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
7696 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
7697 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
7698 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
7704 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
7705 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
7706 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
7707 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
7720 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
7724 There is a shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (But it
7725 doesn't provide a fall-back to a real page, in case the request is not
7726 sent through <application>Privoxy</application>)
7732 Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
7733 editing of actions files:
7737 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
7744 Show the source code version numbers:
7748 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">http://config.privoxy.org/show-version</ulink>
7755 Show the browser's request headers:
7759 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">http://config.privoxy.org/show-request</ulink>
7766 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
7770 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
7777 Toggle Privoxy on or off. In this case, <quote>Privoxy</quote> continues
7778 to run, but only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking place:
7782 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
7786 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
7790 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
7795 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
7804 These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
7808 <sect3 id="bookmarklets">
7809 <title>Bookmarklets</title>
7811 Below are some <quote>bookmarklets</quote> to allow you to easily access a
7812 <quote>mini</quote> version of some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
7813 special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer, but should work
7814 equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which support
7815 JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not by
7816 clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
7819 To save them, right-click the link and choose <quote>Add to Favorites</quote>
7820 (IE) or <quote>Add Bookmark</quote> (Netscape). You will get a warning that
7821 the bookmark <quote>may not be safe</quote> - just click OK. Then you can run the
7822 Bookmarklet directly from your favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access,
7823 you can put them on the <quote>Links</quote> bar (IE) or the <quote>Personal
7824 Toolbar</quote> (Netscape), and run them with a single click.
7833 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=enabled','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Enable</ulink>
7840 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=disabled','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Disable</ulink>
7847 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=toggle','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Toggle Privoxy</ulink> (Toggles between enabled and disabled)
7854 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y','ijbstatus','width=250,height=2,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy- View Status</ulink>
7860 <ulink url="javascript:w=Math.floor(screen.width/2);h=Math.floor(screen.height*0.9);void(window.open('http://www.privoxy.org/actions/index.php?url='+escape(location.href),'Feedback','screenx='+w+',width='+w+',height='+h+',scrollbars=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Submit Actions File Feedback</ulink>
7866 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info?url='+escape(location.href),'Why').focus());">Privoxy - Why?</ulink>
7873 Credit: The site which gave us the general idea for these bookmarklets is
7874 <ulink url="http://www.bookmarklets.com/">www.bookmarklets.com</ulink>. They
7875 have more information about bookmarklets.
7884 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7886 <title>Chain of Events</title>
7888 Let's take a quick look at how some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
7889 core features are triggered, and the ensuing sequence of events when a web
7890 page is requested by your browser:
7897 First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send
7898 the request to <application>Privoxy</application>, which will in turn,
7899 relay the request to the remote web server after passing the following
7905 <application>Privoxy</application> traps any request for its own internal CGI
7906 pages (e.g <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>) and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
7911 Next, <application>Privoxy</application> checks to see if the URL
7913 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link> patterns. If
7914 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be contacted.
7915 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>
7917 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-EMPTY-DOCUMENT"><quote>+handle-as-empty-document</quote></link>
7918 are then checked, and if there is no match, an
7919 HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page is sent back to the browser. Otherwise, if
7920 it does match, an image is returned for the former, and an empty text
7921 document for the latter. The type of image would depend on the setting of
7922 <link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><quote>+set-image-blocker</quote></link>
7923 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
7928 Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the
7929 <filename>trust</filename> file, then that is done.
7934 If the URL pattern matches the <link
7935 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link> action,
7936 it is then processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
7941 Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
7942 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. <link
7943 linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT"><quote>+hide-user-agent</quote></link>,
7944 etc.), headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and
7950 Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web
7956 First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
7957 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
7958 filtered as determined by the
7959 <link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES"><quote>+crunch-incoming-cookies</quote></link>,
7960 <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>,
7961 and <link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION"><quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote></link>
7967 If the <link linkend="KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></link>
7968 action applies, and it is an HTML or JavaScript document, the popup-code in the
7969 response is filtered on-the-fly as it is received.
7974 If any <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
7976 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
7977 action applies (and the document type fits the action), the rest of the page is
7978 read into memory (up to a configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from
7979 <filename>default.filter</filename> and any other filter files) are
7980 processed against the buffered content. Filters are applied in the order
7981 they are specified in one of the filter files. Animated GIFs, if present,
7982 are reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
7983 setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by
7984 <application>Privoxy</application> back to your browser.
