1 <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN" [
2 <!entity % dummy "IGNORE">
3 <!entity supported SYSTEM "supported.sgml">
4 <!entity newfeatures SYSTEM "newfeatures.sgml">
5 <!entity p-intro SYSTEM "privoxy.sgml">
6 <!entity seealso SYSTEM "seealso.sgml">
7 <!entity buildsource SYSTEM "buildsource.sgml">
8 <!entity contacting SYSTEM "contacting.sgml">
9 <!entity history SYSTEM "history.sgml">
10 <!entity copyright SYSTEM "copyright.sgml">
11 <!entity license SYSTEM "license.sgml">
12 <!entity p-authors SYSTEM "p-authors.sgml">
13 <!entity config SYSTEM "p-config.sgml">
14 <!entity p-version "3.0.11">
15 <!entity p-status "stable">
16 <!entity % p-authors-formal "INCLUDE"> <!-- include additional text, etc -->
17 <!entity % p-not-stable "IGNORE">
18 <!entity % p-stable "INCLUDE">
19 <!entity % p-text "IGNORE"> <!-- define we are not a text only doc -->
20 <!entity % p-doc "INCLUDE"> <!-- and we are a formal doc -->
21 <!entity % p-readme "IGNORE">
22 <!entity % user-man "IGNORE">
23 <!entity % config-file "IGNORE">
24 <!entity % p-supp-userman "IGNORE"> <!-- Omit some from supported.sgml -->
25 <!entity my-copy "©"> <!-- kludge for docbook2man -->
26 <!entity % draft "IGNORE"> <!-- WIP stuff -->
27 <!entity my-app "<application>Privoxy</application>">
30 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml,v $
33 This file belongs into
34 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
36 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.97 2009/02/14 18:01:00 fabiankeil Exp $
38 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Privoxy Developers http://www.privoxy.org/
41 ========================================================================
42 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
43 anything in this, or other Privoxy documentation.
44 ========================================================================
51 <title>Privoxy &p-version; User Manual</title>
55 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
56 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
57 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001-2009 by
58 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
62 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.97 2009/02/14 18:01:00 fabiankeil Exp $</pubdate>
66 Note: the following should generate a separate page, and a live link to it,
67 all nicely done. But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave
68 commented unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the
69 copyright/license declarations will be in their own sgml.
82 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
83 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
84 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
90 The <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> gives users information on how to
91 install, configure and use <ulink
92 url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy</ulink>.
95 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
97 <!-- end privoxy.sgml -->
100 You can find the latest version of the <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> at <ulink
101 url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>.
102 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> on how to
103 contact the developers.
107 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
113 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
114 <sect1 label="1" id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
116 This documentation is included with the current &p-status; version of
117 <application>Privoxy</application>, v.&p-version;<![%p-not-stable;[,
118 and is mostly complete at this point. The most up to date reference for the
119 time being is still the comments in the source files and in the individual
120 configuration files. Development of a new version is currently nearing
121 completion, and includes significant changes and enhancements over
122 earlier versions. ]]>.
125 <!-- include only in non-stable versions -->
128 Since this is a &p-status; version, not all new features are well tested. This
129 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with
130 CVS sources). And there <emphasis>may be</emphasis> bugs, though hopefully
135 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
136 <sect2 id="features"><title>Features</title>
138 In addition to the core
139 features of ad blocking and
140 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookie</ulink> management,
141 <application>Privoxy</application> provides many supplemental
142 features<![%p-not-stable;[, some of them currently under development]]>,
143 that give the end-user more control, more privacy and more freedom:
145 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml boilerplate here: -->
147 <!-- end boilerplate -->
152 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
155 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
156 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
159 <application>Privoxy</application> is available both in convenient pre-compiled
160 packages for a wide range of operating systems, and as raw source code.
161 For most users, we recommend using the packages, which can be downloaded from our
162 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Project
168 On some platforms, the installer may remove previously installed versions, if
169 found. (See below for your platform). In any case <emphasis>be sure to backup
170 your old configuration if it is valuable to you.</emphasis> See the <link
171 linkend="upgradersnote">note to upgraders</link> section below.
174 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
175 <sect2 id="installation-packages"><title>Binary Packages</title>
177 How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
180 <!-- XXX: The installation sections should be sorted -->
182 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
183 <sect3 id="installation-pack-rpm"><title>Red Hat and Fedora RPMs</title>
186 RPMs can be installed with <literal>rpm -Uvh privoxy-&p-version;-1.rpm</literal>,
187 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location
188 of configuration files.
192 Note that on Red Hat, <application>Privoxy</application> will
193 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be automatically started on system boot. You will
194 need to enable that using <command>chkconfig</command>,
195 <command>ntsysv</command>, or similar methods.
199 If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM:
200 <literal>rpm --rebuild privoxy-&p-version;-1.src.rpm</literal>. This
201 will use your locally installed libraries and RPM version.
205 Also note that if you have a <application>Junkbuster</application> RPM installed
206 on your system, you need to remove it first, because the packages conflict.
207 Otherwise, RPM will try to remove <application>Junkbuster</application>
208 automatically if found, before installing <application>Privoxy</application>.
212 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
213 <sect3 id="installation-deb"><title>Debian and Ubuntu</title>
215 DEBs can be installed with <literal>apt-get install privoxy</literal>,
216 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location of
221 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
222 <sect3 id="installation-pack-win"><title>Windows</title>
225 Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through
226 the installation process. You will find the configuration files
227 in the same directory as you installed <application>Privoxy</application> in.
230 Version 3.0.5 beta introduced full <application>Windows</application> service
231 functionality. On Windows only, the <application>Privoxy</application>
232 program has two new command line arguments to install and uninstall
233 <application>Privoxy</application> as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>.
237 <term>Arguments:</term>
240 <replaceable class="parameter">--install</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
243 <replaceable class="parameter">--uninstall</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
249 After invoking <application>Privoxy</application> with
250 <command>--install</command>, you will need to bring up the
251 <application>Windows</application> service console to assign the user you
252 want <application>Privoxy</application> to run under, and whether or not you
253 want it to run whenever the system starts. You can start the
254 <application>Windows</application> services console with the following
255 command: <command>services.msc</command>. If you do not take the manual step
256 of modifying <application>Privoxy's</application> service settings, it will
257 not start. Note too that you will need to give Privoxy a user account that
258 actually exists, or it will not be permitted to
259 write to its log and configuration files.
264 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
265 <sect3 id="installation-pack-bintgz"><title>Solaris <!--, NetBSD, HP-UX--></title>
268 Create a new directory, <literal>cd</literal> to it, then unzip and
269 untar the archive. For the most part, you'll have to figure out where
270 things go. <!-- FIXME, more info needed? -->
274 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
275 <sect3 id="installation-os2"><title>OS/2</title>
278 First, make sure that no previous installations of
279 <application>Junkbuster</application> and / or
280 <application>Privoxy</application> are left on your
281 system. Check that no <application>Junkbuster</application>
282 or <application>Privoxy</application> objects are in
288 Then, just double-click the WarpIN self-installing archive, which will
289 guide you through the installation process. A shadow of the
290 <application>Privoxy</application> executable will be placed in your
291 startup folder so it will start automatically whenever OS/2 starts.
295 The directory you choose to install <application>Privoxy</application>
296 into will contain all of the configuration files.
300 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
301 <sect3 id="installation-mac"><title>Mac OS X</title>
303 Unzip the downloaded file (you can either double-click on the zip file
304 icon from the Finder, or from the desktop if you downloaded it there).
305 Then, double-click on the package installer icon and follow the
306 installation process.
309 The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful
310 installation (in addition to every time your computer starts up). To
311 prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your
312 computer starts up, remove or rename the folder named
313 <literal>/Library/StartupItems/Privoxy</literal>.
316 To manually start or stop the privoxy service, use the Privoxy Utility
317 for Mac OS X. This application controls the privoxy service (e.g.
318 starting and stopping the service as well as uninstalling the software).
322 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
323 <sect3 id="installation-amiga"><title>AmigaOS</title>
325 Copy and then unpack the <filename>lha</filename> archive to a suitable location.
326 All necessary files will be installed into <application>Privoxy</application>
327 directory, including all configuration and log files. To uninstall, just
328 remove this directory.
332 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
333 <sect3 id="installation-tbz"><title>FreeBSD</title>
336 Privoxy is part of FreeBSD's Ports Collection, you can build and install
337 it with <literal>cd /usr/ports/www/privoxy; make install clean</literal>.
340 If you don't use the ports, you can fetch and install
341 the package with <literal>pkg_add -r privoxy</literal>.
344 The port skeleton and the package can also be downloaded from the
345 <ulink url="https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118">File Release
346 Page</ulink>, but there's no reason to use them unless you're interested in the
347 beta releases which are only available there.
351 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
352 <sect3 id="installattion-gentoo"><title>Gentoo</title>
354 Gentoo source packages (Ebuilds) for <application>Privoxy</application> are
355 contained in the Gentoo Portage Tree (they are not on the download page,
356 but there is a Gentoo section, where you can see when a new
357 <application>Privoxy</application> Version is added to the Portage Tree).
360 Before installing <application>Privoxy</application> under Gentoo just do
361 first <literal>emerge --sync</literal> to get the latest changes from the
362 Portage tree. With <literal>emerge privoxy</literal> you install the latest
366 Configuration files are in <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename>, the
367 documentation is in <filename>/usr/share/doc/privoxy-&p-version;</filename>
368 and the Log directory is in <filename>/var/log/privoxy</filename>.
374 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
375 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Building from Source</title>
378 The most convenient way to obtain the <application>Privoxy</application> sources
379 is to download the source tarball from our
380 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&package_id=10571">project download
385 If you like to live on the bleeding edge and are not afraid of using
386 possibly unstable development versions, you can check out the up-to-the-minute
387 version directly from <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=11118">the
388 CVS repository</ulink>.
390 deprecated...out of business.
391 or simply download <ulink
392 url="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/ijbswa-cvsroot.tar.bz2">the nightly CVS
397 <!-- include buildsource.sgml boilerplate: -->
399 <!-- end boilerplate -->
402 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
403 <sect2 id="installation-keepupdated"><title>Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date</title>
405 As user feedback comes in and development continues, we will make updated versions
406 of both the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link> (as a <ulink
407 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&release_id=103670">separate
408 package</ulink>) and the software itself (including the actions file) available for
413 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
414 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
415 url="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-announce/">subscribe
416 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
420 In order not to lose your personal changes and adjustments when updating
421 to the latest <literal>default.action</literal> file we <emphasis>strongly
422 recommend</emphasis> that you use <literal>user.action</literal> and
423 <literal>user.filter</literal> for your local
424 customizations of <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
425 linkend="actions-file">Chapter on actions files</link> for details.
433 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
435 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
436 <sect1 id="whatsnew">
437 <title>What's New in this Release</title>
439 There are only a few improvements and new features since
440 <application>Privoxy 3.0.10</application>, the last stable release:
447 On most platforms, outgoing connections can be kept alive and
448 reused if the server supports it. Whether or not this improves
449 things depends on the connection.
454 When dropping privileges, membership in supplementary groups
455 is given up as well. Not doing that can lead to Privoxy running
456 with more rights than necessary and violates the principle of
457 least privilege. Users of the --user option are advised to update.
458 Thanks to Matthias Drochner for reporting the problem,
459 providing the initial patch and testing the final version.
464 Passing invalid users or groups with the --user option
465 didn't lead to program exit. Regression introduced in 3.0.7.
470 The match all section has been moved from default.action
471 to a new file called match-all.action. As a result the
472 default.action no longer needs to be touched by the user
473 and can be safely overwritten by updates.
478 The standard.action file has been removed. Its content
479 is now part of the default.action file.
484 In some situations the logged content length was slightly too low.
489 Crunched requests are logged with their own log level.
490 If you used "debug 1" in the past, you'll probably want
491 to additionally enable "debug 1024", otherwise only passed
492 requests will be logged. If you only care about crunched
493 requests, simply replace "debug 1" with "debug 1024".
498 The crunch reason has been moved to the beginning of the
499 crunch message. For HTTP URLs, the protocol is logged as well.
504 Log messages are shortened by printing the thread id on its
505 own (as opposed to putting it inside the string "Privoxy()").
510 The config option socket-timeout has been added to control
511 the time Privoxy waits for data to arrive on a socket.
516 Support for remote toggling is controlled by the configure
517 option --disable-toggle only. In previous versions it also
518 depended on the action editor and thus configuring with the
519 --disable-editor option would disable remote toggling support
525 Requests with invalid HTTP versions are rejected.
530 The template symbol @date@ can be used to include a date(1)-like
531 time string. Initial patch submitted by Endre Szabo.
