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 "3.0.11">
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 % seealso-extra "INCLUDE"> <!-- extra stuff from seealso.sgml -->
28 <!entity my-app "<application>Privoxy</application>">
31 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml,v $
34 This file belongs into
35 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
37 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.104 2009/04/17 11:27:49 fabiankeil Exp $
39 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Privoxy Developers http://www.privoxy.org/
42 ========================================================================
43 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
44 anything in this, or other Privoxy documentation.
45 ========================================================================
52 <title>Privoxy &p-version; User Manual</title>
56 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
57 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
58 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001-2009 by
59 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
63 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.104 2009/04/17 11:27:49 fabiankeil Exp $</pubdate>
67 Note: the following should generate a separate page, and a live link to it,
68 all nicely done. But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave
69 commented unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the
70 copyright/license declarations will be in their own sgml.
83 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
84 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
85 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
91 The <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> gives users information on how to
92 install, configure and use <ulink
93 url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy</ulink>.
96 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
98 <!-- end privoxy.sgml -->
101 You can find the latest version of the <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> at <ulink
102 url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>.
103 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> on how to
104 contact the developers.
108 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
114 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
115 <sect1 label="1" id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
117 This documentation is included with the current &p-status; version of
118 <application>Privoxy</application>, v.&p-version;<![%p-not-stable;[,
119 and is mostly complete at this point. The most up to date reference for the
120 time being is still the comments in the source files and in the individual
121 configuration files. Development of a new version is currently nearing
122 completion, and includes significant changes and enhancements over
123 earlier versions. ]]>.
126 <!-- include only in non-stable versions -->
129 Since this is a &p-status; version, not all new features are well tested. This
130 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with
131 CVS sources). And there <emphasis>may be</emphasis> bugs, though hopefully
136 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
137 <sect2 id="features"><title>Features</title>
139 In addition to the core
140 features of ad blocking and
141 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookie</ulink> management,
142 <application>Privoxy</application> provides many supplemental
143 features<![%p-not-stable;[, some of them currently under development]]>,
144 that give the end-user more control, more privacy and more freedom:
146 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml boilerplate here: -->
148 <!-- end boilerplate -->
153 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
156 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
157 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
160 <application>Privoxy</application> is available both in convenient pre-compiled
161 packages for a wide range of operating systems, and as raw source code.
162 For most users, we recommend using the packages, which can be downloaded from our
163 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Project
169 On some platforms, the installer may remove previously installed versions, if
170 found. (See below for your platform). In any case <emphasis>be sure to backup
171 your old configuration if it is valuable to you.</emphasis> See the <link
172 linkend="upgradersnote">note to upgraders</link> section below.
175 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
176 <sect2 id="installation-packages"><title>Binary Packages</title>
178 How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
181 <!-- XXX: The installation sections should be sorted -->
183 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
184 <sect3 id="installation-pack-rpm"><title>Red Hat and Fedora RPMs</title>
187 RPMs can be installed with <literal>rpm -Uvh privoxy-&p-version;-1.rpm</literal>,
188 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location
189 of configuration files.
193 Note that on Red Hat, <application>Privoxy</application> will
194 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be automatically started on system boot. You will
195 need to enable that using <command>chkconfig</command>,
196 <command>ntsysv</command>, or similar methods.
200 If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM:
201 <literal>rpm --rebuild privoxy-&p-version;-1.src.rpm</literal>. This
202 will use your locally installed libraries and RPM version.
206 Also note that if you have a <application>Junkbuster</application> RPM installed
207 on your system, you need to remove it first, because the packages conflict.
208 Otherwise, RPM will try to remove <application>Junkbuster</application>
209 automatically if found, before installing <application>Privoxy</application>.
213 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
214 <sect3 id="installation-deb"><title>Debian and Ubuntu</title>
216 DEBs can be installed with <literal>apt-get install privoxy</literal>,
217 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location of
222 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
223 <sect3 id="installation-pack-win"><title>Windows</title>
226 Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through
227 the installation process. You will find the configuration files
228 in the same directory as you installed <application>Privoxy</application> in.
231 Version 3.0.5 beta introduced full <application>Windows</application> service
232 functionality. On Windows only, the <application>Privoxy</application>
233 program has two new command line arguments to install and uninstall
234 <application>Privoxy</application> as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>.
238 <term>Arguments:</term>
241 <replaceable class="parameter">--install</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
244 <replaceable class="parameter">--uninstall</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
250 After invoking <application>Privoxy</application> with
251 <command>--install</command>, you will need to bring up the
252 <application>Windows</application> service console to assign the user you
253 want <application>Privoxy</application> to run under, and whether or not you
254 want it to run whenever the system starts. You can start the
255 <application>Windows</application> services console with the following
256 command: <command>services.msc</command>. If you do not take the manual step
257 of modifying <application>Privoxy's</application> service settings, it will
258 not start. Note too that you will need to give Privoxy a user account that
259 actually exists, or it will not be permitted to
260 write to its log and configuration files.
265 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
266 <sect3 id="installation-pack-bintgz"><title>Solaris <!--, NetBSD, HP-UX--></title>
269 Create a new directory, <literal>cd</literal> to it, then unzip and
270 untar the archive. For the most part, you'll have to figure out where
271 things go. <!-- FIXME, more info needed? -->
275 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
276 <sect3 id="installation-os2"><title>OS/2</title>
279 First, make sure that no previous installations of
280 <application>Junkbuster</application> and / or
281 <application>Privoxy</application> are left on your
282 system. Check that no <application>Junkbuster</application>
283 or <application>Privoxy</application> objects are in
289 Then, just double-click the WarpIN self-installing archive, which will
290 guide you through the installation process. A shadow of the
291 <application>Privoxy</application> executable will be placed in your
292 startup folder so it will start automatically whenever OS/2 starts.
296 The directory you choose to install <application>Privoxy</application>
297 into will contain all of the configuration files.
301 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
302 <sect3 id="installation-mac"><title>Mac OS X</title>
304 Unzip the downloaded file (you can either double-click on the zip file
305 icon from the Finder, or from the desktop if you downloaded it there).
306 Then, double-click on the package installer icon and follow the
307 installation process.
310 The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful
311 installation (in addition to every time your computer starts up). To
312 prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your
313 computer starts up, remove or rename the folder named
314 <literal>/Library/StartupItems/Privoxy</literal>.
317 To manually start or stop the privoxy service, use the Privoxy Utility
318 for Mac OS X. This application controls the privoxy service (e.g.
319 starting and stopping the service as well as uninstalling the software).
323 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
324 <sect3 id="installation-amiga"><title>AmigaOS</title>
326 Copy and then unpack the <filename>lha</filename> archive to a suitable location.
327 All necessary files will be installed into <application>Privoxy</application>
328 directory, including all configuration and log files. To uninstall, just
329 remove this directory.
333 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
334 <sect3 id="installation-tbz"><title>FreeBSD</title>
337 Privoxy is part of FreeBSD's Ports Collection, you can build and install
338 it with <literal>cd /usr/ports/www/privoxy; make install clean</literal>.
341 If you don't use the ports, you can fetch and install
342 the package with <literal>pkg_add -r privoxy</literal>.
345 The port skeleton and the package can also be downloaded from the
346 <ulink url="https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">File Release
347 Page</ulink>, but there's no reason to use them unless you're interested in the
348 beta releases which are only available there.
352 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
353 <sect3 id="installattion-gentoo"><title>Gentoo</title>
355 Gentoo source packages (Ebuilds) for <application>Privoxy</application> are
356 contained in the Gentoo Portage Tree (they are not on the download page,
357 but there is a Gentoo section, where you can see when a new
358 <application>Privoxy</application> Version is added to the Portage Tree).
361 Before installing <application>Privoxy</application> under Gentoo just do
362 first <literal>emerge --sync</literal> to get the latest changes from the
363 Portage tree. With <literal>emerge privoxy</literal> you install the latest
367 Configuration files are in <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename>, the
368 documentation is in <filename>/usr/share/doc/privoxy-&p-version;</filename>
369 and the Log directory is in <filename>/var/log/privoxy</filename>.
375 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
376 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Building from Source</title>
379 The most convenient way to obtain the <application>Privoxy</application> sources
380 is to download the source tarball from our
381 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&package_id=10571">project download
386 If you like to live on the bleeding edge and are not afraid of using
387 possibly unstable development versions, you can check out the up-to-the-minute
388 version directly from <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=11118">the
389 CVS repository</ulink>.
391 deprecated...out of business.
392 or simply download <ulink
393 url="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/ijbswa-cvsroot.tar.bz2">the nightly CVS
398 <!-- include buildsource.sgml boilerplate: -->
400 <!-- end boilerplate -->
403 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
404 <sect2 id="installation-keepupdated"><title>Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date</title>
406 As user feedback comes in and development continues, we will make updated versions
407 of both the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link> (as a <ulink
408 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&release_id=103670">separate
409 package</ulink>) and the software itself (including the actions file) available for
414 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
415 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
416 url="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-announce/">subscribe
417 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
421 In order not to lose your personal changes and adjustments when updating
422 to the latest <literal>default.action</literal> file we <emphasis>strongly
423 recommend</emphasis> that you use <literal>user.action</literal> and
424 <literal>user.filter</literal> for your local
425 customizations of <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
426 linkend="actions-file">Chapter on actions files</link> for details.
434 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
436 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
437 <sect1 id="whatsnew">
438 <title>What's New in this Release</title>
440 <application>Privoxy 3.0.12</application> is mainly a bugfix release:
447 The socket-timeout option now also works on platforms whose
448 select() implementation modifies the timeout structure.
449 Previously the timeout was triggered even if the connection
450 didn't stall. Reported by cyberpatrol.
455 The Connection: keep-alive code properly deals with files
456 larger than 2GB. Previously the connection was closed too
462 The content length for files above 2GB is logged correctly.
467 The user-manual directive on the show-status page links to
468 the documentation location specified with the directive,
469 not to the Privoxy website.
474 When running in daemon mode, Privoxy doesn't log anything
475 to the console unless there are errors before the logfile
481 The show-status page prints warnings about invalid directives
482 on the same line as the directives themselves.
487 Fixed several justified (but harmless) compiler warnings,
488 mostly on 64 bit platforms.
493 The mingw32 version explicitly requests the default charset
494 to prevent display problems with some fonts available on more
495 recent Windows versions. Patch by Burberry.
500 The mingw32 version uses the Privoxy icon in the alt-tab
501 windows. Patch by Burberry.
506 The timestamp and the thread id is omitted in the "Fatal error"
507 message box on mingw32.
512 Fixed two related mingw32-only buffer overflows. Triggering
513 them required control over the configuration file, therefore
514 this isn't seen as a security issue.
519 In verbose mode, or if the new option --show-skipped-tests
520 is used, Privoxy-Regression-Test logs skipped tests and the
528 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
530 <sect2 id="upgradersnote">
531 <title>Note to Upgraders</title>
534 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier
535 versions of <application>Privoxy</application>:
543 The recommended way to upgrade &my-app; is to backup your old
544 configuration files, install the new ones, verify that &my-app;
545 is working correctly and finally merge back your changes using
546 <application>diff</application> and maybe <application>patch</application>.
549 There are a number of new features in each &my-app; release and
550 most of them have to be explicitly enabled in the configuration
551 files. Old configuration files obviously don't do that and due
552 to syntax changes using old configuration files with a new
553 &my-app; isn't always possible anyway.
558 Note that some installers remove earlier versions completely,
559 including configuration files, therefore you should really save
560 any important configuration files!
565 On the other hand, other installers don't overwrite existing configuration
566 files, thinking you will want to do that yourself.
571 <filename>standard.action</filename> has been merged into
572 the <filename>default.action</filename> file.
577 In the default configuration only fatal errors are logged now.
578 You can change that in the <link linkend="DEBUG">debug section</link>
579 of the configuration file. You may also want to enable more verbose
580 logging until you verified that the new &my-app; version is working
587 Three other config file settings are now off by default:
588 <link linkend="enable-remote-toggle">enable-remote-toggle</link>,
589 <link linkend="enable-remote-http-toggle">enable-remote-http-toggle</link>,
590 and <link linkend="enable-edit-actions">enable-edit-actions</link>.
591 If you use or want these, you will need to explicitly enable them, and
592 be aware of the security issues involved.
599 What constitutes a <quote>default</quote> configuration has changed,
600 and you may want to review which actions are <quote>on</quote> by
601 default. This is primarily a matter of emphasis, but some features
602 you may have been used to, may now be <quote>off</quote> by default.
603 There are also a number of new actions and filters you may want to
604 consider, most of which are not fully incorporated into the default
605 settings as yet (see above).
612 The default actions setting is now <literal>Cautious</literal>. Previous
613 releases had a default setting of <literal>Medium</literal>. Experienced
614 users may want to adjust this, as it is fairly conservative by &my-app;
615 standards and past practices. See <ulink
616 url="http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default">
617 http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default</ulink>. New users
618 should try the default settings for a while before turning up the volume.
624 The default setting has filtering turned <emphasis>off</emphasis>, which
625 subsequently means that compression is <emphasis>on</emphasis>. Remember
626 that filtering does not work on compressed pages, so if you use, or want to
627 use, filtering, you will need to force compression off. Example:
631 { +<link linkend="filter">filter</link>{google} +<link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link> }
635 Or if you use a number of filters, or filter many sites, you may just want
636 to turn off compression for all sites in
637 <filename>default.action</filename> (or
638 <filename>user.action</filename>).
645 Also, <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> is
646 off by default now. If you've liked this feature in the past, you may want
647 to turn it back on in <filename>user.action</filename> now.
654 Some installers may not automatically start
655 <application>Privoxy</application> after installation.
666 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
667 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using Privoxy</title>
673 Install <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
674 linkend="installation">Installation Section</link> below for platform specific
681 Advanced users and those who want to offer <application>Privoxy</application>
682 service to more than just their local machine should check the <link
683 linkend="config">main config file</link>, especially the <link
684 linkend="access-control">security-relevant</link> options. These are
691 Start <application>Privoxy</application>, if the installation program has
692 not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
693 <link linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link>.
699 Set your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application> as HTTP and
700 HTTPS (SSL) <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>
701 by setting the proxy configuration for address of
702 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> and port <literal>8118</literal>.
703 <emphasis>DO NOT</emphasis> activate proxying for <literal>FTP</literal> or
704 any protocols besides HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) unless you intend to prevent your
705 browser from using these protocols.
711 Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad images.
712 If using <application>Privoxy</application> to manage
713 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
714 you should remove any currently stored cookies too.
720 A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for
721 most. There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
722 configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little
723 to no initial configuration is required in most cases, you may want
725 <ulink url="config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">web-based action editor</ulink> though.
726 Be sure to read the warnings first.
729 See the <link linkend="configuration">Configuration section</link> for more
730 configuration options, and how to customize your installation.
731 You might also want to look at the <link
732 linkend="quickstart-ad-blocking">next section</link> for a quick
733 introduction to how <application>Privoxy</application> blocks ads and
740 If you experience ads that slip through, innocent images that are
741 blocked, or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune
742 <application>Privoxy's</application> behavior, take a look at the <link
743 linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>. As a quick start, you might
744 find the <link linkend="act-examples">richly commented examples</link>
745 helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files through the <ulink
746 url="http://config.privoxy.org">web-based user interface</ulink>. The
747 Appendix <quote><link linkend="actionsanat">Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an
748 Action</link></quote> has hints on how to understand and debug actions that
749 <quote>misbehave</quote>.
754 Did anyone test these lately?
758 For easy access to &my-app;'s most important controls, drag the provided
759 <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklets</link> into your browser's
767 Please see the section <link linkend="contact">Contacting the
768 Developers</link> on how to report bugs, problems with websites or to get
775 Now enjoy surfing with enhanced control, comfort and privacy!
783 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
785 <sect2 id="quickstart-ad-blocking">
786 <title>Quickstart to Ad Blocking</title>
788 NOTE: This section is deliberately redundant for those that don't
789 want to read the whole thing (which is getting lengthy).
792 Ad blocking is but one of <application>Privoxy's</application>
793 array of features. Many of these features are for the technically minded advanced
794 user. But, ad and banner blocking is surely common ground for everybody.
797 This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so
798 you can get up to speed quickly without having to read the more extensive
799 information provided below, though this is highly recommended.
802 First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the
803 more aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block
804 things that were not intended. And the more likely that some things
805 may not work as intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want
806 extreme ad free browsing, be prepared to deal with more
807 <quote>problem</quote> sites, and to spend more time adjusting the
808 configuration to solve these unintended consequences. In short, there is
809 not an easy way to eliminate <emphasis>all</emphasis> ads. Either take
810 the easy way and settle for <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads blocked with the
811 default configuration, or jump in and tweak it for your personal surfing
812 habits and preferences.
815 Secondly, a brief explanation of <application>Privoxy's </application>
816 <quote>actions</quote>. <quote>Actions</quote> in this context, are
817 the directives we use to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to perform
818 some task relating to HTTP transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell
819 <application>Privoxy</application> to take some <quote>action</quote>. Each
820 action has a unique name and function. While there are many potential
821 <application>actions</application> in <application>Privoxy's</application>
822 arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking. <link
823 linkend="actions">Actions</link>, and <link linkend="actions-file">action
824 configuration files</link>, are explained in depth below.
827 Actions are specified in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
828 followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
829 can actually be URL type <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> that use
830 wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs. The
831 actions, together with the URL patterns are called a section.
834 When you connect to a website, the full URL will either match one or more
835 of the sections as defined in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
836 or not. If so, then <application>Privoxy</application> will perform the
837 respective actions. If not, then nothing special happens. Furthermore, web
838 pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web browser will
839 use to load additional components of the page, as it parses the
840 original page's HTML content. An ad image for instance, is just an URL
841 embedded in the page somewhere. The image itself may be on the same server,
842 or a server somewhere else on the Internet. Complex web pages will have many
843 such embedded URLs. &my-app; can deal with each URL individually, so, for
844 instance, the main page text is not touched, but images from such-and-such
849 The most important actions for basic ad blocking are: <literal><link
850 linkend="block">block</link></literal>, <literal><link
851 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
853 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal>,and
854 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>:
862 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> - this is perhaps
863 the single most used action, and is particularly important for ad blocking.
864 This action stops any contact between your browser and any URL patterns
865 that match this action's configuration. It can be used for blocking ads,
866 but also anything that is determined to be unwanted. By itself, it simply
867 stops any communication with the remote server and sends
868 <application>Privoxy</application>'s own built-in BLOCKED page instead to
869 let you now what has happened (with some exceptions, see below).
875 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> -
876 tells <application>Privoxy</application> to treat this URL as an image.
877 <application>Privoxy</application>'s default configuration already does this
878 for all common image types (e.g. GIF), but there are many situations where this
879 is not so easy to determine. So we'll force it in these cases. This is particularly
880 important for ad blocking, since only if we know that it's an image of
881 some kind, can we replace it with an image of our choosing, instead of the
882 <application>Privoxy</application> BLOCKED page (which would only result in
883 a <quote>broken image</quote> icon). There are some limitations to this
884 though. For instance, you can't just brute-force an image substitution for
885 an entire HTML page in most situations.
891 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> -
892 sends an empty document instead of <application>Privoxy's</application>
893 normal BLOCKED HTML page. This is useful for file types that are neither
894 HTML nor images, such as blocking JavaScript files.
901 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> - tells
902 <application>Privoxy</application> what to display in place of an ad image that
903 has hit a block rule. For this to come into play, the URL must match a
904 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action somewhere in the
905 configuration, <emphasis>and</emphasis>, it must also match an
906 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action.
909 The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
913 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad
914 replacement is obvious. This is the default.
919 <emphasis>blank</emphasis> - A very small empty GIF image is displayed.
920 This is the so-called <quote>invisible</quote> configuration option.
925 <emphasis>http://<URL></emphasis> - A redirect to any image anywhere
926 of the user's choosing (advanced usage).
935 Advanced users will eventually want to explore &my-app;
936 <literal><link linkend="filter">filters</link></literal> as well. Filters
937 are very different from <literal><link
938 linkend="block">blocks</link></literal>.
939 A <quote>block</quote> blocks a site, page, or unwanted contented. Filters
940 are a way of filtering or modifying what is actually on the page. An example
941 filter usage: a text replacement of <quote>no-no</quote> for
942 <quote>nasty-word</quote>. That is a very simple example. This process can be
943 used for ad blocking, but it is more in the realm of advanced usage and has
944 some pitfalls to be wary off.
948 The quickest way to adjust any of these settings is with your browser through
949 the special <application>Privoxy</application> editor at <ulink
950 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
951 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>). This
952 is an internal page, and does not require Internet access.
956 Note that as of <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.7 beta the
957 action editor is disabled by default. Check the
958 <ulink url="config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions
959 section in the configuration file</ulink> to learn why and in which
960 cases it's safe to enable again.
964 If you decided to enable the action editor, select the appropriate
965 <quote>actions</quote> file, and click
966 <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>. It is best to put personal or
967 local preferences in <filename>user.action</filename> since this is not
968 meant to be overwritten during upgrades, and will over-ride the settings in
969 other files. Here you can insert new <quote>actions</quote>, and URLs for ad
970 blocking or other purposes, and make other adjustments to the configuration.
971 <application>Privoxy</application> will detect these changes automatically.
975 A quick and simple step by step example:
983 Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select
984 <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote> from the
992 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
997 Find <filename>user.action</filename> in the top section, and click
998 on <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>:
1001 <!-- image of editor and actions files selections -->
1003 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Actions Files in Use</title>
1006 <imagedata fileref="files-in-use.jpg" format="jpg">
1009 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Actions Files in Use ]</phrase>
1018 You should have a section with only
1019 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> listed under
1020 <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1021 If not, click a <quote><guibutton>Insert new section below</guibutton></quote>
1022 button, and in the new section that just appeared, click the
1023 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button right under the word <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1024 This will bring up a list of all actions. Find
1025 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> near the top, and click
1026 in the <quote>Enabled</quote> column, then <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote>
1027 just below the list.
1032 Now, in the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> actions section,
1033 click the <quote><guibutton>Add</guibutton></quote> button, and paste the URL the
1034 browser got from <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote>.
1035 Remove the <literal>http://</literal> at the beginning of the URL. Then, click
1036 <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote> (or
1037 <quote><guibutton>OK</guibutton></quote> if in a pop-up window).
1042 Now go back to the original page, and press <keycap>SHIFT-Reload</keycap>
1043 (or flush all browser caches). The image should be gone now.
1051 This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
1052 wildcard pattern match to include potentially similar images from the same
1053 site. For a more extensive explanation of <quote>patterns</quote>, and
1054 the entire actions concept, see <link linkend="actions-file">the Actions
1059 For advanced users who want to hand edit their config files, you might want
1060 to now go to the <link linkend="act-examples">Actions Files Tutorial</link>.
1061 The ideas explained therein also apply to the web-based editor.
1064 There are also various
1065 <link linkend="filter">filters</link> that can be used for ad blocking
1066 (filters are a special subset of actions). These
1067 fall into the <quote>advanced</quote> usage category, and are explained in
1068 depth in later sections.