7987 If neither a <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
7989 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
7990 matches, then <application>Privoxy</application> passes the raw data through
7991 to the client browser as it becomes available.
7996 As the browser receives the now (possibly filtered) page content, it
7997 reads and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page
7998 source, e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
7999 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a
8000 separate request (this is easily viewable in <application>Privoxy's</application>
8001 logs). And each such request is in turn processed just as above. Note that a
8002 complex web page will have many, many such embedded URLs. If these
8003 secondary requests are to a different server, then quite possibly a very
8004 differing set of actions is triggered.
8011 NOTE: This is somewhat of a simplistic overview of what happens with each URL
8012 request. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, we have focused on
8013 <application>Privoxy's</application> core features only.
8019 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8020 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
8021 <title>Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</title>
8024 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies
8025 <link linkend="ACTIONS">actions</link> and <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>
8026 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so
8027 easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to
8028 <emphasis>see</emphasis> just what <application>Privoxy</application> is
8029 doing. Especially, if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing
8030 is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to look at
8031 the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
8032 <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> whose consequences are not
8037 One quick test to see if <application>Privoxy</application> is causing a problem
8038 or not, is to disable it temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting
8039 step. See <link linkend="bookmarklets">the Bookmarklets</link> section on a quick
8040 and easy way to do this (be sure to flush caches afterward!). Looking at the
8041 logs is a good idea too.
8044 Another easy troubleshooting step to try is if you have done any
8045 customization of your installation, revert back to the installed
8046 defaults and see if that helps. There are times the developers get complaints
8047 about one thing or another, and the problem is more related to a customized
8048 configuration issue.
8052 <application>Privoxy</application> also provides the
8053 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
8054 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
8055 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
8059 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
8060 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
8061 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
8062 help with filtering effects (i.e. the <link
8063 linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action) from
8064 one of the filter files since this is handled very
8065 differently and not so easy to trap! It also will not tell you about any other
8066 URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are testing. For instance, images
8067 such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw page source of HTML pages. So
8068 you will only get info for the actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area
8069 -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you
8070 will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View
8071 Page Source</quote> option for this. Or right click on the ad, and grab the
8076 Let's try an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
8077 and look at it one section at a time in a sample configuration (your real
8078 configuration may vary):
8083 Matches for http://google.com:
8085 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8089 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
8090 -content-type-overwrite
8091 -crunch-client-header
8092 -crunch-if-none-match
8093 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8094 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8095 -crunch-server-header
8096 +deanimate-gifs {last}
8097 -downgrade-http-version
8098 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8100 -filter {content-cookies}
8101 -filter {all-popups}
8102 -filter {banners-by-link}
8103 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8104 -filter {frameset-borders}
8105 -filter {demoronizer}
8106 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8107 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8109 -filter {crude-parental}
8110 -filter {site-specifics}
8111 -filter {js-annoyances}
8112 -filter {html-annoyances}
8113 +filter {refresh-tags}
8114 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8115 +filter {img-reorder}
8116 +filter {banners-by-size}
8118 +filter {jumping-windows}
8119 +filter {ie-exploits}
8126 -handle-as-empty-document
8128 -hide-accept-language
8129 -hide-content-disposition
8130 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
8131 +hide-from-header {block}
8132 -hide-if-modified-since
8133 +hide-referrer {forge}
8138 -overwrite-last-modified
8139 +prevent-compression
8143 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
8144 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
8145 +session-cookies-only
8146 +set-image-blocker {pattern}
8147 -treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks }
8150 { -session-cookies-only }
8156 In file: user.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8157 (no matches in this file)
8162 This is telling us how we have defined our
8163 <link linkend="ACTIONS"><quote>actions</quote></link>, and
8164 which ones match for our test case, <quote>google.com</quote>.
8165 Displayed is all the actions that are available to us. Remember,
8166 the <literal>+</literal> sign denotes <quote>on</quote>. <literal>-</literal>
8167 denotes <quote>off</quote>. So some are <quote>on</quote> here, but many
8168 are <quote>off</quote>. Each example we try may provide a slightly different
8169 end result, depending on our configuration directives.
8173 is for our <filename>default.action</filename> file. The large, multi-line
8174 listing, is how the actions are set to match for all URLs, i.e. our default
8175 settings. If you look at your <quote>actions</quote> file, this would be the
8176 section just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section near the top. This
8177 will apply to all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end
8178 of the listing -- <quote> / </quote>.