536 Responses from shoutcast servers are accepted again.
537 Problem reported and fix suggested by Stefan.
542 The hide-forwarded-for-headers action has been replaced with
543 the change-x-forwarded-for{} action which can also be used to
544 add X-Forwarded-For headers. The latter functionality already
545 existed in Privoxy versions prior to 3.0.7 but has been removed
546 as it was often used unintentionally (by not using the
547 hide-forwarded-for-headers action).
552 A "clear log" view option was added to the mingw32 version
553 to clear out all of the lines in the Privoxy log window.
554 Based on a patch submitted by T Ford.
559 The mingw32 version uses "critical sections" now, which prevents
560 log message corruption under load. As a side effect, the
561 "no thread-safe PRNG" warning could be removed as well.
566 The mingw32 version's task bar icon is crossed out and
567 the color changed to gray if Privoxy is toggled off.
574 For a more detailed list of changes please have a look at the ChangeLog.
577 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
579 <sect2 id="upgradersnote">
580 <title>Note to Upgraders</title>
583 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier
584 versions of <application>Privoxy</application>:
592 The recommended way to upgrade &my-app; is to backup your old
593 configuration files, install the new ones, verify that &my-app;
594 is working correctly and finally merge back your changes using
595 <application>diff</application> and maybe <application>patch</application>.
598 There are a number of new features in each &my-app; release and
599 most of them have to be explicitly enabled in the configuration
600 files. Old configuration files obviously don't do that and due
601 to syntax changes using old configuration files with a new
602 &my-app; isn't always possible anyway.
607 Note that some installers remove earlier versions completely,
608 including configuration files, therefore you should really save
609 any important configuration files!
614 On the other hand, other installers don't overwrite existing configuration
615 files, thinking you will want to do that yourself.
620 <filename>standard.action</filename> has been merged into
621 the <filename>default.action</filename> file.
626 In the default configuration only fatal errors are logged now.
627 You can change that in the <link linkend="DEBUG">debug section</link>
628 of the configuration file. You may also want to enable more verbose
629 logging until you verified that the new &my-app; version is working
636 Three other config file settings are now off by default:
637 <link linkend="enable-remote-toggle">enable-remote-toggle</link>,
638 <link linkend="enable-remote-http-toggle">enable-remote-http-toggle</link>,
639 and <link linkend="enable-edit-actions">enable-edit-actions</link>.
640 If you use or want these, you will need to explicitly enable them, and
641 be aware of the security issues involved.
648 What constitutes a <quote>default</quote> configuration has changed,
649 and you may want to review which actions are <quote>on</quote> by
650 default. This is primarily a matter of emphasis, but some features
651 you may have been used to, may now be <quote>off</quote> by default.
652 There are also a number of new actions and filters you may want to
653 consider, most of which are not fully incorporated into the default
654 settings as yet (see above).
661 The default actions setting is now <literal>Cautious</literal>. Previous
662 releases had a default setting of <literal>Medium</literal>. Experienced
663 users may want to adjust this, as it is fairly conservative by &my-app;
664 standards and past practices. See <ulink
665 url="http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default">
666 http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default</ulink>. New users
667 should try the default settings for a while before turning up the volume.
673 The default setting has filtering turned <emphasis>off</emphasis>, which
674 subsequently means that compression is <emphasis>on</emphasis>. Remember
675 that filtering does not work on compressed pages, so if you use, or want to
676 use, filtering, you will need to force compression off. Example:
680 { +<link linkend="filter">filter</link>{google} +<link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link> }
684 Or if you use a number of filters, or filter many sites, you may just want
685 to turn off compression for all sites in
686 <filename>default.action</filename> (or
687 <filename>user.action</filename>).
694 Also, <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> is
695 off by default now. If you've liked this feature in the past, you may want
696 to turn it back on in <filename>user.action</filename> now.
703 Some installers may not automatically start
704 <application>Privoxy</application> after installation.
715 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
716 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using Privoxy</title>
722 Install <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
723 linkend="installation">Installation Section</link> below for platform specific
730 Advanced users and those who want to offer <application>Privoxy</application>
731 service to more than just their local machine should check the <link
732 linkend="config">main config file</link>, especially the <link
733 linkend="access-control">security-relevant</link> options. These are
740 Start <application>Privoxy</application>, if the installation program has
741 not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
742 <link linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link>.
748 Set your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application> as HTTP and
749 HTTPS (SSL) <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>
750 by setting the proxy configuration for address of
751 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> and port <literal>8118</literal>.
752 <emphasis>DO NOT</emphasis> activate proxying for <literal>FTP</literal> or
753 any protocols besides HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) unless you intend to prevent your
754 browser from using these protocols.
760 Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad images.
761 If using <application>Privoxy</application> to manage
762 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
763 you should remove any currently stored cookies too.
769 A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for
770 most. There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
771 configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little
772 to no initial configuration is required in most cases, you may want
774 <ulink url="config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">web-based action editor</ulink> though.
775 Be sure to read the warnings first.
778 See the <link linkend="configuration">Configuration section</link> for more
779 configuration options, and how to customize your installation.
780 You might also want to look at the <link
781 linkend="quickstart-ad-blocking">next section</link> for a quick
782 introduction to how <application>Privoxy</application> blocks ads and
789 If you experience ads that slip through, innocent images that are
790 blocked, or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune
791 <application>Privoxy's</application> behavior, take a look at the <link
792 linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>. As a quick start, you might
793 find the <link linkend="act-examples">richly commented examples</link>
794 helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files through the <ulink
795 url="http://config.privoxy.org">web-based user interface</ulink>. The
796 Appendix <quote><link linkend="actionsanat">Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an
797 Action</link></quote> has hints on how to understand and debug actions that
798 <quote>misbehave</quote>.
803 Did anyone test these lately?
807 For easy access to &my-app;'s most important controls, drag the provided
808 <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklets</link> into your browser's
816 Please see the section <link linkend="contact">Contacting the
817 Developers</link> on how to report bugs, problems with websites or to get
824 Now enjoy surfing with enhanced control, comfort and privacy!
832 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
834 <sect2 id="quickstart-ad-blocking">
835 <title>Quickstart to Ad Blocking</title>
837 NOTE: This section is deliberately redundant for those that don't
838 want to read the whole thing (which is getting lengthy).
841 Ad blocking is but one of <application>Privoxy's</application>
842 array of features. Many of these features are for the technically minded advanced
843 user. But, ad and banner blocking is surely common ground for everybody.
846 This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so
847 you can get up to speed quickly without having to read the more extensive
848 information provided below, though this is highly recommended.
851 First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the
852 more aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block
853 things that were not intended. And the more likely that some things
854 may not work as intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want
855 extreme ad free browsing, be prepared to deal with more
856 <quote>problem</quote> sites, and to spend more time adjusting the
857 configuration to solve these unintended consequences. In short, there is
858 not an easy way to eliminate <emphasis>all</emphasis> ads. Either take
859 the easy way and settle for <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads blocked with the
860 default configuration, or jump in and tweak it for your personal surfing
861 habits and preferences.
864 Secondly, a brief explanation of <application>Privoxy's </application>
865 <quote>actions</quote>. <quote>Actions</quote> in this context, are
866 the directives we use to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to perform
867 some task relating to HTTP transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell
868 <application>Privoxy</application> to take some <quote>action</quote>. Each
869 action has a unique name and function. While there are many potential
870 <application>actions</application> in <application>Privoxy's</application>
871 arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking. <link
872 linkend="actions">Actions</link>, and <link linkend="actions-file">action
873 configuration files</link>, are explained in depth below.
876 Actions are specified in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
877 followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
878 can actually be URL type <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> that use
879 wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs. The
880 actions, together with the URL patterns are called a section.
883 When you connect to a website, the full URL will either match one or more
884 of the sections as defined in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
885 or not. If so, then <application>Privoxy</application> will perform the
886 respective actions. If not, then nothing special happens. Furthermore, web
887 pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web browser will
888 use to load additional components of the page, as it parses the
889 original page's HTML content. An ad image for instance, is just an URL
890 embedded in the page somewhere. The image itself may be on the same server,
891 or a server somewhere else on the Internet. Complex web pages will have many
892 such embedded URLs. &my-app; can deal with each URL individually, so, for
893 instance, the main page text is not touched, but images from such-and-such
898 The most important actions for basic ad blocking are: <literal><link
899 linkend="block">block</link></literal>, <literal><link
900 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
902 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal>,and
903 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>:
911 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> - this is perhaps
912 the single most used action, and is particularly important for ad blocking.
913 This action stops any contact between your browser and any URL patterns
914 that match this action's configuration. It can be used for blocking ads,
915 but also anything that is determined to be unwanted. By itself, it simply
916 stops any communication with the remote server and sends
917 <application>Privoxy</application>'s own built-in BLOCKED page instead to
918 let you now what has happened (with some exceptions, see below).
924 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> -
925 tells <application>Privoxy</application> to treat this URL as an image.
926 <application>Privoxy</application>'s default configuration already does this
927 for all common image types (e.g. GIF), but there are many situations where this
928 is not so easy to determine. So we'll force it in these cases. This is particularly
929 important for ad blocking, since only if we know that it's an image of
930 some kind, can we replace it with an image of our choosing, instead of the
931 <application>Privoxy</application> BLOCKED page (which would only result in
932 a <quote>broken image</quote> icon). There are some limitations to this
933 though. For instance, you can't just brute-force an image substitution for
934 an entire HTML page in most situations.
940 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> -
941 sends an empty document instead of <application>Privoxy's</application>
942 normal BLOCKED HTML page. This is useful for file types that are neither
943 HTML nor images, such as blocking JavaScript files.
950 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> - tells
951 <application>Privoxy</application> what to display in place of an ad image that
952 has hit a block rule. For this to come into play, the URL must match a
953 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action somewhere in the
954 configuration, <emphasis>and</emphasis>, it must also match an
955 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action.
958 The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
962 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad
963 replacement is obvious. This is the default.
968 <emphasis>blank</emphasis> - A very small empty GIF image is displayed.
969 This is the so-called <quote>invisible</quote> configuration option.
974 <emphasis>http://<URL></emphasis> - A redirect to any image anywhere
975 of the user's choosing (advanced usage).
984 Advanced users will eventually want to explore &my-app;
985 <literal><link linkend="filter">filters</link></literal> as well. Filters
986 are very different from <literal><link
987 linkend="block">blocks</link></literal>.
988 A <quote>block</quote> blocks a site, page, or unwanted contented. Filters
989 are a way of filtering or modifying what is actually on the page. An example
990 filter usage: a text replacement of <quote>no-no</quote> for
991 <quote>nasty-word</quote>. That is a very simple example. This process can be
992 used for ad blocking, but it is more in the realm of advanced usage and has
993 some pitfalls to be wary off.
997 The quickest way to adjust any of these settings is with your browser through
998 the special <application>Privoxy</application> editor at <ulink
999 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1000 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>). This
1001 is an internal page, and does not require Internet access.
1005 Note that as of <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.7 beta the
1006 action editor is disabled by default. Check the
1007 <ulink url="config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions
1008 section in the configuration file</ulink> to learn why and in which
1009 cases it's safe to enable again.
1013 If you decided to enable the action editor, select the appropriate
1014 <quote>actions</quote> file, and click
1015 <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>. It is best to put personal or
1016 local preferences in <filename>user.action</filename> since this is not
1017 meant to be overwritten during upgrades, and will over-ride the settings in
1018 other files. Here you can insert new <quote>actions</quote>, and URLs for ad
1019 blocking or other purposes, and make other adjustments to the configuration.
1020 <application>Privoxy</application> will detect these changes automatically.
1024 A quick and simple step by step example:
1032 Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select
1033 <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote> from the
1041 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1046 Find <filename>user.action</filename> in the top section, and click
1047 on <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>:
1050 <!-- image of editor and actions files selections -->
1052 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Actions Files in Use</title>
1055 <imagedata fileref="files-in-use.jpg" format="jpg">
1058 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Actions Files in Use ]</phrase>
1067 You should have a section with only
1068 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> listed under
1069 <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1070 If not, click a <quote><guibutton>Insert new section below</guibutton></quote>
1071 button, and in the new section that just appeared, click the
1072 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button right under the word <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1073 This will bring up a list of all actions. Find
1074 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> near the top, and click
1075 in the <quote>Enabled</quote> column, then <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote>
1076 just below the list.
1081 Now, in the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> actions section,
1082 click the <quote><guibutton>Add</guibutton></quote> button, and paste the URL the
1083 browser got from <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote>.
1084 Remove the <literal>http://</literal> at the beginning of the URL. Then, click
1085 <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote> (or
1086 <quote><guibutton>OK</guibutton></quote> if in a pop-up window).
1091 Now go back to the original page, and press <keycap>SHIFT-Reload</keycap>
1092 (or flush all browser caches). The image should be gone now.