1075 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1078 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1079 <sect1 id="startup">
1080 <title>Starting Privoxy</title>
1082 Before launching <application>Privoxy</application> for the first time, you
1083 will want to configure your browser(s) to use
1084 <application>Privoxy</application> as a HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)
1085 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>. The default is
1086 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions
1087 used port 8000). This is the one configuration step <emphasis>that must be done
1091 Please note that <application>Privoxy</application> can only proxy HTTP and
1092 HTTPS traffic. It will not work with FTP or other protocols.
1095 <!-- image of Mozilla Proxy configuration -->
1097 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1098 Mozilla/Netscape HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) Settings</title>
1101 <imagedata fileref="proxy_setup.jpg" format="jpg">
1104 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Mozilla Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1112 With <application>Firefox</application>, this is typically set under:
1116 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Network</guibutton> -><guibutton>Connection</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Settings</guibutton>
1121 Or optionally on some platforms:
1125 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>General</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connection Settings</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Manual Proxy Configuration</guibutton>
1131 With <application>Netscape</application> (and
1132 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under:
1137 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
1138 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
1139 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Proxies</guibutton> -> <guibutton>HTTP Proxy</guibutton>
1144 For <application>Internet Explorer v.5-7</application>:
1148 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Internet Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connections</guibutton> -> <guibutton>LAN Settings</guibutton>
1152 Then, check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info
1153 (Address: 127.0.0.1, Port: 8118). Include HTTPS (SSL), if you want HTTPS
1154 proxy support too (sometimes labeled <quote>Secure</quote>). Make sure any
1155 checkboxes like <quote>Use the same proxy server for all protocols</quote> is
1156 <emphasis>UNCHECKED</emphasis>. You want only HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)!
1159 <!-- image of IE Proxy configuration -->
1161 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1162 Internet Explorer HTTP and HTTPS (Secure) Settings</title>
1165 <imagedata fileref="proxy2.jpg" format="jpg">
1168 <phrase>[ Screenshot of IE Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1176 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
1177 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. Remove
1178 any <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
1179 if you want <application>Privoxy</application> to manage that. You are now
1180 ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
1181 <application>Privoxy</application>!
1185 <application>Privoxy</application> itself is typically started by specifying the
1186 main configuration file to be used on the command line. If no configuration
1187 file is specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application>
1188 will look for a file named <filename>config</filename> in the current
1189 directory. Except on Win32 where it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>.
1192 <sect2 id="start-redhat">
1193 <title>Red Hat and Fedora</title>
1195 A default Red Hat installation may not start &my-app; upon boot. It will use
1196 the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1201 # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
1209 # service privoxy start
1214 <sect2 id="start-debian">
1215 <title>Debian</title>
1217 We use a script. Note that Debian typically starts &my-app; upon booting per
1218 default. It will use the file
1219 <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1224 # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1229 <sect2 id="start-windows">
1230 <title>Windows</title>
1232 Click on the &my-app; Icon to start <application>Privoxy</application>. If no configuration file is
1233 specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application> will look
1234 for a file named <filename>config.txt</filename>. Note that Windows will
1235 automatically start &my-app; when the system starts if you chose that option
1239 <application>Privoxy</application> can run with full Windows service functionality.
1240 On Windows only, the &my-app; program has two new command line arguments
1241 to install and uninstall &my-app; as a service. See the
1242 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Windows Installation
1243 instructions</link> for details.
1247 <sect2 id="start-unices">
1248 <title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others</title>
1250 Example Unix startup command:
1254 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
1259 <sect2 id="start-os2">
1262 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
1263 start automatically when the system restarts. You can start it manually by
1264 double-clicking on the <application>Privoxy</application> icon in the
1265 <application>Privoxy</application> folder.
1269 <sect2 id="start-macosx">
1270 <title>Mac OS X</title>
1272 After downloading the privoxy software, unzip the downloaded file by
1273 double-clicking on the zip file icon. Then, double-click on the
1274 installer package icon and follow the installation process.
1277 The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful
1278 installation. In addition, the privoxy service will automatically
1279 start every time your computer starts up.
1282 To prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your
1283 computer starts up, remove or rename the folder named
1284 /Library/StartupItems/Privoxy.
1287 A simple application named Privoxy Utility has been created which
1288 enables administrators to easily start and stop the privoxy service.
1291 In addition, the Privoxy Utility presents a simple way for
1292 administrators to edit the various privoxy config files. A method
1293 to uninstall the software is also available.
1296 An administrator username and password must be supplied in order for
1297 the Privoxy Utility to perform any of the tasks.
1302 <sect2 id="start-amigaos">
1303 <title>AmigaOS</title>
1305 Start <application>Privoxy</application> (with RUN <>NIL:) in your
1306 <filename>startnet</filename> script (AmiTCP), in
1307 <filename>s:user-startup</filename> (RoadShow), as startup program in your
1308 startup script (Genesis), or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx).
1309 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically quit when you quit your
1310 TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack may display that
1311 <application>Privoxy</application> is still running).
1315 <sect2 id="start-gentoo">
1316 <title>Gentoo</title>
1318 A script is again used. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config
1319 </filename> as its main configuration file.
1323 /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1327 Note that <application>Privoxy</application> is not automatically started at
1328 boot time by default. You can change this with the <literal>rc-update</literal>
1333 rc-update add privoxy default
1341 See the section <link linkend="cmdoptions">Command line options</link> for
1345 must find a better place for this paragraph
1348 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
1349 point. Most of the per site configuration is done in the
1350 <ulink url="actions-file.html"><quote>actions</quote></ulink> files. These are
1351 where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking, and other
1352 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. There are several
1353 such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.
1357 You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites for which you may prefer
1358 persistent cookies, and add these to your actions configuration as needed. By
1359 default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser
1360 session (aka <quote>session cookies</quote>), unless you add them to the
1361 configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will need
1362 to edit <filename>user.action</filename> (or through the web based interface)
1363 and disable this feature. If you use more than one browser, it would make
1364 more sense to let <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which
1365 case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
1369 Another feature where you will probably want to define exceptions for trusted
1370 sites is the popup-killing (through <ulink
1371 url="actions-file.html#FILTER-POPUPS"><quote>+filter{popups}</quote></ulink>),
1372 because your favorite shopping, banking, or leisure site may need
1373 popups (explained below).
1377 <application>Privoxy</application> does not support all of the optional HTTP/1.1
1378 features yet. In the unlikely event that you experience inexplicable problems
1379 with browsers that use HTTP/1.1 per default
1380 (like <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.), you might
1381 try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look under <literal>Edit ->
1382 Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
1383 Alternatively, set the <quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote> config option in
1384 <filename>default.action</filename> which will downgrade your browser's HTTP
1385 requests from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0 before processing them.
1389 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
1390 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
1391 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
1392 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote>
1393 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
1394 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1395 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1396 and then follow the link to <quote>View & Change the Current Configuration</quote>.
1397 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
1401 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
1402 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
1403 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
1404 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
1405 to a given URL. In addition to the actions file
1406 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
1407 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> (toggled) from this page.
1411 If you encounter problems, try loading the page without
1412 <application>Privoxy</application>. If that helps, enter the URL where
1413 you have the problems into <ulink url="http://p.p/show-url-info">the browser
1414 based rule tracing utility</ulink>. See which rules apply and why, and
1415 then try turning them off for that site one after the other, until the problem
1416 is gone. When you have found the culprit, you might want to turn the rest on
1421 If the above paragraph sounds gibberish to you, you might want to <link
1422 linkend="actions-file">read more about the actions concept</link>
1423 or even dive deep into the <link linkend="actionsanat">Appendix
1428 If you can't get rid of the problem at all, think you've found a bug in
1429 Privoxy, want to propose a new feature or smarter rules, please see the
1430 section <link linkend="contact"><quote>Contacting the
1431 Developers</quote></link> below.
1436 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1437 <sect2 id="cmdoptions">
1438 <title>Command Line Options</title>
1440 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
1441 command-line options:
1449 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
1452 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
1457 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
1460 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
1465 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
1468 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
1469 leader, and don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
1474 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
1477 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
1478 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failure to create or delete the
1479 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
1480 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
1485 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
1488 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
1489 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
1490 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
1495 <emphasis>--chroot</emphasis>
1498 Before changing to the user ID given in the <emphasis>--user</emphasis> option,
1499 chroot to that user's home directory, i.e. make the kernel pretend to the &my-app;
1500 process that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
1501 the impact of possible vulnerabilities in &my-app; to the files contained in that hierarchy.
1507 <emphasis>--pre-chroot-nslookup hostname</emphasis>
1510 Specifies a hostname to look up before doing a chroot. On some systems, initializing the
1511 resolver library involves reading config files from /etc and/or loading additional shared
1512 libraries from /lib. On these systems, doing a hostname lookup before the chroot reduces
1513 the number of files that must be copied into the chroot tree.
1516 For fastest startup speed, a good value is a hostname that is not in /etc/hosts but that
1517 your local name server (listed in /etc/resolv.conf) can resolve without recursion
1518 (that is, without having to ask any other name servers). The hostname need not exist,
1519 but if it doesn't, an error message (which can be ignored) will be output.
1525 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
1528 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
1529 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
1530 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
1531 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
1532 full path to avoid confusion. If no config file is found,
1533 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
1541 On <application>MS Windows</application> only there are two additional
1542 command-line options to allow <application>Privoxy</application> to install and
1543 run as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>. See the
1544 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Window Installation section</link>
1552 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1555 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1556 <sect1 id="configuration"><title>Privoxy Configuration</title>
1558 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is stored
1559 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
1560 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
1561 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
1565 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1568 <title>Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser</title>
1570 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface can be reached through the special
1571 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1572 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1573 which is a built-in page and works without Internet access.
1574 You will see the following section:
1578 <!-- Needs to be put in a table and colorized -->
1581 <bridgehead renderas="sect2"> Privoxy Menu</bridgehead>
1585 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View & change the current configuration</ulink>
1588 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">View the source code version numbers</ulink>
1591 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">View the request headers.</ulink>
1594 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">Look up which actions apply to a URL and why</ulink>
1597 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">Toggle Privoxy on or off</ulink>
1600 ▪ <ulink
1601 url="http://www.privoxy.org/&p-version;/user-manual/">Documentation</ulink>
1609 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
1610 <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, which is where the ad, banner,
1611 cookie, and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
1612 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
1613 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
1614 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
1618 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
1619 have problems with your current actions and filters. You can in fact use
1620 it as a test to see whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
1621 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
1622 to run as a proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e.
1623 <application>Privoxy</application> acts like a normal forwarding proxy. There
1624 is even a toggle <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklet</link> offered, so
1625 that you can toggle <application>Privoxy</application> with one click from
1630 Note that several of the features described above are disabled by default
1631 in <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.7 beta and later.
1633 <ulink url="config.html">configuration file</ulink> to learn why
1634 and in which cases it's safe to enable them again.
1639 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1644 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1646 <sect2 id="confoverview">
1647 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
1649 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
1650 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
1651 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
1652 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. <![%p-not-stable;[ The name
1653 and number of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
1654 subject to change as development progresses.]]>
1658 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though
1659 some settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the
1660 principle configuration files are:
1668 The <link linkend="config">main configuration file</link> is named <filename>config</filename>
1669 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
1670 on Windows. This is a required file.
1676 <filename>match-all.action</filename> is used to define which <quote>actions</quote>
1677 relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups, content modification, cookie handling
1678 etc should be applied by default. It should be the first actions file loaded.
1681 <filename>default.action</filename> defines many exceptions (both positive and negative)
1682 from the default set of actions that's configured in <filename>match-all.action</filename>.
1683 It should be the second actions file loaded and shouldn't be edited by the user.
1686 Multiple actions files may be defined in <filename>config</filename>. These
1687 are processed in the order they are defined. Local customizations and locally
1688 preferred exceptions to the default policies as defined in
1689 <filename>match-all.action</filename> (which you will most probably want
1690 to define sooner or later) are best applied in <filename>user.action</filename>,
1691 where you can preserve them across upgrades. The file isn't installed by all
1692 installers, but you can easily create it yourself with a text editor.
1695 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from
1697 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1699 url="http://p.p/show-status">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>) for the
1700 various actions files.
1706 <quote>Filter files</quote> (the <link linkend="filter-file">filter
1707 file</link>) can be used to re-write the raw page content, including
1708 viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript, and whatever else
1709 lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only pre-defined here;
1710 whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
1711 <filename>default.filter</filename> includes various filters made
1712 available for use by the developers. Some are much more intrusive than
1713 others, and all should be used with caution. You may define additional
1714 filter files in <filename>config</filename> as you can with
1715 actions files. We suggest <filename>user.filter</filename> for any
1716 locally defined filters or customizations.
1724 The syntax of the configuration and filter files may change between different
1725 Privoxy versions, unfortunately some enhancements cost backwards compatibility.
1726 <!-- Add link to documentation-->
1730 All files use the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a
1731 comment (the rest of the line will be ignored) and understand line continuation
1732 through placing a backslash ("<literal>\</literal>") as the very last character
1733 in a line. If the <literal>#</literal> is preceded by a backslash, it looses
1734 its special function. Placing a <literal>#</literal> in front of an otherwise
1735 valid configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
1736 out" that line. Blank lines are ignored.
1740 The actions files and filter files
1741 can use Perl style <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> for
1742 maximum flexibility.
1746 After making any changes, there is no need to restart
1747 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
1748 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> detects such changes
1749 automatically. Note, however, that it may take one or two additional
1750 requests for the change to take effect. When changing the listening address
1751 of <application>Privoxy</application>, these <quote>wake up</quote> requests
1752 must obviously be sent to the <emphasis>old</emphasis> listening address.
1757 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
1758 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
1759 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
1760 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
1766 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1769 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1771 <!-- **************************************************** -->
1772 <!-- Include config.sgml here -->
1773 <!-- This is where the entire config file is detailed. -->
1775 <!-- end include -->
1778 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1782 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1784 <sect1 id="actions-file"><title>Actions Files</title>
1788 XXX: similar descriptions are in the Configuration Files sections.
1789 We should only describe them at one place.
1792 The actions files are used to define what <emphasis>actions</emphasis>
1793 <application>Privoxy</application> takes for which URLs, and thus determines
1794 how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
1795 transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof).
1796 There are a number of such actions, with a wide range of functionality.
1797 Each action does something a little different.
1798 These actions give us a veritable arsenal of tools with which to exert
1799 our control, preferences and independence. Actions can be combined so that
1800 their effects are aggregated when applied against a given set of URLs.
1804 are three action files included with <application>Privoxy</application> with
1811 <filename>match-all.action</filename> - is used to define which
1812 <quote>actions</quote> relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups,
1813 content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default.
1814 It should be the first actions file loaded
1819 <filename>default.action</filename> - defines many exceptions (both
1820 positive and negative) from the default set of actions that's configured
1821 in <filename>match-all.action</filename>. It is a set of rules that should
1822 work reasonably well as-is for most users. This file is only supposed to
1823 be edited by the developers. It should be the second actions file loaded.
1828 <filename>user.action</filename> - is intended to be for local site
1829 preferences and exceptions. As an example, if your ISP or your bank
1830 has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
1831 thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
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>. New users should try this for a while before
1843 adjusting the settings to more aggressive levels. The more aggressive
1844 the settings, then the more likelihood there is of problems such as sites
1845 not working as they should.
1848 The <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button allows you to turn each
1849 action on/off individually for fine-tuning. The <guibutton>Cautious</guibutton>
1850 button changes the actions list to low/safe settings which will activate
1851 ad blocking and a minimal set of &my-app;'s features, and subsequently
1852 there will be less of a chance for accidental problems. The
1853 <guibutton>Medium</guibutton> button sets the list to a medium level of
1854 other features and a low level set of privacy features. The
1855 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> button sets the list to a high level of
1856 ad blocking and medium level of privacy. See the chart below. The latter
1857 three buttons over-ride any changes via with the
1858 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button. More fine-tuning can be done in the
1859 lower sections of this internal page.
1862 While the actions file editor allows to enable these settings in all
1863 actions files, they are only supposed to be enabled in the first one
1864 to make sure you don't unintentionally overrule earlier rules.
1867 The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
1868 <filename>default.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>
1944 <entry>GIF de-animation</entry>
1951 <entry>Fast redirects</entry>
1958 <entry>HTML taming</entry>
1965 <entry>JavaScript taming</entry>
1972 <entry>Web-bug killing</entry>
1979 <entry>Image tag reordering</entry>
1995 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
1996 file, and are processed in the order they are defined (e.g.
1997 <filename>default.action</filename> is typically processed before
1998 <filename>user.action</filename>). The content of these can all be viewed and
2000 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2001 The over-riding principle when applying actions, is that the last action that
2002 matches a given URL wins. The broadest, most general rules go first
2003 (defined in <filename>default.action</filename>),
2004 followed by any exceptions (typically also in
2005 <filename>default.action</filename>), which are then followed lastly by any
2006 local preferences (typically in <emphasis>user</emphasis><filename>.action</filename>).
2007 Generally, <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word.
2011 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use
2012 <quote>aliases</quote> in an actions file, you have to place the (optional)
2013 <link linkend="aliases">alias section</link> at the top of that file.
2014 Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally to all
2015 sites and pages (be <emphasis>very careful</emphasis> with using such a
2016 universal set in <filename>user.action</filename> or any other actions file after
2017 <filename>default.action</filename>, because it will override the result
2018 from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
2019 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard
2020 <filename>user.action</filename> as an appendix to <filename>default.action</filename>,
2021 with the advantage that it is a separate file, which makes preserving your
2022 personal settings across <application>Privoxy</application> upgrades easier.
2026 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
2027 just some obnoxious URL whose content you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
2028 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
2029 written to disk), content can be modified, some JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
2030 fooled, and much more. See below for a <link linkend="actions">complete list
2034 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2036 <title>Finding the Right Mix</title>
2038 Note that some <link linkend="actions">actions</link>, like cookie suppression
2039 or script disabling, may render some sites unusable that rely on these
2040 techniques to work properly. Finding the right mix of actions is not always easy and
2041 certainly a matter of personal taste. And, things can always change, requiring
2042 refinements in the configuration. In general, it can be said that the more
2043 <quote>aggressive</quote> your default settings (in the top section of the
2044 actions file) are, the more exceptions for <quote>trusted</quote> sites you
2045 will have to make later. If, for example, you want to crunch all cookies per
2046 default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for sites that you
2047 regularly use and that require cookies for actually useful purposes, like maybe
2048 your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
2052 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
2053 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
2054 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
2055 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again :).
2059 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2061 <title>How to Edit</title>
2063 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by
2064 using our browser-based editor, which can be reached from <ulink
2065 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2066 Note: the config file option <link
2067 linkend="enable-edit-actions">enable-edit-actions</link> must be enabled for
2068 this to work. The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single
2069 feature on a per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults
2070 like <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> or
2071 <quote>Advanced</quote>. Warning: the <quote>Advanced</quote> setting is more
2072 aggressive, and will be more likely to cause problems for some sites.
2073 Experienced users only!
2077 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
2078 the actions files with your favorite text editor. Look at
2079 <filename>default.action</filename> which is richly commented with many
2085 <sect2 id="actions-apply">
2086 <title>How Actions are Applied to Requests</title>
2088 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections,
2089 like the <quote><link linkend="aliases">alias</link></quote> sections which will
2090 be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on regular sections: They have a
2091 heading line (often split up to multiple lines for readability) which consist
2092 of a list of actions, separated by whitespace and enclosed in curly braces.
2093 Below that, there is a list of URL and tag patterns, each on a separate line.
2097 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
2098 compared to all URL patterns in each <quote>action file</quote>.
2099 Every time it matches, the list of applicable actions for the request is
2100 incrementally updated, using the heading of the section in which the
2101 pattern is located. The same is done again for tags and tag patterns later on.
2105 If multiple applying sections set the same action differently,
2106 the last match wins. If not, the effects are aggregated.
2107 E.g. a URL might match a regular section with a heading line of <literal>{
2108 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link> }</literal>,
2109 then later another one with just <literal>{
2110 +<link linkend="block">block</link> }</literal>, resulting
2111 in <emphasis>both</emphasis> actions to apply. And there may well be
2112 cases where you will want to combine actions together. Such a section then
2118 { +<literal>handle-as-image</literal> +<literal>block{Banner ads.}</literal> }
2119 # Block these as if they were images. Send no block page.
2121 media.example.com/.*banners
2122 .example.com/images/ads/</screen>
2126 You can trace this process for URL patterns and any given URL by visiting <ulink
2127 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>.
2131 Examples and more detail on this is provided in the Appendix, <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">
2132 Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</link> section.
2136 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2137 <sect2 id="af-patterns">
2138 <title>Patterns</title>
2140 As mentioned, <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>patterns</quote>
2141 to determine what <emphasis>actions</emphasis> might apply to which sites and
2142 pages your browser attempts to access. These <quote>patterns</quote> use wild
2143 card type <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> matching to achieve a high degree of
2144 flexibility. This allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match
2145 against many similar patterns.
2149 Generally, an URL pattern has the form
2150 <literal><domain><port>/<path></literal>, where the
2151 <literal><domain></literal>, the <literal><port></literal>
2152 and the <literal><path></literal> are optional. (This is why the special
2153 <literal>/</literal> pattern matches all URLs). Note that the protocol
2154 portion of the URL pattern (e.g. <literal>http://</literal>) should
2155 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be included in the pattern. This is assumed already!
2158 The pattern matching syntax is different for the domain and path parts of
2159 the URL. The domain part uses a simple globbing type matching technique,
2160 while the path part uses more flexible
2161 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2162 Expressions</quote></ulink> (POSIX 1003.2).
2165 The port part of a pattern is a decimal port number preceded by a colon
2166 (<literal>:</literal>). If the domain part contains a numerical IPv6 address,
2167 it has to be put into angle brackets
2168 (<literal><</literal>, <literal>></literal>).
2173 <term><literal>www.example.com/</literal></term>
2176 is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2177 regardless of which document on that server is requested. So ALL pages in
2178 this domain would be covered by the scope of this action. Note that a
2179 simple <literal>example.com</literal> is different and would NOT match.
2184 <term><literal>www.example.com</literal></term>
2187 means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing <literal>/</literal> may
2193 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html</literal></term>
2196 matches all the documents on <literal>www.example.com</literal>
2197 whose name starts with <literal>/index.html</literal>.
2202 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html$</literal></term>
2205 matches only the single document <literal>/index.html</literal>
2206 on <literal>www.example.com</literal>.
2211 <term><literal>/index.html$</literal></term>
2214 matches the document <literal>/index.html</literal>, regardless of the domain,
2215 i.e. on <emphasis>any</emphasis> web server anywhere.
2220 <term><literal>:8000/</literal></term>
2223 Matches any URL pointing to TCP port 8000.
2228 <term><literal><2001:db8::1>/</literal></term>
2231 Matches any URL with the host address <literal>2001:db8::1</literal>.
2232 (Note that the real URL uses plain brackets, not angle brackets.)
2237 <term><literal>index.html</literal></term>
2240 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
2241 there is no top-level domain called <literal>.html</literal>. So its
2249 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2250 <sect3><title>The Domain Pattern</title>
2253 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
2254 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
2260 <term><literal>.example.com</literal></term>
2263 matches any domain with first-level domain <literal>com</literal>
2264 and second-level domain <literal>example</literal>.
2265 For example <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2266 <literal>example.com</literal> and <literal>foo.bar.baz.example.com</literal>.