8182 But we have defined additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
8183 rules, and then we list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions
8184 would apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit
8185 matches for <quote>.google.com</quote>. The first is negating our previous
8186 cookie setting, which was for <link
8187 linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>
8188 (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent cookies for google, at
8189 least that is how it is in this example. The second turns
8190 <emphasis>off</emphasis> any <link
8191 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link>
8192 action, allowing this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading
8193 dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will match any hosts and
8194 sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
8195 <quote>www.google.com</quote> or <quote>mail.google.com</quote>. But it would not
8196 match <quote>www.google.de</quote>! So, apparently, we have these two actions
8197 defined as exceptions to the general rules at the top somewhere in the lower
8198 part of our <filename>default.action</filename> file, and
8199 <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced somewhere in these latter sections.
8203 Then, for our <filename>user.action</filename> file, we again have no hits.
8204 So there is nothing google-specific that we might have added to our own, local
8205 configuration. If there was, those actions would over-rule any actions from
8206 previously processed files, such as <filename>default.action</filename>.
8207 <filename>user.action</filename> typically has the last word. This is the
8208 best place to put hard and fast exceptions,
8212 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
8213 <application>Privoxy</application> is applying all its <quote>actions</quote>
8214 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
8225 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
8226 -content-type-overwrite
8227 -crunch-client-header
8228 -crunch-if-none-match
8229 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8230 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8231 -crunch-server-header
8232 +deanimate-gifs {last}
8233 -downgrade-http-version
8234 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8236 -filter {content-cookies}
8237 -filter {all-popups}
8238 -filter {banners-by-link}
8239 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8240 -filter {frameset-borders}
8241 -filter {demoronizer}
8242 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8243 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8245 -filter {crude-parental}
8246 -filter {site-specifics}
8247 -filter {js-annoyances}
8248 -filter {html-annoyances}
8249 +filter {refresh-tags}
8250 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8251 +filter {img-reorder}
8252 +filter {banners-by-size}
8254 +filter {jumping-windows}
8255 +filter {ie-exploits}
8262 -handle-as-empty-document
8264 -hide-accept-language
8265 -hide-content-disposition
8266 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
8267 +hide-from-header {block}
8268 -hide-if-modified-since
8269 +hide-referrer {forge}
8274 -overwrite-last-modified
8275 +prevent-compression
8279 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
8280 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
8281 -session-cookies-only
8282 +set-image-blocker {pattern}
8283 -treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks </screen>
8287 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
8288 <quote>fast-redirects</quote> and <quote>session-cookies-only</quote>,
8289 which are activated specifically for this site in our configuration,
8290 and thus show in the <quote>Final Results</quote>.
8294 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
8306 { +block +handle-as-image }
8307 .[a-vx-z]*.doubleclick.net
8312 We'll just show the interesting part here - the explicit matches. It is
8313 matched three different times. Two <quote>+block</quote> sections,
8314 and a <quote>+block +handle-as-image</quote>,
8315 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
8316 <quote>+block-as-image</quote>. (<link
8317 linkend="ALIASES"><quote>Aliases</quote></link> are defined in
8318 the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
8323 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
8324 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
8325 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
8326 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
8327 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
8328 is done here -- as both a <link
8329 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link>
8330 <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
8331 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>.
8332 The custom alias <quote><literal>+block-as-image</literal></quote> just
8333 simplifies the process and make it more readable.
8337 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
8338 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
8344 Matches for http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
8346 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8350 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
8351 -content-type-overwrite
8352 -crunch-client-header
8353 -crunch-if-none-match
8354 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8355 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8356 -crunch-server-header
8358 -downgrade-http-version
8359 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8361 -filter {content-cookies}
8362 -filter {all-popups}
8363 -filter {banners-by-link}
8364 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8365 -filter {frameset-borders}
8366 -filter {demoronizer}
8367 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8368 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8370 -filter {crude-parental}
8371 -filter {site-specifics}
8372 -filter {js-annoyances}
8373 -filter {html-annoyances}
8374 +filter {refresh-tags}
8375 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8376 +filter {img-reorder}
8377 +filter {banners-by-size}
8379 +filter {jumping-windows}
8380 +filter {ie-exploits}
8387 -handle-as-empty-document
8389 -hide-accept-language
8390 -hide-content-disposition
8391 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
8392 +hide-from-header{block}
8393 +hide-referer{forge}
8397 -overwrite-last-modified
8398 +prevent-compression
8402 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
8403 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
8404 +session-cookies-only
8405 +set-image-blocker{blank}
8406 -treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks }
8409 { +block +handle-as-image }
8415 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote> in our
8416 configuration! But we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the
8417 blank page. It is actually triggering two different actions here, and
8418 the effects are aggregated so that the URL is blocked, and &my-app; is told
8419 to treat the block as if it were an image. But this is, of course, all wrong.