1100 This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
1101 wildcard pattern match to include potentially similar images from the same
1102 site. For a more extensive explanation of <quote>patterns</quote>, and
1103 the entire actions concept, see <link linkend="actions-file">the Actions
1108 For advanced users who want to hand edit their config files, you might want
1109 to now go to the <link linkend="act-examples">Actions Files Tutorial</link>.
1110 The ideas explained therein also apply to the web-based editor.
1113 There are also various
1114 <link linkend="filter">filters</link> that can be used for ad blocking
1115 (filters are a special subset of actions). These
1116 fall into the <quote>advanced</quote> usage category, and are explained in
1117 depth in later sections.
1124 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1127 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1128 <sect1 id="startup">
1129 <title>Starting Privoxy</title>
1131 Before launching <application>Privoxy</application> for the first time, you
1132 will want to configure your browser(s) to use
1133 <application>Privoxy</application> as a HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)
1134 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>. The default is
1135 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions
1136 used port 8000). This is the one configuration step <emphasis>that must be done
1140 Please note that <application>Privoxy</application> can only proxy HTTP and
1141 HTTPS traffic. It will not work with FTP or other protocols.
1144 <!-- image of Mozilla Proxy configuration -->
1146 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1147 Mozilla/Netscape HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) Settings</title>
1150 <imagedata fileref="proxy_setup.jpg" format="jpg">
1153 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Mozilla Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1161 With <application>Firefox</application>, this is typically set under:
1165 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Network</guibutton> -><guibutton>Connection</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Settings</guibutton>
1170 Or optionally on some platforms:
1174 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>General</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connection Settings</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Manual Proxy Configuration</guibutton>
1180 With <application>Netscape</application> (and
1181 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under:
1186 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
1187 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
1188 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Proxies</guibutton> -> <guibutton>HTTP Proxy</guibutton>
1193 For <application>Internet Explorer v.5-7</application>:
1197 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Internet Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connections</guibutton> -> <guibutton>LAN Settings</guibutton>
1201 Then, check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info
1202 (Address: 127.0.0.1, Port: 8118). Include HTTPS (SSL), if you want HTTPS
1203 proxy support too (sometimes labeled <quote>Secure</quote>). Make sure any
1204 checkboxes like <quote>Use the same proxy server for all protocols</quote> is
1205 <emphasis>UNCHECKED</emphasis>. You want only HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)!
1208 <!-- image of IE Proxy configuration -->
1210 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1211 Internet Explorer HTTP and HTTPS (Secure) Settings</title>
1214 <imagedata fileref="proxy2.jpg" format="jpg">
1217 <phrase>[ Screenshot of IE Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1225 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
1226 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. Remove
1227 any <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
1228 if you want <application>Privoxy</application> to manage that. You are now
1229 ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
1230 <application>Privoxy</application>!
1234 <application>Privoxy</application> itself is typically started by specifying the
1235 main configuration file to be used on the command line. If no configuration
1236 file is specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application>
1237 will look for a file named <filename>config</filename> in the current
1238 directory. Except on Win32 where it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>.
1241 <sect2 id="start-redhat">
1242 <title>Red Hat and Fedora</title>
1244 A default Red Hat installation may not start &my-app; upon boot. It will use
1245 the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1250 # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
1258 # service privoxy start
1263 <sect2 id="start-debian">
1264 <title>Debian</title>
1266 We use a script. Note that Debian typically starts &my-app; upon booting per
1267 default. It will use the file
1268 <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1273 # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1278 <sect2 id="start-windows">
1279 <title>Windows</title>
1281 Click on the &my-app; Icon to start <application>Privoxy</application>. If no configuration file is
1282 specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application> will look
1283 for a file named <filename>config.txt</filename>. Note that Windows will
1284 automatically start &my-app; when the system starts if you chose that option
1288 <application>Privoxy</application> can run with full Windows service functionality.
1289 On Windows only, the &my-app; program has two new command line arguments
1290 to install and uninstall &my-app; as a service. See the
1291 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Windows Installation
1292 instructions</link> for details.
1296 <sect2 id="start-unices">
1297 <title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others</title>
1299 Example Unix startup command:
1303 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
1308 <sect2 id="start-os2">
1311 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
1312 start automatically when the system restarts. You can start it manually by
1313 double-clicking on the <application>Privoxy</application> icon in the
1314 <application>Privoxy</application> folder.
1318 <sect2 id="start-macosx">
1319 <title>Mac OS X</title>
1321 After downloading the privoxy software, unzip the downloaded file by
1322 double-clicking on the zip file icon. Then, double-click on the
1323 installer package icon and follow the installation process.
1326 The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful
1327 installation. In addition, the privoxy service will automatically
1328 start every time your computer starts up.
1331 To prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your
1332 computer starts up, remove or rename the folder named
1333 /Library/StartupItems/Privoxy.
1336 A simple application named Privoxy Utility has been created which
1337 enables administrators to easily start and stop the privoxy service.
1340 In addition, the Privoxy Utility presents a simple way for
1341 administrators to edit the various privoxy config files. A method
1342 to uninstall the software is also available.
1345 An administrator username and password must be supplied in order for
1346 the Privoxy Utility to perform any of the tasks.
1351 <sect2 id="start-amigaos">
1352 <title>AmigaOS</title>
1354 Start <application>Privoxy</application> (with RUN <>NIL:) in your
1355 <filename>startnet</filename> script (AmiTCP), in
1356 <filename>s:user-startup</filename> (RoadShow), as startup program in your
1357 startup script (Genesis), or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx).
1358 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically quit when you quit your
1359 TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack may display that
1360 <application>Privoxy</application> is still running).
1364 <sect2 id="start-gentoo">
1365 <title>Gentoo</title>
1367 A script is again used. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config
1368 </filename> as its main configuration file.
1372 /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1376 Note that <application>Privoxy</application> is not automatically started at
1377 boot time by default. You can change this with the <literal>rc-update</literal>
1382 rc-update add privoxy default
1390 See the section <link linkend="cmdoptions">Command line options</link> for
1394 must find a better place for this paragraph
1397 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
1398 point. Most of the per site configuration is done in the
1399 <ulink url="actions-file.html"><quote>actions</quote></ulink> files. These are
1400 where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking, and other
1401 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. There are several
1402 such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.
1406 You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites for which you may prefer
1407 persistent cookies, and add these to your actions configuration as needed. By
1408 default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser
1409 session (aka <quote>session cookies</quote>), unless you add them to the
1410 configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will need
1411 to edit <filename>user.action</filename> (or through the web based interface)
1412 and disable this feature. If you use more than one browser, it would make
1413 more sense to let <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which
1414 case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
1418 Another feature where you will probably want to define exceptions for trusted
1419 sites is the popup-killing (through <ulink
1420 url="actions-file.html#FILTER-POPUPS"><quote>+filter{popups}</quote></ulink>),
1421 because your favorite shopping, banking, or leisure site may need
1422 popups (explained below).
1426 <application>Privoxy</application> does not support all of the optional HTTP/1.1
1427 features yet. In the unlikely event that you experience inexplicable problems
1428 with browsers that use HTTP/1.1 per default
1429 (like <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.), you might
1430 try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look under <literal>Edit ->
1431 Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
1432 Alternatively, set the <quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote> config option in
1433 <filename>default.action</filename> which will downgrade your browser's HTTP
1434 requests from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0 before processing them.
1438 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
1439 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
1440 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
1441 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote>
1442 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
1443 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1444 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1445 and then follow the link to <quote>View & Change the Current Configuration</quote>.
1446 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
1450 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
1451 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
1452 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
1453 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
1454 to a given URL. In addition to the actions file
1455 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
1456 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> (toggled) from this page.
1460 If you encounter problems, try loading the page without
1461 <application>Privoxy</application>. If that helps, enter the URL where
1462 you have the problems into <ulink url="http://p.p/show-url-info">the browser
1463 based rule tracing utility</ulink>. See which rules apply and why, and
1464 then try turning them off for that site one after the other, until the problem
1465 is gone. When you have found the culprit, you might want to turn the rest on
1470 If the above paragraph sounds gibberish to you, you might want to <link
1471 linkend="actions-file">read more about the actions concept</link>
1472 or even dive deep into the <link linkend="actionsanat">Appendix
1477 If you can't get rid of the problem at all, think you've found a bug in
1478 Privoxy, want to propose a new feature or smarter rules, please see the
1479 section <link linkend="contact"><quote>Contacting the
1480 Developers</quote></link> below.
1485 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1486 <sect2 id="cmdoptions">
1487 <title>Command Line Options</title>
1489 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
1490 command-line options:
1498 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
1501 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
1506 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
1509 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
1514 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
1517 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
1518 leader, and don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
1523 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
1526 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
1527 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failure to create or delete the
1528 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
1529 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
1534 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
1537 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
1538 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
1539 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
1544 <emphasis>--chroot</emphasis>
1547 Before changing to the user ID given in the <emphasis>--user</emphasis> option,
1548 chroot to that user's home directory, i.e. make the kernel pretend to the &my-app;
1549 process that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
1550 the impact of possible vulnerabilities in &my-app; to the files contained in that hierarchy.
1556 <emphasis>--pre-chroot-nslookup hostname</emphasis>
1559 Specifies a hostname to look up before doing a chroot. On some systems, initializing the
1560 resolver library involves reading config files from /etc and/or loading additional shared
1561 libraries from /lib. On these systems, doing a hostname lookup before the chroot reduces
1562 the number of files that must be copied into the chroot tree.
1565 For fastest startup speed, a good value is a hostname that is not in /etc/hosts but that
1566 your local name server (listed in /etc/resolv.conf) can resolve without recursion
1567 (that is, without having to ask any other name servers). The hostname need not exist,
1568 but if it doesn't, an error message (which can be ignored) will be output.
1574 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
1577 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
1578 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
1579 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
1580 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
1581 full path to avoid confusion. If no config file is found,
1582 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
1590 On <application>MS Windows</application> only there are two additional
1591 command-line options to allow <application>Privoxy</application> to install and
1592 run as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>. See the
1593 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Window Installation section</link>
1601 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1604 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1605 <sect1 id="configuration"><title>Privoxy Configuration</title>
1607 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is stored
1608 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
1609 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
1610 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
1614 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1617 <title>Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser</title>
1619 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface can be reached through the special
1620 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1621 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1622 which is a built-in page and works without Internet access.
1623 You will see the following section:
1627 <!-- Needs to be put in a table and colorized -->
1630 <bridgehead renderas="sect2"> Privoxy Menu</bridgehead>
1634 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View & change the current configuration</ulink>
1637 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">View the source code version numbers</ulink>
1640 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">View the request headers.</ulink>
1643 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">Look up which actions apply to a URL and why</ulink>
1646 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">Toggle Privoxy on or off</ulink>
1649 ▪ <ulink
1650 url="http://www.privoxy.org/&p-version;/user-manual/">Documentation</ulink>
1658 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
1659 <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, which is where the ad, banner,
1660 cookie, and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
1661 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
1662 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
1663 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
1667 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
1668 have problems with your current actions and filters. You can in fact use
1669 it as a test to see whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
1670 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
1671 to run as a proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e.
1672 <application>Privoxy</application> acts like a normal forwarding proxy. There
1673 is even a toggle <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklet</link> offered, so
1674 that you can toggle <application>Privoxy</application> with one click from
1679 Note that several of the features described above are disabled by default
1680 in <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.7 beta and later.
1682 <ulink url="config.html">configuration file</ulink> to learn why
1683 and in which cases it's safe to enable them again.
1688 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1693 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1695 <sect2 id="confoverview">
1696 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
1698 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
1699 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
1700 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
1701 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. <![%p-not-stable;[ The name
1702 and number of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
1703 subject to change as development progresses.]]>
1707 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though
1708 some settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the
1709 principle configuration files are:
1717 The <link linkend="config">main configuration file</link> is named <filename>config</filename>
1718 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
1719 on Windows. This is a required file.
1725 <filename>match-all.action</filename> is used to define which <quote>actions</quote>
1726 relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups, content modification, cookie handling
1727 etc should be applied by default. It should be the first actions file loaded.
1730 <filename>default.action</filename> defines many exceptions (both positive and negative)
1731 from the default set of actions that's configured in <filename>match-all.action</filename>.
1732 It should be the second actions file loaded and shouldn't be edited by the user.
1735 Multiple actions files may be defined in <filename>config</filename>. These
1736 are processed in the order they are defined. Local customizations and locally
1737 preferred exceptions to the default policies as defined in
1738 <filename>match-all.action</filename> (which you will most probably want
1739 to define sooner or later) are best applied in <filename>user.action</filename>,
1740 where you can preserve them across upgrades. The file isn't installed by all
1741 installers, but you can easily create it yourself with a text editor.