2267 Note that it wouldn't match if the second-level domain was <literal>another-example</literal>.
2272 <term><literal>www.</literal></term>
2275 matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
2276 <literal>www.</literal> (It also matches the domain
2277 <literal>www</literal> but most of the time that doesn't matter.)
2282 <term><literal>.example.</literal></term>
2285 matches any domain that <emphasis>CONTAINS</emphasis> <literal>.example.</literal>.
2286 And, by the way, also included would be any files or documents that exist
2287 within that domain since no path limitations are specified. (Correctly
2288 speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains <literal>example</literal> as
2289 a domain.) This might be <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2290 <literal>news.example.de</literal>, or
2291 <literal>www.example.net/cgi/testing.pl</literal> for instance. All these
2299 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
2300 themselves. These work similarly to shell globbing type wild-cards:
2301 <quote>*</quote> represents zero or more arbitrary characters (this is
2303 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2304 Expression</quote></ulink> based syntax of <quote>.*</quote>),
2305 <quote>?</quote> represents any single character (this is equivalent to the
2306 regular expression syntax of a simple <quote>.</quote>), and you can define
2307 <quote>character classes</quote> in square brackets which is similar to
2308 the same regular expression technique. All of this can be freely mixed:
2313 <term><literal>ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2316 matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
2317 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>
2322 <term><literal>*ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2325 matches all of the above, and then some.
2330 <term><literal>.?pix.com</literal></term>
2333 matches <literal>www.ipix.com</literal>,
2334 <literal>pictures.epix.com</literal>, <literal>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</literal> etc.
2339 <term><literal>www[1-9a-ez].example.c*</literal></term>
2342 matches <literal>www1.example.com</literal>,
2343 <literal>www4.example.cc</literal>, <literal>wwwd.example.cy</literal>,
2344 <literal>wwwz.example.com</literal> etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
2345 <literal>wwww.example.com</literal>.
2352 While flexible, this is not the sophistication of full regular expression based syntax.
2357 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2360 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2361 <sect3><title>The Path Pattern</title>
2364 <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>modern</quote> POSIX 1003.2
2365 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2366 Expressions</quote></ulink> for matching the path portion (after the slash),
2367 and is thus more flexible.
2371 There is an <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link> with a brief quick-start into regular
2372 expressions, you also might want to have a look at your operating system's documentation
2373 on regular expressions (try <literal>man re_format</literal>).
2377 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the <quote>/</quote>,
2378 i.e. it matches as if it would start with a <quote>^</quote> (regular expression speak
2379 for the beginning of a line).
2383 Please also note that matching in the path is <emphasis>CASE INSENSITIVE</emphasis>
2384 by default, but you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
2385 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch: <literal>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</literal> will match
2386 only documents whose path starts with <literal>PaTtErN</literal> in
2387 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
2392 <term><literal>.example.com/.*</literal></term>
2395 Is equivalent to just <quote>.example.com</quote>, since any documents
2396 within that domain are matched with or without the <quote>.*</quote>
2397 regular expression. This is redundant
2402 <term><literal>.example.com/.*/index.html$</literal></term>
2405 Will match any page in the domain of <quote>example.com</quote> that is
2406 named <quote>index.html</quote>, and that is part of some path. For
2407 example, it matches <quote>www.example.com/testing/index.html</quote> but
2408 NOT <quote>www.example.com/index.html</quote> because the regular
2409 expression called for at least two <quote>/'s</quote>, thus the path
2410 requirement. It also would match
2411 <quote>www.example.com/testing/index_html</quote>, because of the
2412 special meta-character <quote>.</quote>.
2417 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)?index\.html$</literal></term>
2420 This regular expression is conditional so it will match any page
2421 named <quote>index.html</quote> regardless of path which in this case can
2422 have one or more <quote>/'s</quote>. And this one must contain exactly
2423 <quote>.html</quote> (but does not have to end with that!).
2428 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)</literal></term>
2431 This regular expression will match any path of <quote>example.com</quote>
2432 that contains any of the words <quote>ads</quote>, <quote>banner</quote>,
2433 <quote>banners</quote> (because of the <quote>?</quote>) or <quote>junk</quote>.
2434 The path does not have to end in these words, just contain them.
2439 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)/.*\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$</literal></term>
2442 This is very much the same as above, except now it must end in either
2443 <quote>.jpg</quote>, <quote>.jpeg</quote>, <quote>.gif</quote> or <quote>.png</quote>. So this
2444 one is limited to common image formats.
2451 There are many, many good examples to be found in <filename>default.action</filename>,
2452 and more tutorials below in <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>.
2457 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2460 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2461 <sect3 id="tag-pattern"><title>The Tag Pattern</title>
2464 Tag patterns are used to change the applying actions based on the
2465 request's tags. Tags can be created with either the
2466 <link linkend="CLIENT-HEADER-TAGGER">client-header-tagger</link>
2467 or the <link linkend="SERVER-HEADER-TAGGER">server-header-tagger</link> action.
2471 Tag patterns have to start with <quote>TAG:</quote>, so &my-app;
2472 can tell them apart from URL patterns. Everything after the colon
2473 including white space, is interpreted as a regular expression with
2474 path pattern syntax, except that tag patterns aren't left-anchored
2475 automatically (&my-app; doesn't silently add a <quote>^</quote>,
2476 you have to do it yourself if you need it).
2480 To match all requests that are tagged with <quote>foo</quote>
2481 your pattern line should be <quote>TAG:^foo$</quote>,
2482 <quote>TAG:foo</quote> would work as well, but it would also
2483 match requests whose tags contain <quote>foo</quote> somewhere.
2484 <quote>TAG: foo</quote> wouldn't work as it requires white space.
2488 Sections can contain URL and tag patterns at the same time,
2489 but tag patterns are checked after the URL patterns and thus
2490 always overrule them, even if they are located before the URL patterns.
2494 Once a new tag is added, Privoxy checks right away if it's matched by one
2495 of the tag patterns and updates the action settings accordingly. As a result
2496 tags can be used to activate other tagger actions, as long as these other
2497 taggers look for headers that haven't already be parsed.
2501 For example you could tag client requests which use the
2502 <literal>POST</literal> method,
2503 then use this tag to activate another tagger that adds a tag if cookies
2504 are sent, and then use a block action based on the cookie tag. This allows
2505 the outcome of one action, to be input into a subsequent action. However if
2506 you'd reverse the position of the described taggers, and activated the
2507 method tagger based on the cookie tagger, no method tags would be created.
2508 The method tagger would look for the request line, but at the time
2509 the cookie tag is created, the request line has already been parsed.
2513 While this is a limitation you should be aware of, this kind of
2514 indirection is seldom needed anyway and even the example doesn't
2515 make too much sense.
2522 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2525 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2527 <sect2 id="actions">
2528 <title>Actions</title>
2530 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
2531 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a
2532 <quote>+</quote>, and turned off if preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. So a
2533 <literal>+action</literal> means <quote>do that action</quote>, e.g.
2534 <literal>+block</literal> means <quote>please block URLs that match the
2535 following patterns</quote>, and <literal>-block</literal> means <quote>don't
2536 block URLs that match the following patterns, even if <literal>+block</literal>
2537 previously applied.</quote>
2542 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
2543 separated by whitespace, like in
2544 <literal>{+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}}</literal>,
2545 followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which they apply.
2546 Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up a section
2547 of the actions file.
2551 Actions fall into three categories:
2558 Boolean, i.e the action can only be <quote>enabled</quote> or
2559 <quote>disabled</quote>. Syntax:
2563 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # enable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
2564 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable></screen>
2567 Example: <literal>+handle-as-image</literal>
2574 Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of action.
2579 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and set parameter to <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>,
2580 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
2581 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action. The parameter can be omitted</screen>
2584 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized action,
2585 the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are simply ignored.
2588 Example: <literal>+hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070602 Firefox/2.0.0.4}</literal>
2594 Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions,
2595 but they behave differently: If the action applies multiple times to the
2596 same URL, but with different parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> the parameters
2597 from <emphasis>all</emphasis> matches are remembered. This is used for actions
2598 that can be executed for the same request repeatedly, like adding multiple
2599 headers, or filtering through multiple filters. Syntax:
2603 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and add <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> to the list of parameters
2604 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # remove the parameter <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> from the list of parameters
2605 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
2606 <replaceable class="parameter">-name</replaceable> # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list</screen>
2609 Examples: <literal>+add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text}</literal> and
2610 <literal>+filter{html-annoyances}</literal>
2618 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no <quote>actions</quote> are
2619 taken. So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
2620 normal, non-blocking, non-filtering proxy. You must specifically enable the
2621 privacy and blocking features you need (although the provided default actions
2622 files will give a good starting point).
2626 Later defined action sections always over-ride earlier ones of the same type.
2627 So exceptions to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
2628 in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files such
2629 as <filename>user.action</filename>). For multi-valued actions, the actions
2630 are applied in the order they are specified. Actions files are processed in
2631 the order they are defined in <filename>config</filename> (the default
2632 installation has three actions files). It also quite possible for any given
2633 URL to match more than one <quote>pattern</quote> (because of wildcards and
2634 regular expressions), and thus to trigger more than one set of actions! Last
2638 <!-- start actions listing -->
2640 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> actions are:
2644 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2645 <!-- Please note the below defined actions use id's that are -->
2646 <!-- probably linked from other places, so please don't change. -->
2648 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2651 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2653 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="add-header">
2654 <title>add-header</title>
2658 <term>Typical use:</term>
2660 <para>Confuse log analysis, custom applications</para>
2665 <term>Effect:</term>
2668 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
2675 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2677 <para>Multi-value.</para>
2682 <term>Parameter:</term>
2685 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not checked.
2686 It is recommended that you use the <quote><literal>X-</literal></quote> prefix
2696 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
2697 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
2698 <quote>HTTP headers</quote> are, you definitely don't need to worry about this
2705 <term>Example usage:</term>
2708 <screen>+add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}</screen>
2716 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2717 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="block">
2718 <title>block</title>
2722 <term>Typical use:</term>
2724 <para>Block ads or other unwanted content</para>
2729 <term>Effect:</term>
2732 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the
2733 requests are trapped by &my-app; and the requested URL is never retrieved,
2734 but is answered locally with a substitute page or image, as determined by
2736 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2738 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>, and
2740 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> actions.
2748 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2750 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2755 <term>Parameter:</term>
2757 <para>A block reason that should be given to the user.</para>
2765 <application>Privoxy</application> sends a special <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page
2766 for requests to blocked pages. This page contains the block reason given as
2767 parameter, a link to find out why the block action applies, and a click-through
2768 to the blocked content (the latter only if the force feature is available and
2772 A very important exception occurs if <emphasis>both</emphasis>
2773 <literal>block</literal> and <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2774 apply to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
2775 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
2776 (see below) also applies, the type of image will be determined by its parameter,
2777 if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is sent.
2780 It is important to understand this process, in order
2781 to understand how <application>Privoxy</application> deals with
2782 ads and other unwanted content. Blocking is a core feature, and one
2783 upon which various other features depend.
2786 The <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
2787 action can perform a very similar task, by <quote>blocking</quote>
2788 banner images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
2789 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
2790 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse the two.
2796 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2799 <screen>{+block{No nasty stuff for you.}}
2800 # Block and replace with "blocked" page
2801 .nasty-stuff.example.com
2803 {+block{Doubleclick banners.} +handle-as-image}
2804 # Block and replace with image
2808 {+block{Layered ads.} +handle-as-empty-document}
2809 # Block and then ignore
2810 adserver.example.net/.*\.js$</screen>
2820 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2821 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="change-x-forwarded-for">
2822 <title>change-x-forwarded-for</title>
2826 <term>Typical use:</term>
2828 <para>Improve privacy by not forwarding the source of the request in the HTTP headers.</para>
2833 <term>Effect:</term>
2836 Deletes the <quote>X-Forwarded-For:</quote> HTTP header from the client request,
2844 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2846 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2851 <term>Parameter:</term>
2855 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header.</para>
2859 <quote>add</quote> to create the header (or append
2860 the client's IP address to an already existing one).
2871 It is safe and recommended to use <literal>block</literal>.
2874 Forwarding the source address of the request may make
2875 sense in some multi-user setups but is also a privacy risk.
2880 <term>Example usage:</term>
2883 <screen>+change-x-forwarded-for{block}</screen>
2890 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2891 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-header-filter">
2892 <title>client-header-filter</title>
2896 <term>Typical use:</term>
2899 Rewrite or remove single client headers.
2905 <term>Effect:</term>
2908 All client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
2909 the specified regular expression based substitutions.
2916 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2918 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2923 <term>Parameter:</term>
2926 The name of a client-header filter, as defined in one of the
2927 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
2936 Client-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
2937 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
2938 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
2939 You can do that by using tags though.
2942 Client-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
2943 and use their output as input.
2946 If the request URL gets changed, &my-app; will detect that and use the new
2947 one. This can be used to rewrite the request destination behind the client's
2948 back, for example to specify a Tor exit relay for certain requests.
2951 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
2952 to learn which client-header filters are available by default, and how to
2960 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2964 # Hide Tor exit notation in Host and Referer Headers
2965 {+client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}}
2976 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2977 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-header-tagger">
2978 <title>client-header-tagger</title>
2982 <term>Typical use:</term>
2985 Block requests based on their headers.
2991 <term>Effect:</term>
2994 Client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
2995 the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
3003 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3005 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3010 <term>Parameter:</term>
3013 The name of a client-header tagger, as defined in one of the
3014 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
3023 Client-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
3024 and as the header isn't modified, each tagger <quote>sees</quote>
3028 Client-header taggers are the first actions that are executed
3029 and their tags can be used to control every other action.
3035 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3039 # Tag every request with the User-Agent header
3040 {+client-header-tagger{user-agent}}
3043 # Tagging itself doesn't change the action
3044 # settings, sections with TAG patterns do:
3046 # If it's a download agent, use a different forwarding proxy,
3047 # show the real User-Agent and make sure resume works.
3048 {+forward-override{forward-socks5 10.0.0.2:2222 .} \
3049 -hide-if-modified-since \
3050 -overwrite-last-modified \
3055 TAG:^User-Agent: NetBSD-ftp/
3056 TAG:^User-Agent: Novell ZYPP Installer
3057 TAG:^User-Agent: RPM APT-HTTP/
3058 TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/
3059 TAG:^User-Agent: Ubuntu APT-HTTP/
3060 TAG:^User-Agent: MPlayer/
3070 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3071 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="content-type-overwrite">
3072 <title>content-type-overwrite</title>
3076 <term>Typical use:</term>
3078 <para>Stop useless download menus from popping up, or change the browser's rendering mode</para>
3083 <term>Effect:</term>
3086 Replaces the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header.
3093 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3095 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3100 <term>Parameter:</term>
3112 The <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header is used by the
3113 browser to decide what to do with the document. The value of this
3114 header can cause the browser to open a download menu instead of
3115 displaying the document by itself, even if the document's format is
3116 supported by the browser.
3119 The declared content type can also affect which rendering mode
3120 the browser chooses. If XHTML is delivered as <quote>text/html</quote>,
3121 many browsers treat it as yet another broken HTML document.
3122 If it is send as <quote>application/xml</quote>, browsers with
3123 XHTML support will only display it, if the syntax is correct.
3126 If you see a web site that proudly uses XHTML buttons, but sets
3127 <quote>Content-Type: text/html</quote>, you can use &my-app;
3128 to overwrite it with <quote>application/xml</quote> and validate
3129 the web master's claim inside your XHTML-supporting browser.
3130 If the syntax is incorrect, the browser will complain loudly.
3133 You can also go the opposite direction: if your browser prints
3134 error messages instead of rendering a document falsely declared
3135 as XHTML, you can overwrite the content type with
3136 <quote>text/html</quote> and have it rendered as broken HTML document.
3139 By default <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal> only replaces
3140 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> headers that look like some kind of text.
3141 If you want to overwrite it unconditionally, you have to combine it with
3142 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>.
3143 This limitation exists for a reason, think twice before circumventing it.
3146 Most of the time it's easier to replace this action with a custom
3147 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
3148 It allows you to activate it for every document of a certain site and it will still
3149 only replace the content types you aimed at.
3152 Of course you can apply <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal>
3153 to a whole site and then make URL based exceptions, but it's a lot
3154 more work to get the same precision.
3160 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
3163 <screen># Check if www.example.net/ really uses valid XHTML
3164 { +content-type-overwrite{application/xml} }
3167 # but leave the content type unmodified if the URL looks like a style sheet
3168 {-content-type-overwrite}
3169 www.example.net/.*\.css$
3170 www.example.net/.*style
3179 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3180 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-client-header">
3184 <title>crunch-client-header</title>
3188 <term>Typical use:</term>
3190 <para>Remove a client header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3195 <term>Effect:</term>
3198 Deletes every header sent by the client that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3205 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3207 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3212 <term>Parameter:</term>
3224 This action allows you to block client headers for which no dedicated
3225 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists.
3226 <application>Privoxy</application> will remove every client header that
3227 contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3230 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3231 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3232 they contain the same string.
3235 <literal>crunch-client-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3236 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3237 parts of them, you should use a
3238 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header filter</link></literal>.
3242 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3249 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3252 <screen># Block the non-existent "Privacy-Violation:" client header
3253 { +crunch-client-header{Privacy-Violation:} }
3263 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3264 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-if-none-match">
3265 <title>crunch-if-none-match</title>
3271 <term>Typical use:</term>
3273 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
3278 <term>Effect:</term>
3281 Deletes the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header.
3288 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3290 <para>Boolean.</para>
3295 <term>Parameter:</term>
3307 Removing the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header
3308 is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
3309 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote> which
3310 would cause the browser to use a cached copy of the page.
3313 It is also useful to make sure the header isn't used as a cookie
3314 replacement (unlikely but possible).
3317 Blocking the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> header shouldn't cause any
3318 caching problems, as long as the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> header
3319 isn't blocked or missing as well.
3322 It is recommended to use this action together with
3323 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
3325 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>.
3331 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3334 <screen># Let the browser revalidate cached documents but don't
3335 # allow the server to use the revalidation headers for user tracking.
3336 {+hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
3337 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
3338 +crunch-if-none-match}
3347 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3348 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-incoming-cookies">
3349 <title>crunch-incoming-cookies</title>
3353 <term>Typical use:</term>
3356 Prevent the web server from setting HTTP cookies on your system
3362 <term>Effect:</term>
3365 Deletes any <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from server replies.
3372 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3374 <para>Boolean.</para>
3379 <term>Parameter:</term>
3391 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> HTTP cookies. For
3392 <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> HTTP cookies, use
3393 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>.
3394 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable HTTP cookies completely.
3397 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3398 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3399 since it would prevent the session cookies from being set. See also
3400 <literal><link linkend="filter-content-cookies">filter-content-cookies</link></literal>.
3406 <term>Example usage:</term>
3409 <screen>+crunch-incoming-cookies</screen>
3417 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3418 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-server-header">
3419 <title>crunch-server-header</title>
3425 <term>Typical use:</term>
3427 <para>Remove a server header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3432 <term>Effect:</term>
3435 Deletes every header sent by the server that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3442 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3444 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3449 <term>Parameter:</term>
3461 This action allows you to block server headers for which no dedicated
3462 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists. <application>Privoxy</application>
3463 will remove every server header that contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3466 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3467 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3468 they contain the same string.
3471 <literal>crunch-server-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3472 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3473 parts of them, you should use a custom
3474 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
3478 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3485 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3488 <screen># Crunch server headers that try to prevent caching
3489 { +crunch-server-header{no-cache} }
3498 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3499 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-outgoing-cookies">
3500 <title>crunch-outgoing-cookies</title>
3504 <term>Typical use:</term>
3507 Prevent the web server from reading any HTTP cookies from your system
3513 <term>Effect:</term>
3516 Deletes any <quote>Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from client requests.
3523 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3525 <para>Boolean.</para>
3530 <term>Parameter:</term>
3542 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> HTTP cookies. For
3543 <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> HTTP cookies, use
3544 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>.
3545 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable HTTP cookies completely.
3548 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3549 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3550 since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
3556 <term>Example usage:</term>
3559 <screen>+crunch-outgoing-cookies</screen>
3568 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3569 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="deanimate-gifs">
3570 <title>deanimate-gifs</title>
3574 <term>Typical use:</term>
3576 <para>Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.</para>
3581 <term>Effect:</term>
3584 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
3591 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3593 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3598 <term>Parameter:</term>
3601 <quote>last</quote> or <quote>first</quote>
3610 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
3611 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
3612 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last
3613 frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
3614 most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
3615 last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
3618 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
3619 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
3626 <term>Example usage:</term>
3629 <screen>+deanimate-gifs{last}</screen>
3636 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3637 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="downgrade-http-version">
3638 <title>downgrade-http-version</title>
3642 <term>Typical use:</term>
3644 <para>Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1</para>
3649 <term>Effect:</term>
3652 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
3659 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3661 <para>Boolean.</para>
3666 <term>Parameter:</term>
3678 This is a left-over from the time when <application>Privoxy</application>
3679 didn't support important HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the
3680 unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server
3681 out there. Not all HTTP/1.1 features and requirements are supported yet,
3682 so there is a chance you might need this action.
3688 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3691 <screen>{+downgrade-http-version}
3692 problem-host.example.com</screen>
3700 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3701 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="fast-redirects">
3702 <title>fast-redirects</title>
3706 <term>Typical use:</term>
3708 <para>Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links.</para>
3713 <term>Effect:</term>
3716 Detects redirection URLs and redirects the browser without contacting
3717 the redirection server first.
3724 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3726 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3731 <term>Parameter:</term>
3736 <quote>simple-check</quote> to just search for the string <quote>http://</quote>
3737 to detect redirection URLs.
3742 <quote>check-decoded-url</quote> to decode URLs (if necessary) before searching
3743 for redirection URLs.
3754 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
3755 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
3756 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
3757 resulting from this scheme typically look like:
3758 <quote>http://www.example.org/click-tracker.cgi?target=http%3a//www.example.net/</quote>.
3761 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
3762 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
3763 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
3764 to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
3765 browser asks the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
3769 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
3770 If it is enabled by default, you will have to create some exceptions to
3771 this action. It can lead to failures in several ways:
3774 Not every URLs with other URLs as parameters is evil.
3775 Some sites offer a real service that requires this information to work.
3776 For example a validation service needs to know, which document to validate.
3777 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> assumes that every URL parameter that
3778 looks like another URL is a redirection target, and will always redirect to
3779 the last one. Most of the time the assumption is correct, but if it isn't,
3780 the user gets redirected anyway.
3783 Another failure occurs if the URL contains other parameters after the URL parameter.
3785 <quote>http://www.example.org/?redirect=http%3a//www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3786 contains the redirection URL <quote>http://www.example.net/</quote>,
3787 followed by another parameter. <literal>fast-redirects</literal> doesn't know that
3788 and will cause a redirect to <quote>http://www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3789 Depending on the target server configuration, the parameter will be silently ignored
3790 or lead to a <quote>page not found</quote> error. You can prevent this problem by
3791 first using the <literal><link linkend="redirect">redirect</link></literal> action
3792 to remove the last part of the URL, but it requires a little effort.