8420 We could now add a new action below this (or better in our own
8421 <filename>user.action</filename> file) that explicitly
8422 <emphasis>un</emphasis> blocks (
8423 <link linkend="BLOCK"><quote>{-block}</quote></link>) paths with
8424 <quote>adsl</quote> in them (remember, last match in the configuration
8425 wins). There are various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
8437 Now the page displays ;-)
8438 Remember to flush your browser's caches when making these kinds of changes to
8439 your configuration to insure that you get a freshly delivered page! Or, try
8440 using <literal>Shift+Reload</literal>.
8444 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
8451 { +block +handle-as-image }
8457 That actually was very helpful and pointed us quickly to where the problem
8458 was. If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default
8459 rules in the first section of <filename>default.action</filename> is causing
8460 the problem. This would require some guesswork, and maybe a little trial and
8461 error to isolate the offending rule. One likely cause would be one of the
8462 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> actions.
8463 These tend to be harder to troubleshoot.
8464 Try adding the URL for the site to one of aliases that turn off
8465 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>:
8473 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
8481 <quote><literal>{ shop }</literal></quote> is an <quote>alias</quote> that expands to
8482 <quote><literal>{ -filter -session-cookies-only }</literal></quote>.
8483 Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
8491 # Disable ALL filter actions for sites in this section
8499 This would turn off all filtering for these sites. This is best
8500 put in <filename>user.action</filename>, for local site
8501 exceptions. Note that when a simple domain pattern is used by itself (without
8502 the subsequent path portion), all sub-pages within that domain are included
8503 automatically in the scope of the action.
8507 Images that are inexplicably being blocked, may well be hitting the
8508 <link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE"><quote>+filter{banners-by-size}</quote></link>
8510 that images of certain sizes are ad banners (works well
8511 <emphasis>most of the time</emphasis> since these tend to be standardized).
8515 <quote><literal>{ fragile }</literal></quote> is an alias that disables most
8516 actions that are the most likely to cause trouble. This can be used as a
8517 last resort for problem sites.
8523 # Handle with care: easy to break
8525 mybank.example.com</screen>
8530 <emphasis>Remember to flush caches!</emphasis> Note that the
8531 <literal>mail.google</literal> reference lacks the TLD portion (e.g.
8532 <quote>.com</quote>. This will effectively match any TLD with
8533 <literal>google</literal> in it, such as <literal>mail.google.de</literal>,
8537 If this still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining
8538 actions one by one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
8547 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
8548 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
8549 Public License as published by the Free Software
8550 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
8551 your option) any later version.
8553 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
8554 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
8555 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
8556 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
8557 License for more details.
8559 The GNU General Public License should be included with
8560 this file. If not, you can view it at
8561 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
8562 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
8563 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301,
8566 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
8567 Revision 2.28 2006/12/10 23:42:48 hal9
8568 Fix various typos reported by Adam P. Thanks.
8570 Revision 2.27 2006/11/14 01:57:47 hal9
8571 Dump all docs prior to 3.0.6 release. Various minor changes to faq and user
8574 Revision 2.26 2006/10/24 11:16:44 hal9
8577 Revision 2.25 2006/10/18 10:50:33 hal9
8578 Add note that since filters are off in Cautious, compression is ON. Turn off
8579 compression to make filters work on all sites.
8581 Revision 2.24 2006/10/03 11:13:54 hal9
8582 More references to the new filters. Include html this time around.
8584 Revision 2.23 2006/10/02 22:43:53 hal9
8585 Contains new filter definitions from Fabian, and few other miscellaneous
8588 Revision 2.22 2006/09/22 01:27:55 hal9
8589 Final commit of probably various minor changes here and there. Unless
8590 something changes this should be ready for pending release.
8592 Revision 2.21 2006/09/20 03:21:36 david__schmidt
8593 Just the tiniest tweak. Wafer thin!
8595 Revision 2.20 2006/09/10 14:53:54 hal9
8596 Results of spell check. User manual has some updates to standard.actions file
8599 Revision 2.19 2006/09/08 12:19:02 fabiankeil
8600 Adjust hide-if-modified-since example values
8601 to reflect the recent changes.