1744 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from
1746 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1748 url="http://p.p/show-status">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>) for the
1749 various actions files.
1755 <quote>Filter files</quote> (the <link linkend="filter-file">filter
1756 file</link>) can be used to re-write the raw page content, including
1757 viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript, and whatever else
1758 lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only pre-defined here;
1759 whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
1760 <filename>default.filter</filename> includes various filters made
1761 available for use by the developers. Some are much more intrusive than
1762 others, and all should be used with caution. You may define additional
1763 filter files in <filename>config</filename> as you can with
1764 actions files. We suggest <filename>user.filter</filename> for any
1765 locally defined filters or customizations.
1773 The syntax of the configuration and filter files may change between different
1774 Privoxy versions, unfortunately some enhancements cost backwards compatibility.
1775 <!-- Add link to documentation-->
1779 All files use the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a
1780 comment (the rest of the line will be ignored) and understand line continuation
1781 through placing a backslash ("<literal>\</literal>") as the very last character
1782 in a line. If the <literal>#</literal> is preceded by a backslash, it looses
1783 its special function. Placing a <literal>#</literal> in front of an otherwise
1784 valid configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
1785 out" that line. Blank lines are ignored.
1789 The actions files and filter files
1790 can use Perl style <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> for
1791 maximum flexibility.
1795 After making any changes, there is no need to restart
1796 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
1797 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> detects such changes
1798 automatically. Note, however, that it may take one or two additional
1799 requests for the change to take effect. When changing the listening address
1800 of <application>Privoxy</application>, these <quote>wake up</quote> requests
1801 must obviously be sent to the <emphasis>old</emphasis> listening address.
1806 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
1807 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
1808 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
1809 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
1815 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1818 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1820 <!-- **************************************************** -->
1821 <!-- Include config.sgml here -->
1822 <!-- This is where the entire config file is detailed. -->
1824 <!-- end include -->
1827 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1831 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1833 <sect1 id="actions-file"><title>Actions Files</title>
1837 XXX: similar descriptions are in the Configuration Files sections.
1838 We should only describe them at one place.
1841 The actions files are used to define what <emphasis>actions</emphasis>
1842 <application>Privoxy</application> takes for which URLs, and thus determines
1843 how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
1844 transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof).
1845 There are a number of such actions, with a wide range of functionality.
1846 Each action does something a little different.
1847 These actions give us a veritable arsenal of tools with which to exert
1848 our control, preferences and independence. Actions can be combined so that
1849 their effects are aggregated when applied against a given set of URLs.
1853 are three action files included with <application>Privoxy</application> with
1860 <filename>match-all.action</filename> - is used to define which
1861 <quote>actions</quote> relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups,
1862 content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default.
1863 It should be the first actions file loaded
1868 <filename>default.action</filename> - defines many exceptions (both
1869 positive and negative) from the default set of actions that's configured
1870 in <filename>match-all.action</filename>. It is a set of rules that should
1871 work reasonably well as-is for most users. This file is only supposed to
1872 be edited by the developers. It should be the second actions file loaded.
1877 <filename>user.action</filename> - is intended to be for local site
1878 preferences and exceptions. As an example, if your ISP or your bank
1879 has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
1880 thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
1885 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Cautious</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Medium</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Advanced</guibutton>
1888 These have increasing levels of aggressiveness <emphasis>and have no
1889 influence on your browsing unless you select them explicitly in the
1890 editor</emphasis>. A default installation should be pre-set to
1891 <literal>Cautious</literal>. New users should try this for a while before
1892 adjusting the settings to more aggressive levels. The more aggressive
1893 the settings, then the more likelihood there is of problems such as sites
1894 not working as they should.
1897 The <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button allows you to turn each
1898 action on/off individually for fine-tuning. The <guibutton>Cautious</guibutton>
1899 button changes the actions list to low/safe settings which will activate
1900 ad blocking and a minimal set of &my-app;'s features, and subsequently
1901 there will be less of a chance for accidental problems. The
1902 <guibutton>Medium</guibutton> button sets the list to a medium level of
1903 other features and a low level set of privacy features. The
1904 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> button sets the list to a high level of
1905 ad blocking and medium level of privacy. See the chart below. The latter
1906 three buttons over-ride any changes via with the
1907 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button. More fine-tuning can be done in the
1908 lower sections of this internal page.
1911 While the actions file editor allows to enable these settings in all
1912 actions files, they are only supposed to be enabled in the first one
1913 to make sure you don't unintentionally overrule earlier rules.
1916 The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
1917 <filename>default.action</filename> are:
1920 <table frame=all><title>Default Configurations</title>
1921 <tgroup cols=4 align=left colsep=1 rowsep=1>
1922 <colspec colname=c1>
1923 <colspec colname=c2>
1924 <colspec colname=c3>
1925 <colspec colname=c4>
1928 <entry>Feature</entry>
1929 <entry>Cautious</entry>
1930 <entry>Medium</entry>
1931 <entry>Advanced</entry>
1936 <!-- <entry>f1</entry> -->
1937 <!-- <entry>f2</entry> -->
1938 <!-- <entry>f3</entry> -->
1939 <!-- <entry>f4</entry> -->
1945 <entry>Ad-blocking Aggressiveness</entry>
1946 <entry>medium</entry>
1952 <entry>Ad-filtering by size</entry>
1959 <entry>Ad-filtering by link</entry>
1965 <entry>Pop-up killing</entry>
1966 <entry>blocks only</entry>
1967 <entry>blocks only</entry>
1968 <entry>blocks only</entry>
1972 <entry>Privacy Features</entry>
1974 <entry>medium</entry>
1975 <entry>medium/high</entry>
1979 <entry>Cookie handling</entry>
1981 <entry>session-only</entry>
1986 <entry>Referer forging</entry>
1993 <entry>GIF de-animation</entry>
2000 <entry>Fast redirects</entry>
2007 <entry>HTML taming</entry>
2014 <entry>JavaScript taming</entry>
2021 <entry>Web-bug killing</entry>
2028 <entry>Image tag reordering</entry>
2044 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
2045 file, and are processed in the order they are defined (e.g.
2046 <filename>default.action</filename> is typically processed before
2047 <filename>user.action</filename>). The content of these can all be viewed and
2049 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2050 The over-riding principle when applying actions, is that the last action that
2051 matches a given URL wins. The broadest, most general rules go first
2052 (defined in <filename>default.action</filename>),
2053 followed by any exceptions (typically also in
2054 <filename>default.action</filename>), which are then followed lastly by any
2055 local preferences (typically in <emphasis>user</emphasis><filename>.action</filename>).
2056 Generally, <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word.
2060 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use
2061 <quote>aliases</quote> in an actions file, you have to place the (optional)
2062 <link linkend="aliases">alias section</link> at the top of that file.
2063 Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally to all
2064 sites and pages (be <emphasis>very careful</emphasis> with using such a
2065 universal set in <filename>user.action</filename> or any other actions file after
2066 <filename>default.action</filename>, because it will override the result
2067 from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
2068 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard
2069 <filename>user.action</filename> as an appendix to <filename>default.action</filename>,
2070 with the advantage that it is a separate file, which makes preserving your
2071 personal settings across <application>Privoxy</application> upgrades easier.
2075 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
2076 just some obnoxious URL whose content you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
2077 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
2078 written to disk), content can be modified, some JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
2079 fooled, and much more. See below for a <link linkend="actions">complete list
2083 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2085 <title>Finding the Right Mix</title>
2087 Note that some <link linkend="actions">actions</link>, like cookie suppression
2088 or script disabling, may render some sites unusable that rely on these
2089 techniques to work properly. Finding the right mix of actions is not always easy and
2090 certainly a matter of personal taste. And, things can always change, requiring
2091 refinements in the configuration. In general, it can be said that the more
2092 <quote>aggressive</quote> your default settings (in the top section of the
2093 actions file) are, the more exceptions for <quote>trusted</quote> sites you
2094 will have to make later. If, for example, you want to crunch all cookies per
2095 default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for sites that you
2096 regularly use and that require cookies for actually useful purposes, like maybe
2097 your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
2101 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
2102 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
2103 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
2104 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again :).
2108 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2110 <title>How to Edit</title>
2112 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by
2113 using our browser-based editor, which can be reached from <ulink
2114 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2115 Note: the config file option <link
2116 linkend="enable-edit-actions">enable-edit-actions</link> must be enabled for
2117 this to work. The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single
2118 feature on a per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults
2119 like <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> or
2120 <quote>Advanced</quote>. Warning: the <quote>Advanced</quote> setting is more
2121 aggressive, and will be more likely to cause problems for some sites.
2122 Experienced users only!
2126 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
2127 the actions files with your favorite text editor. Look at
2128 <filename>default.action</filename> which is richly commented with many
2134 <sect2 id="actions-apply">
2135 <title>How Actions are Applied to Requests</title>
2137 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections,
2138 like the <quote><link linkend="aliases">alias</link></quote> sections which will
2139 be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on regular sections: They have a
2140 heading line (often split up to multiple lines for readability) which consist
2141 of a list of actions, separated by whitespace and enclosed in curly braces.
2142 Below that, there is a list of URL and tag patterns, each on a separate line.
2146 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
2147 compared to all URL patterns in each <quote>action file</quote>.
2148 Every time it matches, the list of applicable actions for the request is
2149 incrementally updated, using the heading of the section in which the
2150 pattern is located. The same is done again for tags and tag patterns later on.
2154 If multiple applying sections set the same action differently,
2155 the last match wins. If not, the effects are aggregated.
2156 E.g. a URL might match a regular section with a heading line of <literal>{
2157 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link> }</literal>,
2158 then later another one with just <literal>{
2159 +<link linkend="block">block</link> }</literal>, resulting
2160 in <emphasis>both</emphasis> actions to apply. And there may well be
2161 cases where you will want to combine actions together. Such a section then
2167 { +<literal>handle-as-image</literal> +<literal>block{Banner ads.}</literal> }
2168 # Block these as if they were images. Send no block page.
2170 media.example.com/.*banners
2171 .example.com/images/ads/</screen>
2175 You can trace this process for URL patterns and any given URL by visiting <ulink
2176 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>.
2180 Examples and more detail on this is provided in the Appendix, <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">
2181 Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</link> section.
2185 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2186 <sect2 id="af-patterns">
2187 <title>Patterns</title>
2189 As mentioned, <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>patterns</quote>
2190 to determine what <emphasis>actions</emphasis> might apply to which sites and
2191 pages your browser attempts to access. These <quote>patterns</quote> use wild
2192 card type <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> matching to achieve a high degree of
2193 flexibility. This allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match
2194 against many similar patterns.
2198 Generally, an URL pattern has the form
2199 <literal><domain>/<path></literal>, where both the
2200 <literal><domain></literal> and <literal><path></literal> are
2201 optional. (This is why the special <literal>/</literal> pattern matches all
2202 URLs). Note that the protocol portion of the URL pattern (e.g.
2203 <literal>http://</literal>) should <emphasis>not</emphasis> be included in
2204 the pattern. This is assumed already!
2207 The pattern matching syntax is different for the domain and path parts of
2208 the URL. The domain part uses a simple globbing type matching technique,
2209 while the path part uses more flexible
2210 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2211 Expressions</quote></ulink> (POSIX 1003.2).
2216 <term><literal>www.example.com/</literal></term>
2219 is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2220 regardless of which document on that server is requested. So ALL pages in
2221 this domain would be covered by the scope of this action. Note that a
2222 simple <literal>example.com</literal> is different and would NOT match.
2227 <term><literal>www.example.com</literal></term>
2230 means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing <literal>/</literal> may
2236 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html</literal></term>
2239 matches all the documents on <literal>www.example.com</literal>
2240 whose name starts with <literal>/index.html</literal>.
2245 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html$</literal></term>
2248 matches only the single document <literal>/index.html</literal>
2249 on <literal>www.example.com</literal>.
2254 <term><literal>/index.html$</literal></term>
2257 matches the document <literal>/index.html</literal>, regardless of the domain,
2258 i.e. on <emphasis>any</emphasis> web server anywhere.
2263 <term><literal>index.html</literal></term>
2266 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
2267 there is no top-level domain called <literal>.html</literal>. So its
2275 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2276 <sect3><title>The Domain Pattern</title>
2279 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
2280 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
2286 <term><literal>.example.com</literal></term>
2289 matches any domain with first-level domain <literal>com</literal>
2290 and second-level domain <literal>example</literal>.
2291 For example <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2292 <literal>example.com</literal> and <literal>foo.bar.baz.example.com</literal>.
2293 Note that it wouldn't match if the second-level domain was <literal>another-example</literal>.
2298 <term><literal>www.</literal></term>
2301 matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
2302 <literal>www.</literal> (It also matches the domain
2303 <literal>www</literal> but most of the time that doesn't matter.)