3795 To detect a redirection URL, <literal>fast-redirects</literal> only
3796 looks for the string <quote>http://</quote>, either in plain text
3797 (invalid but often used) or encoded as <quote>http%3a//</quote>.
3798 Some sites use their own URL encoding scheme, encrypt the address
3799 of the target server or replace it with a database id. In theses cases
3800 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> is fooled and the request reaches the
3801 redirection server where it probably gets logged.
3807 <term>Example usage:</term>
3811 { +fast-redirects{simple-check} }
3814 { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
3815 another.example.com/testing</screen>
3824 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3825 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter">
3826 <title>filter</title>
3830 <term>Typical use:</term>
3832 <para>Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
3833 do fun text replacements, add personalized effects, etc.</para>
3838 <term>Effect:</term>
3841 All instances of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which
3842 this action applies, can be filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular
3843 expression based substitutions. (Note: as of version 3.0.3 plain text documents
3844 are exempted from filtering, because web servers often use the
3845 <literal>text/plain</literal> MIME type for all files whose type they don't know.)
3852 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3854 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3859 <term>Parameter:</term>
3862 The name of a content filter, as defined in the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>.
3863 Filters can be defined in one or more files as defined by the
3864 <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
3865 option in the <link linkend="config">config file</link>.
3866 <filename>default.filter</filename> is the collection of filters
3867 supplied by the developers. Locally defined filters should go
3868 in their own file, such as <filename>user.filter</filename>.
3871 When used in its negative form,
3872 and without parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> filtering is completely disabled.
3881 For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
3882 in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below for
3886 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
3887 slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
3888 passed the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way
3889 since the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more
3890 noticeable on slower connections.
3893 <quote>Rolling your own</quote>
3894 filters requires a knowledge of
3895 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
3896 Expressions</quote></ulink> and
3897 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html"><quote>HTML</quote></ulink>.
3898 This is very powerful feature, and potentially very intrusive.
3899 Filters should be used with caution, and where an equivalent
3900 <quote>action</quote> is not available.
3903 The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
3904 <literal><link linkend="buffer-limit">buffer-limit</link></literal>
3905 option in the main <link linkend="config">config file</link>. The
3906 default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the buffered
3907 data, and all pending data, is passed through unfiltered.
3910 Inappropriate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
3911 (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data
3912 (from HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate
3913 the integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might
3914 be necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering
3915 by defining appropriate <literal>-filter</literal> exceptions.
3918 Compressed content can't be filtered either, unless &my-app;
3919 is compiled with zlib support (requires at least &my-app; 3.0.7),
3920 in which case &my-app; will decompress the content before filtering
3924 If you use a &my-app; version without zlib support, but want filtering to work on
3925 as much documents as possible, even those that would normally be sent compressed,
3926 you must use the <literal><link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link></literal>
3927 action in conjunction with <literal>filter</literal>.
3930 Content filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
3931 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
3932 action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism
3933 works quite differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners
3934 based on their size (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat
3938 <link linkend="contact">Feedback</link> with suggestions for new or
3939 improved filters is particularly welcome!
3942 The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
3943 predefined filter. There are <link linkend="predefined-filters">more
3944 verbose explanations</link> of what these filters do in the <link
3945 linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>.
3951 <term>Example usage (with filters from the distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file).
3952 See <link linkend="PREDEFINED-FILTERS">the Predefined Filters section</link> for
3953 more explanation on each:</term>
3956 <anchor id="filter-js-annoyances">
3957 <screen>+filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.</screen>
3960 <anchor id="filter-js-events">
3961 <screen>+filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings and timers (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites).</screen>
3964 <anchor id="filter-html-annoyances">
3965 <screen>+filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse.</screen>
3968 <anchor id="filter-content-cookies">
3969 <screen>+filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content.</screen>
3972 <anchor id="filter-refresh-tags">
3973 <screen>+filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups).</screen>
3976 <anchor id="filter-unsolicited-popups">
3977 <screen>+filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
3980 <anchor id="filter-all-popups">
3981 <screen>+filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
3984 <anchor id="filter-img-reorder">
3985 <screen>+filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective.</screen>
3988 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-size">
3989 <screen>+filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size.</screen>
3992 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-link">
3993 <screen>+filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers.</screen>
3996 <anchor id="filter-webbugs">
3997 <screen>+filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking).</screen>
4000 <anchor id="filter-tiny-textforms">
4001 <screen>+filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap.</screen>
4004 <anchor id="filter-jumping-windows">
4005 <screen>+filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves.</screen>
4008 <anchor id="filter-frameset-borders">
4009 <screen>+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizable.</screen>
4012 <anchor id="filter-demoronizer">
4013 <screen>+filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets.</screen>
4016 <anchor id="filter-shockwave-flash">
4017 <screen>+filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects.</screen>
4020 <anchor id="filter-quicktime-kioskmode">
4021 <screen>+filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies saveable.</screen>
4024 <anchor id="filter-fun">
4025 <screen>+filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!</screen>
4028 <anchor id="filter-crude-parental">
4029 <screen>+filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering. Note that this filter doesn't work reliably.</screen>
4032 <anchor id="filter-ie-exploits">
4033 <screen>+filter{ie-exploits} # Disable some known Internet Explorer bug exploits.</screen>
4036 <anchor id="filter-site-specifics">
4037 <screen>+filter{site-specifics} # Cure for site-specific problems. Don't apply generally!</screen>
4040 <anchor id="filter-no-ping">
4041 <screen>+filter{no-ping} # Removes non-standard ping attributes in <a> and <area> tags.</screen>
4044 <anchor id="filter-google">
4045 <screen>+filter{google} # CSS-based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation and the toolbar advertisement.</screen>
4048 <anchor id="filter-yahoo">
4049 <screen>+filter{yahoo} # CSS-based block for Yahoo text ads. Also removes a width limitation.</screen>
4052 <anchor id="filter-msn">
4053 <screen>+filter{msn} # CSS-based block for MSN text ads. Also removes tracking URLs and a width limitation.</screen>
4056 <anchor id="filter-blogspot">
4057 <screen>+filter{blogspot} # Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this.</screen>
4065 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4066 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="force-text-mode">
4067 <title>force-text-mode</title>
4073 <term>Typical use:</term>
4075 <para>Force <application>Privoxy</application> to treat a document as if it was in some kind of <emphasis>text</emphasis> format. </para>
4080 <term>Effect:</term>
4083 Declares a document as text, even if the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> isn't detected as such.
4090 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4092 <para>Boolean.</para>
4097 <term>Parameter:</term>
4109 As explained <literal><link linkend="filter">above</link></literal>,
4110 <application>Privoxy</application> tries to only filter files that are
4111 in some kind of text format. The same restrictions apply to
4112 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite</link></literal>.
4113 <literal>force-text-mode</literal> declares a document as text,
4114 without looking at the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> first.
4118 Think twice before activating this action. Filtering binary data
4119 with regular expressions can cause file damage.
4126 <term>Example usage:</term>
4139 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4140 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="forward-override">
4141 <title>forward-override</title>
4147 <term>Typical use:</term>
4149 <para>Change the forwarding settings based on User-Agent or request origin</para>
4154 <term>Effect:</term>
4157 Overrules the forward directives in the configuration file.
4164 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4166 <para>Multi-value.</para>
4171 <term>Parameter:</term>
4175 <para><quote>forward .</quote> to use a direct connection without any additional proxies.</para>
4179 <quote>forward 127.0.0.1:8123</quote> to use the HTTP proxy listening at 127.0.0.1 port 8123.
4184 <quote>forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 .</quote> to use the socks4a proxy listening at
4185 127.0.0.1 port 9050. Replace <quote>forward-socks4a</quote> with <quote>forward-socks4</quote>
4186 to use a socks4 connection (with local DNS resolution) instead, use <quote>forward-socks5</quote>
4187 for socks5 connections (with remote DNS resolution).
4192 <quote>forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 proxy.example.org:8000</quote> to use the socks4a proxy
4193 listening at 127.0.0.1 port 9050 to reach the HTTP proxy listening at proxy.example.org port 8000.
4194 Replace <quote>forward-socks4a</quote> with <quote>forward-socks4</quote> to use a socks4 connection
4195 (with local DNS resolution) instead, use <quote>forward-socks5</quote>
4196 for socks5 connections (with remote DNS resolution).
4207 This action takes parameters similar to the
4208 <link linkend="forwarding">forward</link> directives in the configuration
4209 file, but without the URL pattern. It can be used as replacement, but normally it's only
4210 used in cases where matching based on the request URL isn't sufficient.
4214 Please read the description for the <link linkend="forwarding">forward</link> directives before
4215 using this action. Forwarding to the wrong people will reduce your privacy and increase the
4216 chances of man-in-the-middle attacks.
4219 If the ports are missing or invalid, default values will be used. This might change
4220 in the future and you shouldn't rely on it. Otherwise incorrect syntax causes Privoxy
4224 Use the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">show-url-info CGI page</ulink>
4225 to verify that your forward settings do what you thought the do.
4232 <term>Example usage:</term>
4236 # Always use direct connections for requests previously tagged as
4237 # <quote>User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2.0</quote> and make sure
4238 # resuming downloads continues to work.
4239 # This way you can continue to use Tor for your normal browsing,
4240 # without overloading the Tor network with your FreeBSD ports updates
4241 # or downloads of bigger files like ISOs.
4242 # Note that HTTP headers are easy to fake and therefore their
4243 # values are as (un)trustworthy as your clients and users.
4244 {+forward-override{forward .} \
4245 -hide-if-modified-since \
4246 -overwrite-last-modified \
4248 TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2\.0$
4257 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4258 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-empty-document">
4259 <title>handle-as-empty-document</title>
4265 <term>Typical use:</term>
4267 <para>Mark URLs that should be replaced by empty documents <emphasis>if they get blocked</emphasis></para>
4272 <term>Effect:</term>
4275 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs.
4276 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
4277 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote>
4278 page, or an empty document will be sent to the client as a substitute for the blocked content.
4279 The <emphasis>empty</emphasis> document isn't literally empty, but actually contains a single space.
4286 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4288 <para>Boolean.</para>
4293 <term>Parameter:</term>
4305 Some browsers complain about syntax errors if JavaScript documents
4306 are blocked with <application>Privoxy's</application>
4307 default HTML page; this option can be used to silence them.
4308 And of course this action can also be used to eliminate the &my-app;
4309 BLOCKED message in frames.
4312 The content type for the empty document can be specified with
4313 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{}</link></literal>,
4314 but usually this isn't necessary.
4320 <term>Example usage:</term>
4323 <screen># Block all documents on example.org that end with ".js",
4324 # but send an empty document instead of the usual HTML message.
4325 {+block{Blocked JavaScript} +handle-as-empty-document}
4335 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4336 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-image">
4337 <title>handle-as-image</title>
4341 <term>Typical use:</term>
4343 <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>
4348 <term>Effect:</term>
4351 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
4352 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
4353 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
4354 page, or a replacement image (as determined by the <literal><link
4355 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> action) will be sent to the
4356 client as a substitute for the blocked content.
4363 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4365 <para>Boolean.</para>
4370 <term>Parameter:</term>
4382 The below generic example section is actually part of <filename>default.action</filename>.
4383 It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
4387 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
4388 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
4389 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
4392 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (in-line) ad
4393 frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
4394 Forcing <literal>handle-as-image</literal> in this situation will not replace the
4395 ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
4401 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
4404 <screen># Generic image extensions:
4407 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
4409 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
4410 # blocked as images:
4412 {+block{Nasty banners.} +handle-as-image}
4413 nasty-banner-server.example.com/junk.cgi\?output=trash
4422 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4423 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-accept-language">
4424 <title>hide-accept-language</title>
4430 <term>Typical use:</term>
4432 <para>Pretend to use different language settings.</para>
4437 <term>Effect:</term>
4440 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> HTTP header in client requests.
4447 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4449 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4454 <term>Parameter:</term>
4457 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4466 Faking the browser's language settings can be useful to make a
4467 foreign User-Agent set with
4468 <literal><link linkend="hide-user-agent">hide-user-agent</link></literal>
4472 However some sites with content in different languages check the
4473 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> to decide which one to take by default.
4474 Sometimes it isn't possible to later switch to another language without
4475 changing the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header first.
4478 Therefore it's a good idea to either only change the
4479 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header to languages you understand,
4480 or to languages that aren't wide spread.
4483 Before setting the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header
4484 to a rare language, you should consider that it helps to
4485 make your requests unique and thus easier to trace.
4486 If you don't plan to change this header frequently,
4487 you should stick to a common language.
4493 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4496 <screen># Pretend to use Canadian language settings.
4497 {+hide-accept-language{en-ca} \
4498 +hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenBSD i386; en-CA; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060628 Firefox/1.5.0.4} \
4508 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4509 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-content-disposition">
4510 <title>hide-content-disposition</title>
4516 <term>Typical use:</term>
4518 <para>Prevent download menus for content you prefer to view inside the browser.</para>
4523 <term>Effect:</term>
4526 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header set by some servers.
4533 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4535 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4540 <term>Parameter:</term>
4543 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4552 Some servers set the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header for
4553 documents they assume you want to save locally before viewing them.
4554 The <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header contains the file name
4555 the browser is supposed to use by default.
4558 In most browsers that understand this header, it makes it impossible to
4559 <emphasis>just view</emphasis> the document, without downloading it first,
4560 even if it's just a simple text file or an image.
4563 Removing the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header helps
4564 to prevent this annoyance, but some browsers additionally check the
4565 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> header, before they decide if they can
4566 display a document without saving it first. In these cases, you have
4567 to change this header as well, before the browser stops displaying
4571 It is also possible to change the server's file name suggestion
4572 to another one, but in most cases it isn't worth the time to set
4576 This action will probably be removed in the future,
4577 use server-header filters instead.
4583 <term>Example usage:</term>
4586 <screen># Disarm the download link in Sourceforge's patch tracker
4588 +content-type-overwrite{text/plain}\
4589 +hide-content-disposition{block} }
4590 .sourceforge.net/tracker/download\.php</screen>
4598 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4599 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-if-modified-since">
4600 <title>hide-if-modified-since</title>
4606 <term>Typical use:</term>
4608 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
4613 <term>Effect:</term>
4616 Deletes the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> HTTP client header or modifies its value.
4623 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4625 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4630 <term>Parameter:</term>
4633 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or a user defined value that specifies a range of hours.
4642 Removing this header is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
4643 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the
4644 browser to use a cached copy of the page.
4647 Instead of removing the header, <literal>hide-if-modified-since</literal> can
4648 also add or subtract a random amount of time to/from the header's value.
4649 You specify a range of minutes where the random factor should be chosen from and
4650 <application>Privoxy</application> does the rest. A negative value means
4651 subtracting, a positive value adding.
4654 Randomizing the value of the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> makes
4655 it less likely that the server can use the time as a cookie replacement,
4656 but you will run into caching problems if the random range is too high.
4659 It is a good idea to only use a small negative value and let
4660 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>
4661 handle the greater changes.
4664 It is also recommended to use this action together with
4665 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>,
4666 otherwise it's more or less pointless.
4672 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4675 <screen># Let the browser revalidate but make tracking based on the time less likely.
4676 {+hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
4677 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
4678 +crunch-if-none-match}
4687 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4688 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-from-header">
4689 <title>hide-from-header</title>
4693 <term>Typical use:</term>
4695 <para>Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address</para>
4700 <term>Effect:</term>
4703 Deletes any existing <quote>From:</quote> HTTP header, or replaces it with the
4711 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4713 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4718 <term>Parameter:</term>
4721 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4730 The keyword <quote>block</quote> will completely remove the header
4731 (not to be confused with the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
4735 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
4736 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
4737 is actually used by a real person.
4740 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send
4741 <quote>From:</quote> headers anymore.
4747 <term>Example usage:</term>
4750 <screen>+hide-from-header{block}</screen> or
4751 <screen>+hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}</screen>
4759 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4760 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-referrer">
4761 <title>hide-referrer</title>
4762 <anchor id="hide-referer">
4765 <term>Typical use:</term>
4767 <para>Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site</para>
4772 <term>Effect:</term>
4775 Deletes the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) HTTP header from the client request,
4776 or replaces it with a forged one.
4783 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4785 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4790 <term>Parameter:</term>
4794 <para><quote>conditional-block</quote> to delete the header completely if the host has changed.</para>
4797 <para><quote>conditional-forge</quote> to forge the header if the host has changed.</para>
4800 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header unconditionally.</para>
4803 <para><quote>forge</quote> to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are talking to.</para>
4806 <para>Any other string to set a user defined referrer.</para>
4816 <literal>conditional-block</literal> is the only parameter,
4817 that isn't easily detected in the server's log file. If it blocks the
4818 referrer, the request will look like the visitor used a bookmark or
4819 typed in the address directly.
4822 Leaving the referrer unmodified for requests on the same host
4823 allows the server owner to see the visitor's <quote>click path</quote>,
4824 but in most cases she could also get that information by comparing
4825 other parts of the log file: for example the User-Agent if it isn't
4826 a very common one, or the user's IP address if it doesn't change between
4830 Always blocking the referrer, or using a custom one, can lead to
4831 failures on servers that check the referrer before they answer any
4832 requests, in an attempt to prevent their content from being
4833 embedded or linked to elsewhere.
4836 Both <literal>conditional-block</literal> and <literal>forge</literal>
4837 will work with referrer checks, as long as content and valid referring page
4838 are on the same host. Most of the time that's the case.
4841 <literal>hide-referer</literal> is an alternate spelling of
4842 <literal>hide-referrer</literal> and the two can be can be freely
4843 substituted with each other. (<quote>referrer</quote> is the
4844 correct English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it
4845 requires it to be spelled as <quote>referer</quote>.)
4851 <term>Example usage:</term>
4854 <screen>+hide-referrer{forge}</screen> or
4855 <screen>+hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}</screen>
4863 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4864 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-user-agent">
4865 <title>hide-user-agent</title>
4869 <term>Typical use:</term>
4871 <para>Try to conceal your type of browser and client operating system</para>
4876 <term>Effect:</term>
4879 Replaces the value of the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> HTTP header
4880 in client requests with the specified value.
4887 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4889 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4894 <term>Parameter:</term>
4897 Any user-defined string.
4907 This can lead to problems on web sites that depend on looking at this header in
4908 order to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
4909 way, is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> the right thing to do: good web sites
4910 work browser-independently).
4914 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
4915 browsers will access the same <application>Privoxy</application> is
4916 <emphasis>not recommended</emphasis>. In single-user, single-browser
4917 setups, you might use it to delete your OS version information from
4918 the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known bugs for your
4919 OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to access
4920 sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
4921 reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not
4922 let <application>Mozilla</application> enter, yet forging to a
4923 <application>Netscape 6.1</application> user-agent works just fine.
4924 (Must be just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
4927 More information on known user-agent strings can be found at
4928 <ulink url="http://www.user-agents.org/">http://www.user-agents.org/</ulink>
4930 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent</ulink>.
4936 <term>Example usage:</term>
4939 <screen>+hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}</screen>
4947 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4948 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="limit-connect">
4949 <title>limit-connect</title>
4953 <term>Typical use:</term>
4955 <para>Prevent abuse of <application>Privoxy</application> as a TCP proxy relay or disable SSL for untrusted sites</para>
4960 <term>Effect:</term>
4963 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
4970 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4972 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4977 <term>Parameter:</term>
4980 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
4981 defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
4990 By default, i.e. if no <literal>limit-connect</literal> action applies,
4991 <application>Privoxy</application> allows HTTP CONNECT requests to all
4992 ports. Use <literal>limit-connect</literal> if fine-grained control
4993 is desired for some or all destinations.
4996 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
4997 (<quote>https://</quote> URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
4998 the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
4999 short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
5000 This means CONNECT-enabled proxies can be used as TCP relays very easily.
5003 <application>Privoxy</application> relays HTTPS traffic without seeing
5004 the decoded content. Websites can leverage this limitation to circumvent &my-app;'s
5005 filters. By specifying an invalid port range you can disable HTTPS entirely.
5011 <term>Example usages:</term>
5013 <!-- I had trouble getting the spacing to look right in my browser -->
5014 <!-- I probably have the wrong font setup, bollocks. -->
5015 <!-- Apparently the emphasis tag uses a proportional font no matter what -->
5017 <screen>+limit-connect{443} # Port 443 is OK.
5018 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
5019 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
5020 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK
5021 +limit-connect{,} # No HTTPS/SSL traffic is allowed</screen>
5028 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5029 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="prevent-compression">
5030 <title>prevent-compression</title>
5034 <term>Typical use:</term>
5037 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
5038 passed through <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>s.
5044 <term>Effect:</term>
5047 Removes the Accept-Encoding header which can be used to ask for compressed transfer.
5054 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5056 <para>Boolean.</para>
5061 <term>Parameter:</term>
5073 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
5074 is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But the <literal><link
5075 linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> and
5076 <literal><link linkend="deanimate-gifs">deanimate-gifs</link></literal>
5077 actions need access to the uncompressed data.
5080 When compiled with zlib support (available since &my-app; 3.0.7), content that should be
5081 filtered is decompressed on-the-fly and you don't have to worry about this action.
5082 If you are using an older &my-app; version, or one that hasn't been compiled with zlib
5083 support, this action can be used to convince the server to send the content uncompressed.
5086 Most text-based instances compress very well, the size is seldom decreased by less than 50%,
5087 for markup-heavy instances like news feeds saving more than 90% of the original size isn't
5091 Not using compression will therefore slow down the transfer, and you should only
5092 enable this action if you really need it. As of &my-app; 3.0.7 it's disabled in all
5093 predefined action settings.
5096 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
5097 documents correctly. Broken PHP applications tend to send an empty document body,
5098 some IIS versions only send the beginning of the content. If you enable
5099 <literal>prevent-compression</literal> per default, you might want to add
5100 exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
5106 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
5110 # Selectively turn off compression, and enable a filter
5112 { +filter{tiny-textforms} +prevent-compression }
5113 # Match only these sites
5118 # Or instead, we could set a universal default:
5120 { +prevent-compression }
5123 # Then maybe make exceptions for broken sites:
5125 { -prevent-compression }
5126 .compusa.com/</screen>
5135 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5136 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="overwrite-last-modified">
5137 <title>overwrite-last-modified</title>
5143 <term>Typical use:</term>
5145 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
5150 <term>Effect:</term>
5153 Deletes the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> HTTP server header or modifies its value.
5160 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5162 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5167 <term>Parameter:</term>
5170 One of the keywords: <quote>block</quote>, <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote>
5171 and <quote>randomize</quote>
5180 Removing the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header is useful for filter
5181 testing, where you want to force a real reload instead of getting status
5182 code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the browser to reuse the old
5183 version of the page.
5186 The <quote>randomize</quote> option overwrites the value of the
5187 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with a randomly chosen time
5188 between the original value and the current time. In theory the server
5189 could send each document with a different <quote>Last-Modified:</quote>
5190 header to track visits without using cookies. <quote>Randomize</quote>
5191 makes it impossible and the browser can still revalidate cached documents.
5194 <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote> overwrites the value of the
5195 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with the current time. You could use
5196 this option together with
5197 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
5198 to further customize your random range.
5201 The preferred parameter here is <quote>randomize</quote>. It is safe
5202 to use, as long as the time settings are more or less correct.