8603 Revision 2.18 2006/09/08 02:38:57 hal9
8605 -Fix a number of broken links.
8606 -Migrate the new Windows service command line options, and reference as
8608 -Rebuild so that can be used with the new "user-manual" config capabilities.
8611 Revision 2.17 2006/09/05 13:25:12 david__schmidt
8612 Add Windows service invocation stuff (duplicated) in FAQ and in user manual under Windows startup. One probably ought to reference the other.
8614 Revision 2.16 2006/09/02 12:49:37 hal9
8615 Various small updates for new actions, filterfiles, etc.
8617 Revision 2.15 2006/08/30 11:15:22 hal9
8618 More work on the new actions, especially filter-*-headers, and What's New
8619 section. User Manual is close to final form for 3.0.4 release. Some tinkering
8620 and proof reading left to do.
8622 Revision 2.14 2006/08/29 10:59:36 hal9
8623 Add a "Whats New in this release" Section. Further work on multiple filter
8624 files, and assorted other minor changes.
8626 Revision 2.13 2006/08/22 11:04:59 hal9
8627 Silence warnings and errors. This should build now. New filters were only
8628 stubbed in. More to be done.
8630 Revision 2.12 2006/08/14 08:40:39 fabiankeil
8631 Documented new actions that were part of
8632 the "minor Privoxy improvements".
8634 Revision 2.11 2006/07/18 14:48:51 david__schmidt
8635 Reorganizing the repository: swapping out what was HEAD (the old 3.1 branch)
8636 with what was really the latest development (the v_3_0_branch branch)
8638 Revision 1.123.2.43 2005/05/23 09:59:10 hal9
8641 Revision 1.123.2.42 2004/12/04 14:39:57 hal9
8642 Fix two minor typos per bug SF report.
8644 Revision 1.123.2.41 2004/03/23 12:58:42 oes
8647 Revision 1.123.2.40 2004/02/27 12:48:49 hal9
8648 Add comment re: redirecting to local file system for set-image-blocker may
8649 is dependent on browser.
8651 Revision 1.123.2.39 2004/01/30 22:31:40 oes
8652 Added a hint re bookmarklets to Quickstart section
8654 Revision 1.123.2.38 2004/01/30 16:47:51 oes
8655 Some minor clarifications
8657 Revision 1.123.2.37 2004/01/29 22:36:11 hal9
8658 Updates for no longer filtering text/plain, and demoronizer default settings,
8659 and copyright notice dates.
8661 Revision 1.123.2.36 2003/12/10 02:26:26 hal9
8662 Changed the demoronizer filter description.
8664 Revision 1.123.2.35 2003/11/06 13:36:37 oes
8665 Updated link to nightly CVS tarball
8667 Revision 1.123.2.34 2003/06/26 23:50:16 hal9
8668 Add a small bit on filtering and problems re: source code being corrupted.
8670 Revision 1.123.2.33 2003/05/08 18:17:33 roro
8671 Use apt-get instead of dpkg to install Debian package, which is more
8672 solid, uses the correct and most recent Debian version automatically.
8674 Revision 1.123.2.32 2003/04/11 03:13:57 hal9
8675 Add small note about only one filterfile (as opposed to multiple actions
8678 Revision 1.123.2.31 2003/03/26 02:03:43 oes
8679 Updated hard-coded copyright dates
8681 Revision 1.123.2.30 2003/03/24 12:58:56 hal9
8682 Add new section on Predefined Filters.
8684 Revision 1.123.2.29 2003/03/20 02:45:29 hal9
8685 More problems with \-\-chroot causing markup problems :(
8687 Revision 1.123.2.28 2003/03/19 00:35:24 hal9
8688 Manual edit of revision log because 'chroot' (even inside a comment) was
8689 causing Docbook to hang here (due to double hyphen and the processor thinking
8692 Revision 1.123.2.27 2003/03/18 19:37:14 oes
8693 s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
8695 Revision 1.123.2.26 2003/03/17 16:50:53 oes
8696 Added documentation for new chroot option
8698 Revision 1.123.2.25 2003/03/15 18:36:55 oes
8699 Adapted to the new filters
8701 Revision 1.123.2.24 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
8702 Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
8705 Revision 1.123.2.23 2002/10/21 02:32:01 hal9
8706 Updates to the user.action examples section. A few new ones.
8708 Revision 1.123.2.22 2002/10/12 00:51:53 hal9
8709 Add demoronizer to filter section.
8711 Revision 1.123.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
8712 s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
8714 Revision 1.123.2.20 2002/10/10 03:49:21 hal9
8715 Add notes to session-cookies-only and Quickstart about pre-existing
8716 cookies. Also, note content-cookies work differently.