2308 <term><literal>.example.</literal></term>
2311 matches any domain that <emphasis>CONTAINS</emphasis> <literal>.example.</literal>.
2312 And, by the way, also included would be any files or documents that exist
2313 within that domain since no path limitations are specified. (Correctly
2314 speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains <literal>example</literal> as
2315 a domain.) This might be <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2316 <literal>news.example.de</literal>, or
2317 <literal>www.example.net/cgi/testing.pl</literal> for instance. All these
2325 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
2326 themselves. These work similarly to shell globbing type wild-cards:
2327 <quote>*</quote> represents zero or more arbitrary characters (this is
2329 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2330 Expression</quote></ulink> based syntax of <quote>.*</quote>),
2331 <quote>?</quote> represents any single character (this is equivalent to the
2332 regular expression syntax of a simple <quote>.</quote>), and you can define
2333 <quote>character classes</quote> in square brackets which is similar to
2334 the same regular expression technique. All of this can be freely mixed:
2339 <term><literal>ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2342 matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
2343 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>
2348 <term><literal>*ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2351 matches all of the above, and then some.
2356 <term><literal>.?pix.com</literal></term>
2359 matches <literal>www.ipix.com</literal>,
2360 <literal>pictures.epix.com</literal>, <literal>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</literal> etc.
2365 <term><literal>www[1-9a-ez].example.c*</literal></term>
2368 matches <literal>www1.example.com</literal>,
2369 <literal>www4.example.cc</literal>, <literal>wwwd.example.cy</literal>,
2370 <literal>wwwz.example.com</literal> etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
2371 <literal>wwww.example.com</literal>.
2378 While flexible, this is not the sophistication of full regular expression based syntax.
2383 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2386 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2387 <sect3><title>The Path Pattern</title>
2390 <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>modern</quote> POSIX 1003.2
2391 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2392 Expressions</quote></ulink> for matching the path portion (after the slash),
2393 and is thus more flexible.
2397 There is an <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link> with a brief quick-start into regular
2398 expressions, you also might want to have a look at your operating system's documentation
2399 on regular expressions (try <literal>man re_format</literal>).
2403 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the <quote>/</quote>,
2404 i.e. it matches as if it would start with a <quote>^</quote> (regular expression speak
2405 for the beginning of a line).
2409 Please also note that matching in the path is <emphasis>CASE INSENSITIVE</emphasis>
2410 by default, but you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
2411 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch: <literal>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</literal> will match
2412 only documents whose path starts with <literal>PaTtErN</literal> in
2413 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
2418 <term><literal>.example.com/.*</literal></term>
2421 Is equivalent to just <quote>.example.com</quote>, since any documents
2422 within that domain are matched with or without the <quote>.*</quote>
2423 regular expression. This is redundant
2428 <term><literal>.example.com/.*/index.html$</literal></term>
2431 Will match any page in the domain of <quote>example.com</quote> that is
2432 named <quote>index.html</quote>, and that is part of some path. For
2433 example, it matches <quote>www.example.com/testing/index.html</quote> but
2434 NOT <quote>www.example.com/index.html</quote> because the regular
2435 expression called for at least two <quote>/'s</quote>, thus the path
2436 requirement. It also would match
2437 <quote>www.example.com/testing/index_html</quote>, because of the
2438 special meta-character <quote>.</quote>.
2443 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)?index\.html$</literal></term>
2446 This regular expression is conditional so it will match any page
2447 named <quote>index.html</quote> regardless of path which in this case can
2448 have one or more <quote>/'s</quote>. And this one must contain exactly
2449 <quote>.html</quote> (but does not have to end with that!).
2454 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)</literal></term>
2457 This regular expression will match any path of <quote>example.com</quote>
2458 that contains any of the words <quote>ads</quote>, <quote>banner</quote>,
2459 <quote>banners</quote> (because of the <quote>?</quote>) or <quote>junk</quote>.
2460 The path does not have to end in these words, just contain them.
2465 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)/.*\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$</literal></term>
2468 This is very much the same as above, except now it must end in either
2469 <quote>.jpg</quote>, <quote>.jpeg</quote>, <quote>.gif</quote> or <quote>.png</quote>. So this
2470 one is limited to common image formats.
2477 There are many, many good examples to be found in <filename>default.action</filename>,
2478 and more tutorials below in <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>.
2483 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2486 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2487 <sect3 id="tag-pattern"><title>The Tag Pattern</title>
2490 Tag patterns are used to change the applying actions based on the
2491 request's tags. Tags can be created with either the
2492 <link linkend="CLIENT-HEADER-TAGGER">client-header-tagger</link>
2493 or the <link linkend="SERVER-HEADER-TAGGER">server-header-tagger</link> action.
2497 Tag patterns have to start with <quote>TAG:</quote>, so &my-app;
2498 can tell them apart from URL patterns. Everything after the colon
2499 including white space, is interpreted as a regular expression with
2500 path pattern syntax, except that tag patterns aren't left-anchored
2501 automatically (&my-app; doesn't silently add a <quote>^</quote>,
2502 you have to do it yourself if you need it).
2506 To match all requests that are tagged with <quote>foo</quote>
2507 your pattern line should be <quote>TAG:^foo$</quote>,
2508 <quote>TAG:foo</quote> would work as well, but it would also
2509 match requests whose tags contain <quote>foo</quote> somewhere.
2510 <quote>TAG: foo</quote> wouldn't work as it requires white space.
2514 Sections can contain URL and tag patterns at the same time,
2515 but tag patterns are checked after the URL patterns and thus
2516 always overrule them, even if they are located before the URL patterns.
2520 Once a new tag is added, Privoxy checks right away if it's matched by one
2521 of the tag patterns and updates the action settings accordingly. As a result
2522 tags can be used to activate other tagger actions, as long as these other
2523 taggers look for headers that haven't already be parsed.
2527 For example you could tag client requests which use the
2528 <literal>POST</literal> method,
2529 then use this tag to activate another tagger that adds a tag if cookies
2530 are sent, and then use a block action based on the cookie tag. This allows
2531 the outcome of one action, to be input into a subsequent action. However if
2532 you'd reverse the position of the described taggers, and activated the
2533 method tagger based on the cookie tagger, no method tags would be created.
2534 The method tagger would look for the request line, but at the time
2535 the cookie tag is created, the request line has already been parsed.
2539 While this is a limitation you should be aware of, this kind of
2540 indirection is seldom needed anyway and even the example doesn't
2541 make too much sense.
2548 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2551 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2553 <sect2 id="actions">
2554 <title>Actions</title>
2556 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
2557 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a
2558 <quote>+</quote>, and turned off if preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. So a
2559 <literal>+action</literal> means <quote>do that action</quote>, e.g.
2560 <literal>+block</literal> means <quote>please block URLs that match the
2561 following patterns</quote>, and <literal>-block</literal> means <quote>don't
2562 block URLs that match the following patterns, even if <literal>+block</literal>
2563 previously applied.</quote>
2568 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
2569 separated by whitespace, like in
2570 <literal>{+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}}</literal>,
2571 followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which they apply.
2572 Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up a section
2573 of the actions file.
2577 Actions fall into three categories:
2584 Boolean, i.e the action can only be <quote>enabled</quote> or
2585 <quote>disabled</quote>. Syntax:
2589 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # enable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
2590 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable></screen>
2593 Example: <literal>+handle-as-image</literal>
2600 Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of action.
2605 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and set parameter to <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>,
2606 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
2607 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action. The parameter can be omitted</screen>
2610 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized action,
2611 the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are simply ignored.
2614 Example: <literal>+hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070602 Firefox/2.0.0.4}</literal>
2620 Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions,
2621 but they behave differently: If the action applies multiple times to the
2622 same URL, but with different parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> the parameters
2623 from <emphasis>all</emphasis> matches are remembered. This is used for actions
2624 that can be executed for the same request repeatedly, like adding multiple
2625 headers, or filtering through multiple filters. Syntax:
2629 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and add <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> to the list of parameters
2630 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # remove the parameter <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> from the list of parameters
2631 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
2632 <replaceable class="parameter">-name</replaceable> # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list</screen>
2635 Examples: <literal>+add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text}</literal> and
2636 <literal>+filter{html-annoyances}</literal>
2644 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no <quote>actions</quote> are
2645 taken. So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
2646 normal, non-blocking, non-filtering proxy. You must specifically enable the
2647 privacy and blocking features you need (although the provided default actions
2648 files will give a good starting point).
2652 Later defined action sections always over-ride earlier ones of the same type.
2653 So exceptions to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
2654 in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files such
2655 as <filename>user.action</filename>). For multi-valued actions, the actions
2656 are applied in the order they are specified. Actions files are processed in
2657 the order they are defined in <filename>config</filename> (the default
2658 installation has three actions files). It also quite possible for any given
2659 URL to match more than one <quote>pattern</quote> (because of wildcards and
2660 regular expressions), and thus to trigger more than one set of actions! Last
2664 <!-- start actions listing -->
2666 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> actions are:
2670 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2671 <!-- Please note the below defined actions use id's that are -->
2672 <!-- probably linked from other places, so please don't change. -->
2674 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2677 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2679 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="add-header">
2680 <title>add-header</title>
2684 <term>Typical use:</term>
2686 <para>Confuse log analysis, custom applications</para>
2691 <term>Effect:</term>
2694 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
2701 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2703 <para>Multi-value.</para>
2708 <term>Parameter:</term>
2711 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not checked.
2712 It is recommended that you use the <quote><literal>X-</literal></quote> prefix
2722 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
2723 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
2724 <quote>HTTP headers</quote> are, you definitely don't need to worry about this
2731 <term>Example usage:</term>
2734 <screen>+add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}</screen>
2742 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2743 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="block">
2744 <title>block</title>
2748 <term>Typical use:</term>
2750 <para>Block ads or other unwanted content</para>
2755 <term>Effect:</term>
2758 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the
2759 requests are trapped by &my-app; and the requested URL is never retrieved,
2760 but is answered locally with a substitute page or image, as determined by
2762 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2764 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>, and
2766 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> actions.
2774 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2776 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2781 <term>Parameter:</term>
2783 <para>A block reason that should be given to the user.</para>
2791 <application>Privoxy</application> sends a special <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page
2792 for requests to blocked pages. This page contains the block reason given as
2793 parameter, a link to find out why the block action applies, and a click-through
2794 to the blocked content (the latter only if the force feature is available and
2798 A very important exception occurs if <emphasis>both</emphasis>
2799 <literal>block</literal> and <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2800 apply to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
2801 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
2802 (see below) also applies, the type of image will be determined by its parameter,
2803 if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is sent.
2806 It is important to understand this process, in order
2807 to understand how <application>Privoxy</application> deals with
2808 ads and other unwanted content. Blocking is a core feature, and one
2809 upon which various other features depend.
2812 The <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
2813 action can perform a very similar task, by <quote>blocking</quote>
2814 banner images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
2815 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
2816 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse the two.
2822 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2825 <screen>{+block{No nasty stuff for you.}}
2826 # Block and replace with "blocked" page
2827 .nasty-stuff.example.com
2829 {+block{Doubleclick banners.} +handle-as-image}
2830 # Block and replace with image
2834 {+block{Layered ads.} +handle-as-empty-document}
2835 # Block and then ignore
2836 adserver.example.net/.*\.js$</screen>
2846 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2847 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="change-x-forwarded-for">
2848 <title>change-x-forwarded-for</title>
2852 <term>Typical use:</term>
2854 <para>Improve privacy by not forwarding the source of the request in the HTTP headers.</para>
2859 <term>Effect:</term>
2862 Deletes the <quote>X-Forwarded-For:</quote> HTTP header from the client request,
2870 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2872 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2877 <term>Parameter:</term>
2881 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header.</para>
2885 <quote>add</quote> to create the header (or append
2886 the client's IP address to an already existing one).
2897 It is safe and recommended to use <literal>block</literal>.
2900 Forwarding the source address of the request may make
2901 sense in some multi-user setups but is also a privacy risk.
2906 <term>Example usage:</term>
2909 <screen>+change-x-forwarded-for{block}</screen>
2916 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2917 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-header-filter">
2918 <title>client-header-filter</title>
2922 <term>Typical use:</term>
2925 Rewrite or remove single client headers.
2931 <term>Effect:</term>
2934 All client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
2935 the specified regular expression based substitutions.
2942 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2944 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2949 <term>Parameter:</term>
2952 The name of a client-header filter, as defined in one of the
2953 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
2962 Client-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
2963 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
2964 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
2965 You can do that by using tags though.
2968 Client-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
2969 and use their output as input.
2972 If the request URL gets changed, &my-app; will detect that and use the new
2973 one. This can be used to rewrite the request destination behind the client's
2974 back, for example to specify a Tor exit relay for certain requests.
