1 <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN"[
2 <!entity % dummy "IGNORE">
3 <!entity supported SYSTEM "supported.sgml">
4 <!entity newfeatures SYSTEM "newfeatures.sgml">
5 <!entity p-intro SYSTEM "privoxy.sgml">
6 <!entity seealso SYSTEM "seealso.sgml">
7 <!entity contacting SYSTEM "contacting.sgml">
8 <!entity history SYSTEM "history.sgml">
9 <!entity copyright SYSTEM "copyright.sgml">
10 <!entity license SYSTEM "license.sgml">
11 <!entity p-version "3.0.20">
12 <!entity p-status "UNRELEASED">
13 <!entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE">
14 <!entity % p-stable "IGNORE">
15 <!entity % p-text "IGNORE"> <!-- define we are not a text only doc -->
16 <!entity % p-doc "INCLUDE"> <!-- and we are a formal doc -->
17 <!entity % p-supp-userman "INCLUDE"> <!-- Include all from supported.sgml -->
18 <!entity my-copy "©"> <!-- kludge for docbook2man -->
19 <!entity % p-newstuff "INCLUDE"> <!-- exclude stuff from devel versions -->
20 <!entity % seealso-extra "INCLUDE"> <!-- extra stuff from seealso.sgml -->
21 <!entity my-app "<application>Privoxy</application>">
24 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/faq.sgml,v $
27 This file belongs into
28 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
30 $Id: faq.sgml,v 2.85 2011/12/26 17:05:40 fabiankeil Exp $
32 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Privoxy Developers http://www.privoxy.org/
35 Based partially on the Internet Junkbuster FAQ originally written by and
36 Copyright (C) 1997 Anonymous Coders and Junkbusters Corporation.
37 http://www.junkbusters.com/
39 <Qandaset defaultlabel='qanda'>
54 ========================================================================
55 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
58 Please we keep the info in this file as version independent as possible
59 so we only have to maintain one FAQ. Where significant changes are
60 made to Privoxy configuration, please note the change in such a way that
61 it makes sense to both users of older and newer versions.
62 ========================================================================
68 <article id="index" class="faq">
70 <title>Privoxy Frequently Asked Questions</title>
74 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
75 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
76 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001-2011 by
77 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
81 <pubdate>$Id: faq.sgml,v 2.85 2011/12/26 17:05:40 fabiankeil Exp $</pubdate>
85 Note: this should generate a separate page, and a live link to it.
86 But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave commented
87 unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the copyright
88 statement will be in copyright.smgl.
92 <legalnotice id="legalnotice">
94 text goes here ........
104 <orgname>By: Privoxy Developers</orgname>
113 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
114 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
115 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
120 This FAQ gives quick answers to frequently asked questions about
121 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy</ulink>.
122 It is not a substitute for the
123 <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html"><citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle></ulink>.
125 This works, at least in some situtations:
126 Test: <ulink url="privoxy-user-manual.pdf"><citetitle>User Manual</citetitle></ulink>.
130 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
131 <para>What is Privoxy?</para> &p-intro;
132 <!-- end boilerplate -->
135 Please note that this document is a work in progress. This copy represents
136 the state at the release of version &p-version;.
137 You can find the latest version of the document at <ulink
138 url="http://www.privoxy.org/faq/">http://www.privoxy.org/faq/</ulink>.
139 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> if you want to
140 contact the developers.
144 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
150 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
152 <sect1 id="general"><title>General Information</title>
153 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="who-uses"><title>Who should give &my-app; a try?</title>
155 Anyone who is interested in security, privacy, or in
156 finer-grained control over their web and Internet experience.
160 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="bestchoice"><title>Is Privoxy the best choice for
163 &my-app; is certainly a good choice, especially for those who want more
164 control and security. Those with the willingness to read the documentation
165 and the ability to fine-tune their installation will benefit the most.
168 One of <application>Privoxy's</application>
169 strengths is that it is highly configurable giving you the ability to
170 completely personalize your installation. Being familiar with, or at least
171 having an interest in learning about <ulink
172 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Http">HTTP</ulink> and other networking
173 protocols, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html">HTML</ulink>, and
174 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
175 Expressions</quote></ulink>
176 will be a big plus and will help you get the most out of &my-app;.
177 A new installation just includes a very basic configuration. The user
178 should take this as a starting point only, and enhance it as he or she
179 sees fit. In fact, the user is encouraged, and expected to, fine-tune the
183 Much of <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration can be done
184 with a <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser">Web browser</ulink>.
185 But there are areas where configuration is done using a
186 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_editors">text editor</ulink>
187 to edit configuration files. Also note that the web-based action editor
188 doesn't use authentication and should only be enabled in environments
189 where all clients with access to &my-app; listening port can be trusted.
193 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="proxymoron"><title>What is a <quote>proxy</quote>? How does
194 Privoxy work? </title>
196 A <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">web proxy</ulink>
197 is a service, based on a software such as &my-app;, that clients
198 (i.e. browsers) can use instead of connecting to web servers directly.
199 The clients then ask the proxy to request objects (web pages, images, movies etc)
200 on their behalf and to forward the data to the clients.
201 It is a <quote>go-between</quote>. For details, see
202 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">Wikipedia's proxy definition</ulink>.
205 There are many reasons to use web proxies, such as security (firewalling),
206 efficiency (caching) and others, and there are any number of proxies
207 to accommodate those needs.
210 &my-app; is a proxy that is primarily focused on
211 privacy enhancement, ad and junk elimination and freeing the user from
212 restrictions placed on his activities. Sitting between your browser(s) and the Internet,
213 it is in a perfect position to filter outbound personal information that your
214 browser is leaking, as well as inbound junk. It uses a variety of techniques to do
215 this, all of which are under your complete control via the various configuration
216 files and options. Being a proxy also makes it easier to share
217 configurations among multiple browsers and/or users.
221 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="otherstuff">
222 <title>Does Privoxy do anything more than ad blocking?</title>
224 Yes, ad blocking is but one possible use. There are many, many ways &my-app;
225 can be used to sanitize and customize web browsing.
229 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newjb"><title>What is this new version of
230 <quote><citetitle>Junkbuster</citetitle></quote>?</title>
232 <!-- Include history.sgml -->
239 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
240 <title id="whyprivoxy">Why <quote>Privoxy</quote>? Why change the name from
241 Junkbuster at all?</title>
243 Though outdated, <ulink url="http://junkbusters.com/">Junkbusters Corporation</ulink>
244 continues to offer their original version of the <application>Internet
245 Junkbuster</application>, so publishing our
246 <application> Junkbuster</application>-derived software under the same name
250 There are also potential legal complications from our use of the
251 <application>Junkbuster</application> name, which is a registered trademark of
252 <ulink url="http://junkbusters.com/">Junkbusters Corporation</ulink>.
253 There are, however, no objections from Junkbusters Corporation to the
254 <application>Privoxy</application> project itself, and they, in fact, still
255 share our ideals and goals.
258 The developers also believed that there are so many improvements over the original
259 code, that it was time to make a clean break from the past and make
260 a name in their own right.
263 <application>Privoxy</application> is the
264 <quote><emphasis>Privacy Enhancing Proxy</emphasis></quote>. Also, its content
265 modification and junk suppression gives <emphasis>you</emphasis>, the user, more
266 control, more freedom, and allows you to browse your personal and
267 <quote><emphasis>private</emphasis> edition</quote> of the web.
271 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="differs"><title>How does Privoxy differ
272 from the old Junkbuster?</title>
274 <application>Privoxy</application> picks up where
275 <application>Junkbuster</application> left off.
276 The new <application>Privoxy</application> still blocks ads and banners,
278 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>, and still
279 helps protect your privacy. But, most of these features have been enhanced,
280 and many new ones have been added, all in the same vein.
283 <application>Privoxy</application>'s new features include:
286 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml: -->
292 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whatsanad">
293 <title id="knows">How does Privoxy know what is
294 an ad, and what is not?</title>
296 <application>Privoxy</application>'s approach to blocking ads is twofold:
299 First, there are certain patterns in the <emphasis>locations</emphasis> (URLs)
300 of banner images. This applies to both the path (you wouldn't guess how many
301 web sites serve their banners from a directory called <quote>banners</quote>!)
302 and the host (blocking the big banner hosting services like doublecklick.net
303 already helps a lot). <application>Privoxy</application> takes advantage of this
304 fact by using <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#AF-PATTERNS">URL
305 patterns</ulink> to sort out and block the requests for things that sound
306 like they would be ads or banners.
309 Second, banners tend to come in certain <emphasis>sizes</emphasis>. But you
310 can't tell the size of an image by its URL without downloading it, and if you
311 do, it's too late to save bandwidth. Therefore, <application>Privoxy</application>
312 also inspects the HTML sources of web pages while they are loaded, and replaces
313 references to images with standard banner sizes by dummy references, so that
314 your browser doesn't request them anymore in the first place.
317 Both of this involves a certain amount of guesswork and is, of course, freely
318 and readily configurable.
322 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
323 <title id="mistakes">Can Privoxy make mistakes?
324 This does not sound very scientific.</title>
326 Actually, it's a black art ;-) And yes, it is always possible to have a broad
327 rule accidentally block or change something by mistake. You will almost surely
328 run into such situations at some point. It is tricky writing rules to
329 cover every conceivable possibility, and not occasionally get false positives.
333 But this should not be a big concern since the
334 <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is very flexible, and
335 includes tools to help identify these types of situations so they can be
336 addressed as needed, allowing you to customize your installation.
337 (<link linkend="badsite">See the Troubleshooting section below</link>.)
342 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
343 <title id="configornot">Will I have to configure Privoxy
344 before I can use it?</title>
346 That depends on your expectations.
347 The default installation should give you a good starting
348 point, and block <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads and unwanted content,
349 but many of the more advanced features are off by default, and require
350 you to activate them.
353 You do have to set up your browser to use
354 <application>Privoxy</application> (see the <link
355 linkend="firststep">Installation section below</link>).
358 And you will certainly run into situations where there are false positives,
359 or ads not being blocked that you may not want to see. In these cases, you
360 would certainly benefit by customizing <application>Privoxy's</application>
361 configuration to more closely match your individual situation. And we
362 encourage you to do this. This is where the real power of
363 <application>Privoxy</application> lies!
368 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="lan">
369 <title>Can Privoxy run as a server on a network?</title>
371 Yes, &my-app; runs as a server already, and can easily be configured to
372 <quote>serve</quote> more than one client. See <link linkend="lanconfig">
373 How can I set up Privoxy to act as a proxy for my LAN</link> below.
377 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="browsers2"><title>My browser does the same things as
378 Privoxy. Why should I use Privoxy at all?</title>
380 Modern browsers do indeed have <emphasis>some</emphasis> of the same
381 functionality as <application>Privoxy</application>. Maybe this is
382 adequate for you. But <application>Privoxy</application> is very
383 versatile and powerful, and can probably do a number of things
384 your browser just can't.
387 In addition, a proxy is good choice if you use multiple browsers, or
388 have a LAN with multiple computers since &my-app; can run as a server
389 application. This way all the configuration is in one place, and you don't
390 have to maintain a similar configuration for possibly many browsers or
394 Note, however, that it's recommended to leverage both your browser's
395 and <application>Privoxy's</application> privacy enhancing features
396 at the same time. While your browser probably lacks some features
397 &my-app; offers, it should also be able to do some things more
398 reliable, for example restricting and suppressing JavaScript.
402 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whytrust"><title>Why should I trust Privoxy?</title>
404 The most important reason is because you have access to
405 <emphasis>everything</emphasis>, and you can control everything. You can
406 check every line of every configuration file yourself. You can check every
407 last bit of source code should you desire. And even if you can't read code,
408 there should be some comfort in knowing that <!-- thousands of -->other people can,
409 and do read it. You can build the software from scratch, if you want,
410 so that you know the executable is clean, and that it is
411 <emphasis>yours</emphasis>. In fact, we encourage this level of scrutiny. It
412 is one reason we use &my-app; ourselves.
416 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="license"><title>Is there is a license or fee? What about a
417 warranty? Registration?</title>
419 <application>Privoxy</application> is free software and licensed under the <ulink
420 url="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html">GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2</ulink>.
421 It is free to use, copy, modify or distribute as you wish under the terms of this
422 license. Please see the <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> section for more
423 information on the license and copyright. Or the <filename>LICENSE</filename> file
424 that should be included.
427 There is <emphasis>no warranty</emphasis> of any kind, expressed, implied or otherwise.
428 That is something that would cost real money ;-) There is no registration either.
433 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="spyware">
434 <title>Can Privoxy remove spyware? Adware? Viruses?</title>
436 No, at least not reliably enough to trust it. &my-app; is not designed to be
437 a malware removal tool and the default configuration doesn't even try to
438 filter out any malware.
441 &my-app; could help prevent contact from (known) sites that use such
442 tactics with appropriate configuration rules, and thus could conceivably
443 prevent contamination from such sites. However, keeping such a configuration
444 up to date would require a lot of time and effort that would be better spend
445 on keeping your software itself up to date so it doesn't have known
451 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="otherads">
452 <title>Can I use Privoxy with other ad-blocking software?</title>
454 &my-app; should work fine with other proxies and other software in general.
457 But it is probably not necessary to use &my-app; in conjunction with other
458 ad-blocking products, and this could conceivably cause undesirable results.
459 It might be better to choose one software or the other and work a little to
460 tweak its configuration to your liking.
463 Note that this is an advice specific to ad blocking.
467 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="help-the-developers"><title id="jointeam">I would like to help you, what can I do?</title>
469 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="participate"><title id="jointeam-work">Would you like to participate?</title>
471 Well, we <emphasis>always</emphasis> need help. There is something for
472 everybody who wants to help us. We welcome new developers, packagers,
473 testers, documentation writers or really anyone with a desire to help in
474 any way. You <emphasis>DO NOT</emphasis> need to be a
475 <quote>programmer</quote>. There are many other tasks available. In fact,
476 the programmers often can't spend as much time programming because of some
477 of the other, more mundane things that need to be done, like checking the
478 Tracker feedback sections or responding to user questions on the mailing
482 So first thing, subscribe to the <ulink
483 url="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-users">Privoxy Users</ulink>
484 or the <ulink url="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-developers">Privoxy
485 Developers</ulink> mailing list, join the discussion, help out other users, provide general
486 feedback or report problems you noticed.
489 If you intend to help out with the trackers, you also might want to <ulink
490 url="https://sourceforge.net/account/register.php">get an account on SourceForge.net</ulink>
491 so we don't confuse you with the other name-less users.
494 We also have a <ulink
495 url="../developer-manual/index.html">Developer's Manual</ulink>.
496 While it is partly out of date, it's still worth reading.
499 Our <ulink url="http://ijbswa.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ijbswa/current/TODO?view=markup">TODO list</ulink>
500 may be of interest to you as well.
501 Please let us know if you want to work on one of the items listed.
505 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="donate"><title>Would you like to donate?</title>
507 <application>Privoxy</application> is developed by unpaid volunteers
508 and thus our current running costs are pretty low. Nevertheless, we
509 have plans that will cost money in the future. They include,
510 but aren't limited to spending money on:
518 Hardware to help make sure <application>Privoxy</application>
519 keeps running on platforms the developers currently can't test
520 on and can be ported to others.