8718 Revision 1.123.2.19 2002/09/26 01:25:36 hal9
8719 More explanation on Privoxy patterns, more on content-cookies and SSL.
8721 Revision 1.123.2.18 2002/08/22 23:47:58 hal9
8722 Add 'Documentation' to Privoxy Menu shot in Configuration section to match
8725 Revision 1.123.2.17 2002/08/18 01:13:05 hal9
8726 Spell checked (only one typo this time!).
8728 Revision 1.123.2.16 2002/08/09 19:20:54 david__schmidt
8729 Update to Mac OSX startup script name
8731 Revision 1.123.2.15 2002/08/07 17:32:11 oes
8732 Converted some internal links from ulink to link for PDF creation; no content changed
8734 Revision 1.123.2.14 2002/08/06 09:16:13 oes
8735 Nits re: actions file download
8737 Revision 1.123.2.13 2002/08/02 18:23:19 g_sauthoff
8738 Just 2 small corrections to the Gentoo sections
8740 Revision 1.123.2.12 2002/08/02 18:17:21 g_sauthoff
8741 Added 2 Gentoo sections
8743 Revision 1.123.2.11 2002/07/26 15:20:31 oes
8744 - Added version info to title
8745 - Added info on new filters
8746 - Revised parts of the filter file tutorial
8747 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
8749 Revision 1.123.2.10 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
8750 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
8752 Revision 1.123.2.9 2002/07/11 03:40:28 david__schmidt
8754 Updated Mac OSX sections due to installation location change
8756 Revision 1.123.2.8 2002/06/09 16:36:32 hal9
8757 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
8759 Revision 1.123.2.7 2002/06/09 00:29:34 hal9
8760 Touch ups on filtering, in actions section and Anatomy.
8762 Revision 1.123.2.6 2002/06/06 23:11:03 hal9
8763 Fix broken link. Linkchecked all docs.
8765 Revision 1.123.2.5 2002/05/29 02:01:02 hal9
8766 This is break out of the entire config section from u-m, so it can
8767 eventually be used to generate the comments, etc in the main config file
8768 so that these are in sync with each other.
8770 Revision 1.123.2.4 2002/05/27 03:28:45 hal9
8771 Ooops missed something from David.
8773 Revision 1.123.2.3 2002/05/27 03:23:17 hal9
8774 Fix FIXMEs for OS2 and OSX startup. Fix Redhat typos (should be Red Hat).
8775 That's a wrap, I think.
8777 Revision 1.123.2.2 2002/05/26 19:02:09 hal9
8778 Move Amiga stuff around to take of FIXME in start up section.
8780 Revision 1.123.2.1 2002/05/26 17:04:25 hal9
8781 -Spellcheck, very minor edits, and sync across branches
8783 Revision 1.123 2002/05/24 23:19:23 hal9
8784 Include new image (Proxy setup). More fun with guibutton.
8785 Minor corrections/clarifications here and there.
8787 Revision 1.122 2002/05/24 13:24:08 oes
8788 Added Bookmarklet for one-click pre-filled access to show-url-info
8790 Revision 1.121 2002/05/23 23:20:17 oes
8791 - Changed more (all?) references to actions to the
8792 <literal><link> style.
8793 - Small fixes in the actions chapter
8794 - Small clarifications in the quickstart to ad blocking
8795 - Removed <emphasis> from <title>s since the new doc CSS
8796 renders them red (bad in TOC).