2977 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
2978 to learn which client-header filters are available by default, and how to
2986 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2990 # Hide Tor exit notation in Host and Referer Headers
2991 {+client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}}
3002 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3003 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-header-tagger">
3004 <title>client-header-tagger</title>
3008 <term>Typical use:</term>
3011 Block requests based on their headers.
3017 <term>Effect:</term>
3020 Client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
3021 the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
3029 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3031 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3036 <term>Parameter:</term>
3039 The name of a client-header tagger, as defined in one of the
3040 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
3049 Client-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
3050 and as the header isn't modified, each tagger <quote>sees</quote>
3054 Client-header taggers are the first actions that are executed
3055 and their tags can be used to control every other action.
3061 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3065 # Tag every request with the User-Agent header
3066 {+client-header-tagger{user-agent}}
3069 # Tagging itself doesn't change the action
3070 # settings, sections with TAG patterns do:
3072 # If it's a download agent, use a different forwarding proxy,
3073 # show the real User-Agent and make sure resume works.
3074 {+forward-override{forward-socks5 10.0.0.2:2222 .} \
3075 -hide-if-modified-since \
3076 -overwrite-last-modified \
3081 TAG:^User-Agent: NetBSD-ftp/
3082 TAG:^User-Agent: Novell ZYPP Installer
3083 TAG:^User-Agent: RPM APT-HTTP/
3084 TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/
3085 TAG:^User-Agent: Ubuntu APT-HTTP/
3086 TAG:^User-Agent: MPlayer/
3096 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3097 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="content-type-overwrite">
3098 <title>content-type-overwrite</title>
3102 <term>Typical use:</term>
3104 <para>Stop useless download menus from popping up, or change the browser's rendering mode</para>
3109 <term>Effect:</term>
3112 Replaces the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header.
3119 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3121 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3126 <term>Parameter:</term>
3138 The <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header is used by the
3139 browser to decide what to do with the document. The value of this
3140 header can cause the browser to open a download menu instead of
3141 displaying the document by itself, even if the document's format is
3142 supported by the browser.
3145 The declared content type can also affect which rendering mode
3146 the browser chooses. If XHTML is delivered as <quote>text/html</quote>,
3147 many browsers treat it as yet another broken HTML document.
3148 If it is send as <quote>application/xml</quote>, browsers with
3149 XHTML support will only display it, if the syntax is correct.
3152 If you see a web site that proudly uses XHTML buttons, but sets
3153 <quote>Content-Type: text/html</quote>, you can use &my-app;
3154 to overwrite it with <quote>application/xml</quote> and validate
3155 the web master's claim inside your XHTML-supporting browser.
3156 If the syntax is incorrect, the browser will complain loudly.
3159 You can also go the opposite direction: if your browser prints
3160 error messages instead of rendering a document falsely declared
3161 as XHTML, you can overwrite the content type with
3162 <quote>text/html</quote> and have it rendered as broken HTML document.
3165 By default <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal> only replaces
3166 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> headers that look like some kind of text.
3167 If you want to overwrite it unconditionally, you have to combine it with
3168 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>.
3169 This limitation exists for a reason, think twice before circumventing it.
3172 Most of the time it's easier to replace this action with a custom
3173 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
3174 It allows you to activate it for every document of a certain site and it will still
3175 only replace the content types you aimed at.
3178 Of course you can apply <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal>
3179 to a whole site and then make URL based exceptions, but it's a lot
3180 more work to get the same precision.
3186 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
3189 <screen># Check if www.example.net/ really uses valid XHTML
3190 { +content-type-overwrite{application/xml} }
3193 # but leave the content type unmodified if the URL looks like a style sheet
3194 {-content-type-overwrite}
3195 www.example.net/.*\.css$
3196 www.example.net/.*style
3205 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3206 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-client-header">
3210 <title>crunch-client-header</title>
3214 <term>Typical use:</term>
3216 <para>Remove a client header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3221 <term>Effect:</term>
3224 Deletes every header sent by the client that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3231 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3233 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3238 <term>Parameter:</term>
3250 This action allows you to block client headers for which no dedicated
3251 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists.
3252 <application>Privoxy</application> will remove every client header that
3253 contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3256 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3257 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3258 they contain the same string.
3261 <literal>crunch-client-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3262 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3263 parts of them, you should use a
3264 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header filter</link></literal>.
3268 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3275 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3278 <screen># Block the non-existent "Privacy-Violation:" client header
3279 { +crunch-client-header{Privacy-Violation:} }
3289 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3290 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-if-none-match">
3291 <title>crunch-if-none-match</title>
3297 <term>Typical use:</term>
3299 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
3304 <term>Effect:</term>
3307 Deletes the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header.
3314 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3316 <para>Boolean.</para>
3321 <term>Parameter:</term>
3333 Removing the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header
3334 is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
3335 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote> which
3336 would cause the browser to use a cached copy of the page.
3339 It is also useful to make sure the header isn't used as a cookie
3340 replacement (unlikely but possible).
3343 Blocking the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> header shouldn't cause any
3344 caching problems, as long as the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> header
3345 isn't blocked or missing as well.
3348 It is recommended to use this action together with
3349 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
3351 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>.
3357 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3360 <screen># Let the browser revalidate cached documents but don't
3361 # allow the server to use the revalidation headers for user tracking.
3362 {+hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
3363 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
3364 +crunch-if-none-match}
3373 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3374 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-incoming-cookies">
3375 <title>crunch-incoming-cookies</title>
3379 <term>Typical use:</term>
3382 Prevent the web server from setting HTTP cookies on your system
3388 <term>Effect:</term>
3391 Deletes any <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from server replies.
3398 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3400 <para>Boolean.</para>
3405 <term>Parameter:</term>
3417 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> HTTP cookies. For
3418 <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> HTTP cookies, use
3419 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>.
3420 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable HTTP cookies completely.
3423 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3424 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3425 since it would prevent the session cookies from being set. See also
3426 <literal><link linkend="filter-content-cookies">filter-content-cookies</link></literal>.
3432 <term>Example usage:</term>
3435 <screen>+crunch-incoming-cookies</screen>
3443 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3444 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-server-header">
3445 <title>crunch-server-header</title>
3451 <term>Typical use:</term>
3453 <para>Remove a server header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3458 <term>Effect:</term>
3461 Deletes every header sent by the server that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3468 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3470 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3475 <term>Parameter:</term>
3487 This action allows you to block server headers for which no dedicated
3488 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists. <application>Privoxy</application>
3489 will remove every server header that contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3492 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3493 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3494 they contain the same string.
3497 <literal>crunch-server-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3498 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3499 parts of them, you should use a custom
3500 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
3504 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3511 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3514 <screen># Crunch server headers that try to prevent caching
3515 { +crunch-server-header{no-cache} }
3524 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3525 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-outgoing-cookies">
3526 <title>crunch-outgoing-cookies</title>
3530 <term>Typical use:</term>
3533 Prevent the web server from reading any HTTP cookies from your system
3539 <term>Effect:</term>
3542 Deletes any <quote>Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from client requests.
3549 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3551 <para>Boolean.</para>
3556 <term>Parameter:</term>
3568 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> HTTP cookies. For
3569 <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> HTTP cookies, use
3570 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>.
3571 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable HTTP cookies completely.
3574 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3575 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3576 since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
3582 <term>Example usage:</term>
3585 <screen>+crunch-outgoing-cookies</screen>
3594 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3595 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="deanimate-gifs">
3596 <title>deanimate-gifs</title>
3600 <term>Typical use:</term>
3602 <para>Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.</para>
3607 <term>Effect:</term>
3610 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
3617 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3619 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3624 <term>Parameter:</term>
3627 <quote>last</quote> or <quote>first</quote>
3636 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
3637 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
3638 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last
3639 frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
3640 most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
3641 last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
3644 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
3645 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
3652 <term>Example usage:</term>
3655 <screen>+deanimate-gifs{last}</screen>
3662 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3663 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="downgrade-http-version">
3664 <title>downgrade-http-version</title>
3668 <term>Typical use:</term>
3670 <para>Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1</para>
3675 <term>Effect:</term>
3678 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
3685 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3687 <para>Boolean.</para>
3692 <term>Parameter:</term>
3704 This is a left-over from the time when <application>Privoxy</application>
3705 didn't support important HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the
3706 unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server
3707 out there. Not all HTTP/1.1 features and requirements are supported yet,
3708 so there is a chance you might need this action.
3714 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3717 <screen>{+downgrade-http-version}
3718 problem-host.example.com</screen>
3726 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3727 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="fast-redirects">
3728 <title>fast-redirects</title>
3732 <term>Typical use:</term>
3734 <para>Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links.</para>
3739 <term>Effect:</term>
3742 Detects redirection URLs and redirects the browser without contacting
3743 the redirection server first.
3750 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3752 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3757 <term>Parameter:</term>
3762 <quote>simple-check</quote> to just search for the string <quote>http://</quote>
3763 to detect redirection URLs.
3768 <quote>check-decoded-url</quote> to decode URLs (if necessary) before searching
3769 for redirection URLs.
3780 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
3781 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
3782 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
3783 resulting from this scheme typically look like:
3784 <quote>http://www.example.org/click-tracker.cgi?target=http%3a//www.example.net/</quote>.
3787 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
3788 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
3789 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
3790 to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
3791 browser asks the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
3795 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
3796 If it is enabled by default, you will have to create some exceptions to
3797 this action. It can lead to failures in several ways:
3800 Not every URLs with other URLs as parameters is evil.
3801 Some sites offer a real service that requires this information to work.
3802 For example a validation service needs to know, which document to validate.
3803 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> assumes that every URL parameter that
3804 looks like another URL is a redirection target, and will always redirect to
3805 the last one. Most of the time the assumption is correct, but if it isn't,
3806 the user gets redirected anyway.
3809 Another failure occurs if the URL contains other parameters after the URL parameter.
3811 <quote>http://www.example.org/?redirect=http%3a//www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3812 contains the redirection URL <quote>http://www.example.net/</quote>,
3813 followed by another parameter. <literal>fast-redirects</literal> doesn't know that
3814 and will cause a redirect to <quote>http://www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3815 Depending on the target server configuration, the parameter will be silently ignored
3816 or lead to a <quote>page not found</quote> error. You can prevent this problem by
3817 first using the <literal><link linkend="redirect">redirect</link></literal> action
3818 to remove the last part of the URL, but it requires a little effort.
3821 To detect a redirection URL, <literal>fast-redirects</literal> only
3822 looks for the string <quote>http://</quote>, either in plain text
3823 (invalid but often used) or encoded as <quote>http%3a//</quote>.
3824 Some sites use their own URL encoding scheme, encrypt the address
3825 of the target server or replace it with a database id. In theses cases
3826 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> is fooled and the request reaches the
3827 redirection server where it probably gets logged.
3833 <term>Example usage:</term>
3837 { +fast-redirects{simple-check} }
3840 { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
3841 another.example.com/testing</screen>
3850 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3851 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter">
3852 <title>filter</title>
3856 <term>Typical use:</term>
3858 <para>Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
3859 do fun text replacements, add personalized effects, etc.</para>
3864 <term>Effect:</term>
3867 All instances of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which
3868 this action applies, can be filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular
3869 expression based substitutions. (Note: as of version 3.0.3 plain text documents
3870 are exempted from filtering, because web servers often use the
3871 <literal>text/plain</literal> MIME type for all files whose type they don't know.)
3878 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3880 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3885 <term>Parameter:</term>
3888 The name of a content filter, as defined in the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>.
3889 Filters can be defined in one or more files as defined by the
3890 <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
3891 option in the <link linkend="config">config file</link>.
3892 <filename>default.filter</filename> is the collection of filters
3893 supplied by the developers. Locally defined filters should go
3894 in their own file, such as <filename>user.filter</filename>.
3897 When used in its negative form,
3898 and without parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> filtering is completely disabled.
3907 For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
3908 in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below for
3912 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
3913 slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
3914 passed the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way
3915 since the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more
3916 noticeable on slower connections.
3919 <quote>Rolling your own</quote>
3920 filters requires a knowledge of
3921 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
3922 Expressions</quote></ulink> and
3923 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html"><quote>HTML</quote></ulink>.
3924 This is very powerful feature, and potentially very intrusive.
3925 Filters should be used with caution, and where an equivalent
3926 <quote>action</quote> is not available.
3929 The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
3930 <literal><link linkend="buffer-limit">buffer-limit</link></literal>
3931 option in the main <link linkend="config">config file</link>. The
3932 default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the buffered
3933 data, and all pending data, is passed through unfiltered.
3936 Inappropriate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
3937 (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data
3938 (from HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate
3939 the integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might
3940 be necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering
3941 by defining appropriate <literal>-filter</literal> exceptions.