525 Technical books to educate our developers about said platforms
526 or to improve their knowledge in general.
531 More reliable hosting,
538 We would like to get this money through donations made by our users.
542 <application>Privoxy</application> has therefore become an associated
543 project of <ulink url="http://www.spi-inc.org/about-spi/about-spi">Software
544 in the Public Interest (SPI)</ulink>, which allows us to receive donations.
545 In the United States they are tax-deductible, in a few other western countries
546 they might be tax-deductible in the future.
550 If you read this section before you may notice that paying for the
551 project domain privoxy.org is no longer on the list. It has been
552 transferred to SPI is sponsored by Mythic Beasts Ltd.
556 If you enjoy our software and feel like helping out with a donation,
557 please have a look at
558 <ulink url="http://www.spi-inc.org/donations">SPI's donation page</ulink>
559 to see what the options are. If you have any questions regarding donations
560 please mail to either the public user mailing list or, if it's a private
561 matter, to <ulink url="mailto:fk@fabiankeil.de">Fabian Keil</ulink>
562 (Privoxy's SPI liason) directly.
571 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
573 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
575 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whichbrowsers">
576 <title>Which browsers are supported by Privoxy?</title>
578 Any browser that can be configured to use a proxy, which
579 should be virtually all browsers, including
580 <application>Firefox</application>, <application>Internet
581 Explorer</application>, <application>Opera</application>, and
582 <application>Safari</application> among others.
583 Direct browser support is not an absolute requirement since
584 <application>Privoxy</application> runs as a separate application and talks
585 to the browser in the standardized HTTP protocol, just like a web server
590 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whichos">
591 <title>Which operating systems are supported?</title>
593 Include supported.sgml here:
598 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="email-client">
599 <title>Can I use Privoxy with my email client?</title>
601 As long as there is some way to set a HTTP proxy for the client, then yes,
602 any application can be used, whether it is strictly speaking a
603 <quote>browser</quote> or not. Though this may not be the best approach for
604 dealing with some of the common abuses of HTML in email. See <link
605 linkend="outlook">How can I configure <application>Privoxy</application>
606 with <application>Outlook</application>?</link> below for more on
610 Be aware that HTML email presents a number of unique security and privacy
611 related issues, that can require advanced skills to overcome. The developers
612 recommend using email clients that can be configured to convert HTML to plain
613 text for these reasons.
617 <!-- Nobody is going to still be doing this!
618 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newinstall"><title>Can I install
619 Privoxy over Junkbuster?</title>
621 We recommend you un-install <application>Junkbuster</application>
622 first to minimize conflicts and confusion. You may want to
623 save your old configuration files for future reference. The configuration
624 files and syntax have substantially changed, so you will need to manually
625 port your old patterns. See the <ulink url="../user-manual/upgradersnote.html">note
626 to upgraders</ulink> and <ulink url="../user-manual/installation.html">installation
627 chapter</ulink> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User Manual</ulink>
631 Note: Some installers may automatically un-install
632 <application>Junkbuster</application>, if present!
638 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="firststep">
639 <title>I just installed Privoxy. Is there anything
640 special I have to do now?</title>
643 All browsers should be told to use <application>Privoxy</application>
644 as a proxy by specifying the correct proxy address and port number
645 in the appropriate configuration area for the browser. It's possible
646 to combine &my-app; with a packet filter to intercept HTTP requests
647 even if the client isn't explicitly configured to use &my-app;,
648 but where possible, configuring the client is recommended. See
649 <ulink url="../user-manual/startup.html">the User Manual for more
650 details</ulink>. You should also flush your browser's memory and disk
651 cache to get rid of any cached junk items, and remove any stored
652 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>.
658 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="localhost"><title>What is the proxy address of Privoxy?</title>
660 If you set up the <application>Privoxy</application> to run on
661 the computer you browse from (rather than your ISP's server or some
662 networked computer on a LAN), the proxy will be on <literal>127.0.0.1</literal>
663 (sometimes referred to as <quote>localhost</quote>,
664 which is the special name used by every computer on the Internet to refer
665 to itself) and the port will be 8118 (unless you used the <ulink
666 url="../user-manual/config.html#LISTEN-ADDRESS">listen-address</ulink>
667 config option to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to run on
671 When configuring your browser's proxy settings you typically enter
672 the word <quote>localhost</quote> or the IP address <quote>127.0.0.1</quote>
673 in the boxes next to <quote>HTTP</quote> and <quote>Secure</quote> (HTTPS) and
674 then the number <quote>8118</quote> for <quote>port</quote>.
675 This tells your browser to send all web requests to <application>Privoxy</application>
676 instead of directly to the Internet.
679 <application>Privoxy</application> can also be used to proxy for
680 a Local Area Network. In this case, your would enter either the IP
681 address of the LAN host where <application>Privoxy</application>
682 is running, or the equivalent hostname, e.g. <literal>192.168.1.1</literal>.
683 Port assignment would be same as above. Note that
684 <application>Privoxy</application> doesn't listen on any LAN interfaces by
688 <application>Privoxy</application> does not currently handle
689 any other protocols such as FTP, SMTP, IM, IRC, ICQ, etc.
693 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="nothing">
694 <title>I just installed Privoxy, and nothing is happening.
695 All the ads are there. What's wrong?</title>
698 Did you configure your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application>
699 as a proxy? It does not sound like it. See above. You might also try flushing
700 the browser's caches to force a full re-reading of pages. You can verify
701 that <application>Privoxy</application> is running, and your browser
702 is correctly configured by entering the special URL:
703 <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>.
704 <!-- Use http://p.p/ instead of http://config.privoxy.org/ here because
705 of potential redirect caching problem (see next Q). -->
706 This should take you to a page titled <quote>This is Privoxy..</quote> with
707 access to <application>Privoxy's</application> internal configuration.
708 If you see this, then you are good to go. If you receive a page saying
709 <quote>Privoxy is not running</quote>, then the browser is not set up to use
710 your <application>Privoxy</application> installation.
711 If you receive anything else (probably nothing at all), it could either
712 be that the browser is not set up correctly, or that
713 <application>Privoxy</application> is not running at all. Check the <ulink
714 url="../user-manual/config.html#LOGFILE">log file</ulink>. For instructions
715 on starting <application>Privoxy</application> and browser configuration,
716 see the <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/startup.html">chapter
717 on starting <application>Privoxy</application></ulink> in the
718 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">User Manual</ulink>.
723 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="notused">
724 <title>I get a <quote>Privoxy is not being used</quote> dummy page although
725 Privoxy is running and being used.</title>
728 First, make sure that Privoxy is <emphasis>really</emphasis> running and
729 being used by visiting <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>. You
730 should see the <application>Privoxy</application> main page. If not, see
731 the <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/startup.html">chapter
732 on starting <application>Privoxy</application></ulink> in the
733 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">User Manual</ulink>.
737 Now if <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> works for you, but
738 other parts of <application>Privoxy</application>'s web interface show
739 the dummy page, your browser has cached a redirection it encountered before
740 <application>Privoxy</application> was being used. You need to clear your
741 browser's cache. Note that shift-reloading the dummy page won't help, since
742 that'll only refresh the dummy page, not the redirection that lead you there.
746 The procedure for clearing the cache varies from browser to browser. For
747 example, <application>Mozilla/Netscape</application> users would click
748 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -->
749 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Cache</guibutton> and
750 then click both <quote><guibutton>Clear Memory Cache</guibutton></quote>
751 and <quote><guibutton>Clear Disk Cache</guibutton></quote>.
752 In some <application>Firefox</application> versions it's
753 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Options</guibutton> -->
754 <guibutton>Privacy</guibutton> --> <guibutton>Cache</guibutton> and
755 then click <quote><guibutton>Clear Cache Now</guibutton></quote>.
756 <!-- In my Firefox versions it's the Netscape way. fk 2007-11-19-->
763 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
765 <sect1 id="configuration"><title>Configuration</title>
766 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
767 <title id="actionsfile">What exactly is an <quote>actions</quote> file?</title>
770 &my-app; utilizes the concept of <quote>
771 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACTIONS">actions</ulink></quote>
772 that are used to manipulate and control web page data.
773 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">Actions files</ulink>
774 are where these <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACTIONS">actions</ulink>
775 that <application>Privoxy</application> could take while processing a certain
776 request, are configured. Typically, you would define a set of default actions
777 that apply globally to all URLs, then add exceptions to these defaults where needed.
778 There is a wide array of actions available that give the user a high degree
779 of control and flexibility on how to process each and every web page.
783 Actions can be defined on a <ulink
784 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#AF-PATTERNS">URL pattern</ulink> basis, i.e.
785 for single URLs, whole web sites, groups or parts thereof etc. Actions can also be
786 grouped together and then applied to requests matching one or more patterns.
787 There are many possible actions that might apply to any given site. As an example,
788 if you are blocking <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>
789 as one of your default actions, but need to accept cookies from a given site,
790 you would need to define an exception for this site in one of your actions
791 files, preferably in <filename>user.action</filename>.
796 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="actionss">
797 <title>The <quote>actions</quote> concept confuses me. Please list
798 some of these <quote>actions</quote>.</title>
800 For a comprehensive discussion of the actions concept, please refer
801 to the <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">actions file
802 chapter</ulink> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User
803 Manual</ulink>. It includes a <ulink
804 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACTIONS">list of all actions</ulink>
805 and an <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACT-EXAMPLES">actions
806 file tutorial</ulink> to get you started.
811 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
812 <title id="actconfig">How are actions files configured? What is the easiest
813 way to do this?</title>
816 Actions files are just text files in a special syntax and can be edited
817 with a text editor. But probably the easiest way is to access
818 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface with your web browser
819 at <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
820 (Shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>) and then select
821 <quote><ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View &
822 change the current configuration</ulink></quote> from the menu. Note
823 that this feature must be explicitly enabled in the main config file
825 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions</ulink>).
830 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
831 <title>There are several different <quote>actions</quote> files. What are
832 the differences?</title>
834 Please have a look at the <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">the actions chapter</ulink>
835 in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User Manual</ulink> for a detailed explanation.
840 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="getupdates"><title>Where can I get updated Actions Files?</title>
842 Based on your feedback and the continuing development, updates of
843 <filename>default.action</filename> will be
844 made available from time to time on the <ulink
845 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">files section</ulink> of
846 our <ulink url="http://sf.net/projects/ijbswa/">project page</ulink>.
850 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
851 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
852 url="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-announce/">subscribe
853 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
858 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newconfig"><title>Can I use my old config files?</title>
860 The syntax and purpose of configuration files has remained roughly the
861 same throughout the 3.x series, but backwards compatibility is not guaranteed.
862 Also each release contains updated, <quote>improved</quote> versions and it is
863 therefore strongly recommended to install the newer configuration files
864 and merge back your modifications.
868 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="difficult">
869 <title>Why is the configuration so complicated?</title>
871 <quote>Complicated</quote> is in the eye of the beholder. Those that are
872 familiar with some of the underlying concepts, such as regular expression
873 syntax, take to it like a fish takes to water. Also, software that tries
874 hard to be <quote>user friendly</quote>, often lacks sophistication and
875 flexibility. There is always that trade-off there between power vs.
876 easy-of-use. Furthermore, anyone is welcome to contribute ideas and
877 implementations to enhance &my-app;.
881 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="yahoo"><title>How can I make my Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail account work?</title>
883 The default configuration shouldn't impact the usability of any of these services.
884 It may, however, make all <ulink
885 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>
886 temporary, so that your browser will forget your
887 login credentials in between browser sessions. If you would like not to have to log
888 in manually each time you access those websites, simply turn off all cookie handling
889 for them in the <filename>user.action</filename> file. An example for yahoo might
893 <screen># Allow all cookies for Yahoo login:
895 { -<ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</ulink> -<ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</ulink> -<ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</ulink> }
896 .login.yahoo.com</screen>
899 These kinds of sites are often quite complex and heavy with
900 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript">Javascript</ulink> and
901 thus <quote>fragile</quote>. So if <emphasis>still</emphasis> a problem,
903 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ALIASES">alias</ulink> just for such
907 <screen># Gmail is a _fragile_ site:
909 { <literal>fragile</literal> }
911 mail.google.com</screen>
914 Be sure to flush your browser's caches whenever making these kinds of
915 changes, just to make sure the changes <quote>take</quote>.
918 Make sure the domain, host and path are appropriate as well. Your browser can
919 tell you where you are specifically and you should use that information for
920 your configuration settings. Note that above it is not referenced as
921 <literal>gmail.com</literal>, which is a valid domain name.
926 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="configfiles"> <title>What's the difference between the
927 <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> and <quote>Advanced</quote> defaults?</title>
929 Configuring <application>Privoxy</application> is not entirely trivial. To
930 help you get started, we provide you with three different default action
931 <quote>profiles</quote> in the web based actions file editor at <ulink
932 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
933 See the <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html"><citetitle>User
934 Manual</citetitle></ulink> for a list of actions, and how the default
939 Where the defaults are likely to break some sites, exceptions for
940 known popular <quote>problem</quote> sites are included, but in
941 general, the more aggressive your default settings are, the more exceptions
942 you will have to make later. New users are best to start off in
943 <quote>Cautious</quote> setting. This is safest and will have the fewest
944 problems. See the <ulink
945 url="../user-manual/index.html"><citetitle>User Manual</citetitle></ulink>
946 for a more detailed discussion.
950 It should be noted that the <quote>Advanced</quote> profile (formerly known
951 as the <quote>Adventuresome</quote> profile) is more
952 aggressive, and will make use of some of
953 <application>Privoxy's</application> advanced features. Use at your own risk!
958 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="browseconfig"> <title>Why can I change the configuration
959 with a browser? Does that not raise security issues?</title>
961 It may seem strange that regular users can edit the config files with their
962 browsers, although the whole <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> hierarchy
963 belongs to the user <quote>privoxy</quote>, with only 644 permissions.
966 When you use the browser-based editor, <application>Privoxy</application>
967 itself is writing to the config files. Because
968 <application>Privoxy</application> is running as the user <quote>privoxy</quote>,
969 it can update its own config files.
972 If you run <application>Privoxy</application> for multiple untrusted users (e.g. in
973 a LAN) or aren't entirely in control of your own browser, you will probably want
974 to make sure that the web-based editor and remote toggle features are
975 <quote>off</quote> by setting <quote><literal><ulink
976 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions</ulink>
977 0</literal></quote> and <quote><literal><ulink
978 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-REMOTE-TOGGLE">enable-remote-toggle</ulink>
979 0</literal></quote> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html">main configuration file</ulink>.
982 As of &my-app; 3.0.7 these options are disabled by default.
987 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
988 <title id="filterfile">What is the <filename>default.filter</filename> file? What is a <quote>filter</quote>?</title>
990 The <ulink url="../user-manual/filter-file.html"><filename>default.filter</filename></ulink>
991 file is where <emphasis>filters</emphasis> as supplied by the developers are defined.
992 Filters are a special subset of actions that can be used to modify or
993 remove web page content or headers on the fly. Content filters can
994 be applied to <emphasis>anything</emphasis> in the page source,
995 header filters can be applied to either server or client headers.