5203 If the server sets the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header to the time
5204 of the request, the random range becomes zero and the value stays the same.
5205 Therefore you should later randomize it a second time with
5206 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>,
5210 It is also recommended to use this action together with
5211 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>.
5217 <term>Example usage:</term>
5220 <screen># Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
5221 { +hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
5222 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
5223 +crunch-if-none-match}
5232 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5233 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="redirect">
5234 <title>redirect</title>
5240 <term>Typical use:</term>
5243 Redirect requests to other sites.
5249 <term>Effect:</term>
5252 Convinces the browser that the requested document has been moved
5253 to another location and the browser should get it from there.
5260 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5262 <para>Parameterized</para>
5267 <term>Parameter:</term>
5270 An absolute URL or a single pcrs command.
5279 Requests to which this action applies are answered with a
5280 HTTP redirect to URLs of your choosing. The new URL is
5281 either provided as parameter, or derived by applying a
5282 single pcrs command to the original URL.
5285 This action will be ignored if you use it together with
5286 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>.
5287 It can be combined with
5288 <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects{check-decoded-url}</link></literal>
5289 to redirect to a decoded version of a rewritten URL.
5292 Use this action carefully, make sure not to create redirection loops
5293 and be aware that using your own redirects might make it
5294 possible to fingerprint your requests.
5297 In case of problems with your redirects, or simply to watch
5298 them working, enable <link linkend="DEBUG">debug 128</link>.
5304 <term>Example usages:</term>
5307 <screen># Replace example.com's style sheet with another one
5308 { +redirect{http://localhost/css-replacements/example.com.css} }
5309 example.com/stylesheet\.css
5311 # Create a short, easy to remember nickname for a favorite site
5312 # (relies on the browser accept and forward invalid URLs to &my-app;)
5313 { +redirect{http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html} }
5316 # Always use the expanded view for Undeadly.org articles
5317 # (Note the $ at the end of the URL pattern to make sure
5318 # the request for the rewritten URL isn't redirected as well)
5319 {+redirect{s@$@&mode=expanded@}}
5320 undeadly.org/cgi\?action=article&sid=\d*$
5322 # Redirect Google search requests to MSN
5323 {+redirect{s@^http://[^/]*/search\?q=([^&]*).*@http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=$1@}}
5326 # Redirect MSN search requests to Yahoo
5327 {+redirect{s@^http://[^/]*/results\.aspx\?q=([^&]*).*@http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=$1@}}
5328 search.msn.com//results\.aspx\?q=
5330 # Redirect remote requests for this manual
5331 # to the local version delivered by Privoxy
5332 {+redirect{s@^http://www@http://config@}}
5333 www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</screen>
5342 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5343 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="server-header-filter">
5344 <title>server-header-filter</title>
5348 <term>Typical use:</term>
5351 Rewrite or remove single server headers.
5357 <term>Effect:</term>
5360 All server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly
5361 through the specified regular expression based substitutions.
5368 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
5370 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5375 <term>Parameter:</term>
5378 The name of a server-header filter, as defined in one of the
5379 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
5388 Server-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
5389 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
5390 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
5391 You can do that by using tags though.
5394 Server-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
5395 and use their output as input.
5398 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
5399 to learn which server-header filters are available by default, and how to
5406 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5410 {+server-header-filter{html-to-xml}}
5411 example.org/xml-instance-that-is-delivered-as-html
5413 {+server-header-filter{xml-to-html}}
5414 example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
5424 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5425 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="server-header-tagger">
5426 <title>server-header-tagger</title>
5430 <term>Typical use:</term>
5433 Enable or disable filters based on the Content-Type header.
5439 <term>Effect:</term>
5442 Server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
5443 the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
5451 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
5453 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5458 <term>Parameter:</term>
5461 The name of a server-header tagger, as defined in one of the
5462 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
5471 Server-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
5472 and as the header isn't modified, each tagger <quote>sees</quote>
5476 Server-header taggers are executed before all other header actions
5477 that modify server headers. Their tags can be used to control
5478 all of the other server-header actions, the content filters
5479 and the crunch actions (<link linkend="redirect">redirect</link>
5480 and <link linkend="block">block</link>).
5483 Obviously crunching based on tags created by server-header taggers
5484 doesn't prevent the request from showing up in the server's log file.
5491 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5495 # Tag every request with the content type declared by the server
5496 {+server-header-tagger{content-type}}
5507 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5508 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="session-cookies-only">
5509 <title>session-cookies-only</title>
5513 <term>Typical use:</term>
5516 Allow only temporary <quote>session</quote> cookies (for the current
5517 browser session <emphasis>only</emphasis>).
5523 <term>Effect:</term>
5526 Deletes the <quote>expires</quote> field from <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote>
5527 server headers. Most browsers will not store such cookies permanently and
5528 forget them in between sessions.
5535 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5537 <para>Boolean.</para>
5542 <term>Parameter:</term>
5554 This is less strict than <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> /
5555 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal> and allows you to browse
5556 websites that insist or rely on setting cookies, without compromising your privacy too badly.
5559 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed by
5560 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal> and will forget about them between sessions.
5561 This makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
5562 that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
5563 sites, and is the recommended setting.
5566 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>
5567 together with <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> or
5568 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>. If you do, cookies
5569 will be plainly killed.
5572 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an <quote>expires</quote>
5573 field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out to be sure.
5576 This setting also has no effect on cookies that may have been stored
5577 previously by the browser before starting <application>Privoxy</application>.
5578 These would have to be removed manually.
5581 <application>Privoxy</application> also uses
5582 the <link linkend="filter-content-cookies">content-cookies filter</link>
5583 to block some types of cookies. Content cookies are not effected by
5584 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>.
5590 <term>Example usage:</term>
5593 <screen>+session-cookies-only</screen>
5601 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5602 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="set-image-blocker">
5603 <title>set-image-blocker</title>
5607 <term>Typical use:</term>
5609 <para>Choose the replacement for blocked images</para>
5614 <term>Effect:</term>
5617 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If <emphasis>both</emphasis>
5618 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><link
5619 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> <emphasis>also</emphasis>
5620 apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an image,
5621 <emphasis>then</emphasis> the parameter of this action decides what will be
5622 sent as a replacement.
5629 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5631 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5636 <term>Parameter:</term>
5641 <quote>pattern</quote> to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is visually
5642 decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners were busted.
5647 <quote>blank</quote> to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners disappear
5648 completely, but makes it hard to detect where <application>Privoxy</application> has blocked
5649 images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if <application>Privoxy</application>
5650 has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
5655 <quote><replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable></quote> to
5656 send a redirect to <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>. You can redirect
5657 to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem via <quote>file:///</quote> URL.
5658 (But note that not all browsers support redirecting to a local file system).
5661 A good application of redirects is to use special <application>Privoxy</application>-built-in
5662 URLs, which send the built-in images, as <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>.
5663 This has the same visual effect as specifying <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote> in
5664 the first place, but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of requesting
5665 it over and over again.
5676 The URLs for the built-in images are <quote>http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=<replaceable
5677 class="parameter">type</replaceable></quote>, where <replaceable class="parameter">type</replaceable> is
5678 either <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote>.
5681 There is a third (advanced) type, called <quote>auto</quote>. It is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> to be
5682 used in <literal>set-image-blocker</literal>, but meant for use from <link linkend="filter-file">filters</link>.
5683 Auto will select the type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an image.
5689 <term>Example usage:</term>
5695 <screen>+set-image-blocker{pattern}</screen>
5698 Redirect to the BSD daemon:
5701 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}</screen>
5704 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
5707 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}</screen>
5715 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5717 <title>Summary</title>
5719 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
5720 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
5721 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
5722 content, and other criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard
5723 and fast rules for all sites. See the <link
5724 linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link> for a brief example on troubleshooting
5730 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5731 <sect2 id="aliases">
5732 <title>Aliases</title>
5734 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
5735 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other actions.
5736 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
5737 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab,
5739 <quote>{</quote> and <quote>}</quote>, but we <emphasis>strongly
5740 recommend</emphasis> that you only use <quote>a</quote> to <quote>z</quote>,
5741 <quote>0</quote> to <quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and <quote>-</quote>.
5742 Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start with a
5743 <quote>+</quote> or <quote>-</quote> sign, since they are merely textually
5747 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they <emphasis>must be
5748 defined in a special section at the top of the file!</emphasis>
5749 And there can only be one such section per actions file. Each actions file may
5750 have its own alias section, and the aliases defined in it are only visible
5754 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
5755 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
5756 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called
5757 <quote>shop</quote>, you can later change your policy on shops in
5758 <emphasis>one</emphasis> place, and your changes will take effect everywhere
5759 in the actions file where the <quote>shop</quote> alias is used. Calling aliases
5760 by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
5763 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though:
5764 <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in web-based action file
5765 editor honors aliases when reading the actions files, but it expands
5766 them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are of course preserved,
5767 but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
5772 Now let's define some aliases...
5777 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
5779 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
5780 # must be at the top of the actions file!
5784 # These aliases just save typing later:
5785 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5787 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5788 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5789 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked image.} +handle-as-image
5790 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
5792 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5793 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5795 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="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link>
5797 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link>
5799 # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
5801 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
5802 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies</screen>
5806 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
5807 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
5808 up for the <quote>/</quote> pattern):
5813 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
5814 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
5817 .office.microsoft.com
5818 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
5819 # Gmail is really mail.google.com, not gmail.com
5823 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
5827 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
5830 # These shops require pop-ups:
5832 {-filter{all-popups} -filter{unsolicited-popups}}
5834 .overclockers.co.uk</screen>
5838 Aliases like <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote> are typically used for
5839 <quote>problem</quote> sites that require more than one action to be disabled
5840 in order to function properly.
5846 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5847 <sect2 id="act-examples">
5848 <title>Actions Files Tutorial</title>
5850 The above chapters have shown <link linkend="actions-file">which actions files
5851 there are and how they are organized</link>, how actions are <link
5852 linkend="actions">specified</link> and <link linkend="actions-apply">applied
5853 to URLs</link>, how <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> work, and how to
5854 define and use <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link>. Now, let's look at an
5855 example <filename>match-all.action</filename>, <filename>default.action</filename>
5856 and <filename>user.action</filename> file and see how all these pieces come together:
5860 <title>match-all.action</title>
5862 Remember <emphasis>all actions are disabled when matching starts</emphasis>,
5863 so we have to explicitly enable the ones we want.
5867 While the <filename>match-all.action</filename> file only contains a
5868 single section, it is probably the most important one. It has only one
5869 pattern, <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, but this pattern
5870 <link linkend="af-patterns">matches all URLs</link>. Therefore, the set of
5871 actions used in this <quote>default</quote> section <emphasis>will
5872 be applied to all requests as a start</emphasis>. It can be partly or
5873 wholly overridden by other actions files like <filename>default.action</filename>
5874 and <filename>user.action</filename>, but it will still be largely responsible
5875 for your overall browsing experience.
5879 Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
5880 no need to disable any actions here. (Remember: a <quote>+</quote>
5881 preceding the action name enables the action, a <quote>-</quote> disables!).
5882 Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
5883 multiple lines with line continuation.
5889 +<link linkend="CHANGE-X-FORWARDED-FOR">change-x-forwarded-for{block}</link> \
5890 +<link linkend="HIDE-FROM-HEADER">hide-from-header{block}</link> \
5891 +<link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER">set-image-blocker{pattern}</link> \
5898 The default behavior is now set.
5903 <title>default.action</title>
5906 If you aren't a developer, there's no need for you to edit the
5907 <filename>default.action</filename> file. It is maintained by
5908 the &my-app; developers and if you disagree with some of the
5909 sections, you should overrule them in your <filename>user.action</filename>.
5913 Understanding the <filename>default.action</filename> file can
5914 help you with your <filename>user.action</filename>, though.
5918 The first section in this file is a special section for internal use
5919 that prevents older &my-app; versions from reading the file:
5924 ##########################################################################
5925 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
5926 ##########################################################################
5928 for-privoxy-version=3.0.11</screen>
5932 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
5933 section from the above <link linkend="aliases">chapter on aliases</link>,
5934 that also explains why and how aliases are used:
5939 ##########################################################################
5941 ##########################################################################
5944 # These aliases just save typing later:
5945 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5947 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5948 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5949 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked image.} +handle-as-image
5950 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
5952 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5953 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5955 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>
5956 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link></screen>
5960 The first of our specialized sections is concerned with <quote>fragile</quote>
5961 sites, i.e. sites that require minimum interference, because they are either
5962 very complex or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that
5963 make them unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will simply use
5964 our pre-defined <literal>fragile</literal> alias instead of stating the list
5965 of actions explicitly:
5970 ##########################################################################
5971 # Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
5972 ##########################################################################
5974 # "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
5977 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
5978 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
5979 mail.google.com</screen>
5983 Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically
5984 require cookies to log in, and pop-up windows for shopping
5985 carts or item details. Again, we'll use a pre-defined alias:
5994 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
5996 .scan.co.uk</screen>
6000 The <literal><link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link></literal>
6001 action, which may have been enabled in <filename>match-all.action</filename>,
6002 breaks some sites. So disable it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
6007 { -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> }
6011 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
6012 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
6013 .nytimes.com</screen>
6017 It is important that <application>Privoxy</application> knows which
6018 URLs belong to images, so that <emphasis>if</emphasis> they are to
6019 be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
6020 Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it
6021 would destroy the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it
6022 would feed the advertisers information about you. We can mark any
6023 URL as an image with the <literal><link
6024 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action,
6025 and marking all URLs that end in a known image file extension is a
6031 ##########################################################################
6033 ##########################################################################
6035 # Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
6036 # blocked further down this file:
6038 { +<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> }
6039 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$</screen>
6043 And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to
6044 generate the banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the
6045 request is for an image. Hence we block them <emphasis>and</emphasis>
6046 mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
6047 <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above. (We could of
6048 course just as well use <literal>+<link linkend="block">block</link>
6049 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> here.)
6050 Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
6051 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
6052 action. Since all URLs have matched the default section with its
6053 <literal>+<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link>{pattern}</literal>
6054 action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:
6059 # Known ad generators:
6064 .ad.*.doubleclick.net
6065 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6066 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6072 One of the most important jobs of <application>Privoxy</application>
6073 is to block banners. Many of these can be <quote>blocked</quote>
6074 by the <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{banners-by-size}</literal>
6075 action, which we enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner
6076 images from the pages while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request
6077 them anymore, and hence they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally
6078 doesn't catch all banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we
6079 need a comprehensive list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the
6080 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action to them.
6083 First comes many generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
6084 matching typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes
6085 a list of individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here
6086 to keep the example short:
6091 ##########################################################################
6092 # Block these fine banners:
6093 ##########################################################################
6094 { <link linkend="BLOCK">+block{Banner ads.}</link> }
6102 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
6103 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
6105 # Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
6107 .hitbox.com</screen>
6111 It's quite remarkable how many advertisers actually call their banner
6112 servers ads.<replaceable>company</replaceable>.com, or call the directory
6113 in which the banners are stored simply <quote>banners</quote>. So the above
6114 generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
6117 But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want
6118 to block. The pattern <literal>.*ads.</literal> e.g. catches
6119 <quote>nasty-<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.nasty-corp.com</quote> as intended,
6120 but also <quote>downlo<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.sourcefroge.net</quote> or
6121 <quote><emphasis>ads</emphasis>l.some-provider.net.</quote> So here come some
6122 well-known exceptions to the <literal>+<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6126 Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
6127 <quote>downloads.sourcefroge.net</quote>: Initially, all actions are deactivated,
6128 so it wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the
6129 URL, but just deactivates the <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6130 action once again. Then it matches <literal>.*ads.</literal>, an exception to the
6131 general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
6132 <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link></literal> applies. And now, it'll match
6133 <literal>.*loads.</literal>, where <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">-block</link></literal>
6134 applies, so (unless it matches <emphasis>again</emphasis> further down) it ends up
6135 with no <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal> action applying.
6140 ##########################################################################
6141 # Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
6142 ##########################################################################
6146 { -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
6147 adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
6148 adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
6149 adobe. # (has nothing to do with ads either)
6150 ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
6151 .edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
6152 .*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
6160 www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
6161 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv</screen>
6165 Filtering source code can have nasty side effects,
6166 so make an exception for our friends at sourceforge.net,
6167 and all paths with <quote>cvs</quote> in them. Note that
6168 <literal>-<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link></literal>
6169 disables <emphasis>all</emphasis> filters in one fell swoop!
6174 # Don't filter code!
6176 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6181 .sourceforge.net</screen>
6185 The actual <filename>default.action</filename> is of course much more
6186 comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
6191 <sect3><title>user.action</title>
6194 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies,
6195 which would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now,
6196 you might want to be more specific and have customized rules that
6197 are more suitable to your personal habits and preferences. These would
6198 be for narrowly defined situations like your ISP or your bank, and should
6199 be placed in <filename>user.action</filename>, which is parsed after all other
6200 actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any previously
6201 defined actions. <filename>user.action</filename> is also a
6202 <emphasis>safe</emphasis> place for your personal settings, since
6203 <filename>default.action</filename> is actively maintained by the
6204 <application>Privoxy</application> developers and you'll probably want
6205 to install updated versions from time to time.
6209 So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
6210 <filename>user.action</filename>:
6214 <!-- brief sample user.action here -->
6218 # My user.action file. <fred@example.com></screen>
6222 As <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link> are local to the actions
6223 file that they are defined in, you can't use the ones from
6224 <filename>default.action</filename>, unless you repeat them here:
6229 # Aliases are local to the file they are defined in.
6230 # (Re-)define aliases for this file:
6234 # These aliases just save typing later, and the alias names should
6235 # be self explanatory.
6237 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
6238 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6239 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
6240 allow-popups = -filter{all-popups}
6241 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked as image.} +handle-as-image
6242 -block-as-image = -block
6244 # These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
6245 # certain types of sites:
6247 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referrer
6248 shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
6250 # Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
6252 allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}
6254 # Alias for specific file types that are text, but might have conflicting
6255 # MIME types. We want the browser to force these to be text documents.
6256 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>
6261 Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and
6262 you don't want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like
6263 to allow persistent cookies for these sites. The
6264 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal> alias defined above does exactly
6265 that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
6266 processing of cookies to make them only temporary.
6271 { allow-all-cookies }
6275 .redhat.com</screen>
6279 Your bank is allergic to some filter, but you don't know which, so you disable them all:
6284 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6285 .your-home-banking-site.com</screen>
6289 Some file types you may not want to filter for various reasons:
6294 # Technical documentation is likely to contain strings that might
6295 # erroneously get altered by the JavaScript-oriented filters:
6300 # And this stupid host sends streaming video with a wrong MIME type,
6301 # so that Privoxy thinks it is getting HTML and starts filtering:
6303 stupid-server.example.com/</screen>
6307 Example of a simple <link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> action. Say you've
6308 seen an ad on your favourite page on example.com that you want to get rid of.
6309 You have right-clicked the image, selected <quote>copy image location</quote>
6310 and pasted the URL below while removing the leading http://, into a
6311 <literal>{ +block{} }</literal> section. Note that <literal>{ +handle-as-image
6312 }</literal> need not be specified, since all URLs ending in
6313 <literal>.gif</literal> will be tagged as images by the general rules as set
6314 in default.action anyway:
6319 { +<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link>{Nasty ads.} }
6320 www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor\.gif
6321 another.example.net/more/junk/here/</screen>
6325 The URLs of dynamically generated banners, especially from large banner
6326 farms, often don't use the well-known image file name extensions, which
6327 makes it impossible for <application>Privoxy</application> to guess
6328 the file type just by looking at the URL.
6329 You can use the <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above for
6331 Note that objects which match this rule but then turn out NOT to be an
6332 image are typically rendered as a <quote>broken image</quote> icon by the
6333 browser. Use cautiously.
6342 ar.atwola.com/</screen>
6346 Now you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine,
6347 but you were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you
6348 were again too lazy to give <link linkend="contact">feedback</link>, so
6349 you just used the <literal>fragile</literal> alias on the site, and
6350 -- <emphasis>whoa!</emphasis> -- it worked. The <literal>fragile</literal>
6351 aliases disables those actions that are most likely to break a site. Also,
6352 good for testing purposes to see if it is <application>Privoxy</application>
6353 that is causing the problem or not. We later find other regular sites
6354 that misbehave, and add those to our personalized list of troublemakers:
6362 .mybank.com</screen>
6366 You like the <quote>fun</quote> text replacements in <filename>default.filter</filename>,
6367 but it is disabled in the distributed actions file.
6368 So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
6369 update-safe config, once and for all:
6374 { +<link linkend="filter-fun">filter{fun}</link> }
6375 / # For ALL sites!</screen>
6379 Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions
6380 to the filters in <filename>default.action</filename> for things that
6381 really shouldn't be filtered, like code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since
6382 <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word, these exceptions
6383 won't be valid for the <quote>fun</quote> filtering specified here.
6387 You might also worry about how your favourite free websites are
6388 funded, and find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements
6389 to survive. So you might want to specifically allow banners for those
6390 sites that you feel provide value to you:
6402 Note that <literal>allow-ads</literal> has been aliased to
6403 <literal>-<link linkend="block">block</link></literal>,
6404 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-size">filter{banners-by-size}</link></literal>, and
6405 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-link">filter{banners-by-link}</link></literal> above.
6409 Invoke another alias here to force an over-ride of the MIME type <literal>
6410 application/x-sh</literal> which typically would open a download type
6411 dialog. In my case, I want to look at the shell script, and then I can save
6412 it should I choose to.
6422 <filename>user.action</filename> is generally the best place to define
6423 exceptions and additions to the default policies of
6424 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some actions are safe to have their
6425 default policies set here though. So let's set a default policy to have a
6426 <quote>blank</quote> image as opposed to the checkerboard pattern for
6427 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> sites. <quote>/</quote> of course matches all URL
6433 { +<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker{blank}</link> }
6434 / # ALL sites</screen>
6440 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6444 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6446 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6448 <sect1 id="filter-file">
6449 <title>Filter Files</title>
6452 On-the-fly text substitutions need
6453 to be defined in a <quote>filter file</quote>. Once defined, they
6454 can then be invoked as an <quote>action</quote>.
6458 &my-app; supports three different filter actions:
6459 <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> to
6460 rewrite the content that is send to the client,
6461 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header-filter</link></literal>
6462 to rewrite headers that are send by the client, and
6463 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header-filter</link></literal>
6464 to rewrite headers that are send by the server.
6468 &my-app; also supports two tagger actions:
6469 <literal><link linkend="client-header-tagger">client-header-tagger</link></literal>
6471 <literal><link linkend="server-header-tagger">server-header-tagger</link></literal>.
6472 Taggers and filters use the same syntax in the filter files, the difference
6473 is that taggers don't modify the text they are filtering, but use a rewritten
6474 version of the filtered text as tag. The tags can then be used to change the
6475 applying actions through sections with <link linkend="tag-pattern">tag-patterns</link>.
6480 Multiple filter files can be defined through the <literal> <link
6481 linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal> config directive. The filters
6482 as supplied by the developers are located in
6483 <filename>default.filter</filename>. It is recommended that any locally
6484 defined or modified filters go in a separately defined file such as
6485 <filename>user.filter</filename>.