8798 Revision 1.120 2002/05/23 19:16:43 roro
8799 Correct Debian specials (installation and startup).
8801 Revision 1.119 2002/05/22 17:17:05 oes
8804 Revision 1.118 2002/05/21 04:54:55 hal9
8805 -New Section: Quickstart to Ad Blocking
8806 -Reformat Actions Anatomy to match new CGI layout
8808 Revision 1.117 2002/05/17 13:56:16 oes
8809 - Reworked & extended Templates chapter
8810 - Small changes to Regex appendix
8811 - #included authors.sgml into (C) and hist chapter
8813 Revision 1.116 2002/05/17 03:23:46 hal9
8814 Fixing merge conflict in Quickstart section.
8816 Revision 1.115 2002/05/16 16:25:00 oes
8817 Extended the Filter File chapter & minor fixes
8819 Revision 1.114 2002/05/16 09:42:50 oes
8820 More ulink->link, added some hints to Quickstart section
8822 Revision 1.113 2002/05/15 21:07:25 oes
8823 Extended and further commented the example actions files
8825 Revision 1.112 2002/05/15 03:57:14 hal9
8826 Spell check. A few minor edits here and there for better syntax and
8829 Revision 1.111 2002/05/14 23:01:36 oes
8832 Revision 1.110 2002/05/14 19:10:45 oes
8833 Restored alphabetical order of actions
8835 Revision 1.109 2002/05/14 17:23:11 oes
8836 Renamed the prevent-*-cookies actions, extended aliases section and moved it before the example AFs
8838 Revision 1.108 2002/05/14 15:29:12 oes
8839 Completed proofreading the actions chapter
8841 Revision 1.107 2002/05/12 03:20:41 hal9
8842 Small clarifications for 127.0.0.1 vs localhost for listen-address since this
8843 apparently an important distinction for some OS's.
8845 Revision 1.106 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
8846 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
8847 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
8848 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
8850 Revision 1.105 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
8851 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
8853 Revision 1.104 2002/05/04 08:44:45 swa
8856 Revision 1.103 2002/05/04 00:40:53 hal9
8857 -Remove the TOC first page kludge. It's fixed proper now in ldp.dsl.in.
8858 -Some minor additions to Quickstart.
8860 Revision 1.102 2002/05/03 17:46:00 oes
8861 Further proofread & reactivated short build instructions
8863 Revision 1.101 2002/05/03 03:58:30 hal9
8864 Move the user-manual config directive to top of section. Add note about
8865 Privoxy needing read permissions for configs, and write for logs.
8867 Revision 1.100 2002/04/29 03:05:55 hal9
8868 Add clarification on differences of new actions files.
8870 Revision 1.99 2002/04/28 16:59:05 swa
8871 more structure in starting section
8873 Revision 1.98 2002/04/28 05:43:59 hal9
8874 This is the break up of configuration.html into multiple files. This
8875 will probably break links elsewhere :(
8877 Revision 1.97 2002/04/27 21:04:42 hal9
8878 -Rewrite of Actions File example.
8879 -Add section for user-manual directive in config.
8881 Revision 1.96 2002/04/27 05:32:00 hal9
8882 -Add short section to Filter Files to tie in with +filter action.
8883 -Start rewrite of examples in Actions Examples (not finished).
8885 Revision 1.95 2002/04/26 17:23:29 swa
8886 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
8888 Revision 1.94 2002/04/26 05:24:36 hal9
8889 -Add most of Andreas suggestions to Chain of Events section.
8890 -A few other minor corrections and touch up.
8892 Revision 1.92 2002/04/25 18:55:13 hal9
8893 More catchups on new actions files, and new actions names.
8894 Other assorted cleanups, and minor modifications.
8896 Revision 1.91 2002/04/24 02:39:31 hal9
8897 Add 'Chain of Events' section.
8899 Revision 1.90 2002/04/23 21:41:25 hal9
8900 Linuxconf is deprecated on RH, substitute chkconfig.
8902 Revision 1.89 2002/04/23 21:05:28 oes
8903 Added hint for startup on Red Hat
8905 Revision 1.88 2002/04/23 05:37:54 hal9
8906 Add AmigaOS install stuff.
8908 Revision 1.87 2002/04/23 02:53:15 david__schmidt
8909 Updated OSX installation section
8910 Added a few English tweaks here an there
8912 Revision 1.86 2002/04/21 01:46:32 hal9
8913 Re-write actions section.
8915 Revision 1.85 2002/04/18 21:23:23 hal9
8916 Fix ugly typo (mine).
8918 Revision 1.84 2002/04/18 21:17:13 hal9
8919 Spell Redhat correctly (ie Red Hat). A few minor grammar corrections.
8921 Revision 1.83 2002/04/18 18:21:12 oes
8922 Added RPM install detail
8924 Revision 1.82 2002/04/18 12:04:50 oes
8927 Revision 1.81 2002/04/18 11:50:24 oes
8928 Extended Install section - needs fixing by packagers
8930 Revision 1.80 2002/04/18 10:45:19 oes
8931 Moved text to buildsource.sgml, renamed some filters, details
8933 Revision 1.79 2002/04/18 03:18:06 hal9
8934 Spellcheck, and minor touchups.
8936 Revision 1.78 2002/04/17 18:04:16 oes
8939 Revision 1.77 2002/04/17 13:51:23 oes
8940 Proofreading, part one
8942 Revision 1.76 2002/04/16 04:25:51 hal9
8943 -Added 'Note to Upgraders' and re-ordered the 'Quickstart' section.