996 Regular expressions are used to accomplish this.
999 There are a number of pre-defined filters to deal with common annoyances. The
1000 filters are only defined here, to invoke them, you need to use the
1002 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER"><literal>filter</literal>
1003 action</ulink> in one of the actions files. Content filtering is automatically
1004 disabled for inappropriate MIME types, but if you know better than Privoxy
1005 what should or should not be filtered you can filter any content you like.
1009 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be confused with <ulink
1010 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK"><literal>blocks</literal></ulink>, which
1011 is a completely different action, and is more typically used to block ads and
1016 If you are familiar with regular expressions, and HTML, you can look at
1017 the provided <filename>default.filter</filename> with a text editor and define
1018 your own filters. This is potentially a very powerful feature, but
1019 requires some expertise in both regular expressions and HTML/HTTP.
1020 <![%p-newstuff;[ You should
1021 place any modifications to the default filters, or any new ones you create
1022 in a separate file, such as <filename>user.filter</filename>, so they won't
1023 be overwritten during upgrades.
1024 The ability to define multiple filter files
1025 in <filename>config</filename> is a new feature as of v. 3.0.5.]]>
1029 There is no GUI editor option for this part of the configuration,
1030 but you can disable/enable the various pre-defined filters of the included
1031 <filename>default.filter</filename> file with the <ulink
1032 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">web-based actions file editor</ulink>.
1033 Note that the custom actions editor must be explicitly enabled in
1034 the main config file (see <ulink
1035 url="../user-manual/config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions</ulink>).
1039 If you intend to develop your own filters, you might want to have a look at
1041 url="http://www.fabiankeil.de/sourcecode/pft/">Privoxy-Filter-Test</ulink>.
1046 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="lanconfig">
1047 <title>How can I set up Privoxy to act as a proxy for my
1050 By default, <application>Privoxy</application> only responds to requests
1051 from <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> (localhost). To have it act as a server for
1052 a network, this needs to be changed in the <ulink
1053 url="../user-manual/config.html">main configuration file</ulink>. Look for
1055 url="../user-manual/config.html#LISTEN-ADDRESS">listen-address</ulink></literal>
1056 option, which may be commented out with a <quote>#</quote> symbol. Make sure
1057 it is uncommented, and assign it the address of the LAN gateway interface,
1058 and port number to use. Assuming your LAN address is 192.168.1.1 and you
1059 wish to run <application>Privoxy</application> on port 8118, this line
1065 listen-address 192.168.1.1:8118</screen>
1069 Save the file, and restart <application>Privoxy</application>. Configure
1070 all browsers on the network then to use this address and port number.
1074 Alternately, you can have <application>Privoxy</application> listen on
1075 all available interfaces:
1080 listen-address :8118</screen>
1084 And then use <application>Privoxy's</application>
1086 url="../user-manual/config.html#PERMIT-ACCESS">permit-access</ulink>
1087 feature to limit connections. A firewall in this situation is recommended
1092 The above steps should be the same for any TCP network, regardless of
1097 If you run <application>Privoxy</application> on a LAN with untrusted users,
1098 we recommend that you double-check the <ulink
1099 url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCESS-CONTROL">access control and security</ulink>
1106 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1107 <title id="noseeum">Instead of ads, now I get a checkerboard pattern. I don't want to see anything.</title>
1109 The replacement for blocked images can be controlled with the <ulink
1110 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><literal>set-image-blocker</literal>
1111 action</ulink>. You have the choice of a checkerboard pattern, a transparent 1x1 GIF
1112 image (aka <quote>blank</quote>), or a redirect to a custom image of your choice.
1113 Note that this choice only has effect for images which are blocked as images, i.e.
1114 whose URLs match both a <literal><ulink
1115 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</ulink></literal>
1116 <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><ulink
1117 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">block</ulink></literal> action.
1120 If you want to see nothing, then change the <ulink
1121 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><literal>set-image-blocker</literal>
1122 action</ulink> to <quote>blank</quote>. This can be done by editing the
1123 <filename>user.action</filename> file, or through the <ulink
1124 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">web-based actions file editor</ulink>.
1129 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1130 <title id="whyseeum">Why would anybody want to see a checkerboard pattern?</title>
1132 Remember that <link linkend="whatsanad">telling which image is an ad and which
1133 isn't</link>, is an educated guess. While we hope that the standard configuration
1134 is rather smart, it will make occasional mistakes. The checkerboard image is visually
1135 decent, and it shows you where images have been blocked, which can be very
1136 helpful in case some navigation aid or otherwise innocent image was
1137 erroneously blocked. It is recommended for new users so they can
1138 <quote>see</quote> what is happening. Some people might also enjoy seeing how
1139 many banners they <emphasis>don't</emphasis> have to see.
1144 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1145 <title id="blockedbytext">I see some images being replaced with text
1146 instead of the checkerboard image. Why and how do I get rid of this?</title>
1148 This happens when the banners are not embedded in the HTML code of the
1149 page itself, but in separate HTML (sub)documents that are loaded into (i)frames
1150 or (i)layers, and these external HTML documents are blocked. Being non-images
1151 they get replaced by a substitute HTML page rather than a substitute image,
1152 which wouldn't work out technically, since the browser expects and accepts
1153 only HTML when it has requested an HTML document.
1156 The substitute page adapts to the available space and shows itself as a
1157 miniature two-liner if loaded into small frames, or full-blown with a
1158 large red "BLOCKED" banner if space allows.
1161 If you prefer the banners to be blocked by images, you must see to it that
1162 the HTML documents in which they are embedded are not blocked. Clicking
1163 the <quote>See why</quote> link offered in the substitute page will show
1164 you which rule blocked the page. After changing the rule and un-blocking
1165 the HTML documents, the browser will try to load the actual banner images
1166 and the usual image blocking will (hopefully!) kick in.
1171 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="srvany">
1172 <title>Can Privoxy run as a service
1173 on Win2K/NT/XP?</title>
1176 Yes. Version 3.0.5 introduces full <application>Windows</application> service
1177 functionality. See <ulink url="../user-manual/installation.html#installation-pack-win">
1178 the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle></ulink> for details on how to install and configure
1179 <application>Privoxy</application> as a service.
1182 Earlier ]]>3.x versions could run as a system service using <command>srvany.exe</command>.
1183 See the discussion at <ulink
1184 url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=361118&aid=485617&group_id=11118">http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=361118&aid=485617&group_id=11118</ulink>,
1185 for details, and a sample configuration.
1190 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="otherproxy">
1191 <title>How can I make Privoxy work with other proxies?</title>
1193 This can be done and is often useful to combine the benefits of
1194 <application>Privoxy</application> with those of a another proxy,
1195 for example to cache content.
1197 url="../user-manual/config.html#FORWARDING">forwarding chapter</ulink>
1198 in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">User Manual</ulink> which
1199 describes how to do this. If you intend to use Privoxy with Tor,
1200 please also have a look at
1201 <link linkend="TOR">How do I use Privoxy together with Tor</link>.
1205 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="port-80">
1206 <title>Can I just set Privoxy to use port 80
1207 and thus avoid individual browser configuration?</title>
1210 No, its more complicated than that. This only works with special kinds
1211 of proxies known as <quote>intercepting</quote> proxies
1212 (<link linkend="INTERCEPTING">see below</link>).
1217 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="transparent">
1218 <title>Can Privoxy run as a <quote>transparent
1219 </quote> proxy?</title>
1221 The whole idea of Privoxy is to modify client requests
1222 and server responses in all sorts of ways and therefore
1223 it's not a transparent proxy as described in
1224 <ulink url="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616">RFC 2616</ulink>.
1227 However, some people say <quote>transparent proxy</quote> when they
1228 mean <quote>intercepting proxy</quote>. If you are one of them,
1229 please read the <link linkend="INTERCEPTING">next entry</link>.
1234 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="intercepting">
1235 <title>Can Privoxy run as a <quote>intercepting</quote> proxy?</title>
1237 <application>Privoxy</application> can't intercept traffic itself,
1238 but it can handle requests that where intercepted and redirected
1239 with a packet filter (like <application>PF</application> or
1240 <application>iptables</application>), as long as the <literal>Host</literal>
1244 As the <literal>Host</literal> header is required by HTTP/1.1 and as most
1245 web sites rely on it anyway, this limitation shouldn't be a problem.
1248 Please refer to your packet filter's documentation to learn how to
1249 intercept and redirect traffic into <application>Privoxy</application>.
1250 Afterward you just have to configure <application>Privoxy</application> to
1251 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCEPT-INTERCEPTED-REQUESTS">accept
1252 intercepted requests</ulink>.
1257 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="outlook">
1258 <title>How can I configure Privoxy for use with Outlook?</title>
1260 Versions of <application>Outlook</application> prior to Office 2007, use
1261 <application>Internet Explorer</application> components to both render HTML,
1262 and fetch any HTTP requests that may be embedded in an HTML email. So however
1263 you have <application>Privoxy</application> configured to work with IE, this
1264 configuration should automatically be shared, at least with older version of
1268 Starting with Office 2007, Microsoft is instead using the MS-Word rendering
1269 engine with Outlook. It is unknown whether this can be configured to use a
1271 <!-- FIXME HB 2009-02-15 -->
1275 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="outlook-more">
1276 <title>How can I have separate rules just for HTML mail?</title>
1278 The short answer is, you can't. <application>Privoxy</application> has no way
1279 of knowing which particular application makes a request, so there is no way to
1280 distinguish between web pages and HTML mail.
1281 <application>Privoxy</application> just blindly proxies all requests. In the
1282 case of <application>Outlook Express</application> (see above), OE uses
1283 IE anyway, and there is no way for <application>Privoxy</application> to ever
1284 be able to distinguish between them (nor could any other proxy type application for
1288 For a good discussion of some of the issues involved (including privacy and
1289 security issues), see
1290 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=211118&aid=629518&group_id=11118">http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=211118&aid=629518&group_id=11118</ulink>.
1294 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="sneaky-cookies">
1295 <title>I sometimes notice cookies sneaking through. How?</title>
1298 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">Cookies</ulink> can be
1299 set in several ways. The classic method is via the
1300 <literal>Set-Cookie</literal> HTTP header. This is straightforward, and an
1301 easy one to manipulate, such as the &my-app; concept of
1302 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</ulink>.
1303 There is also the possibility of using
1304 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript">Javascript</ulink> to
1305 set cookies (&my-app; calls these <literal>content-cookies</literal>). This
1306 is trickier because the syntax can vary widely, and thus requires a certain
1307 amount of guesswork. It is not realistic to catch all of these short of
1308 disabling Javascript, which would break many sites. And lastly, if the
1309 cookies are embedded in a HTTPS/SSL secure session via Javascript, they are beyond
1310 <application>Privoxy's</application> reach.
1313 All in all, &my-app; can help manage cookies in general, can help minimize
1314 the loss of privacy posed by cookies, but can't realistically stop all
1319 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="evil-cookies">
1320 <title>Are all cookies bad? Why?</title>
1322 No, in fact there are many beneficial uses of
1324 url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>. Cookies are just a
1325 method that browsers can use to store data between pages, or between browser
1326 sessions. Sometimes there is a good reason for this, and the user's life is a
1327 bit easier as a result. But there is a long history of some websites taking
1328 advantage of this layer of trust, and using the data they glean from you and
1329 your browsing habits for their own purposes, and maybe to your potential
1330 detriment. Such sites are using you and storing their data on your system.
1331 That is why the privacy conscious watch from whom those cookies come, and why
1332 they really <emphasis>need</emphasis> to be there.
1336 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">Wikipedia cookie
1337 definition</ulink> for more.
1341 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="allow-cookies">
1342 <title>How can I allow permanent cookies for my trusted sites?</title>
1345 There are several actions that relate to cookies. The default behavior is to
1346 allow only <quote>session cookies</quote>, which means the cookies only last
1347 for the current browser session. This eliminates most kinds of abuse related
1348 to cookies. But there may be cases where you want cookies to last.
1351 To disable all cookie actions, so that cookies are allowed unrestricted,
1352 both in and out, for <literal>example.com</literal>:
1356 { -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies -session-cookies-only -filter{content-cookies} }
1357 .example.com</screen>
1360 Place the above in <filename>user.action</filename>. Note that some of these may
1361 be off by default anyway, so this might be redundant, but there is no harm
1362 being explicit in what you want to happen. <filename>user.action</filename>
1363 includes an alias for this situation, called
1364 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal>.
1368 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="multiples">
1369 <title>Can I have separate configurations for different users?</title>
1371 Each instance of <application>Privoxy</application> has its own
1372 configuration, including such attributes as the TCP port that it listens on.
1373 What you can do is run multiple instances of <application>Privoxy</application>, each with
1375 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#LISTEN-ADDRESS">listen-address</ulink>
1376 configuration setting, and configuration path, and then
1377 each of these can have their own configurations. Think of it as per-port
1381 Simple enough for a few users, but for large installations, consider having
1382 groups of users that might share like configurations.
1386 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="whitelists">
1387 <title>Can I set-up Privoxy as a whitelist of
1388 <quote>good</quote> sites?</title>
1390 Sure. There are a couple of things you can do for simple white-listing.
1391 Here's one real easy one:
1394 ############################################################
1396 ############################################################
1397 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">+block</ulink> }
1398 / # Block *all* URLs
1400 ############################################################
1402 ############################################################
1403 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">-block</ulink> }
1406 games.example.com</screen>
1408 This allows access to only those three sites by first blocking all URLs, and
1409 then subsequently allowing three specific exceptions.
1412 Another approach is <application>Privoxy's</application>
1413 <literal>trustfile</literal> concept, which incorporates the notion of
1414 <quote>trusted referrers</quote>. See the <ulink
1415 url="../user-manual/config.html#TRUSTFILE">Trust documentation</ulink>
1419 These are fairly simple approaches and are not completely foolproof. There
1420 are various other configuration options that should be disabled (described
1421 elsewhere here and in <ulink url="../user-manual/">the User Manual</ulink>)
1422 so that users can't modify their own configuration and easily circumvent the
1427 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="no-adblock">
1428 <title>How can I turn off ad-blocking?</title>
1430 Ad blocking is achieved through a complex application of various &my-app;
1431 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">actions</ulink>. These
1432 actions are deployed against simple images, banners, flash animations,
1433 text pages, JavaScript, pop-ups and pop-unders, etc., so its not as simple as
1434 just turning one or two actions off. The various actions that make up
1435 &my-app; ad blocking are hard-coded into the default configuration files. It
1436 has been assumed that everyone using &my-app; is interested in this
1440 If you want to do without this, there are several approaches you can take:
1441 You can manually undo the many block rules in
1442 <filename>default.action</filename>. Or even easier, just create your own
1443 <filename>default.action</filename> file from scratch without the many ad
1444 blocking rules, and corresponding exceptions. Or lastly, if you are not
1445 concerned about the additional blocks that are done for privacy reasons, you
1446 can very easily over-ride <emphasis>all</emphasis> blocking with the
1447 following very simple rule in your <filename>user.action</filename>:
1451 # Unblock everybody, everywhere
1452 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">-block</ulink> }
1453 / # UN-Block *all* URLs</screen>
1456 Or even a more comprehensive reversing of various ad related actions:
1460 # Unblock everybody, everywhere, and turn off appropriate filtering, etc
1461 { <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">-block</ulink> \
1462 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE">-filter{banners-by-size}</ulink> \
1463 <ulink url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER-BANNERS-BY-LINK">-filter{banners-by-link}</ulink> \
1464 <literal>allow-popups</literal> \
1466 / # UN-Block *all* URLs and allow ads</screen>
1469 This last <quote>action</quote> in this compound statement,
1470 <literal>allow-popups</literal>, is an <ulink
1471 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ALIASES">alias</ulink> that disables
1472 various pop-up blocking features.