6489 Common tasks for content filters are to eliminate common annoyances in
6490 HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows,
6491 exit consoles, crippled windows without navigation tools, the
6492 infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to suppress images with certain
6493 width and height attributes (standard banner sizes or web-bugs),
6494 or just to have fun.
6498 Enabled content filters are applied to any content whose
6499 <quote>Content Type</quote> header is recognised as a sign
6500 of text-based content, with the exception of <literal>text/plain</literal>.
6501 Use the <link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> action
6502 to also filter other content.
6506 Substitutions are made at the source level, so if you want to <quote>roll
6507 your own</quote> filters, you should first be familiar with HTML syntax,
6508 and, of course, regular expressions.
6512 Just like the <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, the
6513 filter file is organized in sections, which are called <emphasis>filters</emphasis>
6514 here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with one of the
6515 <emphasis>keywords</emphasis> <literal>FILTER:</literal>,
6516 <literal>CLIENT-HEADER-FILTER:</literal> or <literal>SERVER-HEADER-FILTER:</literal>
6517 followed by the filter's <emphasis>name</emphasis>, and a short (one line)
6518 <emphasis>description</emphasis> of what it does. Below that line
6519 come the <emphasis>jobs</emphasis>, i.e. lines that define the actual
6520 text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
6521 should describe what the filter <emphasis>eliminates</emphasis>. The
6522 comment is used in the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
6523 user interface</ulink>.
6527 Once a filter called <replaceable>name</replaceable> has been defined
6528 in the filter file, it can be invoked by using an action of the form
6529 +<literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>name</replaceable>}</literal>
6530 in any <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>.
6534 Filter definitions start with a header line that contains the filter
6535 type, the filter name and the filter description.
6536 A content filter header line for a filter called <quote>foo</quote> could look
6541 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"</screen>
6545 Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that
6546 define what text replacements the filter executes. They are specified
6547 in a syntax that imitates <ulink url="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</ulink>'s
6548 <literal>s///</literal> operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you
6549 will find this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the
6550 PCRS documentation for the subtle differences to Perl behaviour. Most
6551 notably, the non-standard option letter <literal>U</literal> is supported,
6552 which turns the default to ungreedy matching.
6557 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
6558 Expressions</quote></ulink>, you might want to take a look at
6559 the <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>, and
6560 see the <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl
6562 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlop.html">the
6563 <literal>s///</literal> operator's syntax</ulink> and <ulink
6564 url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl-style regular
6565 expressions</ulink> in general.
6566 The below examples might also help to get you started.
6570 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6572 <sect2><title>Filter File Tutorial</title>
6574 Now, let's complete our <quote>foo</quote> content filter. We have already defined
6575 the heading, but the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace
6576 <quote>foo</quote> with <quote>bar</quote>, there is only one (trivial) job
6581 <screen>s/foo/bar/</screen>
6585 But wait! Didn't the comment say that <emphasis>all</emphasis> occurrences
6586 of <quote>foo</quote> should be replaced? Our current job will only take
6587 care of the first <quote>foo</quote> on each page. For global substitution,
6588 we'll need to add the <literal>g</literal> option:
6592 <screen>s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6596 Our complete filter now looks like this:
6599 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
6600 s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6604 Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see
6605 a filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
6606 abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
6612 FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
6614 # Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
6616 s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg</screen>
6620 Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses
6621 <literal>|</literal> as the delimiter instead of <literal>/</literal>, because
6622 the pattern contains a forward slash, which would otherwise have to be escaped
6623 by a backslash (<literal>\</literal>).
6627 Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <literal><script.*</literal>
6628 enclosed in parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and <literal>*</literal>
6629 means: <quote>Match an arbitrary number of the element left of myself</quote>, this
6630 matches <quote><script</quote>, followed by <emphasis>any</emphasis> text, i.e.
6631 it matches the whole page, from the start of the first <script> tag.
6635 That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: <literal>document\.referrer</literal>
6636 matches only the exact string <quote>document.referrer</quote>. The dot needed to
6637 be <emphasis>escaped</emphasis>, i.e. preceded by a backslash, to take away its
6638 special meaning as a joker, and make it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is:
6639 Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including,
6640 the text <quote>document.referrer</quote>, if <emphasis>both</emphasis> are present
6641 in the page (and appear in that order).
6645 But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in parentheses,
6646 is <literal>.*</script></literal>. You already know what <literal>.*</literal>
6647 means, so the whole pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script>
6648 tag in a page to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text
6649 <quote>document.referrer</quote> appears somewhere in between.
6653 This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the parentheses:
6654 The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed in parentheses, will be
6655 remembered and be available through the variables <literal>$1, $2, ...</literal> in
6656 the substitute. The <literal>U</literal> option switches to ungreedy matching, which means
6657 that the first <literal>.*</literal> in the pattern will only <quote>eat up</quote> all
6658 text in between <quote><script</quote> and the <emphasis>first</emphasis> occurrence
6659 of <quote>document.referrer</quote>, and that the second <literal>.*</literal> will
6660 only span the text up to the <emphasis>first</emphasis> <quote></script></quote>
6661 tag. Furthermore, the <literal>s</literal> option says that the match may span
6662 multiple lines in the page, and the <literal>g</literal> option again means that the
6663 substitution is global.
6667 So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
6668 <quote>document.referrer</quote>. Remember the parts of the script from
6669 (and including) the start tag up to (and excluding) the string
6670 <quote>document.referrer</quote> as <literal>$1</literal>, and the part following
6671 that string, up to and including the closing tag, as <literal>$2</literal>.
6675 Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
6676 lets look at the substitute: <literal>$1"Not Your Business!"$2</literal> is
6677 easy to read: The text remembered as <literal>$1</literal>, followed by
6678 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> (<emphasis>including</emphasis>
6679 the quotation marks!), followed by the text remembered as <literal>$2</literal>.
6680 This produces an exact copy of the original string, with the middle part
6681 (the <quote>document.referrer</quote>) replaced by <literal>"Not Your
6682 Business!"</literal>.
6686 The whole job now reads: Replace <quote>document.referrer</quote> by
6687 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> wherever it appears inside a
6688 <script> tag. Note that this job won't break JavaScript syntax,
6689 since both the original and the replacement are syntactically valid
6690 string objects. The script just won't have access to the referrer
6691 information anymore.
6695 We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but
6696 this time only point out the constructs of special interest:
6701 # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
6703 s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig</screen>
6707 <literal>\s</literal> stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline,
6708 carriage return, form feed), so that <literal>\s*</literal> means: <quote>zero
6709 or more whitespace</quote>. The <literal>?</literal> in <literal>.*?</literal>
6710 makes this matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the <literal>U</literal>
6711 option is not set). The <literal>['"]</literal> construct means: <quote>a single
6712 <emphasis>or</emphasis> a double quote</quote>. Finally, <literal>\1</literal> is
6713 a back-reference to the first parenthesis just like <literal>$1</literal> above,
6714 with the difference that in the <emphasis>pattern</emphasis>, a backslash indicates
6715 a back-reference, whereas in the <emphasis>substitute</emphasis>, it's the dollar.
6719 So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
6720 strings to the <quote>window.status</quote> object with a dummy assignment
6721 (using a variable name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with
6722 real variables in scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless
6723 descriptions are displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when
6724 you move your mouse over links.
6729 # Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
6731 s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU</screen>
6736 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">OnUnload
6737 event binding</ulink> in the HTML DOM was a <emphasis>CRIME</emphasis>.
6738 When I close a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta.
6739 This job replaces the <quote>onunload</quote> attribute in
6740 <quote><body></quote> tags with the dummy word <literal>never</literal>.
6741 Note that the <literal>i</literal> option makes the pattern matching
6742 case-insensitive. Also note that ungreedy matching alone doesn't always guarantee
6743 a minimal match: In the first parenthesis, we had to use <literal>[^>]*</literal>
6744 instead of <literal>.*</literal> to prevent the match from exceeding the
6745 <body> tag if it doesn't contain <quote>OnUnload</quote>, but the page's
6750 The last example is from the fun department:
6755 FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
6757 # Spice the daily news:
6759 s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig</screen>
6763 Note the <literal>(?!\.com)</literal> part (a so-called negative lookahead)
6764 in the job's pattern, which means: Don't match, if the string
6765 <quote>.com</quote> appears directly following <quote>microsoft</quote>
6766 in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being trashed, while
6767 still replacing the word everywhere else.
6772 # Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
6774 s* industry[ -]leading \
6776 | customer[ -]focused \
6777 | market[ -]driven \
6778 | award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
6779 | high[ -]performance \
6780 | solutions[ -]based \
6784 *<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
6789 The <literal>x</literal> option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for
6790 e.g. the liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
6798 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6800 <sect2 id="predefined-filters"><title>The Pre-defined Filters</title>
6804 Note each filter is also listed in the +filter action section above. Please
6805 keep these listings in sync.
6810 The distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file contains a selection of
6811 pre-defined filters for your convenience:
6816 <term><emphasis>js-annoyances</emphasis></term>
6819 The purpose of this filter is to get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.
6824 replaces JavaScript references to the browser's referrer information
6825 with the string "Not Your Business!". This compliments the <literal><link
6826 linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal> action on the content level.
6831 removes the bindings to the DOM's
6832 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">unload
6833 event</ulink> which we feel has no right to exist and is responsible for most <quote>exit consoles</quote>, i.e.
6834 nasty windows that pop up when you close another one.
6839 removes code that causes new windows to be opened with undesired properties, such as being
6840 full-screen, non-resizeable, without location, status or menu bar etc.
6846 Use with caution. This is an aggressive filter, and can break sites that
6847 rely heavily on JavaScript.
6853 <term><emphasis>js-events</emphasis></term>
6856 This is a very radical measure. It removes virtually all JavaScript event bindings, which
6857 means that scripts can not react to user actions such as mouse movements or clicks, window
6858 resizing etc, anymore. Use with caution!
6861 We <emphasis>strongly discourage</emphasis> using this filter as a default since it breaks
6862 many legitimate scripts. It is meant for use only on extra-nasty sites (should you really
6869 <term><emphasis>html-annoyances</emphasis></term>
6872 This filter will undo many common instances of HTML based abuse.
6875 The <literal>BLINK</literal> and <literal>MARQUEE</literal> tags
6876 are neutralized (yeah baby!), and browser windows will be created as
6877 resizeable (as of course they should be!), and will have location,
6878 scroll and menu bars -- even if specified otherwise.
6884 <term><emphasis>content-cookies</emphasis></term>
6887 Most cookies are set in the HTTP dialog, where they can be intercepted
6889 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>
6890 and <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>
6891 actions. But web sites increasingly make use of HTML meta tags and JavaScript
6892 to sneak cookies to the browser on the content level.
6895 This filter disables most HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets
6896 cookies. It cannot detect all clever uses of these types of code, so it
6897 should not be relied on as an absolute fix. Use it wherever you would also
6898 use the cookie crunch actions.
6904 <term><emphasis>refresh tags</emphasis></term>
6907 Disable any refresh tags if the interval is greater than nine seconds (so
6908 that redirections done via refresh tags are not destroyed). This is useful
6909 for dial-on-demand setups, or for those who find this HTML feature
6916 <term><emphasis>unsolicited-popups</emphasis></term>
6919 This filter attempts to prevent only <quote>unsolicited</quote> pop-up
6920 windows from opening, yet still allow pop-up windows that the user
6921 has explicitly chosen to open. It was added in version 3.0.1,
6922 as an improvement over earlier such filters.
6925 Technical note: The filter works by redefining the window.open JavaScript
6926 function to a dummy function, <literal>PrivoxyWindowOpen()</literal>,
6927 during the loading and rendering phase of each HTML page access, and
6928 restoring the function afterward.
6931 This is recommended only for browsers that cannot perform this function
6932 reliably themselves. And be aware that some sites require such windows
6933 in order to function normally. Use with caution.
6939 <term><emphasis>all-popups</emphasis></term>
6942 Attempt to prevent <emphasis>all</emphasis> pop-up windows from opening.
6943 Note this should be used with even more discretion than the above, since
6944 it is more likely to break some sites that require pop-ups for normal
6945 usage. Use with caution.
6951 <term><emphasis>img-reorder</emphasis></term>
6954 This is a helper filter that has no value if used alone. It makes the
6955 <literal>banners-by-size</literal> and <literal>banners-by-link</literal>
6956 (see below) filters more effective and should be enabled together with them.
6962 <term><emphasis>banners-by-size</emphasis></term>
6965 This filter removes image tags purely based on what size they are. Fortunately
6966 for us, many ads and banner images tend to conform to certain standardized
6967 sizes, which makes this filter quite effective for ad stripping purposes.
6970 Occasionally this filter will cause false positives on images that are not ads,
6971 but just happen to be of one of the standard banner sizes.
6974 Recommended only for those who require extreme ad blocking. The default
6975 block rules should catch 95+% of all ads <emphasis>without</emphasis> this filter enabled.
6981 <term><emphasis>banners-by-link</emphasis></term>
6984 This is an experimental filter that attempts to kill any banners if
6985 their URLs seem to point to known or suspected click trackers. It is currently
6986 not of much value and is not recommended for use by default.
6992 <term><emphasis>webbugs</emphasis></term>
6995 Webbugs are small, invisible images (technically 1X1 GIF images), that
6996 are used to track users across websites, and collect information on them.
6997 As an HTML page is loaded by the browser, an embedded image tag causes the
6998 browser to contact a third-party site, disclosing the tracking information
6999 through the requested URL and/or cookies for that third-party domain, without
7000 the user ever becoming aware of the interaction with the third-party site.
7001 HTML-ized spam also uses a similar technique to verify email addresses.
7004 This filter removes the HTML code that loads such <quote>webbugs</quote>.
7010 <term><emphasis>tiny-textforms</emphasis></term>
7013 A rather special-purpose filter that can be used to enlarge textareas (those
7014 multi-line text boxes in web forms) and turn off hard word wrap in them.
7015 It was written for the sourceforge.net tracker system where such boxes are
7016 a nuisance, but it can be handy on other sites, too.
7019 It is not recommended to use this filter as a default.
7025 <term><emphasis>jumping-windows</emphasis></term>
7028 Many consider windows that move, or resize themselves to be abusive. This filter
7029 neutralizes the related JavaScript code. Note that some sites might not display
7030 or behave as intended when using this filter. Use with caution.
7036 <term><emphasis>frameset-borders</emphasis></term>
7039 Some web designers seem to assume that everyone in the world will view their
7040 web sites using the same browser brand and version, screen resolution etc,
7041 because only that assumption could explain why they'd use static frame sizes,
7042 yet prevent their frames from being resized by the user, should they be too
7043 small to show their whole content.
7046 This filter removes the related HTML code. It should only be applied to sites
7053 <term><emphasis>demoronizer</emphasis></term>
7056 Many Microsoft products that generate HTML use non-standard extensions (read:
7057 violations) of the ISO 8859-1 aka Latin-1 character set. This can cause those
7058 HTML documents to display with errors on standard-compliant platforms.
7061 This filter translates the MS-only characters into Latin-1 equivalents.
7062 It is not necessary when using MS products, and will cause corruption of
7063 all documents that use 8-bit character sets other than Latin-1. It's mostly
7064 worthwhile for Europeans on non-MS platforms, if weird garbage characters
7065 sometimes appear on some pages, or user agents that don't correct for this on
7068 My version of Mozilla (ancient) shows litte square boxes for quote
7069 characters, and apostrophes on moronized pages. So many pages have this, I
7070 can read them fine now. HB 08/27/06
7077 <term><emphasis>shockwave-flash</emphasis></term>
7080 A filter for shockwave haters. As the name suggests, this filter strips code
7081 out of web pages that is used to embed shockwave flash objects.
7089 <term><emphasis>quicktime-kioskmode</emphasis></term>
7092 Change HTML code that embeds Quicktime objects so that kioskmode, which
7093 prevents saving, is disabled.
7099 <term><emphasis>fun</emphasis></term>
7102 Text replacements for subversive browsing fun. Make fun of your favorite
7103 Monopolist or play buzzword bingo.
7109 <term><emphasis>crude-parental</emphasis></term>
7112 A demonstration-only filter that shows how <application>Privoxy</application>
7113 can be used to delete web content on a keyword basis.
7119 <term><emphasis>ie-exploits</emphasis></term>
7122 An experimental collection of text replacements to disable malicious HTML and JavaScript
7123 code that exploits known security holes in Internet Explorer.
7126 Presently, it only protects against Nimda and a cross-site scripting bug, and
7127 would need active maintenance to provide more substantial protection.
7133 <term><emphasis>site-specifics</emphasis></term>
7136 Some web sites have very specific problems, the cure for which doesn't apply
7137 anywhere else, or could even cause damage on other sites.
7140 This is a collection of such site-specific cures which should only be applied
7141 to the sites they were intended for, which is what the supplied
7142 <filename>default.action</filename> file does. Users shouldn't need to change
7143 anything regarding this filter.
7149 <term><emphasis>google</emphasis></term>
7152 A CSS based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation
7153 and the toolbar advertisement.
7159 <term><emphasis>yahoo</emphasis></term>
7162 Another CSS based block, this time for Yahoo text ads. And removes
7163 a width limitation as well.
7169 <term><emphasis>msn</emphasis></term>
7172 Another CSS based block, this time for MSN text ads. And removes
7173 tracking URLs, as well as a width limitation.
7179 <term><emphasis>blogspot</emphasis></term>
7182 Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this one!
7185 This filter also intentionally removes some navigation stuff and sets the
7186 page width to 100%. As a result, some rounded <quote>corners</quote> would
7187 appear to early or not at all and as fixing this would require a browser
7188 that understands background-size (CSS3), they are removed instead.
7194 <term><emphasis>xml-to-html</emphasis></term>
7197 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from xml to html.
7203 <term><emphasis>html-to-xml</emphasis></term>
7206 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from html to xml.
7212 <term><emphasis>no-ping</emphasis></term>
7215 Removes the non-standard <literal>ping</literal> attribute from
7216 anchor and area HTML tags.
7222 <term><emphasis>hide-tor-exit-notation</emphasis></term>
7225 Client-header filter to remove the <command>Tor</command> exit node notation
7226 found in Host and Referer headers.
7229 If &my-app; and <command>Tor</command> are chained and &my-app;
7230 is configured to use socks4a, one can use <quote>http://www.example.org.foobar.exit/</quote>
7231 to access the host <quote>www.example.org</quote> through the
7232 <command>Tor</command> exit node <quote>foobar</quote>.
7235 As the HTTP client isn't aware of this notation, it treats the
7236 whole string <quote>www.example.org.foobar.exit</quote> as host and uses it
7237 for the <quote>Host</quote> and <quote>Referer</quote> headers. From the
7238 server's point of view the resulting headers are invalid and can cause problems.
7241 An invalid <quote>Referer</quote> header can trigger <quote>hot-linking</quote>
7242 protections, an invalid <quote>Host</quote> header will make it impossible for
7243 the server to find the right vhost (several domains hosted on the same IP address).
7246 This client-header filter removes the <quote>foo.exit</quote> part in those headers
7247 to prevent the mentioned problems. Note that it only modifies
7248 the HTTP headers, it doesn't make it impossible for the server
7249 to detect your <command>Tor</command> exit node based on the IP address
7250 the request is coming from.
7257 <term><emphasis> </emphasis></term>
7271 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7275 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7277 <sect1 id="templates">
7278 <title>Privoxy's Template Files</title>
7280 All <application>Privoxy</application> built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the
7281 <ulink url="http://show-the-404-error.page"><quote>404 - No Such Domain</quote>
7282 error page</ulink>, the <ulink
7283 url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
7285 and all pages of its <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
7286 user interface</ulink>, are generated from <emphasis>templates</emphasis>.
7287 (<application>Privoxy</application> must be running for the above links to work as
7292 These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the <link linkend="confdir">configuration
7293 directory</link> called <filename>templates</filename>. On Unixish platforms,
7295 <ulink url="file:///etc/privoxy/templates/"><filename>/etc/privoxy/templates/</filename></ulink>.
7299 The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called symbols
7300 or exports), which <application>Privoxy</application> fills at run time. It
7301 is possible to edit the templates with a normal text editor, should you want
7302 to customize them. (<emphasis>Not recommended for the casual
7303 user</emphasis>). Should you create your own custom templates, you should use
7304 the <filename>config</filename> setting <link linkend="templdir">templdir</link>
7305 to specify an alternate location, so your templates do not get overwritten
7309 Note that just like in configuration files, lines starting
7310 with <literal>#</literal> are ignored when the templates are filled in.
7314 The place-holders are of the form <literal>@name@</literal>, and you will
7315 find a list of available symbols, which vary from template to template,
7316 in the comments at the start of each file. Note that these comments are not
7317 always accurate, and that it's probably best to look at the existing HTML
7318 code to find out which symbols are supported and what they are filled in with.
7322 A special application of this substitution mechanism is to make whole
7323 blocks of HTML code disappear when a specific symbol is set. We use this
7324 for many purposes, one of them being to include the beta warning in all
7325 our user interface (CGI) pages when <application>Privoxy</application>
7326 is in an alpha or beta development stage:
7331 <!-- @if-unstable-start -->
7333 ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
7335 <!-- if-unstable-end@ --></screen>
7339 If the "unstable" symbol is set, everything in between and including
7340 <literal>@if-unstable-start</literal> and <literal>if-unstable-end@</literal>
7341 will disappear, leaving nothing but an empty comment:
7345 <screen><!-- --></screen>
7349 There's also an if-then-else construct and an <literal>#include</literal>
7350 mechanism, but you'll sure find out if you are inclined to edit the
7355 All templates refer to a style located at
7356 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet"><literal>http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet</literal></ulink>.
7357 This is, of course, locally served by <application>Privoxy</application>
7358 and the source for it can be found and edited in the
7359 <filename>cgi-style.css</filename> template.
7364 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7368 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7370 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
7373 <!-- Include contacting.sgml boilerplate: -->
7375 <!-- end boilerplate -->
7379 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7382 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7383 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Privoxy Copyright, License and History</title>
7385 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
7387 <!-- end copyright -->
7389 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7390 <sect2><title>License</title>
7391 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
7393 <!-- end copyright -->
7395 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7398 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7400 <sect2 id="history"><title>History</title>
7401 <!-- Include history.sgml: -->
7403 <!-- end history -->
7406 <sect2 id="authors"><title>Authors</title>
7407 <!-- Include p-authors.sgml: -->
7409 <!-- end authors -->
7414 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7417 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7418 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See Also</title>
7419 <!-- Include seealso.sgml: -->
7421 <!-- end seealso -->
7426 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7427 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
7430 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7432 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
7434 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl-style <quote>regular
7435 expressions</quote> in its <link linkend="actions-file">actions
7436 files</link> and <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>,
7437 through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> and
7440 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/">PCRS</ulink> libraries.
7442 <application>PCRS</application> libraries.
7446 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
7447 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
7448 introduction only. A full explanation would require a <ulink
7449 url="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/">book</ulink> ;-)
7453 Regular expressions provide a language to describe patterns that can be
7454 run against strings of characters (letter, numbers, etc), to see if they
7455 match the string or not. The patterns are themselves (sometimes complex)
7456 strings of literal characters, combined with wild-cards, and other special
7457 characters, called meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have
7458 special meanings and are used to build complex patterns to be matched against.