3944 Compressed content can't be filtered either, unless &my-app;
3945 is compiled with zlib support (requires at least &my-app; 3.0.7),
3946 in which case &my-app; will decompress the content before filtering
3950 If you use a &my-app; version without zlib support, but want filtering to work on
3951 as much documents as possible, even those that would normally be sent compressed,
3952 you must use the <literal><link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link></literal>
3953 action in conjunction with <literal>filter</literal>.
3956 Content filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
3957 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
3958 action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism
3959 works quite differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners
3960 based on their size (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat
3964 <link linkend="contact">Feedback</link> with suggestions for new or
3965 improved filters is particularly welcome!
3968 The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
3969 predefined filter. There are <link linkend="predefined-filters">more
3970 verbose explanations</link> of what these filters do in the <link
3971 linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>.
3977 <term>Example usage (with filters from the distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file).
3978 See <link linkend="PREDEFINED-FILTERS">the Predefined Filters section</link> for
3979 more explanation on each:</term>
3982 <anchor id="filter-js-annoyances">
3983 <screen>+filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.</screen>
3986 <anchor id="filter-js-events">
3987 <screen>+filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings and timers (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites).</screen>
3990 <anchor id="filter-html-annoyances">
3991 <screen>+filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse.</screen>
3994 <anchor id="filter-content-cookies">
3995 <screen>+filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content.</screen>
3998 <anchor id="filter-refresh-tags">
3999 <screen>+filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups).</screen>
4002 <anchor id="filter-unsolicited-popups">
4003 <screen>+filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
4006 <anchor id="filter-all-popups">
4007 <screen>+filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
4010 <anchor id="filter-img-reorder">
4011 <screen>+filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective.</screen>
4014 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-size">
4015 <screen>+filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size.</screen>
4018 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-link">
4019 <screen>+filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers.</screen>
4022 <anchor id="filter-webbugs">
4023 <screen>+filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking).</screen>
4026 <anchor id="filter-tiny-textforms">
4027 <screen>+filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap.</screen>
4030 <anchor id="filter-jumping-windows">
4031 <screen>+filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves.</screen>
4034 <anchor id="filter-frameset-borders">
4035 <screen>+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizable.</screen>
4038 <anchor id="filter-demoronizer">
4039 <screen>+filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets.</screen>
4042 <anchor id="filter-shockwave-flash">
4043 <screen>+filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects.</screen>
4046 <anchor id="filter-quicktime-kioskmode">
4047 <screen>+filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies saveable.</screen>
4050 <anchor id="filter-fun">
4051 <screen>+filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!</screen>
4054 <anchor id="filter-crude-parental">
4055 <screen>+filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering. Note that this filter doesn't work reliably.</screen>
4058 <anchor id="filter-ie-exploits">
4059 <screen>+filter{ie-exploits} # Disable some known Internet Explorer bug exploits.</screen>
4062 <anchor id="filter-site-specifics">
4063 <screen>+filter{site-specifics} # Cure for site-specific problems. Don't apply generally!</screen>
4066 <anchor id="filter-no-ping">
4067 <screen>+filter{no-ping} # Removes non-standard ping attributes in <a> and <area> tags.</screen>
4070 <anchor id="filter-google">
4071 <screen>+filter{google} # CSS-based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation and the toolbar advertisement.</screen>
4074 <anchor id="filter-yahoo">
4075 <screen>+filter{yahoo} # CSS-based block for Yahoo text ads. Also removes a width limitation.</screen>
4078 <anchor id="filter-msn">
4079 <screen>+filter{msn} # CSS-based block for MSN text ads. Also removes tracking URLs and a width limitation.</screen>
4082 <anchor id="filter-blogspot">
4083 <screen>+filter{blogspot} # Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this.</screen>
4091 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4092 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="force-text-mode">
4093 <title>force-text-mode</title>
4099 <term>Typical use:</term>
4101 <para>Force <application>Privoxy</application> to treat a document as if it was in some kind of <emphasis>text</emphasis> format. </para>
4106 <term>Effect:</term>
4109 Declares a document as text, even if the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> isn't detected as such.
4116 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4118 <para>Boolean.</para>
4123 <term>Parameter:</term>
4135 As explained <literal><link linkend="filter">above</link></literal>,
4136 <application>Privoxy</application> tries to only filter files that are
4137 in some kind of text format. The same restrictions apply to
4138 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite</link></literal>.
4139 <literal>force-text-mode</literal> declares a document as text,
4140 without looking at the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> first.
4144 Think twice before activating this action. Filtering binary data
4145 with regular expressions can cause file damage.
4152 <term>Example usage:</term>
4165 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4166 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="forward-override">
4167 <title>forward-override</title>
4173 <term>Typical use:</term>
4175 <para>Change the forwarding settings based on User-Agent or request origin</para>
4180 <term>Effect:</term>
4183 Overrules the forward directives in the configuration file.
4190 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4192 <para>Multi-value.</para>
4197 <term>Parameter:</term>
4201 <para><quote>forward .</quote> to use a direct connection without any additional proxies.</para>
4205 <quote>forward 127.0.0.1:8123</quote> to use the HTTP proxy listening at 127.0.0.1 port 8123.
4210 <quote>forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 .</quote> to use the socks4a proxy listening at
4211 127.0.0.1 port 9050. Replace <quote>forward-socks4a</quote> with <quote>forward-socks4</quote>
4212 to use a socks4 connection (with local DNS resolution) instead, use <quote>forward-socks5</quote>
4213 for socks5 connections (with remote DNS resolution).
4218 <quote>forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 proxy.example.org:8000</quote> to use the socks4a proxy
4219 listening at 127.0.0.1 port 9050 to reach the HTTP proxy listening at proxy.example.org port 8000.
4220 Replace <quote>forward-socks4a</quote> with <quote>forward-socks4</quote> to use a socks4 connection
4221 (with local DNS resolution) instead, use <quote>forward-socks5</quote>
4222 for socks5 connections (with remote DNS resolution).
4233 This action takes parameters similar to the
4234 <link linkend="forwarding">forward</link> directives in the configuration
4235 file, but without the URL pattern. It can be used as replacement, but normally it's only
4236 used in cases where matching based on the request URL isn't sufficient.
4240 Please read the description for the <link linkend="forwarding">forward</link> directives before
4241 using this action. Forwarding to the wrong people will reduce your privacy and increase the
4242 chances of man-in-the-middle attacks.
4245 If the ports are missing or invalid, default values will be used. This might change
4246 in the future and you shouldn't rely on it. Otherwise incorrect syntax causes Privoxy
4250 Use the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">show-url-info CGI page</ulink>
4251 to verify that your forward settings do what you thought the do.
4258 <term>Example usage:</term>
4262 # Always use direct connections for requests previously tagged as
4263 # <quote>User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2.0</quote> and make sure
4264 # resuming downloads continues to work.
4265 # This way you can continue to use Tor for your normal browsing,
4266 # without overloading the Tor network with your FreeBSD ports updates
4267 # or downloads of bigger files like ISOs.
4268 # Note that HTTP headers are easy to fake and therefore their
4269 # values are as (un)trustworthy as your clients and users.
4270 {+forward-override{forward .} \
4271 -hide-if-modified-since \
4272 -overwrite-last-modified \
4274 TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2\.0$
4283 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4284 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-empty-document">
4285 <title>handle-as-empty-document</title>
4291 <term>Typical use:</term>
4293 <para>Mark URLs that should be replaced by empty documents <emphasis>if they get blocked</emphasis></para>
4298 <term>Effect:</term>
4301 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs.
4302 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
4303 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote>
4304 page, or an empty document will be sent to the client as a substitute for the blocked content.
4305 The <emphasis>empty</emphasis> document isn't literally empty, but actually contains a single space.
4312 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4314 <para>Boolean.</para>
4319 <term>Parameter:</term>
4331 Some browsers complain about syntax errors if JavaScript documents
4332 are blocked with <application>Privoxy's</application>
4333 default HTML page; this option can be used to silence them.
4334 And of course this action can also be used to eliminate the &my-app;
4335 BLOCKED message in frames.
4338 The content type for the empty document can be specified with
4339 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{}</link></literal>,
4340 but usually this isn't necessary.
4346 <term>Example usage:</term>
4349 <screen># Block all documents on example.org that end with ".js",
4350 # but send an empty document instead of the usual HTML message.
4351 {+block{Blocked JavaScript} +handle-as-empty-document}
4361 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4362 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-image">
4363 <title>handle-as-image</title>
4367 <term>Typical use:</term>
4369 <para>Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images <emphasis>if they do get blocked</emphasis>, rather than HTML pages)</para>
4374 <term>Effect:</term>
4377 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
4378 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
4379 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
4380 page, or a replacement image (as determined by the <literal><link
4381 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> action) will be sent to the
4382 client as a substitute for the blocked content.
4389 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4391 <para>Boolean.</para>
4396 <term>Parameter:</term>
4408 The below generic example section is actually part of <filename>default.action</filename>.
4409 It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
4413 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
4414 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
4415 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
4418 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (in-line) ad
4419 frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
4420 Forcing <literal>handle-as-image</literal> in this situation will not replace the
4421 ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
4427 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
4430 <screen># Generic image extensions:
4433 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
4435 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
4436 # blocked as images:
4438 {+block{Nasty banners.} +handle-as-image}
4439 nasty-banner-server.example.com/junk.cgi\?output=trash
4448 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4449 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-accept-language">
4450 <title>hide-accept-language</title>
4456 <term>Typical use:</term>
4458 <para>Pretend to use different language settings.</para>
4463 <term>Effect:</term>
4466 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> HTTP header in client requests.
4473 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4475 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4480 <term>Parameter:</term>
4483 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4492 Faking the browser's language settings can be useful to make a
4493 foreign User-Agent set with
4494 <literal><link linkend="hide-user-agent">hide-user-agent</link></literal>
4498 However some sites with content in different languages check the
4499 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> to decide which one to take by default.
4500 Sometimes it isn't possible to later switch to another language without
4501 changing the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header first.
4504 Therefore it's a good idea to either only change the
4505 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header to languages you understand,
4506 or to languages that aren't wide spread.
4509 Before setting the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header
4510 to a rare language, you should consider that it helps to
4511 make your requests unique and thus easier to trace.
4512 If you don't plan to change this header frequently,
4513 you should stick to a common language.
4519 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4522 <screen># Pretend to use Canadian language settings.
4523 {+hide-accept-language{en-ca} \
4524 +hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenBSD i386; en-CA; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060628 Firefox/1.5.0.4} \
4534 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4535 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-content-disposition">
4536 <title>hide-content-disposition</title>
4542 <term>Typical use:</term>
4544 <para>Prevent download menus for content you prefer to view inside the browser.</para>
4549 <term>Effect:</term>
4552 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header set by some servers.
4559 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4561 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4566 <term>Parameter:</term>
4569 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4578 Some servers set the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header for
4579 documents they assume you want to save locally before viewing them.
4580 The <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header contains the file name
4581 the browser is supposed to use by default.
4584 In most browsers that understand this header, it makes it impossible to
4585 <emphasis>just view</emphasis> the document, without downloading it first,
4586 even if it's just a simple text file or an image.
4589 Removing the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header helps
4590 to prevent this annoyance, but some browsers additionally check the
4591 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> header, before they decide if they can
4592 display a document without saving it first. In these cases, you have
4593 to change this header as well, before the browser stops displaying
4597 It is also possible to change the server's file name suggestion
4598 to another one, but in most cases it isn't worth the time to set
4602 This action will probably be removed in the future,
4603 use server-header filters instead.
4609 <term>Example usage:</term>
4612 <screen># Disarm the download link in Sourceforge's patch tracker
4614 +content-type-overwrite{text/plain}\
4615 +hide-content-disposition{block} }
4616 .sourceforge.net/tracker/download\.php</screen>
4624 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4625 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-if-modified-since">
4626 <title>hide-if-modified-since</title>
4632 <term>Typical use:</term>
4634 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
4639 <term>Effect:</term>
4642 Deletes the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> HTTP client header or modifies its value.
4649 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4651 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4656 <term>Parameter:</term>
4659 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or a user defined value that specifies a range of hours.
4668 Removing this header is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
4669 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the
4670 browser to use a cached copy of the page.
4673 Instead of removing the header, <literal>hide-if-modified-since</literal> can
4674 also add or subtract a random amount of time to/from the header's value.
4675 You specify a range of minutes where the random factor should be chosen from and
4676 <application>Privoxy</application> does the rest. A negative value means
4677 subtracting, a positive value adding.