1476 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="templates">
1477 <title>How can I have custom template pages, like the
1478 <emphasis>BLOCKED</emphasis> page?</title>
1480 &my-app; <quote>templates</quote> are specialized text files utilized by
1481 &my-app; for various purposes and can easily be modified using any text
1482 editor. All the template pages are installed in a sub-directory appropriately
1483 named: <filename>templates</filename>. Knowing something about HTML syntax
1484 will of course be helpful.
1487 Be forewarned that the default templates are subject to being overwritten
1488 during upgrades. You can, however, create completely new templates,
1489 place them in another directory and specify the alternate path in the main
1490 <filename>config</filename>. For details, have a look at the <ulink
1491 url="../user-manual/config.html#templdir">templdir</ulink> option.
1495 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="blockall">
1496 <title>How can I remove the <quote>Go There Anyway</quote> link from
1497 the <emphasis>BLOCKED</emphasis> page?</title>
1499 There is more than one way to do it (although Perl is not involved).
1502 Editing the BLOCKED template page (see above) may dissuade some users, but
1503 this method is easily circumvented. Where you need this level of control, you
1504 might want to build &my-app; from source, and disable various features that are
1505 available as compile-time options. You should
1506 <command>configure</command> the sources as follows:
1510 ./configure --disable-toggle --disable-editor --disable-force</screen>
1513 This will create an executable with hard-coded security features so that
1514 &my-app; does not allow easy bypassing of blocked sites, or changing the
1515 current configuration via any connected user's web browser.
1518 Finally, all of these features can also be toggled on/off via options in
1519 <application>Privoxy's</application> main <ulink
1520 url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCESS-CONTROL">config</ulink> file which
1521 means you don't have to recompile anything.
1527 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1530 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1532 <sect1 id="misc"><title>Miscellaneous</title>
1534 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1535 <title id="slowsme">How much does Privoxy slow my browsing down? This
1536 has to add extra time to browsing.</title>
1538 How much of an impact depends on many things, including the CPU of the host
1539 system, how aggressive the configuration is, which specific actions are being triggered,
1540 the size of the page, the bandwidth of the connection, etc.
1543 Overall, it should not slow you down any in real terms, and may actually help
1544 speed things up since ads, banners and other junk are not typically being
1545 retrieved and displayed. The actual processing time required by
1546 <application>Privoxy</application> itself for each page, is relatively small
1547 in the overall scheme of things, and happens very quickly. This is typically
1548 more than offset by time saved not downloading and rendering ad images and
1549 other junk content (if ad blocking is being used).
1553 <quote>Filtering</quote> content via the <literal><ulink
1554 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER">filter</ulink></literal> or
1556 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</ulink></literal>
1557 actions may cause a perceived slowdown, since the entire document
1558 needs to be buffered before displaying. And on very large documents,
1559 filtering may have some measurable impact. How much depends on the page size,
1560 the actual definition of the filter(s), etc. See below. Most other actions
1561 have little to no impact on speed.
1564 Also, when filtering is enabled but zlib support isn't available, compression
1565 is often disabled (see <ulink
1566 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</ulink>).
1567 This can have an impact on speed as well, although it's probably smaller than
1568 you might think. Again, the page size, etc. will determine how much of an impact.
1574 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="loadingtimes"><title>I notice considerable
1575 delays in page requests. What's wrong?</title>
1577 If you use any <literal><ulink
1578 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER">filter</ulink></literal> action,
1579 such as filtering banners by size, web-bugs etc, or the <literal><ulink
1580 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</ulink></literal>
1581 action, the entire document must be loaded into memory in order for the filtering
1582 mechanism to work, and nothing is sent to the browser during this time.
1585 The loading time typically does not really change much in real numbers, but
1586 the feeling is different, because most browsers are able to start rendering
1587 incomplete content, giving the user a feeling of "it works". This effect is
1588 more noticeable on slower dialup connections. Extremely large documents
1589 may have some impact on the time to load the page where there is filtering
1590 being done. But overall, the difference should be very minimal. If there is a
1591 big impact, then probably some other situation is contributing (like
1592 anti-virus software).
1595 Filtering is automatically disabled for inappropriate MIME types. But note
1596 that if the web server mis-reports the MIME type, then content that should
1597 not be filtered, could be. <application>Privoxy</application> only knows how
1598 to differentiate filterable content because of the MIME type as reported by
1599 the server, or because of some configuration setting that enables/disables
1604 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="configurl"><title>What are "http://config.privoxy.org/" and
1605 "http://p.p/"?</title>
1607 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink> is the
1608 address of <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in user interface, and
1609 <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> is a shortcut for it.
1612 Since <application>Privoxy</application> sits between your web browser and the Internet,
1613 it can simply intercept requests for these addresses and answer them with its built-in
1614 <quote>web server</quote>.
1617 This also makes for a good test for your browser configuration: If entering the
1618 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1619 takes you to a page saying <quote>This is Privoxy ...</quote>, everything is OK.
1620 If you get a page saying <quote>Privoxy is not working</quote> instead, then
1621 your browser didn't use <application>Privoxy</application> for the request,
1622 hence it could not be intercepted, and you have accessed the <emphasis>real</emphasis>
1623 web site at config.privoxy.org.
1629 out of date 09/02/06 HB
1630 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="blocklist"><title>Do you still maintain the blocklists?</title>
1632 No. The patterns for blocking now reside (among other things) in the <ulink
1633 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html">actions files</ulink>, which are
1634 actively maintained instead. See next question ...
1638 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newads"><title>How can I submit new ads, or report
1641 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> for
1642 various ways to interact with the developers.
1647 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="newads2"><title>If I do submit missed ads, will
1648 they be included in future updates?</title>
1650 Whether such submissions are eventually included in the
1651 <filename>default.action</filename> configuration file depends on how
1652 significant the issue is. We of course want to address any potential
1653 problem with major, high-profile sites such as <citetitle>Google</citetitle>,
1654 <citetitle>Yahoo</citetitle>, etc. Any site with global or regional reach,
1655 has a good chance of being a candidate. But at the other end of the spectrum
1656 are any number of smaller, low-profile sites such as for local clubs or
1657 schools. Since their reach and impact are much less, they are best handled by
1658 inclusion in the user's <filename>user.action</filename>, and thus would be
1659 unlikely to be included.
1665 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="noonecares"><title>Why doesn't anyone answer my support
1668 Rest assured that it has been read and considered. Why it is not answered,
1669 could be for various reasons, including no one has a good answer for it, no
1670 one has had time to yet investigate it thoroughly, it has been reported
1671 numerous times already, or because not enough information was provided to help
1672 us help you. Your efforts are not wasted, and we do appreciate them.
1678 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="ip"><title>How can I hide my IP address?</title>
1680 If you run both the browser and &my-app; locally, you cannot hide your IP
1681 address with <application>Privoxy</application> or ultimately any other
1682 software alone. The server needs to know your IP address so that it knows
1683 where to send the responses back.
1686 There are many publicly usable "anonymous" proxies out there, which
1687 provide a further level of indirection between you and the web server.
1690 However, these proxies are called "anonymous" because you don't need
1691 to authenticate, not because they would offer any real anonymity.
1692 Most of them will log your IP address and make it available to the
1693 authorities in case you violate the law of the country they run in. In fact
1694 you can't even rule out that some of them only exist to *collect* information
1695 on (those suspicious) people with a more than average preference for privacy.
1698 If you want to hide your IP address from most adversaries,
1699 you should consider chaining <application>Privoxy</application>
1700 with <ulink url="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</ulink>.
1701 The configuration details can be found in
1702 <ulink url="#TOR">How do I use <application>Privoxy</application> together
1703 with <application>Tor</application> section</ulink>
1708 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1709 <title id="anonforsure">Can Privoxy guarantee I am anonymous?</title>
1711 No. Your chances of remaining anonymous are improved, but unless you
1712 <ulink url="#TOR">chain <application>Privoxy</application> with <application>Tor</application></ulink>
1713 or a similar proxy and know what you're doing when it comes to configuring
1714 the rest of your system, you should assume that everything you do
1715 on the Web can be traced back to you.
1718 <application>Privoxy</application> can remove various information about you,
1719 and allows <emphasis>you</emphasis> more freedom to decide which sites
1720 you can trust, and what details you want to reveal. But it neither
1721 hides your IP address, nor can it guarantee that the rest of the system
1722 behaves correctly. There are several possibilities how a web sites can find
1723 out who you are, even if you are using a strict <application>Privoxy</application>
1724 configuration and chained it with <application>Tor</application>.
1727 Most of <application>Privoxy's</application> privacy-enhancing features can be easily subverted
1728 by an insecure browser configuration, therefore you should use a browser that can
1729 be configured to only execute code from trusted sites, and be careful which sites you trust.
1730 For example there is no point in having <application>Privoxy</application>
1731 modify the User-Agent header, if websites can get all the information they want
1732 through JavaScript, ActiveX, Flash, Java etc.
1735 A few browsers disclose the user's email address in certain situations, such
1736 as when transferring a file by FTP. <application>Privoxy</application>
1737 does not filter FTP. If you need this feature, or are concerned about the
1738 mail handler of your browser disclosing your email address, you might
1739 consider products such as <application>NSClean</application>.
1742 Browsers available only as binaries could use non-standard headers to give
1743 out any information they can have access to: see the manufacturer's license
1744 agreement. It's impossible to anticipate and prevent every breach of privacy
1745 that might occur. The professionally paranoid prefer browsers available as
1746 source code, because anticipating their behavior is easier. Trust the source,
1752 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1753 <title id="proxytest">A test site says I am not using a Proxy.</title>
1755 Good! Actually, they are probably testing for some other kinds of proxies.
1756 Hiding yourself completely would require additional steps.
1760 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="tor"><title>How do I use Privoxy
1761 together with Tor?</title>
1763 Before you configure <application>Privoxy</application> to use
1764 <ulink url="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</ulink>,
1765 please follow the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> chapters
1766 <ulink url="../user-manual/installation.html">2. Installation</ulink> and
1767 <ulink url="../user-manual/startup.html">5. Startup</ulink> to make sure
1768 <application>Privoxy</application> itself is setup correctly.
1771 If it is, refer to <ulink url="https://www.torproject.org/documentation.html">Tor's
1772 extensive documentation</ulink> to learn how to install <application>Tor</application>,
1773 and make sure <application>Tor</application>'s logfile says that
1774 <quote>Tor has successfully opened a circuit</quote> and it
1775 <quote>looks like client functionality is working</quote>.
1778 If either <application>Tor</application> or <application>Privoxy</application>
1779 isn't working, their combination most likely will neither. Testing them on their
1780 own will also help you to direct problem reports to the right audience.
1781 If <application>Privoxy</application> isn't working, don't bother the
1782 <application>Tor</application> developers. If <application>Tor</application>
1783 isn't working, don't send bug reports to the <application>Privoxy</application> Team.
1786 If you verified that <application>Privoxy</application> and <application>Tor</application>
1787 are working, it is time to connect them. As far as <application>Privoxy</application>
1788 is concerned, <application>Tor</application> is just another proxy that can be reached
1789 by socks4, socks4a and socks5. Most likely you are interested in <application>Tor</application>
1790 to increase your anonymity level, therefore you should use socks5, to make sure DNS
1791 requests are done through <application>Tor</application> and thus invisible to your
1792 local network. Using socks4a would work too, but with socks5 you get more precise error
1798 Since <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.5, its
1799 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html">main configuration file</ulink>
1800 is already prepared for <application>Tor</application>, if you are using a
1801 default <application>Tor</application> configuration and run it on the same
1802 system as &my-app;, you just have to edit the
1803 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#FORWARDING">forwarding section</ulink>
1804 and uncomment the line:
1808 # forward-socks5 / 127.0.0.1:9050 .
1812 This is enough to reach the Internet, but additionally you might want to
1813 uncomment the following forward rules, to make sure your local network is still
1814 reachable through Privoxy:
1818 # forward 192.168.*.*/ .
1819 # forward 10.*.*.*/ .
1820 # forward 127.*.*.*/ .
1824 Unencrypted connections to systems in these address ranges will
1825 be as (un)secure as the local network is, but the alternative is
1826 that your browser can't reach the network at all. Then again,
1827 that may actually be desired and if you don't know for sure
1828 that your browser has to be able to reach the local network,
1829 there's no reason to allow it.
1832 If you want your browser to be able to reach servers in your local
1833 network by using their names, you will need additional exceptions
1834 that look like this:
1838 # forward localhost/ .
1842 Save the modified configuration file and open
1843 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status/</ulink>
1844 in your browser, confirm that <application>Privoxy</application> has reloaded its configuration
1845 and that there are no other forward lines, unless you know that you need them. If everything looks good,
1847 <ulink url="https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#IsMyConnectionPrivate">Tor
1848 Faq 4.2</ulink> to learn how to verify that you are really using <application>Tor</application>.
1851 Afterward, please take the time to at least skim through the rest
1852 of <application>Tor's</application> documentation. Make sure you understand
1853 what <application>Tor</application> does, why it is no replacement for
1854 application level security, and why you probably don't want to
1855 use it for unencrypted logins.
1859 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1860 <title id="sitebreak">Might some things break because header information or
1861 content is being altered?</title>
1864 Definitely. It is common for sites to use browser type, browser version,
1865 HTTP header content, and various other techniques in order to dynamically
1866 decide what to display and how to display it. What you see, and what I see,
1867 might be very different. There are many, many ways that this can be handled,
1868 so having hard and fast rules, is tricky.
1872 The <quote>User-Agent</quote> is sometimes used in this way to identify
1873 the browser, and adjust content accordingly.
1877 Also, different browsers use different encodings of non-English
1878 characters, certain web servers convert pages on-the-fly according to the
1879 User Agent header. Giving a <quote>User Agent</quote> with the wrong
1880 operating system or browser manufacturer causes some sites in these languages
1881 to be garbled; Surfers to Eastern European sites should change it to
1882 something closer. And then some page access counters work by looking at the
1883 <quote>Referer</quote> header; they may fail or break if unavailable. The
1884 weather maps of Intellicast have been blocked by their server when no
1885 <quote>Referer</quote> or cookie is provided, is another example. (But you
1886 can forge both headers without giving information away). There are
1887 many other ways things can go wrong when trying to fool a web server. The
1888 results of which could inadvertently cause pages to load incorrectly,
1889 partially, or even not at all. And there may be no obvious clues as to just
1890 what went wrong, or why. Nowhere will there be a message that says
1891 <quote><emphasis>Turn off <literal>fast-redirects</literal> or else!</emphasis>
1896 Similar thoughts apply to modifying JavaScript, and, to a lesser degree,
1901 If you have problems with a site, you will have to adjust your configuration
1902 accordingly. Cookies are probably the most likely adjustment that may
1903 be required, but by no means the only one.