7459 Perl Compatible Regular Expressions are an especially convenient
7460 <quote>dialect</quote> of the regular expression language.
7464 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
7465 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
7466 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
7467 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
7468 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
7469 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
7470 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
7471 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
7475 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
7476 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
7477 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
7478 and then some examples:
7483 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
7484 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
7486 </simplelist></para>
7490 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
7493 </simplelist></para>
7497 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
7500 </simplelist></para>
7504 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
7507 </simplelist></para>
7511 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
7512 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
7513 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
7514 not as a special meta-character. Example: <quote>example\.com</quote>, makes
7515 sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded to its
7516 meta-character meaning of any single character).
7518 </simplelist></para>
7522 <emphasis>[ ]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
7523 any of the enclosed characters are encountered. For instance, <quote>[0-9]</quote>
7524 matches any numeric digit (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine
7525 this with <quote>+</quote> to match any digit one of more times: <quote>[0-9]+</quote>.
7527 </simplelist></para>
7531 <emphasis>( )</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
7532 or multiple sub-expressions.
7534 </simplelist></para>
7538 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
7539 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
7540 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches. As an example:
7541 <quote>/(this|that) example/</quote> uses grouping and the bar character
7542 and would match either <quote>this example</quote> or <quote>that
7543 example</quote>, and nothing else.
7545 </simplelist></para>
7548 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
7549 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
7550 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
7551 be more illuminating:
7555 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
7556 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
7557 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
7558 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
7559 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
7560 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
7561 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
7562 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
7563 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
7564 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
7565 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
7566 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
7567 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
7568 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
7573 And now something a little more complex:
7577 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
7578 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
7579 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
7580 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
7581 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
7582 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
7583 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
7588 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
7589 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
7590 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
7591 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
7592 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
7593 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
7594 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
7595 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
7596 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
7597 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
7598 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
7599 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
7600 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
7601 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
7602 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
7603 changing our regular expression to:
7604 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
7609 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
7610 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
7611 <quote>[ ]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
7612 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
7613 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
7614 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
7615 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
7616 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
7617 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
7618 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
7619 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
7620 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
7621 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
7622 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
7623 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
7624 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
7625 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
7626 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
7627 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
7628 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
7629 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
7630 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
7631 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
7632 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
7633 in the expression anywhere).
7637 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
7638 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
7639 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
7640 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
7641 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
7646 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
7647 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html</ulink>
7651 For information on regular expression based substitutions and their applications
7652 in filters, please see the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file tutorial</link>
7657 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7660 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7662 <title>Privoxy's Internal Pages</title>
7665 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
7666 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
7667 trap certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
7668 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
7669 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
7670 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
7671 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
7677 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
7678 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
7679 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
7680 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
7693 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
7697 There is a shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (But it
7698 doesn't provide a fall-back to a real page, in case the request is not
7699 sent through <application>Privoxy</application>)
7705 Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
7706 editing of actions files:
7710 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
7717 Show the source code version numbers:
7721 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">http://config.privoxy.org/show-version</ulink>
7728 Show the browser's request headers:
7732 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">http://config.privoxy.org/show-request</ulink>
7739 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
7743 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
7750 Toggle Privoxy on or off. This feature can be turned off/on in the main
7751 <filename>config</filename> file. When toggled <quote>off</quote>, <quote>Privoxy</quote>
7752 continues to run, but only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking
7757 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
7761 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
7765 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
7770 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
7779 These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
7783 <sect3 id="bookmarklets">
7784 <title>Bookmarklets</title>
7786 Below are some <quote>bookmarklets</quote> to allow you to easily access a
7787 <quote>mini</quote> version of some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
7788 special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer, but should work
7789 equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which support
7790 JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not by
7791 clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
7794 To save them, right-click the link and choose <quote>Add to Favorites</quote>
7795 (IE) or <quote>Add Bookmark</quote> (Netscape). You will get a warning that
7796 the bookmark <quote>may not be safe</quote> - just click OK. Then you can run the
7797 Bookmarklet directly from your favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access,
7798 you can put them on the <quote>Links</quote> bar (IE) or the <quote>Personal
7799 Toolbar</quote> (Netscape), and run them with a single click.
7808 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>
7815 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>
7822 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)
7829 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>
7835 <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>
7841 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info?url='+escape(location.href),'Why').focus());">Privoxy - Why?</ulink>
7848 Credit: The site which gave us the general idea for these bookmarklets is
7849 <ulink url="http://www.bookmarklets.com/">www.bookmarklets.com</ulink>. They
7850 have more information about bookmarklets.
7859 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7861 <title>Chain of Events</title>
7863 Let's take a quick look at how some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
7864 core features are triggered, and the ensuing sequence of events when a web
7865 page is requested by your browser:
7872 First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send
7873 the request to <application>Privoxy</application>, which will in turn,
7874 relay the request to the remote web server after passing the following
7880 <application>Privoxy</application> traps any request for its own internal CGI
7881 pages (e.g <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>) and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
7886 Next, <application>Privoxy</application> checks to see if the URL
7888 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link> patterns. If
7889 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be contacted.
7890 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>
7892 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-EMPTY-DOCUMENT"><quote>+handle-as-empty-document</quote></link>
7893 are then checked, and if there is no match, an
7894 HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page is sent back to the browser. Otherwise, if
7895 it does match, an image is returned for the former, and an empty text
7896 document for the latter. The type of image would depend on the setting of
7897 <link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><quote>+set-image-blocker</quote></link>
7898 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
7903 Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the
7904 <filename>trust</filename> file, then that is done.
7909 If the URL pattern matches the <link
7910 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link> action,
7911 it is then processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
7916 Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
7917 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. <link
7918 linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT"><quote>+hide-user-agent</quote></link>,
7919 etc.), headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and
7925 Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web
7931 First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
7932 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
7933 filtered as determined by the
7934 <link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES"><quote>+crunch-incoming-cookies</quote></link>,
7935 <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>,
7936 and <link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION"><quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote></link>
7942 If any <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
7944 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
7945 action applies (and the document type fits the action), the rest of the page is
7946 read into memory (up to a configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from
7947 <filename>default.filter</filename> and any other filter files) are
7948 processed against the buffered content. Filters are applied in the order
7949 they are specified in one of the filter files. Animated GIFs, if present,
7950 are reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
7951 setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by
7952 <application>Privoxy</application> back to your browser.
7955 If neither a <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
7957 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
7958 matches, then <application>Privoxy</application> passes the raw data through
7959 to the client browser as it becomes available.
7964 As the browser receives the now (possibly filtered) page content, it
7965 reads and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page
7966 source, e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
7967 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a
7968 separate request (this is easily viewable in <application>Privoxy's</application>
7969 logs). And each such request is in turn processed just as above. Note that a
7970 complex web page will have many, many such embedded URLs. If these
7971 secondary requests are to a different server, then quite possibly a very
7972 differing set of actions is triggered.
7979 NOTE: This is somewhat of a simplistic overview of what happens with each URL
7980 request. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, we have focused on
7981 <application>Privoxy's</application> core features only.
7987 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7988 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
7989 <title>Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</title>
7992 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies
7993 <link linkend="ACTIONS">actions</link> and <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>
7994 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so
7995 easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to
7996 <emphasis>see</emphasis> just what <application>Privoxy</application> is
7997 doing. Especially, if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing
7998 is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to look at
7999 the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
8000 <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> whose consequences are not
8005 One quick test to see if <application>Privoxy</application> is causing a problem
8006 or not, is to disable it temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting
8007 step. See <link linkend="bookmarklets">the Bookmarklets</link> section on a quick
8008 and easy way to do this (be sure to flush caches afterward!). Looking at the
8009 logs is a good idea too. (Note that both the toggle feature and logging are
8010 enabled via <filename>config</filename> file settings, and may need to be
8011 turned <quote>on</quote>.)
8014 Another easy troubleshooting step to try is if you have done any
8015 customization of your installation, revert back to the installed
8016 defaults and see if that helps. There are times the developers get complaints
8017 about one thing or another, and the problem is more related to a customized
8018 configuration issue.
8022 <application>Privoxy</application> also provides the
8023 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
8024 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
8025 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
8029 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
8030 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
8031 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
8032 help with filtering effects (i.e. the <link
8033 linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action) from
8034 one of the filter files since this is handled very
8035 differently and not so easy to trap! It also will not tell you about any other
8036 URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are testing. For instance, images
8037 such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw page source of HTML pages. So
8038 you will only get info for the actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area
8039 -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you
8040 will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View
8041 Page Source</quote> option for this. Or right click on the ad, and grab the
8046 Let's try an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
8047 and look at it one section at a time in a sample configuration (your real
8048 configuration may vary):
8053 Matches for http://www.google.com:
8055 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8057 {+change-x-forwarded-for{block}
8058 +deanimate-gifs {last}
8059 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8060 +filter {refresh-tags}
8061 +filter {img-reorder}
8062 +filter {banners-by-size}
8064 +filter {jumping-windows}
8065 +filter {ie-exploits}
8066 +hide-from-header {block}
8067 +hide-referrer {forge}
8068 +session-cookies-only
8069 +set-image-blocker {pattern}
8072 { -session-cookies-only }
8078 In file: user.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8079 (no matches in this file)
8084 This is telling us how we have defined our
8085 <link linkend="ACTIONS"><quote>actions</quote></link>, and
8086 which ones match for our test case, <quote>google.com</quote>.
8087 Displayed is all the actions that are available to us. Remember,
8088 the <literal>+</literal> sign denotes <quote>on</quote>. <literal>-</literal>
8089 denotes <quote>off</quote>. So some are <quote>on</quote> here, but many
8090 are <quote>off</quote>. Each example we try may provide a slightly different
8091 end result, depending on our configuration directives.
8095 is for our <filename>default.action</filename> file. The large, multi-line
8096 listing, is how the actions are set to match for all URLs, i.e. our default
8097 settings. If you look at your <quote>actions</quote> file, this would be the
8098 section just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section near the top. This
8099 will apply to all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end
8100 of the listing -- <quote> / </quote>.
8104 But we have defined additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
8105 rules, and then we list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions
8106 would apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit
8107 matches for <quote>.google.com</quote>. The first is negating our previous
8108 cookie setting, which was for <link
8109 linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>
8110 (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent cookies for google, at
8111 least that is how it is in this example. The second turns
8112 <emphasis>off</emphasis> any <link
8113 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link>
8114 action, allowing this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading
8115 dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will match any hosts and
8116 sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
8117 <quote>www.google.com</quote> or <quote>mail.google.com</quote>. But it would not
8118 match <quote>www.google.de</quote>! So, apparently, we have these two actions
8119 defined as exceptions to the general rules at the top somewhere in the lower
8120 part of our <filename>default.action</filename> file, and
8121 <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced somewhere in these latter sections.
8125 Then, for our <filename>user.action</filename> file, we again have no hits.
8126 So there is nothing google-specific that we might have added to our own, local
8127 configuration. If there was, those actions would over-rule any actions from
8128 previously processed files, such as <filename>default.action</filename>.
8129 <filename>user.action</filename> typically has the last word. This is the
8130 best place to put hard and fast exceptions,
8134 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
8135 <application>Privoxy</application> is applying all its <quote>actions</quote>
8136 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
8147 +change-x-forwarded-for{block}
8148 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
8149 -content-type-overwrite
8150 -crunch-client-header
8151 -crunch-if-none-match
8152 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8153 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8154 -crunch-server-header
8155 +deanimate-gifs {last}
8156 -downgrade-http-version
8159 -filter {content-cookies}
8160 -filter {all-popups}
8161 -filter {banners-by-link}
8162 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8163 -filter {frameset-borders}
8164 -filter {demoronizer}
8165 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8166 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8168 -filter {crude-parental}
8169 -filter {site-specifics}
8170 -filter {js-annoyances}
8171 -filter {html-annoyances}
8172 +filter {refresh-tags}
8173 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8174 +filter {img-reorder}
8175 +filter {banners-by-size}
8177 +filter {jumping-windows}
8178 +filter {ie-exploits}
8185 -handle-as-empty-document
8187 -hide-accept-language
8188 -hide-content-disposition
8189 +hide-from-header {block}
8190 -hide-if-modified-since
8191 +hide-referrer {forge}
8194 -overwrite-last-modified
8195 -prevent-compression
8197 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
8198 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
8199 -session-cookies-only
8200 +set-image-blocker {pattern} </screen>
8204 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
8205 <quote>fast-redirects</quote> and <quote>session-cookies-only</quote>,
8206 which are activated specifically for this site in our configuration,
8207 and thus show in the <quote>Final Results</quote>.
8211 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
8217 { +block{Domains starts with "ad"} }
8220 { +block{Domain contains "ad"} }
8223 { +block{Doubleclick banner server} +handle-as-image }
8224 .[a-vx-z]*.doubleclick.net
8229 We'll just show the interesting part here - the explicit matches. It is
8230 matched three different times. Two <quote>+block{}</quote> sections,
8231 and a <quote>+block{} +handle-as-image</quote>,
8232 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
8233 <quote>+block-as-image</quote>. (<link
8234 linkend="ALIASES"><quote>Aliases</quote></link> are defined in
8235 the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
8240 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
8241 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
8242 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
8243 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
8244 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
8245 is done here -- as both a <link
8246 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block{}</quote></link>
8247 <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
8248 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>.
8249 The custom alias <quote><literal>+block-as-image</literal></quote> just
8250 simplifies the process and make it more readable.
8254 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
8255 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
8261 Matches for http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
8263 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8267 +change-x-forwarded-for{block}
8268 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
8269 -content-type-overwrite
8270 -crunch-client-header
8271 -crunch-if-none-match
8272 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8273 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8274 -crunch-server-header
8276 -downgrade-http-version
8277 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8279 -filter {content-cookies}
8280 -filter {all-popups}
8281 -filter {banners-by-link}
8282 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8283 -filter {frameset-borders}
8284 -filter {demoronizer}
8285 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8286 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8288 -filter {crude-parental}
8289 -filter {site-specifics}
8290 -filter {js-annoyances}
8291 -filter {html-annoyances}
8292 +filter {refresh-tags}
8293 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8294 +filter {img-reorder}
8295 +filter {banners-by-size}
8297 +filter {jumping-windows}
8298 +filter {ie-exploits}
8305 -handle-as-empty-document
8307 -hide-accept-language
8308 -hide-content-disposition
8309 +hide-from-header{block}
8310 +hide-referer{forge}
8312 -overwrite-last-modified
8313 +prevent-compression
8315 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
8316 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
8317 +session-cookies-only
8318 +set-image-blocker{blank} }
8321 { +block{Path contains "ads".} +handle-as-image }
8327 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote> in our
8328 configuration! But we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the
8329 blank page. It is actually triggering two different actions here, and
8330 the effects are aggregated so that the URL is blocked, and &my-app; is told
8331 to treat the block as if it were an image. But this is, of course, all wrong.
8332 We could now add a new action below this (or better in our own
8333 <filename>user.action</filename> file) that explicitly
8334 <emphasis>un</emphasis> blocks (
8335 <link linkend="BLOCK"><quote>{-block}</quote></link>) paths with
8336 <quote>adsl</quote> in them (remember, last match in the configuration
8337 wins). There are various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
8349 Now the page displays ;-)
8350 Remember to flush your browser's caches when making these kinds of changes to
8351 your configuration to insure that you get a freshly delivered page! Or, try
8352 using <literal>Shift+Reload</literal>.
8356 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
8363 { +block{Path starts with "ads".} +handle-as-image }
8369 That actually was very helpful and pointed us quickly to where the problem
8370 was. If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default
8371 rules in the first section of <filename>default.action</filename> is causing
8372 the problem. This would require some guesswork, and maybe a little trial and
8373 error to isolate the offending rule. One likely cause would be one of the
8374 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> actions.
8375 These tend to be harder to troubleshoot.
8376 Try adding the URL for the site to one of aliases that turn off
8377 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>:
8385 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
8393 <quote><literal>{ shop }</literal></quote> is an <quote>alias</quote> that expands to
8394 <quote><literal>{ -filter -session-cookies-only }</literal></quote>.
8395 Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
8403 # Disable ALL filter actions for sites in this section
8411 This would turn off all filtering for these sites. This is best
8412 put in <filename>user.action</filename>, for local site
8413 exceptions. Note that when a simple domain pattern is used by itself (without
8414 the subsequent path portion), all sub-pages within that domain are included
8415 automatically in the scope of the action.
8419 Images that are inexplicably being blocked, may well be hitting the
8420 <link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE"><quote>+filter{banners-by-size}</quote></link>
8422 that images of certain sizes are ad banners (works well
8423 <emphasis>most of the time</emphasis> since these tend to be standardized).
8427 <quote><literal>{ fragile }</literal></quote> is an alias that disables most
8428 actions that are the most likely to cause trouble. This can be used as a
8429 last resort for problem sites.
8435 # Handle with care: easy to break
8437 mybank.example.com</screen>
8442 <emphasis>Remember to flush caches!</emphasis> Note that the
8443 <literal>mail.google</literal> reference lacks the TLD portion (e.g.
8444 <quote>.com</quote>). This will effectively match any TLD with
8445 <literal>google</literal> in it, such as <literal>mail.google.de.</literal>,
8449 If this still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining
8450 actions one by one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
8459 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
8460 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
8461 Public License as published by the Free Software
8462 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
8463 your option) any later version.
8465 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
8466 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
8467 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
8468 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
8469 License for more details.
8471 The GNU General Public License should be included with
8472 this file. If not, you can view it at
8473 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
8474 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
8475 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301,
8478 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
8479 Revision 2.104 2009/04/17 11:27:49 fabiankeil
8480 Petr Pisar's privoxy-3.0.12-ipv6-3.diff.
8482 Revision 2.103 2009/03/21 10:49:05 fabiankeil
8483 Merge updated ChangeLog.
8485 Revision 2.102 2009/03/15 19:31:36 fabiankeil
8486 Update "What's New in this Release" section.
8488 Revision 2.101 2009/02/25 19:01:56 fabiankeil
8491 Revision 2.100 2009/02/19 17:14:11 fabiankeil
8492 - Copy the release cycle description from announce.txt into
8493 the "What's New" section.
8494 - Stop referring to the ChangeLog for a "complete list of changes".
8495 The "What's New" section already contains the complete list.
8497 Revision 2.99 2009/02/19 02:20:22 hal9
8498 Make some links in seealso conditional. Man page is now privoxy only links.
8500 Revision 2.98 2009/02/16 17:10:33 fabiankeil
8501 Fix entry about shortened log messages. Noticed by Lee.
8503 Revision 2.97 2009/02/14 18:01:00 fabiankeil
8506 Revision 2.96 2009/02/14 13:14:03 fabiankeil
8509 Revision 2.95 2009/02/14 12:51:26 fabiankeil
8510 Mention match-all.action in the "Actions Files Tutorial" section.
8512 Revision 2.94 2009/02/14 11:50:31 fabiankeil
8513 Some indentation fixes.
8515 Revision 2.93 2009/02/14 10:14:42 fabiankeil
8516 Mention match-all.action in the action file descriptions.
8518 Revision 2.92 2009/02/12 16:08:26 fabiankeil
8519 Declare the code stable.
8521 Revision 2.91 2009/01/13 16:50:35 fabiankeil
8522 The standard.action file is gone.
8524 Revision 2.90 2008/09/26 16:53:09 fabiankeil
8525 Update "What's new" section.
8527 Revision 2.89 2008/09/21 15:38:56 fabiankeil
8528 Fix Portage tree sync instructions in Gentoo section.
8529 Anonymously reported at ijbswa-developers@.
8531 Revision 2.88 2008/09/21 14:42:52 fabiankeil
8532 Add documentation for change-x-forwarded-for{},
8533 remove documentation for hide-forwarded-for-headers.
8535 Revision 2.87 2008/08/30 15:37:35 fabiankeil
8538 Revision 2.86 2008/08/16 10:12:23 fabiankeil
8539 Merge two sentences and move the URL to the end of the item.
8541 Revision 2.85 2008/08/16 10:04:59 fabiankeil
8542 Some more syntax fixes. This version actually builds.
8544 Revision 2.84 2008/08/16 09:42:45 fabiankeil
8545 Turns out building docs works better if the syntax is valid.
8547 Revision 2.83 2008/08/16 09:32:02 fabiankeil
8548 Mention changes since 3.0.9 beta.
8550 Revision 2.82 2008/08/16 09:00:52 fabiankeil
8551 Fix example URL pattern (once more with feeling).
8553 Revision 2.81 2008/08/16 08:51:28 fabiankeil
8554 Update version-related entities.
8556 Revision 2.80 2008/07/18 16:54:30 fabiankeil
8557 Remove erroneous whitespace in documentation link.
8558 Reported by John Chronister in #2021611.
8560 Revision 2.79 2008/06/27 18:00:53 markm68k
8561 remove outdated startup information for mac os x
8563 Revision 2.78 2008/06/21 17:03:03 fabiankeil
8566 Revision 2.77 2008/06/14 13:45:22 fabiankeil
8567 Re-add a colon I unintentionally removed a few revisions ago.
8569 Revision 2.76 2008/06/14 13:21:28 fabiankeil
8570 Prepare for the upcoming 3.0.9 beta release.
8572 Revision 2.75 2008/06/13 16:06:48 fabiankeil
8573 Update the "What's New in this Release" section with
8574 the ChangeLog entries changelog2doc.pl could handle.
8576 Revision 2.74 2008/05/26 15:55:46 fabiankeil
8577 - Update "default profiles" table.
8578 - Add some more pcrs redirect examples and note that
8579 enabling debug 128 helps to get redirects working.
8581 Revision 2.73 2008/05/23 14:43:18 fabiankeil
8582 Remove previously out-commented block that caused syntax problems.
8584 Revision 2.72 2008/05/12 10:26:14 fabiankeil
8585 Synchronize content filter descriptions with the ones in default.filter.
8587 Revision 2.71 2008/04/10 17:37:16 fabiankeil
8588 Actually we use "modern" POSIX 1003.2 regular
8589 expressions in path patterns, not PCRE.
8591 Revision 2.70 2008/04/10 15:59:12 fabiankeil
8592 Add another section to the client-header-tagger example that shows
8593 how to actually change the action settings once the tag is created.
8595 Revision 2.69 2008/03/29 12:14:25 fabiankeil
8596 Remove send-wafer and send-vanilla-wafer actions.
8598 Revision 2.68 2008/03/28 15:13:43 fabiankeil
8599 Remove inspect-jpegs action.
8601 Revision 2.67 2008/03/27 18:31:21 fabiankeil
8602 Remove kill-popups action.
8604 Revision 2.66 2008/03/06 16:33:47 fabiankeil
8605 If limit-connect isn't used, don't limit CONNECT requests to port 443.
8607 Revision 2.65 2008/03/04 18:30:40 fabiankeil
8608 Remove the treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks action. We now
8609 use the "blocked" page for forbidden CONNECT requests by default.