8944 -Note about proxy may need requests to re-read config files.
8946 Revision 1.75 2002/04/12 02:08:48 david__schmidt
8947 Remove OS/2 building info... it is already in the developer-manual
8949 Revision 1.74 2002/04/11 00:54:38 hal9
8950 Add small section on submitting actions.
8952 Revision 1.73 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
8955 Revision 1.72 2002/04/10 04:06:19 hal9
8956 Added actions feedback to Bookmarklets section
8958 Revision 1.71 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
8959 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
8961 Revision 1.70 2002/04/08 20:53:56 swa
8964 Revision 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9
8965 -Add privoxy-man-page.sgml, for man page.
8966 -Add authors.sgml for AUTHORS (and p-authors.sgml)
8967 -Reworked various aspects of various docs.
8968 -Added additional comments to sub-docs.
8970 Revision 1.68 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
8971 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
8973 Revision 1.67 2002/04/04 17:27:57 swa
8974 more single file to be included at multiple points. make maintaining easier
8976 Revision 1.66 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
8977 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
8978 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
8979 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
8980 eventually be set by Makefile.
8981 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
8983 Revision 1.65 2002/04/03 19:52:07 swa
8984 enhance squid section due to user suggestion
8986 Revision 1.64 2002/04/03 03:53:43 hal9
8987 A few minor bug fixes, and touch ups. Ready for review.
8989 Revision 1.63 2002/04/01 16:24:49 hal9
8990 Define entities to include boilerplate text. See doc/source/*.
8992 Revision 1.62 2002/03/30 04:15:53 hal9
8993 - Fix privoxy.org/config links.
8994 - Paste in Bookmarklets from Toggle page.
8995 - Move Quickstart nearer top, and minor rework.
8997 Revision 1.61 2002/03/29 01:31:08 hal9
9000 Revision 1.60 2002/03/27 01:57:34 hal9
9001 Added more to Anatomy section.
9003 Revision 1.59 2002/03/27 00:54:33 hal9
9004 Touch up intro for new name.
9006 Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
9007 we have a new homepage!
9009 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
9010 A few minor catch ups with name change.
9012 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
9013 configure needs to be generated.
9015 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
9016 we are too lazy to make a block-built
9017 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
9019 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
9020 name change related issue.
9022 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
9023 name change. changed filenames.
9025 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
9028 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
9029 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
9030 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
9031 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
9032 comments and remarks to history untouched.
9034 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
9037 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
9038 New section in Appendix.
9040 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
9041 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
9043 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
9044 correct feedback channels
9046 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
9047 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
9049 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
9052 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
9053 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
9055 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
9056 Added imageblock{pattern}.
9058 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
9061 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
9062 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
9064 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
9065 provide correct feedback channels
9067 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
9068 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
9070 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
9071 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
9073 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
9074 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
9076 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
9077 Add new - - user option.
9079 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
9080 Added section on command line options.
9082 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
9083 Changed default port to 8118
9085 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
9086 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
9088 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
9089 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
9090 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
9093 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
9096 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
9097 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
9099 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
9100 Update OS/2 build section
9102 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
9103 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
9104 will work - no other changes are needed.
9106 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
9107 Added a very short section on Templates
9109 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
9110 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
9112 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
9113 Touch ups for *.action files.
9115 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
9118 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
9119 Updates for recent changes.
9121 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
9122 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
9124 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
9125 Correct 2 minor errors
9127 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
9128 *** empty log message ***
9130 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
9131 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
9133 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
9134 wrong url in documentation
9136 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
9137 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
9139 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
9142 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
9145 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
9148 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
9149 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
9151 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
9152 Some additions, and re-arranging.
9154 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
9157 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
9158 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
9160 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
9163 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
9164 source files for junkbuster documentation
9166 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
9167 first proposal of a structure.
9169 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
9170 docs should have an author.
9172 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
9173 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.