1909 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1910 <title id="caching">Can Privoxy act as a <quote>caching</quote> proxy to
1911 speed up web browsing?</title>
1913 No, it does not have this ability at all. You want something like
1914 <ulink url="http://www.squid-cache.org/">Squid</ulink> or
1915 <ulink url="http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/polipo/">Polipo</ulink> for this.
1916 And, yes, before you ask, <application>Privoxy</application> can co-exist
1917 with other kinds of proxies like <application>Squid</application>.
1918 See the <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#FORWARDING">forwarding
1919 chapter</ulink> in the <ulink url="../user-manual/index.html">user
1920 manual</ulink> for details.
1924 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1925 <title id="firewall">What about as a firewall? Can Privoxy protect me?</title>
1927 Not in the way you mean, or in the way some firewall vendors claim they can.
1928 <application>Privoxy</application> can help protect your privacy, but can't
1929 protect your system from intrusion attempts. It is, of course, perfectly possible
1930 to use <emphasis>both</emphasis>.
1934 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1935 <title id="wasted">I have large empty spaces / a checkerboard pattern now where
1936 ads used to be. Why?</title>
1938 It is technically possible to eliminate banners and ads in a way that frees
1939 their allocated page space. This could easily be done by blocking with
1940 <application>Privoxy's</application> filters,
1941 and eliminating the <emphasis>entire</emphasis> image references from the
1945 But, this would consume considerably more CPU resources (IOW, slow things
1946 down), would likely destroy the layout of some web pages which rely on the
1947 banners utilizing a certain amount of page space, and might fail in other
1948 cases, where the screen space is reserved (e.g. by HTML tables for instance).
1949 Also, making ads and banners disappear without any trace complicates
1950 troubleshooting, and would sooner or later be problematic.
1953 The better alternative is to instead let them stay, and block the resulting
1954 requests for the banners themselves as is now the case. This leaves either
1955 empty space, or the familiar checkerboard pattern.
1958 So the developers won't support this in the default configuration, but you
1959 can of course define appropriate filters yourself to achieve this.
1963 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1964 <title id="ssl">How can Privoxy filter Secure (HTTPS) URLs?</title>
1966 Since secure HTTP connections are encrypted SSL sessions between your browser
1967 and the secure site, and are meant to be reliably <emphasis>secure</emphasis>,
1968 there is little that <application>Privoxy</application> can do but hand the raw
1969 gibberish data though from one end to the other unprocessed.
1972 The only exception to this is blocking by host patterns, as the client needs
1973 to tell <application>Privoxy</application> the name of the remote server,
1974 so that <application>Privoxy</application> can establish the connection.
1975 If that name matches a host-only pattern, the connection will be blocked.
1978 As far as ad blocking is concerned, this is less of a restriction than it may
1979 seem, since ad sources are often identifiable by the host name, and often
1980 the banners to be placed in an encrypted page come unencrypted nonetheless
1981 for efficiency reasons, which exposes them to the full power of
1982 <application>Privoxy</application>'s ad blocking.
1985 <quote>Content cookies</quote> (those that are embedded in the actual HTML or
1986 JS page content, see <literal><ulink
1987 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</ulink></literal>),
1988 in an SSL transaction will be impossible to block under these conditions.
1989 Fortunately, this does not seem to be a very common scenario since most
1990 cookies come by traditional means.
1995 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
1996 <title id="secure">Privoxy runs as a <quote>server</quote>. How
1997 secure is it? Do I need to take any special precautions?</title>
1999 On Unix-like systems, <application>Privoxy</application> can run as a non-privileged
2000 user, which is how we recommend it be run. Also, by default
2001 <application>Privoxy</application> listens to requests from <quote>localhost</quote>
2005 The server aspect of <application>Privoxy</application> is not itself directly
2006 exposed to the Internet in this configuration. If you want to have
2007 <application>Privoxy</application> serve as a LAN proxy, this will have to
2008 be opened up to allow for LAN requests. In this case, we'd recommend
2009 you specify only the LAN gateway address, e.g. 192.168.1.1, in the main
2010 <application>Privoxy</application> configuration file and check all <ulink
2011 url="../user-manual/config.html#ACCESS-CONTROL">access control and security
2012 options</ulink>. All LAN hosts can then use this as their proxy address
2013 in the browser proxy configuration, but <application>Privoxy</application>
2014 will not listen on any external interfaces. ACLs can be defined in addition,
2015 and using a firewall is always good too. Better safe than sorry.
2020 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="turnoff">
2021 <title>Can I temporarily disable Privoxy?</title>
2023 &my-app; doesn't have a transparent proxy mode,
2024 but you can toggle off blocking and content filtering.
2027 The easiest way to do that is to point your browser
2028 to the remote toggle URL: <ulink
2029 url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>.
2032 See the <ulink url="../user-manual/appendix.html#BOOKMARKLETS">Bookmarklets section</ulink>
2033 of the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> for an easy way to access this
2034 feature. Note that this is a feature that may need to be enabled in the main
2035 <filename>config</filename> file.
2040 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="reallyoff">
2041 <title>When <quote>disabled</quote> is Privoxy totally
2042 out of the picture?</title>
2044 No, this just means all optional filtering and actions are disabled.
2045 <application>Privoxy</application> is still acting as a proxy, but just
2046 doing less of the things that <application>Privoxy</application> would
2047 normally be expected to do. It is still a <quote>middle-man</quote> in
2048 the interaction between your browser and web sites. See below to bypass
2053 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="turnoff2">
2054 <title>How can I tell Privoxy to totally ignore certain sites?</title>
2056 Bypassing a proxy, or proxying based on arbitrary criteria, is purely a browser
2057 configuration issue, not a &my-app; issue. Modern browsers typically do have
2058 settings for not proxying certain sites. Check your browser's help files.
2063 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="crunch">
2064 <title>My logs show Privoxy <quote>crunches</quote>
2065 ads, but also its own internal CGI pages. What is a <quote>crunch</quote>?</title>
2067 A <quote>crunch</quote> simply means <application>Privoxy</application> intercepted
2068 <emphasis>something</emphasis>, nothing more. Often this is indeed ads or
2069 banners, but <application>Privoxy</application> uses the same mechanism for
2070 trapping requests for its own internal pages. For instance, a request for
2071 <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration page at: <ulink
2072 url="http://config.privoxy.org">http://config.privoxy.org</ulink>, is
2073 intercepted (i.e. it does not go out to the 'net), and the familiar CGI
2074 configuration is returned to the browser, and the log consequently will show
2075 a <quote>crunch</quote>.
2078 Since version 3.0.7, Privoxy will also log the crunch reason.
2079 If you are using an older version you might want to upgrade.
2083 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="downloads">
2084 <title>Can Privoxy effect files that I download
2085 from a webserver? FTP server?</title>
2087 From the webserver's perspective, there is no difference between
2088 viewing a document (i.e. a page), and downloading a file. The same is true of
2089 <application>Privoxy</application>. If there is a match for a <literal><ulink
2090 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#BLOCK">block</ulink></literal> pattern,
2091 it will still be blocked, and of course this is obvious.
2094 Filtering is potentially more of a concern since the results are not always
2095 so obvious, and the effects of filtering are there whether the file is simply
2096 viewed, or downloaded. And potentially whether the content is some obnoxious
2097 advertisement, or Mr. Jimmy's latest/greatest source code jewel. Of course,
2098 one of these presumably is <quote>bad</quote> content that we don't want, and
2099 the other is <quote>good</quote> content that we do want.
2100 <application>Privoxy</application> is blind to the differences, and can only
2101 distinguish <quote>good from bad</quote> by the configuration parameters
2102 <emphasis>we</emphasis> give it.
2105 <application>Privoxy</application> knows the differences in files according
2106 to the <quote>Content Type</quote> as reported by the webserver. If this is
2107 reported accurately (e.g. <quote>application/zip</quote> for a zip archive),
2108 then <application>Privoxy</application> knows to ignore these where
2109 appropriate. <application>Privoxy</application> potentially can filter HTML
2110 as well as plain text documents, subject to configuration parameters of
2111 course. Also, documents that are of an unknown type (generally assumed to be
2112 <quote>text/plain</quote>) can be filtered, as will those that might be
2113 incorrectly reported by the webserver. If such a file is a downloaded file
2114 that is intended to be saved to disk, then any content that might have been
2115 altered by filtering, will be saved too, for these (probably rare) cases.
2118 Note that versions later than 3.0.2 do NOT filter document types reported as
2119 <quote>text/plain</quote>. Prior to this, <application>Privoxy</application>
2120 did filter this document type.
2123 In short, filtering is <quote>ON</quote> if a) the content type as reported
2124 by the webserver is appropriate <emphasis>and</emphasis> b) the configuration
2125 allows it (or at least does not disallow it). That's it. There is no magic
2126 cookie anywhere to say this is <quote>good</quote> and this is
2127 <quote>bad</quote>. It's the configuration that lets it all happen or not.
2130 If you download text files, you probably do not want these to be filtered,
2131 particularly if the content is source code, or other critical content. Source
2132 code sometimes might be mistaken for Javascript (i.e. the kind that might
2133 open a pop-up window). It is recommended to turn off filtering for download
2134 sites (particularly if the content may be plain text files and you are using
2135 version 3.0.2 or earlier) in your <filename>user.action</filename> file. And
2136 also, for any site or page where making <emphasis>any</emphasis> changes at
2137 all to the content is to be avoided.
2140 <application>Privoxy</application> does not do FTP at all, only HTTP
2141 and HTTPS (SSL) protocols.
2145 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="downloads2">
2146 <title>I just downloaded a Perl script, and Privoxy
2147 altered it! Yikes, what is wrong!</title>
2153 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="hostsfile">
2154 <title>Should I continue to use a <quote>HOSTS</quote> file for ad-blocking?</title>
2156 One time-tested technique to defeat common ads is to trick the local DNS
2157 system by giving a phony IP address for the ad generator in the local
2158 <filename>HOSTS</filename> file, typically using <literal>127.0.0.1</literal>, aka
2159 <literal>localhost</literal>. This effectively blocks the ad.
2162 There is no reason to use this technique in conjunction with
2163 <application>Privoxy</application>. <application>Privoxy</application>
2164 does essentially the same thing, much more elegantly and with much more
2165 flexibility. A large <filename>HOSTS</filename> file, in fact, not only
2166 duplicates effort, but may get in the way and seriously slow down your system.
2167 It is recommended to remove such entries from your <filename>HOSTS</filename> file. If you think
2168 your hosts list is neglected by <application>Privoxy's </application>
2169 configuration, consider adding your list to your <filename>user.action</filename> file:
2176 ads.galore.example.com
2177 etc.example.com</screen>
2181 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="seealso">
2182 <title>Where can I find more information about Privoxy
2183 and related issues?</title>
2184 <!-- Include seealso.sgml boilerplate: -->
2186 <!-- end boilerplate -->
2191 <ulink url="../user-manual/seealso.html">user-manual</ulink> for
2197 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="microsuck">
2198 <title>I've noticed that Privoxy changes <quote>Microsoft</quote> to
2199 <quote>MicroSuck</quote>! Why are you manipulating my browsing?</title>
2202 We're not. The text substitutions that you are seeing are disabled
2203 in the default configuration as shipped. You have either manually
2204 activated the <quote><literal>fun</literal></quote> filter which
2205 is clearly labeled <quote>Text replacements for subversive browsing
2206 fun!</quote> or you are using an older Privoxy version and have implicitly
2207 activated it by choosing the <quote>Advanced</quote> profile in the
2208 web-based editor. Please upgrade.
2212 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="valid">
2213 <title>Does Privoxy produce <quote>valid</quote> HTML (or XHTML)?</title>
2216 Privoxy generates HTML in both its own <quote>templates</quote>, and possibly
2217 whenever there are text substitutions via a &my-app; filter. While this
2218 should always conform to the HTML 4.01 specifications, it has not been
2219 validated against this or any other standard.
2223 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="surprise-privoxy">
2224 <title>How did you manage to get Privoxy on my computer without my consent?</title>
2227 We didn't. We make Privoxy available for download, but we don't go
2228 around installing it on other people's systems behind their back.
2229 If you discover Privoxy running on your system and are sure you didn't
2230 install it yourself, somebody else did. You may not even be running
2231 the real Privoxy, but maybe something else that only pretends to be
2232 Privoxy, or maybe something that is based on the real Privoxy,
2233 but has been modified.
2236 Lately there have been reports of problems with some kind of
2237 Privoxy versions that come preinstalled on some Netbooks.
2238 Some of the problems described are inconsistent with the behaviour
2239 of official Privoxy versions, which suggests that the preinstalled
2240 software may contain vendor modifications that we don't know about
2241 and thus can't debug.
2244 Privoxy's <link linkend="copyright">license</link> allows vendor
2245 modifications, but the vendor has to comply with the license,
2246 which involves informing the user about the changes and to make
2247 the changes available under the same license as Privoxy itself.
2250 If you are having trouble with a modified Privoxy version,
2251 please try to talk to whoever made the modifications before
2252 reporting the problem to us. Please also try to convince
2253 whoever made the modifications to talk to us. If you think
2254 somebody gave you a modified Privoxy version without complying
2255 to the license, please let us know.
2263 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2265 <sect1 id="trouble">
2266 <title>Troubleshooting</title>
2268 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
2269 <title id="refused">I cannot connect to any websites. Or, I am getting
2270 <quote>connection refused</quote> message with every web page. Why?</title>
2272 There are several possibilities:
2277 <application>Privoxy</application> is not running. Solution: verify
2278 that &my-app; is installed correctly, has not crashed, and is indeed running.
2279 Turn on <application>Privoxy's</application> logging, and look at the logs to see what they say.
2281 <listitem><para>Or your browser is configured for a different port than what
2282 <application>Privoxy</application> is using. Solution: verify that &my-app;
2283 and your browser are set to the same port (<literal>listen-address</literal>).
2285 <listitem><para>Or if using a forwarding rule, you have a configuration problem or a
2286 problem with a host in the forwarding chain. Solution: temporarily alter your
2287 configuration and take the forwarders out of the equation.
2290 Or you have a firewall that is interfering and blocking you. Solution:
2291 try disabling or removing the firewall as a simple test.
2298 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2299 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="error503">
2300 <title>Why am I getting a 503 Error (WSAECONNREFUSED) on every page?</title>
2302 More than likely this is a problem with your TCP/IP networking. ZoneAlarm has
2303 been reported to cause this symptom -- even if not running! The solution is
2304 to either fight the ZA configuration, or uninstall ZoneAlarm, and then find
2305 something better behaved in its place. Other personal firewall type products
2306 may cause similar type problems if not configured correctly.
2310 <sect2 renderas="sect3">
2311 <title id="flushit">I just added a new rule, but the steenkin ad is
2312 still getting through. How?</title>
2314 If the ad had been displayed before you added its URL, it will probably be
2315 held in the browser's cache for some time, so it will be displayed without
2316 the need for any request to the server, and <application>Privoxy</application>
2317 will not be involved. Flush the browser's caches, and then try again.
2321 If this doesn't help, you probably have an error in the rule you
2322 applied. Try pasting the full URL of the offending ad into <ulink
2323 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
2324 and see if it really matches your new rule. Blocking ads is like blocking
2325 spam: a lot of tinkering is required to stay ahead of the game. And
2326 remember you need to block the URL of the ad in question, which may be
2327 entirely different from the site URL itself. Most ads are hosted on different
2328 servers than the main site itself. If you right-click on the ad, you should
2329 be able to get all the relevant information you need. Alternately, you can
2330 find the correct URL by looking at <application>Privoxy's</application> logs
2331 (you may need to enable logging in the main config file if its disabled).