8611 Revision 2.64 2008/03/01 14:10:28 fabiankeil
8612 Use new block syntax. Still needs some polishing.
8614 Revision 2.63 2008/02/22 05:50:37 markm68k
8617 Revision 2.62 2008/02/11 11:52:23 hal9
8618 Fix entity ... s/&/&
8620 Revision 2.61 2008/02/11 03:41:47 markm68k
8621 more updates for mac os x
8623 Revision 2.60 2008/02/11 03:40:25 markm68k
8624 more updates for mac os x
8626 Revision 2.59 2008/02/11 00:52:34 markm68k
8627 reflect new changes for mac os x
8629 Revision 2.58 2008/02/03 21:37:40 hal9
8630 Apply patch from Mark: s/OSX/OS X/
8632 Revision 2.57 2008/02/03 19:10:14 fabiankeil
8633 Mention forward-socks5.
8635 Revision 2.56 2008/01/31 19:11:35 fabiankeil
8636 Let the +client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation} example apply
8637 to all requests as "tainted" Referers aren't limited to exit TLDs.
8639 Revision 2.55 2008/01/19 21:26:37 hal9
8640 Add IE7 to configuration section per Gerry.
8642 Revision 2.54 2008/01/19 17:52:39 hal9
8643 Re-commit to fix various minor issues for new release.
8645 Revision 2.53 2008/01/19 15:03:05 hal9
8646 Doc sources tagged for 3.0.8 release.
8648 Revision 2.52 2008/01/17 01:49:51 hal9
8649 Change copyright notice for docs s/2007/2008/. All these will be rebuilt soon
8652 Revision 2.51 2007/12/23 16:48:24 fabiankeil
8653 Use more precise example descriptions for the mysterious domain patterns.
8655 Revision 2.50 2007/12/08 12:44:36 fabiankeil
8656 - Remove already commented out pre-3.0.7 changes.
8657 - Update the "new log defaults" paragraph.
8659 Revision 2.49 2007/12/06 18:21:55 fabiankeil
8660 Update hide-forwarded-for-headers description.
8662 Revision 2.48 2007/11/24 19:07:17 fabiankeil
8663 - Mention request rewriting.
8664 - Enable the conditional-forge paragraph.
8667 Revision 2.47 2007/11/18 14:59:47 fabiankeil
8668 A few "Note to Upgraders" updates.
8670 Revision 2.46 2007/11/17 17:24:44 fabiankeil
8671 - Use new action defaults.
8672 - Minor fixes and rewordings.
8674 Revision 2.45 2007/11/16 11:48:46 hal9
8675 Fix one typo, and add a couple of small refinements.
8677 Revision 2.44 2007/11/15 03:30:20 hal9
8678 Results of spell check.
8680 Revision 2.43 2007/11/14 18:45:39 fabiankeil
8681 - Mention some more contributors in the "New in this Release" list.
8684 Revision 2.42 2007/11/12 03:32:40 hal9
8685 Updates for "What's New" and "Notes to Upgraders". Various other changes in
8686 preparation for new release. User Manual is almost ready.
8688 Revision 2.41 2007/11/11 16:32:11 hal9
8689 This is primarily syncing What's New and Note to Upgraders sections with the many
8690 new features and changes (gleaned from memory but mostly from ChangeLog).
8692 Revision 2.40 2007/11/10 17:10:59 fabiankeil
8693 In the first third of the file, mention several times that
8694 the action editor is disabled by default in 3.0.7 beta and later.
8696 Revision 2.39 2007/11/05 02:34:49 hal9
8697 Various changes in preparation for the upcoming release. Much yet to be done.
8699 Revision 2.38 2007/09/22 16:01:42 fabiankeil
8700 Update embedded show-url-info output.
8702 Revision 2.37 2007/08/27 16:09:55 fabiankeil
8703 Fix pre-chroot-nslookup description which I failed to
8704 copy and paste properly. Reported by Stephen Gildea.
8706 Revision 2.36 2007/08/26 16:47:14 fabiankeil
8707 Add Stephen Gildea's pre-chroot-nslookup patch [#1276666],
8708 extensive comments moved to user manual.
8710 Revision 2.35 2007/08/26 14:59:49 fabiankeil
8711 Minor rewordings and fixes.
8713 Revision 2.34 2007/08/05 15:19:50 fabiankeil
8714 - Don't claim HTTP/1.1 compliance.
8715 - Use $ in some of the path pattern examples.
8716 - Use a hide-user-agent example argument without
8717 leading and trailing space.
8718 - Make it clear that the cookie actions work with
8720 - Rephrase the inspect-jpegs text to underline
8721 that it's only meant to protect against a single
8724 Revision 2.33 2007/07/27 10:57:35 hal9
8725 Add references for user-agent strings for hide-user-agenet
8727 Revision 2.32 2007/06/07 12:36:22 fabiankeil
8728 Apply Roland's 29_usermanual.dpatch to fix a bunch
8729 of syntax errors I collected over the last months.
8731 Revision 2.31 2007/06/02 14:01:37 fabiankeil
8732 Start to document forward-override{}.
8734 Revision 2.30 2007/04/25 15:10:36 fabiankeil
8735 - Describe installation for FreeBSD.
8736 - Start to document taggers and tag patterns.
8737 - Don't confuse devils and daemons.
8739 Revision 2.29 2007/04/05 11:47:51 fabiankeil
8740 Some updates regarding header filtering,
8741 handling of compressed content and redirect's
8742 support for pcrs commands.
8744 Revision 2.28 2006/12/10 23:42:48 hal9
8745 Fix various typos reported by Adam P. Thanks.
8747 Revision 2.27 2006/11/14 01:57:47 hal9
8748 Dump all docs prior to 3.0.6 release. Various minor changes to faq and user
8751 Revision 2.26 2006/10/24 11:16:44 hal9
8754 Revision 2.25 2006/10/18 10:50:33 hal9
8755 Add note that since filters are off in Cautious, compression is ON. Turn off
8756 compression to make filters work on all sites.
8758 Revision 2.24 2006/10/03 11:13:54 hal9
8759 More references to the new filters. Include html this time around.
8761 Revision 2.23 2006/10/02 22:43:53 hal9
8762 Contains new filter definitions from Fabian, and few other miscellaneous
8765 Revision 2.22 2006/09/22 01:27:55 hal9
8766 Final commit of probably various minor changes here and there. Unless
8767 something changes this should be ready for pending release.
8769 Revision 2.21 2006/09/20 03:21:36 david__schmidt
8770 Just the tiniest tweak. Wafer thin!
8772 Revision 2.20 2006/09/10 14:53:54 hal9
8773 Results of spell check. User manual has some updates to standard.actions file
8776 Revision 2.19 2006/09/08 12:19:02 fabiankeil
8777 Adjust hide-if-modified-since example values
8778 to reflect the recent changes.
8780 Revision 2.18 2006/09/08 02:38:57 hal9
8782 -Fix a number of broken links.
8783 -Migrate the new Windows service command line options, and reference as
8785 -Rebuild so that can be used with the new "user-manual" config capabilities.
8788 Revision 2.17 2006/09/05 13:25:12 david__schmidt
8789 Add Windows service invocation stuff (duplicated) in FAQ and in user manual under Windows startup. One probably ought to reference the other.
8791 Revision 2.16 2006/09/02 12:49:37 hal9
8792 Various small updates for new actions, filterfiles, etc.
8794 Revision 2.15 2006/08/30 11:15:22 hal9
8795 More work on the new actions, especially filter-*-headers, and What's New
8796 section. User Manual is close to final form for 3.0.4 release. Some tinkering
8797 and proof reading left to do.
8799 Revision 2.14 2006/08/29 10:59:36 hal9
8800 Add a "Whats New in this release" Section. Further work on multiple filter
8801 files, and assorted other minor changes.
8803 Revision 2.13 2006/08/22 11:04:59 hal9
8804 Silence warnings and errors. This should build now. New filters were only
8805 stubbed in. More to be done.
8807 Revision 2.12 2006/08/14 08:40:39 fabiankeil
8808 Documented new actions that were part of
8809 the "minor Privoxy improvements".
8811 Revision 2.11 2006/07/18 14:48:51 david__schmidt
8812 Reorganizing the repository: swapping out what was HEAD (the old 3.1 branch)
8813 with what was really the latest development (the v_3_0_branch branch)
8815 Revision 1.123.2.43 2005/05/23 09:59:10 hal9
8818 Revision 1.123.2.42 2004/12/04 14:39:57 hal9
8819 Fix two minor typos per bug SF report.
8821 Revision 1.123.2.41 2004/03/23 12:58:42 oes
8824 Revision 1.123.2.40 2004/02/27 12:48:49 hal9
8825 Add comment re: redirecting to local file system for set-image-blocker may
8826 is dependent on browser.
8828 Revision 1.123.2.39 2004/01/30 22:31:40 oes
8829 Added a hint re bookmarklets to Quickstart section
8831 Revision 1.123.2.38 2004/01/30 16:47:51 oes
8832 Some minor clarifications
8834 Revision 1.123.2.37 2004/01/29 22:36:11 hal9
8835 Updates for no longer filtering text/plain, and demoronizer default settings,
8836 and copyright notice dates.
8838 Revision 1.123.2.36 2003/12/10 02:26:26 hal9
8839 Changed the demoronizer filter description.
8841 Revision 1.123.2.35 2003/11/06 13:36:37 oes
8842 Updated link to nightly CVS tarball
8844 Revision 1.123.2.34 2003/06/26 23:50:16 hal9
8845 Add a small bit on filtering and problems re: source code being corrupted.
8847 Revision 1.123.2.33 2003/05/08 18:17:33 roro
8848 Use apt-get instead of dpkg to install Debian package, which is more
8849 solid, uses the correct and most recent Debian version automatically.
8851 Revision 1.123.2.32 2003/04/11 03:13:57 hal9
8852 Add small note about only one filterfile (as opposed to multiple actions
8855 Revision 1.123.2.31 2003/03/26 02:03:43 oes
8856 Updated hard-coded copyright dates
8858 Revision 1.123.2.30 2003/03/24 12:58:56 hal9
8859 Add new section on Predefined Filters.
8861 Revision 1.123.2.29 2003/03/20 02:45:29 hal9
8862 More problems with \-\-chroot causing markup problems :(
8864 Revision 1.123.2.28 2003/03/19 00:35:24 hal9
8865 Manual edit of revision log because 'chroot' (even inside a comment) was
8866 causing Docbook to hang here (due to double hyphen and the processor thinking
8869 Revision 1.123.2.27 2003/03/18 19:37:14 oes
8870 s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
8872 Revision 1.123.2.26 2003/03/17 16:50:53 oes
8873 Added documentation for new chroot option
8875 Revision 1.123.2.25 2003/03/15 18:36:55 oes
8876 Adapted to the new filters
8878 Revision 1.123.2.24 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
8879 Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
8882 Revision 1.123.2.23 2002/10/21 02:32:01 hal9
8883 Updates to the user.action examples section. A few new ones.
8885 Revision 1.123.2.22 2002/10/12 00:51:53 hal9
8886 Add demoronizer to filter section.
8888 Revision 1.123.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
8889 s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
8891 Revision 1.123.2.20 2002/10/10 03:49:21 hal9
8892 Add notes to session-cookies-only and Quickstart about pre-existing
8893 cookies. Also, note content-cookies work differently.
8895 Revision 1.123.2.19 2002/09/26 01:25:36 hal9
8896 More explanation on Privoxy patterns, more on content-cookies and SSL.
8898 Revision 1.123.2.18 2002/08/22 23:47:58 hal9
8899 Add 'Documentation' to Privoxy Menu shot in Configuration section to match
8902 Revision 1.123.2.17 2002/08/18 01:13:05 hal9
8903 Spell checked (only one typo this time!).
8905 Revision 1.123.2.16 2002/08/09 19:20:54 david__schmidt
8906 Update to Mac OS X startup script name
8908 Revision 1.123.2.15 2002/08/07 17:32:11 oes
8909 Converted some internal links from ulink to link for PDF creation; no content changed
8911 Revision 1.123.2.14 2002/08/06 09:16:13 oes
8912 Nits re: actions file download
8914 Revision 1.123.2.13 2002/08/02 18:23:19 g_sauthoff
8915 Just 2 small corrections to the Gentoo sections
8917 Revision 1.123.2.12 2002/08/02 18:17:21 g_sauthoff
8918 Added 2 Gentoo sections
8920 Revision 1.123.2.11 2002/07/26 15:20:31 oes
8921 - Added version info to title
8922 - Added info on new filters
8923 - Revised parts of the filter file tutorial
8924 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
8926 Revision 1.123.2.10 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
8927 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
8929 Revision 1.123.2.9 2002/07/11 03:40:28 david__schmidt
8931 Updated Mac OS X sections due to installation location change
8933 Revision 1.123.2.8 2002/06/09 16:36:32 hal9
8934 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
8936 Revision 1.123.2.7 2002/06/09 00:29:34 hal9
8937 Touch ups on filtering, in actions section and Anatomy.
8939 Revision 1.123.2.6 2002/06/06 23:11:03 hal9
8940 Fix broken link. Linkchecked all docs.
8942 Revision 1.123.2.5 2002/05/29 02:01:02 hal9
8943 This is break out of the entire config section from u-m, so it can
8944 eventually be used to generate the comments, etc in the main config file
8945 so that these are in sync with each other.
8947 Revision 1.123.2.4 2002/05/27 03:28:45 hal9
8948 Ooops missed something from David.
8950 Revision 1.123.2.3 2002/05/27 03:23:17 hal9
8951 Fix FIXMEs for OS2 and Mac OS X startup. Fix Redhat typos (should be Red Hat).
8952 That's a wrap, I think.
8954 Revision 1.123.2.2 2002/05/26 19:02:09 hal9
8955 Move Amiga stuff around to take of FIXME in start up section.
8957 Revision 1.123.2.1 2002/05/26 17:04:25 hal9
8958 -Spellcheck, very minor edits, and sync across branches
8960 Revision 1.123 2002/05/24 23:19:23 hal9
8961 Include new image (Proxy setup). More fun with guibutton.
8962 Minor corrections/clarifications here and there.
8964 Revision 1.122 2002/05/24 13:24:08 oes
8965 Added Bookmarklet for one-click pre-filled access to show-url-info
8967 Revision 1.121 2002/05/23 23:20:17 oes
8968 - Changed more (all?) references to actions to the
8969 <literal><link> style.
8970 - Small fixes in the actions chapter
8971 - Small clarifications in the quickstart to ad blocking
8972 - Removed <emphasis> from <title>s since the new doc CSS
8973 renders them red (bad in TOC).
8975 Revision 1.120 2002/05/23 19:16:43 roro
8976 Correct Debian specials (installation and startup).
8978 Revision 1.119 2002/05/22 17:17:05 oes
8981 Revision 1.118 2002/05/21 04:54:55 hal9
8982 -New Section: Quickstart to Ad Blocking
8983 -Reformat Actions Anatomy to match new CGI layout
8985 Revision 1.117 2002/05/17 13:56:16 oes
8986 - Reworked & extended Templates chapter
8987 - Small changes to Regex appendix
8988 - #included authors.sgml into (C) and hist chapter
8990 Revision 1.116 2002/05/17 03:23:46 hal9
8991 Fixing merge conflict in Quickstart section.
8993 Revision 1.115 2002/05/16 16:25:00 oes
8994 Extended the Filter File chapter & minor fixes
8996 Revision 1.114 2002/05/16 09:42:50 oes
8997 More ulink->link, added some hints to Quickstart section
8999 Revision 1.113 2002/05/15 21:07:25 oes
9000 Extended and further commented the example actions files
9002 Revision 1.112 2002/05/15 03:57:14 hal9
9003 Spell check. A few minor edits here and there for better syntax and
9006 Revision 1.111 2002/05/14 23:01:36 oes
9009 Revision 1.110 2002/05/14 19:10:45 oes
9010 Restored alphabetical order of actions
9012 Revision 1.109 2002/05/14 17:23:11 oes
9013 Renamed the prevent-*-cookies actions, extended aliases section and moved it before the example AFs
9015 Revision 1.108 2002/05/14 15:29:12 oes
9016 Completed proofreading the actions chapter
9018 Revision 1.107 2002/05/12 03:20:41 hal9
9019 Small clarifications for 127.0.0.1 vs localhost for listen-address since this
9020 apparently an important distinction for some OS's.
9022 Revision 1.106 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
9023 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
9024 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
9025 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
9027 Revision 1.105 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
9028 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
9030 Revision 1.104 2002/05/04 08:44:45 swa
9033 Revision 1.103 2002/05/04 00:40:53 hal9
9034 -Remove the TOC first page kludge. It's fixed proper now in ldp.dsl.in.
9035 -Some minor additions to Quickstart.
9037 Revision 1.102 2002/05/03 17:46:00 oes
9038 Further proofread & reactivated short build instructions
9040 Revision 1.101 2002/05/03 03:58:30 hal9
9041 Move the user-manual config directive to top of section. Add note about
9042 Privoxy needing read permissions for configs, and write for logs.
9044 Revision 1.100 2002/04/29 03:05:55 hal9
9045 Add clarification on differences of new actions files.
9047 Revision 1.99 2002/04/28 16:59:05 swa
9048 more structure in starting section
9050 Revision 1.98 2002/04/28 05:43:59 hal9
9051 This is the break up of configuration.html into multiple files. This
9052 will probably break links elsewhere :(
9054 Revision 1.97 2002/04/27 21:04:42 hal9
9055 -Rewrite of Actions File example.
9056 -Add section for user-manual directive in config.
9058 Revision 1.96 2002/04/27 05:32:00 hal9
9059 -Add short section to Filter Files to tie in with +filter action.
9060 -Start rewrite of examples in Actions Examples (not finished).
9062 Revision 1.95 2002/04/26 17:23:29 swa
9063 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
9065 Revision 1.94 2002/04/26 05:24:36 hal9
9066 -Add most of Andreas suggestions to Chain of Events section.
9067 -A few other minor corrections and touch up.
9069 Revision 1.92 2002/04/25 18:55:13 hal9
9070 More catchups on new actions files, and new actions names.
9071 Other assorted cleanups, and minor modifications.
9073 Revision 1.91 2002/04/24 02:39:31 hal9
9074 Add 'Chain of Events' section.
9076 Revision 1.90 2002/04/23 21:41:25 hal9
9077 Linuxconf is deprecated on RH, substitute chkconfig.
9079 Revision 1.89 2002/04/23 21:05:28 oes
9080 Added hint for startup on Red Hat
9082 Revision 1.88 2002/04/23 05:37:54 hal9
9083 Add AmigaOS install stuff.
9085 Revision 1.87 2002/04/23 02:53:15 david__schmidt
9086 Updated Mac OS X installation section
9087 Added a few English tweaks here an there
9089 Revision 1.86 2002/04/21 01:46:32 hal9
9090 Re-write actions section.
9092 Revision 1.85 2002/04/18 21:23:23 hal9
9093 Fix ugly typo (mine).
9095 Revision 1.84 2002/04/18 21:17:13 hal9
9096 Spell Redhat correctly (ie Red Hat). A few minor grammar corrections.
9098 Revision 1.83 2002/04/18 18:21:12 oes
9099 Added RPM install detail
9101 Revision 1.82 2002/04/18 12:04:50 oes
9104 Revision 1.81 2002/04/18 11:50:24 oes
9105 Extended Install section - needs fixing by packagers
9107 Revision 1.80 2002/04/18 10:45:19 oes
9108 Moved text to buildsource.sgml, renamed some filters, details
9110 Revision 1.79 2002/04/18 03:18:06 hal9
9111 Spellcheck, and minor touchups.
9113 Revision 1.78 2002/04/17 18:04:16 oes
9116 Revision 1.77 2002/04/17 13:51:23 oes
9117 Proofreading, part one
9119 Revision 1.76 2002/04/16 04:25:51 hal9
9120 -Added 'Note to Upgraders' and re-ordered the 'Quickstart' section.
9121 -Note about proxy may need requests to re-read config files.
9123 Revision 1.75 2002/04/12 02:08:48 david__schmidt
9124 Remove OS/2 building info... it is already in the developer-manual
9126 Revision 1.74 2002/04/11 00:54:38 hal9
9127 Add small section on submitting actions.
9129 Revision 1.73 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
9132 Revision 1.72 2002/04/10 04:06:19 hal9
9133 Added actions feedback to Bookmarklets section
9135 Revision 1.71 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
9136 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
9138 Revision 1.70 2002/04/08 20:53:56 swa
9141 Revision 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9
9142 -Add privoxy-man-page.sgml, for man page.
9143 -Add authors.sgml for AUTHORS (and p-authors.sgml)
9144 -Reworked various aspects of various docs.
9145 -Added additional comments to sub-docs.
9147 Revision 1.68 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
9148 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
9150 Revision 1.67 2002/04/04 17:27:57 swa
9151 more single file to be included at multiple points. make maintaining easier
9153 Revision 1.66 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
9154 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
9155 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
9156 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
9157 eventually be set by Makefile.
9158 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
9160 Revision 1.65 2002/04/03 19:52:07 swa
9161 enhance squid section due to user suggestion
9163 Revision 1.64 2002/04/03 03:53:43 hal9
9164 A few minor bug fixes, and touch ups. Ready for review.
9166 Revision 1.63 2002/04/01 16:24:49 hal9
9167 Define entities to include boilerplate text. See doc/source/*.
9169 Revision 1.62 2002/03/30 04:15:53 hal9
9170 - Fix privoxy.org/config links.
9171 - Paste in Bookmarklets from Toggle page.
9172 - Move Quickstart nearer top, and minor rework.
9174 Revision 1.61 2002/03/29 01:31:08 hal9
9177 Revision 1.60 2002/03/27 01:57:34 hal9
9178 Added more to Anatomy section.
9180 Revision 1.59 2002/03/27 00:54:33 hal9
9181 Touch up intro for new name.
9183 Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
9184 we have a new homepage!
9186 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
9187 A few minor catch ups with name change.
9189 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
9190 configure needs to be generated.
9192 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
9193 we are too lazy to make a block-built
9194 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
9196 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
9197 name change related issue.
9199 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
9200 name change. changed filenames.
9202 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
9205 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
9206 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
9207 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
9208 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
9209 comments and remarks to history untouched.
9211 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
9214 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
9215 New section in Appendix.
9217 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
9218 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
9220 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
9221 correct feedback channels
9223 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
9224 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
9226 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
9229 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
9230 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
9232 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
9233 Added imageblock{pattern}.
9235 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
9238 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
9239 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
9241 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
9242 provide correct feedback channels
9244 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
9245 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
9247 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
9248 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
9250 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
9251 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
9253 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
9254 Add new - - user option.
9256 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
9257 Added section on command line options.
9259 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
9260 Changed default port to 8118
9262 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
9263 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
9265 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
9266 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
9267 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
9270 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
9273 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
9274 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
9276 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
9277 Update OS/2 build section
9279 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
9280 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
9281 will work - no other changes are needed.
9283 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
9284 Added a very short section on Templates
9286 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
9287 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
9289 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
9290 Touch ups for *.action files.
9292 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
9295 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
9296 Updates for recent changes.
9298 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
9299 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
9301 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
9302 Correct 2 minor errors
9304 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
9305 *** empty log message ***
9307 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
9308 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
9310 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
9311 wrong url in documentation
9313 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
9314 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
9316 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
9319 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
9322 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
9325 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
9326 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
9328 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
9329 Some additions, and re-arranging.
9331 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
9334 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
9335 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
9337 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
9340 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
9341 source files for junkbuster documentation
9343 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
9344 first proposal of a structure.
9346 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
9347 docs should have an author.
9349 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
9350 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.