2334 Below is a slightly modified real-life log snippet that originates with one
2335 requested URL: <literal>www.example.com</literal> (name of site was changed
2336 for this example, the number of requests is real). You can see in this the
2337 complexity of what goes into making up this one <quote>page</quote>. There
2338 are eight different domains involved here, with thirty two separate URLs
2339 requested in all, making up all manner of images, Shockwave Flash,
2340 JavaScript, CSS stylesheets, scripts, and other related content. Some of this
2341 content is obviously <quote>good</quote> or <quote>bad</quote>, but not all.
2342 Many of the more questionable looking requests, are going to outside domains
2343 that seem to be identifying themselves with suspicious looking names, making
2344 our job a little easier. &my-app; has <quote>crunched</quote> (meaning caught
2345 and BLOCKED) quite a few items in this example, but perhaps missed a few as well.
2350 Request: www.example.com/
2351 Request: www.example.com/favicon.ico
2352 Request: img.example.com/main.css
2353 Request: img.example.com/sr.js
2354 Request: example.betamarker.com/example.html
2355 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/bestsellers/skyscraper.php?likref=BSellers
2356 Request: img.example.com/pb.png
2357 Request: www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js crunch! (Blocked)
2358 Request: www.advertising-department.com/ats/switch.ps.php?26856 crunch! (Blocked)
2359 Request: img.example.com/p.gif
2360 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/assign.php?l=example&mode=behind crunch! (Blocked)
2361 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/scripts/popup.php?hid=5c3cf&tmpl=PBa.tmpl crunch! (Blocked)
2362 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/assign.php?l=example crunch! (Blocked)
2363 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/best_sellers.css
2364 Request: www.adtrak.net/adx.js crunch! (Blocked)
2365 Request: img.example.com/hbg.gif
2366 Request: img.example.com/example.jpg
2367 Request: img.example.com/mt.png
2368 Request: img.example.com/mm.png
2369 Request: img.example.com/mb.png
2370 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/scripts/popup.php?hid=a71b91fa5&tmpl=Ua.tmp crunch! (Blocked)
2371 Request: www.example.com/tracker.js
2372 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/lsi_head.gif
2373 Request: www.adtrak.net/adjs.php?n=020548130&what=zone:61 crunch! (Blocked)
2374 Request: www.adtrak.net/adjs.php?n=463594413&what=zone:58&source=Ua crunch! (Blocked)
2375 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/bottomani.swf
2376 Request: mmm.elitemediagroup.net/install.php?allowpop=no&popupmincook=0&allowsp2=1 crunch! (Blocked)
2377 Request: www.example.com/tracker.js?screen=1400x1050&win=962x693
2378 Request: www.adtrak.net/adlog.php?bannerid=1309&clientid=439&zoneid=61 crunch! (Blocked)
2379 Request: 66.70.21.80/scripts/click.php?hid=5c3cf599a9efd0320d26&si
2380 Request: 66.70.21.80/img/pixel.gif
2381 Request: www.adtrak.net/adlog.php?bannerid=1309&clientid=439&zoneid=58&source=Ua&block=86400 crunch! (Blocked)
2382 Request: 66.70.21.80/scripts/click.php?hid=a71b9f6504b0c5681fa5&si=Ua
2387 Despite 12 out of 32 requests being blocked, the page looked, and seemed to
2388 behave perfectly <quote>normal</quote> (minus some ads, of course).
2393 <sect2 id="badsite" renderas="sect3">
2394 <title >One of my favorite sites does not work with Privoxy.
2395 What can I do?</title>
2398 First verify that it is indeed a <application>Privoxy</application> problem,
2399 by toggling off <application>Privoxy</application> through <ulink
2400 url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
2401 (the toggle feature may need to be enabled in the main
2402 <filename>config</filename>),
2403 and then shift-reloading the problem page (i.e. holding down the shift key
2404 while clicking reload. Alternatively, flush your browser's disk and memory
2409 If the problem went away, we know we have a configuration related problem.
2411 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
2412 and paste the full URL of the page in question into the prompt. See which
2413 actions are being applied to the URL, and which matches in which actions
2414 files are responsible for that. It might be helpful also to look at your logs
2415 for this site too, to see what else might be happening (note: logging may need
2416 to be enabled in the main config file). Many sites are
2417 complex and require a number of related pages to help present their content.
2418 Look at what else might be used by the page in question, and what of that
2419 might be <emphasis>required</emphasis>.
2420 Now, armed with this information, go to
2422 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
2423 and select the appropriate actions files for editing. </para>
2425 You can now either look for a section which disables the actions that
2426 you suspect to cause the problem and add a pattern for your site there,
2427 or make up a completely new section for your site. In any case, the recommended
2428 way is to disable only the prime suspect, reload the problem page, and only
2429 if the problem persists, disable more and more actions until you have
2430 identified the culprit. You may or may not want to turn the other actions
2431 on again. Remember to flush your browser's caches in between any such changes!
2434 Alternately, if you are comfortable with a text editor, you can accomplish
2435 the same thing by editing the appropriate actions file. Probably the easiest
2436 way to deal with such problems when editing by hand is to add your
2437 site to a <literal>{ fragile }</literal> section in <filename>user.action</filename>,
2438 which is an alias that turns off most <quote>dangerous</quote>
2439 actions, but is also likely to turn off more actions then needed, and thus lower
2440 your privacy and protection more than necessary,
2443 Troubleshooting actions is discussed in more detail in the <ulink
2444 url="../user-manual/appendix.html#ACTIONSANAT">User Manual appendix,
2445 Troubleshooting: the Anatomy of an Action</ulink>.
2446 There is also an <ulink
2447 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACT-EXAMPLES">actions tutorial</ulink>
2448 with general configuration information and examples.
2451 As a last resort, you can always see if your browser has a setting that will
2452 bypass the proxy setting for selective sites. Modern browsers can do this.
2458 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2459 <sect2 id="dun" renderas="sect3">
2460 <title>After installing Privoxy, I have to log in
2461 every time I start IE. What gives?</title>
2464 This is a quirk that effects the installation of
2465 <application>Privoxy</application>, in conjunction with Internet Explorer and
2466 Internet Connection Sharing on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The symptoms may
2467 appear to be corrupted or invalid DUN settings, or passwords.
2471 When setting up an NT based Windows system with
2472 <application>Privoxy</application> you may find that things do not seem to be
2473 doing what you expect. When you set your system up you will probably have set
2474 up Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) with Dial up Networking (DUN) when
2475 logged in with administrator privileges. You will probably have made this DUN
2476 connection available to other accounts that you may have set-up on your
2477 system. E.g. Mum or Dad sets up the system and makes accounts suitably
2478 configured for the kids.
2482 When setting up <application>Privoxy</application> in this environment you
2483 will have to alter the proxy set-up of Internet Explorer (IE) for the
2484 specific DUN connection on which you wish to use
2485 <application>Privoxy</application>. When you do this the ICS DUN set-up
2486 becomes user specific. In this instance you will see no difference if you
2487 change the DUN connection under the account used to set-up the connection.
2488 However when you do this from another user you will notice that the DUN
2489 connection changes to make available to "Me only". You will also find that
2490 you have to store the password under each different user!
2494 The reason for this is that each user's set-up for IE is user specific. Each
2495 set-up DUN connection and each LAN connection in IE store the settings for
2496 each user individually. As such this enforces individual configurations
2497 rather than common ones. Hence the first time you use a DUN connection after
2498 re-booting your system it may not perform as you expect, and prompt you for
2499 the password. Just set and save the password again and all should be OK.
2503 [Thanks to Ray Griffith for this submission.]
2508 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2509 <sect2 id="ftp" renderas="sect3">
2510 <title>I cannot connect to any FTP sites. Privoxy
2511 is blocking me.</title>
2513 <application>Privoxy</application> cannot act as a proxy for FTP traffic,
2514 so do not configure your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application>
2515 as an FTP proxy. The same is true for <emphasis>any protocol other than HTTP
2516 or HTTPS (SSL)</emphasis>.
2519 Most browsers understand FTP as well as HTTP. If you connect to a site, with
2520 a URL like <literal>ftp://ftp.example.com</literal>, your browser is making
2521 an FTP connection, and not a HTTP connection. So while your browser may
2522 speak FTP, <application>Privoxy</application> does not, and cannot proxy
2526 To complicate matters, some systems may have a generic <quote>proxy</quote>
2527 setting, which will enable various protocols, including
2528 <emphasis>both</emphasis> HTTP and FTP proxying! So it is possible to
2529 accidentally enable FTP proxying in these cases. And of course, if this
2530 happens, <application>Privoxy</application> will indeed cause problems since
2531 it does not know FTP. <![%p-newstuff;[Newer version will give a sane error
2532 message if a FTP connection is attempted.]]> Just disable the FTP setting
2533 and all will be well again.
2536 Will <application>Privoxy</application> ever proxy FTP traffic? Unlikely.
2537 There just is not much reason, and the work to make this happen is more than
2542 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2543 <sect2 id="macosxie" renderas="sect3">
2544 <title>In Mac OS X, I can't configure Microsoft Internet Explorer to use
2545 Privoxy as the HTTP proxy.</title>
2547 Microsoft Internet Explorer (in versions like 5.1) respects system-wide
2548 network settings. In order to change the HTTP proxy, open System
2549 Preferences, and click on the Network icon. In the settings pane that
2550 comes up, click on the Proxies tab. Ensure the "Web Proxy (HTTP)" checkbox
2551 is checked and enter <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> in the entry field.
2552 Enter <literal>8118</literal> in the Port field. The next time you start
2553 IE, it should reflect these values.
2557 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2558 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="macosxuninstall">
2559 <title>In Mac OS X, I dragged the Privoxy folder to the trash in order to
2560 uninstall it. Now the finder tells me I don't have sufficient privileges to
2561 empty the trash.</title>
2563 Note: This ONLY applies to privoxy 3.0.6 and earlier.
2566 Just dragging the <application>Privoxy</application> folder to the trash is
2567 not enough to delete it. <application>Privoxy</application> supplies an
2568 <application>uninstall.command</application> file that takes care of
2569 these details. Open the trash, drag the <application>uninstall.command</application>
2570 file out of the trash and double-click on it. You will be prompted for
2571 confirmation and the administration password.
2574 The trash may still appear full after this command; emptying the trash
2575 from the desktop should make it appear empty again.
2580 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2581 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="macosximages">
2582 <title>In Mac OS X Panther (10.3), images often fail to load and/or I
2583 experience random delays in page loading. I'm using
2584 <literal>localhost</literal> as my browser's proxy setting.</title>
2586 We believe this is due to an IPv6-related bug in Mac OS X, but don't fully
2587 understand the issue yet. In any case, changing the proxy setting to
2588 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> instead of <literal>localhost</literal>
2589 works around the problem.
2593 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2594 <!-- XXX: Is this still relevant now that we have gzip support? -->
2595 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="blankpage">
2596 <title>I get a completely blank page at one site. <quote>View Source</quote>
2597 shows only: <markup><![CDATA[<html><body></body></html>]]></markup>. Without
2598 Privoxy the page loads fine.</title>
2600 Chances are that the site suffers from a bug in
2601 <ulink url="http://www.php.net/"><application>PHP</application></ulink>,
2602 which results in empty pages being sent if the client explicitly requests
2603 an uncompressed page, like <application>Privoxy</application> does.
2604 This bug has been fixed in PHP 4.2.3.
2607 To find out if this is in fact the source of the problem, try adding
2608 the site to a <literal>-prevent-compression</literal> section in
2609 <filename>user.action</filename>:
2612 # Make exceptions for ill-behaved sites:
2614 {-prevent-compression}
2615 .example.com</screen>
2617 If that works, you may also want to report the problem to the
2618 site's webmasters, telling them to use zlib.output_compression
2619 instead of ob_gzhandler in their PHP applications (workaround)
2620 or upgrade to PHP 4.2.3 or later (fix).
2624 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="nohostname">
2625 <title>My logs show many <quote>Unable to get my own hostname</quote> lines.
2628 <application>Privoxy</application> tries to get the hostname of the system
2629 its running on from the IP address of the system interface it is bound to
2630 (from the <filename>config</filename> file
2631 <emphasis>listen-address</emphasis> setting). If the system cannot supply
2632 this information, <application>Privoxy</application> logs this condition.
2635 Typically, this would be considered a minor system configuration error. It is
2636 not a fatal error to <application>Privoxy</application> however, but may
2637 result in a much slower response from <application>Privoxy</application> on
2638 some platforms due to DNS timeouts.
2641 This can be caused by a problem with the local <filename>hosts</filename>
2642 file. If this file has been changed from the original, try reverting it to
2643 see if that helps. Make sure whatever name(s) are used for the local system,
2644 that they resolve both ways.
2647 You should also be able to work around the problem with the
2648 <ulink url="../user-manual/config.html#HOSTNAME">hostname option</ulink>.
2652 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="inuse">
2653 <title>When I try to launch Privoxy, I get an
2654 error message <quote>port 8118 is already in use</quote> (or similar wording).
2657 Port 8118 is <application>Privoxy's</application> default TCP
2658 <quote>listening</quote> port. Typically this message would mean that there
2659 is already one instance of <application>Privoxy</application> running, and
2660 your system is actually trying to start a second
2661 <application>Privoxy</application> on the same port, which will not work.
2662 (You can have multiple instances but they must be assigned different ports.)
2663 How and why this might happen varies from platform to platform, but you need
2664 to check your installation and start-up procedures.
2668 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="demoronizer">
2670 Pages with UTF-8 fonts are garbled.
2673 This is caused by the <quote>demoronizer</quote> filter. You should either
2674 upgrade <application>Privoxy</application>, or at least upgrade to the most
2675 recent <filename>default.action</filename> file available from <ulink
2676 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">SourceForge</ulink>.
2677 Or you can simply disable the demoronizer filter.
2681 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="demoronizer2">
2683 Why are binary files (such as images) corrupted when Privoxy
2687 This may also be caused by the <quote>demoronizer</quote> filter,
2688 in conjunction with a web server that is misreporting the content type. Binary
2689 files are exempted from <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering
2690 (unless the web server by mistake says the file is something else). Either
2691 upgrade <application>Privoxy</application>, or go to the most recent
2692 <filename>default.action</filename> file available from <ulink
2693 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">SourceForge</ulink>.
2697 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="demoronizer3">
2699 What is the <quote>demoronizer</quote> and why is it there?
2702 The original demoronizer was a Perl script that cleaned up HTML pages which
2703 were created with certain Microsoft products. MS has used proprietary extensions
2704 to standardized font encodings (ISO 8859-1), which has caused problems for pages
2705 that are viewed with non-Microsoft products (and are expecting to see a
2706 standard set of fonts). The demoronizer corrected these errors so the pages
2707 displayed correctly. <application>Privoxy</application> borrowed from this
2708 script, introducing a filter based on the original demoronizer, which in turn could
2709 correct these errors on the fly.
2712 But this is only needed in some situations, and will cause serious problems in some
2716 If you are using Microsoft products, you do not need it. If you need to view
2717 pages with UTF-8 characters (such as Cyrillic or Chinese), then it will
2718 cause corruption of the fonts, and thus <emphasis>should not be on</emphasis>.
2721 On the other hand, if you use non-Microsoft products, and you occasionally
2722 notice weird characters on pages, you might want to try it.
2726 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="windowopen">
2728 Why do I keep seeing <quote>PrivoxyWindowOpen()</quote> in raw source code?
2731 <application>Privoxy</application> is attempting to disable malicious
2732 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript">Javascript</ulink>
2733 in this case, with the <literal>unsolicited-popups</literal>
2734 filter. <application>Privoxy</application> cannot tell very well
2735 <quote>good</quote> code snippets from <quote>bad</quote> code snippets.
2738 If you see this in HTML source, and the page displays without problems, then
2739 this is good, and likely some pop-up window was disabled. If you see this
2740 where it is causing a problem, such as a downloaded program source code file,
2741 then you should set an exception for this site or page such that the
2742 integrity of the page stays in tact by disabling all filtering.
2746 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="dnserrors">
2748 I am getting too many DNS errors like <quote>404 No Such Domain</quote>. Why
2749 can't Privoxy do this better?
2752 There are potentially several factors here. First of all, the DNS resolution
2753 is done by the underlying operating system -- not
2754 <application>Privoxy</application> itself. <application>Privoxy</application>
2755 merely initiates the process and hands it off, and then later reports
2756 whatever the outcome was and tries to give a coherent message if there seems
2757 to be a problem. In some cases, this might otherwise be mitigated by the
2758 browser itself which might try some work-arounds and alternate approaches (e.g
2759 adding <quote>www.</quote> to the URL).
2762 In other cases, if <application>Privoxy</application> is being chained
2763 with another proxy, this could complicate the issue, and cause undue
2764 delays and timeouts. In the case of a <quote>socks4a</quote> proxy, the socks
2765 server handles all the DNS. <application>Privoxy</application> would just be
2766 the <quote>messenger</quote> which is reporting whatever problem occurred
2767 downstream, and not the root cause of the error.
2771 In any case, versions newer than 3.0.3 include various improvements to help
2772 <application>Privoxy</application> better handle these cases.
2776 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="allcpu">
2778 At one site Privoxy just hangs, and starts taking
2779 all CPU. Why is this?
2782 This is probably a manifestation of the <quote>100% cpu</quote> problem that
2783 occurs on pages containing many (thousands upon thousands) of blank lines. The blank lines
2784 are in the raw HTML source of the page, and the browser just ignores them. But the
2785 pattern matching in <application>Privoxy's</application> page filtering
2786 mechanism is trying to match against absurdly long strings and this becomes
2787 very CPU-intensive, taking a long, long time to complete.
2790 Until a better solution comes along, disable filtering on these pages,
2791 particularly the <literal>js-annoyances</literal> and
2792 <literal>unsolicited-popups</literal> filters. If you run into this problem
2793 with a recent &my-app; version, please send a problem report.
2797 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="slowcrawl">
2798 <title>I just installed Privoxy, and all my
2799 browsing has slowed to a crawl. What gives? </title>
2801 This should not happen, and for the overwhelming number of users world-wide,
2802 it does not happen. I would suspect some inadvertent interaction of software
2803 components such as anti-virus software, spyware protectors, personal
2804 firewalls or similar components. Try disabling (or uninstalling) these one
2805 at a time and see if that helps. Either way, if you are using a
2806 recent &my-app; version, please report the problem.
2810 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="preventcomp">
2811 <title>Why do my filters work on some sites but not on others? </title>
2813 It's probably due to compression. It is a common practice for web servers to
2814 send their content <quote>compressed</quote> in order to speed things up, and
2815 then let the browser <quote>uncompress</quote> them. When compiled with zlib support
2816 &my-app; can decompress content before filtering, otherwise you may want to enable
2818 url="../user-manual/actions-file.html#PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</ulink>.
2821 As of &my-app; 3.0.9, zlib support is enabled in the default builds.
2826 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="ssl-warnings">
2827 <title>On some HTTPS sites my browser warns me about unauthenticated content,
2828 the URL bar doesn't get highlighted and the lock symbol appears to be broken.
2829 What's going on?</title>
2831 Probably the browser is requesting ads through HTTPS and &my-app;
2832 is blocking the requests. Privoxy's error messages are delivered
2833 unencrypted and while it's obvious for the browser that the HTTPS
2834 request is already blocked by the proxy, some warn about unauthenticated
2838 To work around the problem you can redirect those requests to an invalid
2839 local address instead of blocking them. While the redirects aren't
2840 encrypted either, many browsers don't care. They simply follow the
2841 redirect, fail to reach a server and display an error message instead
2845 To do that, enable logging to figure out which requests get blocked by
2846 &my-app; and add the hosts (no path patterns) to a section like this:
2851 {+redirect{http://127.0.0.1:0/} -block -limit-connect}
2857 Additionally you have to configure your browser to contact
2858 <quote>127.0.0.1:0</quote> directly (instead of through &my-app;).
2861 To add a proxy exception in <application>Mozilla Firefox</application>
2862 open the <quote>Preferences</quote>, click the <quote>Settings</quote>
2863 button located on the <quote>Network</quote> tab in the <quote>Advanced</quote>
2864 section, and add <quote>127.0.0.1:0</quote> in the <quote>No Proxy for:</quote>
2870 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="se-linux">
2871 <title>I get selinux error messages. How can I fix this?</title>
2873 Please report the problem to the creator of your selinux policies.
2876 The problem is that some selinux policy writers aren't familiar
2877 with the application they are trying to <quote>secure</quote> and
2878 thus create policies that make no sense.
2881 In <application>Privoxy's</application> case the problem usually
2882 is that the policy only allows outgoing connections for certain
2883 destination ports (e.g. 80 and 443). While this may cover the
2884 standard ports, websites occasionally use other ports as well.
2885 This isn't a security problem and therefore <application>Privoxy's</application>
2886 default configuration doesn't block these requests.
2889 If you really want to block these ports (and don't be able
2890 to load websites that don't use standard ports), you should
2891 configure Privoxy to block these ports as well, so it doesn't
2892 trigger the selinux warnings.
2897 <sect2 renderas="sect3" id="gentoo-ricers">
2898 <title>I compiled &my-app; with Gentoo's portage and it appears to be very slow. Why?</title>
2900 Probably you unintentionally compiled &my-app; without threading support
2901 in which case requests have to be serialized and only one can be served
2905 Check your <quote>USE</quote> flags and make sure they include
2906 <quote>threads</quote>. If they don't, add the flag and rebuild &my-app;.
2909 If you compiled &my-app; with threading support (on POSIX-based systems),
2910 the <quote>Conditional #defines</quote> section on <ulink
2911 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
2912 will list <quote>FEATURE_PTHREAD</quote> as <quote>enabled</quote>.
2919 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2920 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests</title>
2921 <!-- Include contacting.sgml -->
2923 <!-- end contacting -->
2926 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2927 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Privoxy Copyright, License and History</title>
2929 <!-- Include copyright.sgml -->
2935 Portions of this document are <quote>borrowed</quote> from the original
2936 <application>Junkbuster</application> (tm) FAQ, and modified as
2937 appropriate for <application>Privoxy</application>.
2940 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2941 <sect2><title>License</title>
2942 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
2944 <!-- end copyright -->
2946 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2948 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2949 <sect2><title>History</title>
2950 <!-- Include history.sgml -->
2956 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2959 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2961 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See also</title>
2963 <!-- Include seealso.sgml -->
2974 Tue 09/11/01 06:38:14 PM EST: Test SGML doc by Hal Burgiss.
2976 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
2977 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
2978 Public License as published by the Free Software
2979 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
2980 your option) any later version.
2982 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
2983 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
2984 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
2985 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
2986 License for more details.
2988 The GNU General Public License should be included with
2989 this file. If not, you can view it at
2990 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
2991 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
2992 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
2995 Revision 2.85 2011/12/26 17:05:40 fabiankeil
2996 Bump entities for 3.0.19
2998 Revision 2.84 2011/11/13 17:03:54 fabiankeil
2999 Bump entities for 3.0.18 stable
3001 Revision 2.83 2011/11/13 16:53:24 fabiankeil
3002 Rephrase the donations section some more
3004 Mention that the domain is now sponsored by Mythic Beasts Ltd
3005 and make it clear that asking questions about donations is
3008 Revision 2.82 2011/11/13 16:50:34 fabiankeil
3009 Note that donations for Privoxy are currently only tax-deductible in the US
3011 As it turns out tax-deductible donations in a few other western
3012 countries are theoretically possible through partner organizations
3013 but aren't available out of the box.
3015 Revision 2.81 2011/09/04 11:10:12 fabiankeil
3016 Ditch trailing whitespace
3018 Revision 2.80 2011/08/18 11:42:50 fabiankeil
3019 Bump some more documentation copyright ranges.
3021 Revision 2.79 2011/08/17 10:40:07 fabiankeil
3022 Update the entities.
3024 This commit is chronological out of order.
3026 Revision 2.78 2011/04/19 13:14:10 fabiankeil
3027 Fix spelling errors in the documentation. Found with codespell.
3029 Revision 2.77 2011/03/03 14:22:12 fabiankeil
3030 Remove duplicated 'the'
3032 Revision 2.76 2010/11/22 10:35:02 fabiankeil
3033 Mention socks5 in another part of the Tor section.
3035 Revision 2.75 2010/11/13 10:08:00 fabiankeil
3036 Fix a link to the 'intercepting' entry and add another one
3038 Revision 2.74 2010/11/13 10:07:46 fabiankeil
3039 Remove the product names in the 'otherproxy' entry's title.
3041 I'm tired of getting the 'otherproxy' entry as first hit
3042 when searching the index for the Tor FAQ.
3044 Revision 2.73 2010/11/06 12:55:48 fabiankeil
3045 Set p-version to 3.0.17
3047 Revision 2.72 2010/02/27 12:13:17 fabiankeil
3050 Revision 2.71 2010/02/27 12:12:13 fabiankeil
3051 Consistently recommending socks5 in the Tor entry and mention its advantage compared to socks4a.
3052 Reported by David in #2960129.
3054 Revision 2.70 2010/02/20 18:08:31 ler762
3057 Revision 2.69 2010/02/13 17:38:27 fabiankeil
3058 Update entities for 3.0.16 stable.
3060 Revision 2.68 2010/01/30 19:51:28 fabiankeil
3061 New FAQ entry: How did you manage to get Privoxy on my computer without my consent?
3063 Also bump copyright.
3065 Revision 2.67 2009/11/15 14:24:12 fabiankeil
3066 Prepare to generate docs for 3.0.16 UNRELEASED.
3068 Revision 2.66 2009/10/10 05:48:55 fabiankeil
3069 Prepare for 3.0.15 beta.
3071 Revision 2.65 2009/07/18 16:24:39 fabiankeil
3072 Bump entities for 3.0.14 beta.
3074 Revision 2.64 2009/07/18 12:18:52 fabiankeil
3075 Don't describe the action files in the FAQ when we can simply link to the description in the User Manual.
3077 Revision 2.63 2009/06/15 15:08:03 fabiankeil
3078 Patch #2806626 from Frédéric Crozat to fix a closing tag.
3080 Revision 2.62 2009/06/12 14:30:58 fabiankeil
3081 Update entities for 3.0.13 beta.
3083 Revision 2.61 2009/06/12 11:52:33 fabiankeil
3084 Mention the TODO list in the participate entry.
3086 Revision 2.60 2009/04/07 12:25:05 fabiankeil
3087 In the "I would like to help ..." entry:
3088 - Change the ids to more general ones as helping out doesn't require
3089 joining the team (and joining the team requires significantly helping
3091 - Add links to the subscription pages for the main mailing lists.
3093 Revision 2.59 2009/03/28 15:33:41 fabiankeil
3094 Recommend the use of forward-socks5 when forwarding to Tor.
3095 The error messages are more detailed than with forward-socks4a.
3097 Revision 2.58 2009/03/21 12:27:44 fabiankeil
3098 Turn the donation entry title into a question,
3099 also rephrase the content a bit.
3101 Revision 2.57 2009/03/19 19:07:49 fabiankeil
3102 First draft of a "Donating" entry. To be polished tomorrow.
3104 Revision 2.56 2009/02/19 17:05:05 fabiankeil
3105 Explain slowness when build with Gentoo's portage.
3107 Revision 2.55 2009/02/19 02:20:21 hal9
3108 Make some links in seealso conditional. Man page is now privoxy only links.
3110 Revision 2.54 2009/02/15 20:47:12 hal9
3113 Revision 2.53 2009/02/15 20:46:13 hal9
3114 Update Outlook HTML rendering engine comments re: Office 2007.
3116 Revision 2.52 2009/02/14 10:27:52 fabiankeil
3117 Finish last paragraph in the selinux entry which
3118 I unintentionally committed with the last commit.
3120 Revision 2.51 2009/02/12 16:08:26 fabiankeil
3121 Declare the code stable.
3123 Revision 2.50 2009/02/11 18:13:36 fabiankeil
3126 Revision 2.49 2009/02/10 16:30:20 fabiankeil
3127 Add a workaround for "unauthenticated content" warnings on HTTPS sites.
3129 Revision 2.48 2009/01/13 16:50:35 fabiankeil
3130 The standard.action file is gone.
3132 Revision 2.47 2008/11/24 18:29:39 fabiankeil
3133 Two changes suggested by Roger Dingledine:
3134 - Use https://www.torproject.org/ in section 4.7, too.
3135 - Replace the Tor wiki URL in section 4.10 with one
3136 with a more useful anchor name.
3138 Revision 2.46 2008/08/30 15:37:35 fabiankeil
3141 Revision 2.45 2008/08/16 08:51:28 fabiankeil
3142 Update version-related entities.
3144 Revision 2.44 2008/06/19 01:41:36 hal9
3145 Add short note about zlib being enabled in 3.0.9
3147 Revision 2.43 2008/06/14 13:21:25 fabiankeil
3148 Prepare for the upcoming 3.0.9 beta release.
3150 Revision 2.42 2008/06/07 13:11:15 fabiankeil
3151 - Note that the "100% cpu problem" is worth
3152 reporting if it happens with a recent release.
3153 - Mention the hostname option as a workaround for
3154 the "can't get my own hostname" issue.
3155 - The profile formerly known as "Adventuresome"
3156 is called "Advanced" now.
3157 - Some white-space fixes.
3159 Revision 2.41 2008/06/06 15:32:09 fabiankeil
3161 - Don't claim that all the old Junkbuster features remain.
3162 Some of them have been removed or replaced with better ones.
3164 Revision 2.40 2008/02/22 05:54:27 markm68k
3165 updates for mac os x
3167 Revision 2.39 2008/02/03 21:37:41 hal9
3168 Apply patch from Mark: s/OSX/OS X/
3170 Revision 2.38 2008/01/19 17:52:39 hal9
3171 Re-commit to fix various minor issues for new release.
3173 Revision 2.37 2008/01/19 15:03:05 hal9
3174 Doc sources tagged for 3.0.8 release.
3176 Revision 2.36 2008/01/17 01:49:51 hal9
3177 Change copyright notice for docs s/2007/2008/. All these will be rebuilt soon
3180 Revision 2.35 2007/11/19 17:57:59 fabiankeil
3181 A bunch of rewordings, minor updates and fixes.
3183 Revision 2.34 2007/11/19 02:38:11 hal9
3184 Minor revisions and rebuild
3186 Revision 2.33 2007/11/15 03:30:20 hal9
3187 Results of spell check.
3189 Revision 2.32 2007/11/13 03:03:42 hal9
3190 Various changes to reflect new features and revised configuration for the
3193 Revision 2.31 2007/11/05 02:34:53 hal9
3194 Various changes in preparation for the upcoming release. Much yet to be done.
3196 Revision 2.30 2007/11/04 15:16:40 hal9
3199 Revision 2.29 2007/11/04 15:12:47 hal9
3200 Various minor adjustments.
3202 Revision 2.28 2007/10/27 15:14:16 fabiankeil
3203 Change Tor links to use the new domain torproject.org.
3205 Revision 2.27 2007/10/22 19:47:05 fabiankeil
3206 - Bump version and copyright.
3207 - Adjust Tor section to make it clear that forward exceptions
3208 aren't required and may not even be desired.
3209 - A bunch of other minor rewordings.
3210 - Fix markup problems Roland noticed (hopefully without adding new ones).
3212 Revision 2.26 2007/08/05 15:37:55 fabiankeil
3213 - Don't claim that thousands of people read our code.
3214 - Specify the GPL version and link to GPLv2 instead of v3.
3215 - Note that configuration syntax may change between releases.
3216 - Mention zlib support.
3217 - Answer the "transparent proxy" question properly.
3218 - Add "intercepting proxy" entry.
3220 - Rephrase some other sentences for various reasons.
3222 Revision 2.25 2007/07/18 11:00:34 hal9
3223 Add misc note about valid mark-up in Privoxy.
3225 Revision 2.24 2006/11/14 01:57:46 hal9
3226 Dump all docs prior to 3.0.6 release. Various minor changes to faq and user
3229 Revision 2.23 2006/10/21 22:19:52 hal9
3230 Two new FAQs, a rewrite or two, and some touch ups.
3232 Revision 2.22 2006/10/14 20:33:10 hal9
3233 Three new FAQ's re: templates and blocking, and various minor touch-ups/improvements.
3235 Revision 2.21 2006/10/03 14:40:51 fabiankeil
3236 Added links from the Tor faq to the
3237 configuration chapter in the User Manual.
3239 Revision 2.20 2006/09/26 10:12:37 fabiankeil
3242 Revision 2.19 2006/09/22 10:54:32 hal9
3243 Change references to 3.0.4 to 3.0.5 and minor adjustments.
3245 Revision 2.18 2006/09/22 01:27:55 hal9
3246 Final commit of probably various minor changes here and there. Unless
3247 something changes this should be ready for pending release.
3249 Revision 2.17 2006/09/17 14:56:32 hal9
3250 This includes yet several more new FAQs, some improved wording, enhanced
3251 mark-up, various hyper links to wikipedia to explain key terminology to the
3252 uninitiated, etc. This is ready for release IMO pending final tagging of cvs
3253 and Privoxy version stamping.
3255 Revision 2.16 2006/09/10 15:30:46 hal9
3258 Revision 2.15 2006/09/08 23:05:07 hal9
3259 Fix broken links. Add faq on hosts files. Move most of new windows service
3260 feature to user manual and reference in faq. Various other small changes.
3262 Revision 2.14 2006/09/05 13:25:12 david__schmidt
3263 Add Windows service invocation stuff (duplicated) in FAQ and in user manual under Windows startup. One probably ought to reference the other.
3265 Revision 2.13 2006/09/04 19:20:33 fabiankeil
3266 Adjusted anonymity related sections to match reality.
3267 Added a section about using Privoxy with Tor.
3269 Revision 2.12 2006/09/03 14:15:30 hal9
3270 Various updates, including 7 or 8 new FAQs, and updates/changes to various
3271 other ones to better reflect improvements, additions and changes for the
3272 upcoming release. This is close to final form for 3.0.4 IMHO.
3274 Revision 2.11 2006/07/18 14:48:50 david__schmidt
3275 Reorganizing the repository: swapping out what was HEAD (the old 3.1 branch)
3276 with what was really the latest development (the v_3_0_branch branch)
3278 Revision 1.61.2.41 2004/04/05 13:44:05 oes
3279 Fixed allow-all-cookies alias name; closes SR #929746
3281 Revision 1.61.2.40 2004/01/30 17:00:33 oes
3282 Added Mac OS X Panther problem
3284 Revision 1.61.2.39 2004/01/29 22:53:08 hal9
3285 Minor changes for exempting docs of text/plain. Change copyright date.
3287 Revision 1.61.2.38 2003/12/10 03:39:45 hal9
3288 Added FAQs for: demoronizer, related problems and why its included. Also,
3289 port 8118 already in use questions, and PrivoxyWindowOpen() questions. All in
3290 troubleshooting section.
3292 Revision 1.61.2.37 2003/10/17 11:01:50 oes
3293 Added Q&A for "not being used" page problem
3295 Revision 1.61.2.36 2003/06/26 23:49:20 hal9
3296 More on the filter/source code problem.
3298 Revision 1.61.2.35 2003/06/26 13:38:08 hal9
3299 Add FAQ on whether configuring Privoxy is necessary or not.
3301 Revision 1.61.2.34 2003/06/26 03:00:03 hal9
3302 Sorry, found another copyright date.
3304 Revision 1.61.2.33 2003/06/26 02:57:05 hal9
3305 Fix typo (finally!) and very minor modifications.
3307 Revision 1.61.2.32 2003/06/26 02:52:04 hal9
3310 Revision 1.61.2.31 2003/06/25 01:27:51 hal9
3311 Fix copyright, and a few nits.
3313 Revision 1.61.2.30 2003/06/25 01:13:52 hal9
3316 - FAQ on "Unable to get my own hostname"
3317 - Another one on filtering effects on text files.
3319 Revision 1.61.2.29 2003/06/15 21:32:58 hal9
3320 Add to the 4.17 (filtering effects on downloaded files).
3322 Revision 1.61.2.28 2003/03/18 19:37:21 oes
3323 s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
3325 Revision 1.61.2.27 2002/12/01 06:31:58 hal9
3326 Add faq on win32 error 503 due to ZoneAlarm.
3328 Revision 1.61.2.26 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
3329 Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
3332 Revision 1.61.2.25 2002/10/29 03:21:50 hal9
3333 Add 3 Q/A's relating to HTML in email. Other minor touchups.
3335 Revision 1.61.2.24 2002/10/15 12:50:22 oes
3336 s/Advanced/Radical/ (stupid me)
3338 Revision 1.61.2.23 2002/10/15 12:38:56 oes
3339 Added Microsuck faq; more detail for PHP problem
3341 Revision 1.61.2.22 2002/10/12 01:13:13 hal9
3342 Updates for demoronizer, more commentary on Radical profile, and update on
3343 the srvany.exe/icon fix.
3345 Revision 1.61.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
3346 s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
3348 Revision 1.61.2.20 2002/09/26 01:22:45 hal9
3349 Small additions for LAN setup, content-cookies/SSL, and FTP non-support.
3351 Revision 1.61.2.19 2002/08/25 23:31:56 hal9
3352 Fix one grammatical error. Add brief FAQ relating to tranparent proxies (ie
3353 port 80 setting). Add FAQ on effects of Privoxy on downloaded files
3354 (especially filtering).
3356 Revision 1.61.2.18 2002/08/14 16:39:37 hal9
3357 Fix wrong tag on FAQ addition.
3359 Revision 1.61.2.17 2002/08/14 00:01:18 hal9
3362 Revision 1.61.2.16 2002/08/13 00:10:38 hal9
3363 Add faq to troubleshooting re: blank page syndrome, ie {-prevent-compression}.
3365 Revision 1.61.2.15 2002/08/10 11:34:22 oes
3366 Add disclaimer about probably being out-of-date
3368 Revision 1.61.2.14 2002/08/07 02:53:43 hal9
3369 Fix some minor markup errors, and move one Mac OS X Q/A to troubleshooting section.
3371 Revision 1.61.2.13 2002/08/06 11:55:32 oes
3372 Added missing close tag
3374 Revision 1.61.2.12 2002/08/06 11:43:46 david__schmidt
3375 Updated Mac OS X uninstall FAQ... we have an uninstall script now.
3377 Revision 1.61.2.11 2002/08/06 08:54:03 oes
3378 Style police: Fixed formatting details
3380 Revision 1.61.2.10 2002/08/02 14:00:25 david__schmidt
3381 Made the Mac OS X removal commands far less dangerous
3383 Revision 1.61.2.9 2002/08/02 13:14:45 oes
3384 Added warning about sudo rm -r for Mac OS X deinstallation; moved this item to install section
3386 Revision 1.61.2.8 2002/08/02 02:01:42 david__schmidt
3387 Add FAQ item for MSIE on Mac OS X HTTP proxy confusion
3389 Revision 1.61.2.7 2002/08/02 01:46:01 david__schmidt
3390 Added FAQ item for Mac OS X uninstall woes
3392 Revision 1.61.2.6 2002/07/30 20:04:56 hal9
3393 Fix typo: 'schould'.
3395 Revision 1.61.2.5 2002/07/26 15:22:58 oes
3396 - Updated to reflect changes in standard.action
3397 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
3399 Revision 1.61.2.4 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
3400 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
3402 Revision 1.61.2.3 2002/06/09 16:36:33 hal9
3403 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
3405 Revision 1.61.2.2 2002/06/06 02:51:34 hal9
3406 Fix typo in URL http:/config.privoxy.org
3408 Revision 1.61.2.1 2002/06/05 23:10:43 hal9
3409 Add new FAQ re: DUN/IE. Change release date from May to June :)
3411 Revision 1.61 2002/05/25 12:37:25 hal9
3412 Various minor changes and edits.
3414 Revision 1.60 2002/05/22 17:17:48 oes
3415 Proofread & added more links into u-m
3417 Revision 1.59 2002/05/15 04:03:30 hal9
3418 Fix ulink -> link markup.
3420 Revision 1.58 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
3421 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
3422 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
3423 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
3425 Revision 1.57 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
3426 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
3428 Revision 1.56 2002/05/04 08:44:44 swa
3431 Revision 1.55 2002/05/04 00:41:56 hal9
3432 -Remove TOC/first page kludge in favor of proper handling via dsl file.
3434 Revision 1.54 2002/05/03 05:06:44 hal9
3435 Add brief Q/A on transparent proxies.
3437 Revision 1.53 2002/05/03 01:34:52 hal9
3438 Fix section numbering for new sections (due to TOC kludge).
3440 Revision 1.52 2002/04/29 03:08:43 hal9
3441 -Added new Q/A on new actions file set up (pointer to u-m)
3442 -Fixed a few broken links and converted old actions as a result of
3445 Revision 1.51 2002/04/26 17:24:31 swa
3446 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
3448 Revision 1.50 2002/04/26 05:25:23 hal9
3449 Mass commit to catch a few scattered fixes.
3451 Revision 1.49 2002/04/12 10:10:18 swa
3454 Revision 1.48 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
3457 Revision 1.47 2002/04/10 04:05:32 hal9
3460 Revision 1.45 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
3461 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
3463 Revision 1.44 2002/04/07 21:24:29 hal9
3464 Touch up on name change.
3466 Revision 1.43 2002/04/04 21:59:53 hal9
3467 Added NT/W2K service/icon situation.
3469 Revision 1.42 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
3470 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
3472 Revision 1.41 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
3473 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
3474 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
3475 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
3476 eventually be set by Makefile.
3477 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
3479 Revision 1.40 2002/04/03 04:22:03 hal9
3480 Fixed several typos.
3482 Revision 1.39 2002/04/03 03:53:03 hal9
3483 Revert some changes, and then make some news, to layout, and appearance.
3485 Revision 1.38 2002/04/02 03:49:10 hal9
3486 Major changes to doc structure and layout. Sections are not automatically
3487 numbered now. TOC is on page by itself.
3489 Revision 1.37 2002/04/01 16:24:07 hal9
3490 -Rework of supported Q/A.
3491 -Set up entities to include boilerplate text.
3493 Revision 1.36 2002/03/31 23:18:47 hal9
3494 More on dealing with BLOCKED.
3496 Revision 1.35 2002/03/30 04:14:19 hal9
3497 Fix privoxy.org/config links.
3499 Revision 1.34 2002/03/29 04:35:56 hal9
3502 Revision 1.33 2002/03/29 01:31:48 hal9
3503 Several new Q/A's and other touch ups.
3505 Revision 1.32 2002/03/27 00:57:03 hal9
3506 Touch ups for name change.
3508 Revision 1.31 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
3509 we have a new homepage!
3511 Revision 1.30 2002/03/25 16:39:22 hal9
3512 A few new sections. Made all links relative to user-manual.
3514 Revision 1.29 2002/03/25 05:23:57 hal9
3515 Moved section, and touch ups.
3517 Revision 1.28 2002/03/25 04:27:33 hal9
3518 New section related to name change.
3520 Revision 1.25 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
3521 we are too lazy to make a block-built
3522 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
3524 Revision 1.24 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
3525 name change related issue.
3527 Revision 1.23 2002/03/24 12:33:01 swa
3530 Revision 1.22 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
3531 name change. changed filenames.
3533 Revision 1.21 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
3536 Revision 1.20 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
3537 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
3538 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
3539 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
3540 comments and remarks to history untouched.
3542 Revision 1.19 2002/03/21 17:01:54 hal9
3545 Revision 1.18 2002/03/18 16:40:31 hal9
3548 Revision 1.17 2002/03/18 03:53:53 hal9
3551 Revision 1.16 2002/03/17 21:32:56 hal9
3552 A few more additions.
3554 Revision 1.15 2002/03/17 07:25:59 hal9
3555 Correcting some of my typos, and some additions.
3557 Revision 1.14 2002/03/17 02:39:13 hal9
3558 A little more added ...
3560 Revision 1.13 2002/03/17 00:22:20 hal9
3561 Adding new stuff, and trying to incorporate stuff from old faq.
3563 Revision 1.12 2002/03/11 20:13:21 swa
3566 Revision 1.11 2002/03/11 18:42:27 swa
3569 Revision 1.10 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
3570 correct feedback channels
3572 Revision 1.9 2002/03/10 23:34:04 swa
3573 more info on not hiding ip address
3575 Revision 1.8 2002/03/09 15:55:48 swa
3576 added default config section
3578 Revision 1.7 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
3581 Revision 1.6 2002/03/07 13:16:31 oes
3582 Committing changes by Stefan
3584 Revision 1.5 2002/03/02 15:50:04 swa
3585 2.9.11 version. more input for docs.
3587 Revision 1.4 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
3588 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
3589 will work - no other changes are needed.
3591 Revision 1.3 2001/09/23 10:13:48 swa
3592 upload process established. run make webserver and
3593 the documentation is moved to the webserver. documents
3594 are now linked correctly.
3596 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:20:17 swa
3597 merged standards into developer manual
3599 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
3600 source files for junkbuster documentation
3602 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
3603 first proposal of a structure.
3605 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
3606 docs should have an author.
3608 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
3609 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.