4680 Randomizing the value of the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> makes
4681 it less likely that the server can use the time as a cookie replacement,
4682 but you will run into caching problems if the random range is too high.
4685 It is a good idea to only use a small negative value and let
4686 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>
4687 handle the greater changes.
4690 It is also recommended to use this action together with
4691 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>,
4692 otherwise it's more or less pointless.
4698 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4701 <screen># Let the browser revalidate but make tracking based on the time less likely.
4702 {+hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
4703 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
4704 +crunch-if-none-match}
4713 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4714 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-from-header">
4715 <title>hide-from-header</title>
4719 <term>Typical use:</term>
4721 <para>Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address</para>
4726 <term>Effect:</term>
4729 Deletes any existing <quote>From:</quote> HTTP header, or replaces it with the
4737 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4739 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4744 <term>Parameter:</term>
4747 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4756 The keyword <quote>block</quote> will completely remove the header
4757 (not to be confused with the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
4761 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
4762 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
4763 is actually used by a real person.
4766 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send
4767 <quote>From:</quote> headers anymore.
4773 <term>Example usage:</term>
4776 <screen>+hide-from-header{block}</screen> or
4777 <screen>+hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}</screen>
4785 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4786 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-referrer">
4787 <title>hide-referrer</title>
4788 <anchor id="hide-referer">
4791 <term>Typical use:</term>
4793 <para>Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site</para>
4798 <term>Effect:</term>
4801 Deletes the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) HTTP header from the client request,
4802 or replaces it with a forged one.
4809 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4811 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4816 <term>Parameter:</term>
4820 <para><quote>conditional-block</quote> to delete the header completely if the host has changed.</para>
4823 <para><quote>conditional-forge</quote> to forge the header if the host has changed.</para>
4826 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header unconditionally.</para>
4829 <para><quote>forge</quote> to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are talking to.</para>
4832 <para>Any other string to set a user defined referrer.</para>
4842 <literal>conditional-block</literal> is the only parameter,
4843 that isn't easily detected in the server's log file. If it blocks the
4844 referrer, the request will look like the visitor used a bookmark or
4845 typed in the address directly.
4848 Leaving the referrer unmodified for requests on the same host
4849 allows the server owner to see the visitor's <quote>click path</quote>,
4850 but in most cases she could also get that information by comparing
4851 other parts of the log file: for example the User-Agent if it isn't
4852 a very common one, or the user's IP address if it doesn't change between
4856 Always blocking the referrer, or using a custom one, can lead to
4857 failures on servers that check the referrer before they answer any
4858 requests, in an attempt to prevent their content from being
4859 embedded or linked to elsewhere.
4862 Both <literal>conditional-block</literal> and <literal>forge</literal>
4863 will work with referrer checks, as long as content and valid referring page
4864 are on the same host. Most of the time that's the case.
4867 <literal>hide-referer</literal> is an alternate spelling of
4868 <literal>hide-referrer</literal> and the two can be can be freely
4869 substituted with each other. (<quote>referrer</quote> is the
4870 correct English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it
4871 requires it to be spelled as <quote>referer</quote>.)
4877 <term>Example usage:</term>
4880 <screen>+hide-referrer{forge}</screen> or
4881 <screen>+hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}</screen>
4889 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4890 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-user-agent">
4891 <title>hide-user-agent</title>
4895 <term>Typical use:</term>
4897 <para>Try to conceal your type of browser and client operating system</para>
4902 <term>Effect:</term>
4905 Replaces the value of the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> HTTP header
4906 in client requests with the specified value.
4913 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4915 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4920 <term>Parameter:</term>
4923 Any user-defined string.
4933 This can lead to problems on web sites that depend on looking at this header in
4934 order to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
4935 way, is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> the right thing to do: good web sites
4936 work browser-independently).
4940 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
4941 browsers will access the same <application>Privoxy</application> is
4942 <emphasis>not recommended</emphasis>. In single-user, single-browser
4943 setups, you might use it to delete your OS version information from
4944 the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known bugs for your
4945 OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to access
4946 sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
4947 reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not
4948 let <application>Mozilla</application> enter, yet forging to a
4949 <application>Netscape 6.1</application> user-agent works just fine.
4950 (Must be just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
4953 More information on known user-agent strings can be found at
4954 <ulink url="http://www.user-agents.org/">http://www.user-agents.org/</ulink>
4956 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent</ulink>.
4962 <term>Example usage:</term>
4965 <screen>+hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}</screen>
4973 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4974 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="limit-connect">
4975 <title>limit-connect</title>
4979 <term>Typical use:</term>
4981 <para>Prevent abuse of <application>Privoxy</application> as a TCP proxy relay or disable SSL for untrusted sites</para>
4986 <term>Effect:</term>
4989 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
4996 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4998 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5003 <term>Parameter:</term>
5006 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
5007 defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
5016 By default, i.e. if no <literal>limit-connect</literal> action applies,
5017 <application>Privoxy</application> allows HTTP CONNECT requests to all
5018 ports. Use <literal>limit-connect</literal> if fine-grained control
5019 is desired for some or all destinations.
5022 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
5023 (<quote>https://</quote> URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
5024 the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
5025 short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
5026 This means CONNECT-enabled proxies can be used as TCP relays very easily.
5029 <application>Privoxy</application> relays HTTPS traffic without seeing
5030 the decoded content. Websites can leverage this limitation to circumvent &my-app;'s
5031 filters. By specifying an invalid port range you can disable HTTPS entirely.
5037 <term>Example usages:</term>
5039 <!-- I had trouble getting the spacing to look right in my browser -->
5040 <!-- I probably have the wrong font setup, bollocks. -->
5041 <!-- Apparently the emphasis tag uses a proportional font no matter what -->
5043 <screen>+limit-connect{443} # Port 443 is OK.
5044 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
5045 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
5046 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK
5047 +limit-connect{,} # No HTTPS/SSL traffic is allowed</screen>
5054 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5055 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="prevent-compression">
5056 <title>prevent-compression</title>
5060 <term>Typical use:</term>
5063 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
5064 passed through <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>s.
5070 <term>Effect:</term>
5073 Removes the Accept-Encoding header which can be used to ask for compressed transfer.
5080 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5082 <para>Boolean.</para>
5087 <term>Parameter:</term>
5099 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
5100 is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But the <literal><link
5101 linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> and
5102 <literal><link linkend="deanimate-gifs">deanimate-gifs</link></literal>
5103 actions need access to the uncompressed data.
5106 When compiled with zlib support (available since &my-app; 3.0.7), content that should be
5107 filtered is decompressed on-the-fly and you don't have to worry about this action.
5108 If you are using an older &my-app; version, or one that hasn't been compiled with zlib
5109 support, this action can be used to convince the server to send the content uncompressed.
5112 Most text-based instances compress very well, the size is seldom decreased by less than 50%,
5113 for markup-heavy instances like news feeds saving more than 90% of the original size isn't
5117 Not using compression will therefore slow down the transfer, and you should only
5118 enable this action if you really need it. As of &my-app; 3.0.7 it's disabled in all
5119 predefined action settings.
5122 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
5123 documents correctly. Broken PHP applications tend to send an empty document body,
5124 some IIS versions only send the beginning of the content. If you enable
5125 <literal>prevent-compression</literal> per default, you might want to add
5126 exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
5132 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
5136 # Selectively turn off compression, and enable a filter
5138 { +filter{tiny-textforms} +prevent-compression }
5139 # Match only these sites
5144 # Or instead, we could set a universal default:
5146 { +prevent-compression }
5149 # Then maybe make exceptions for broken sites:
5151 { -prevent-compression }
5152 .compusa.com/</screen>
5161 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5162 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="overwrite-last-modified">
5163 <title>overwrite-last-modified</title>
5169 <term>Typical use:</term>
5171 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
5176 <term>Effect:</term>
5179 Deletes the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> HTTP server header or modifies its value.
5186 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5188 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5193 <term>Parameter:</term>
5196 One of the keywords: <quote>block</quote>, <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote>
5197 and <quote>randomize</quote>
5206 Removing the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header is useful for filter
5207 testing, where you want to force a real reload instead of getting status
5208 code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the browser to reuse the old
5209 version of the page.
5212 The <quote>randomize</quote> option overwrites the value of the
5213 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with a randomly chosen time
5214 between the original value and the current time. In theory the server
5215 could send each document with a different <quote>Last-Modified:</quote>
5216 header to track visits without using cookies. <quote>Randomize</quote>
5217 makes it impossible and the browser can still revalidate cached documents.
5220 <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote> overwrites the value of the
5221 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with the current time. You could use
5222 this option together with
5223 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>
5224 to further customize your random range.
5227 The preferred parameter here is <quote>randomize</quote>. It is safe
5228 to use, as long as the time settings are more or less correct.
5229 If the server sets the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header to the time
5230 of the request, the random range becomes zero and the value stays the same.
5231 Therefore you should later randomize it a second time with
5232 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>,
5236 It is also recommended to use this action together with
5237 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>.
5243 <term>Example usage:</term>
5246 <screen># Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
5247 { +hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
5248 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
5249 +crunch-if-none-match}
5258 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5259 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="redirect">
5260 <title>redirect</title>
5266 <term>Typical use:</term>
5269 Redirect requests to other sites.
5275 <term>Effect:</term>
5278 Convinces the browser that the requested document has been moved
5279 to another location and the browser should get it from there.
5286 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5288 <para>Parameterized</para>
5293 <term>Parameter:</term>
5296 An absolute URL or a single pcrs command.
5305 Requests to which this action applies are answered with a
5306 HTTP redirect to URLs of your choosing. The new URL is
5307 either provided as parameter, or derived by applying a
5308 single pcrs command to the original URL.
5311 This action will be ignored if you use it together with
5312 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>.
5313 It can be combined with
5314 <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects{check-decoded-url}</link></literal>
5315 to redirect to a decoded version of a rewritten URL.
5318 Use this action carefully, make sure not to create redirection loops
5319 and be aware that using your own redirects might make it
5320 possible to fingerprint your requests.
5323 In case of problems with your redirects, or simply to watch
5324 them working, enable <link linkend="DEBUG">debug 128</link>.
5330 <term>Example usages:</term>
5333 <screen># Replace example.com's style sheet with another one
5334 { +redirect{http://localhost/css-replacements/example.com.css} }
5335 example.com/stylesheet\.css
5337 # Create a short, easy to remember nickname for a favorite site
5338 # (relies on the browser accept and forward invalid URLs to &my-app;)
5339 { +redirect{http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html} }
5342 # Always use the expanded view for Undeadly.org articles
5343 # (Note the $ at the end of the URL pattern to make sure
5344 # the request for the rewritten URL isn't redirected as well)
5345 {+redirect{s@$@&mode=expanded@}}
5346 undeadly.org/cgi\?action=article&sid=\d*$
5348 # Redirect Google search requests to MSN
5349 {+redirect{s@^http://[^/]*/search\?q=([^&]*).*@http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=$1@}}
5352 # Redirect MSN search requests to Yahoo
5353 {+redirect{s@^http://[^/]*/results\.aspx\?q=([^&]*).*@http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=$1@}}
5354 search.msn.com//results\.aspx\?q=
5356 # Redirect remote requests for this manual
5357 # to the local version delivered by Privoxy
5358 {+redirect{s@^http://www@http://config@}}
5359 www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</screen>
5368 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5369 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="server-header-filter">
5370 <title>server-header-filter</title>
5374 <term>Typical use:</term>
5377 Rewrite or remove single server headers.
5383 <term>Effect:</term>
5386 All server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly
5387 through the specified regular expression based substitutions.
5394 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
5396 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5401 <term>Parameter:</term>
5404 The name of a server-header filter, as defined in one of the
5405 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
5414 Server-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
5415 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
5416 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
5417 You can do that by using tags though.
5420 Server-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
5421 and use their output as input.
5424 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
5425 to learn which server-header filters are available by default, and how to
5432 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5436 {+server-header-filter{html-to-xml}}
5437 example.org/xml-instance-that-is-delivered-as-html
5439 {+server-header-filter{xml-to-html}}
5440 example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
5450 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5451 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="server-header-tagger">
5452 <title>server-header-tagger</title>
5456 <term>Typical use:</term>
5459 Enable or disable filters based on the Content-Type header.
5465 <term>Effect:</term>
5468 Server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
5469 the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
5477 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
5479 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5484 <term>Parameter:</term>
5487 The name of a server-header tagger, as defined in one of the
5488 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
5497 Server-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
5498 and as the header isn't modified, each tagger <quote>sees</quote>
5502 Server-header taggers are executed before all other header actions
5503 that modify server headers. Their tags can be used to control
5504 all of the other server-header actions, the content filters
5505 and the crunch actions (<link linkend="redirect">redirect</link>
5506 and <link linkend="block">block</link>).
5509 Obviously crunching based on tags created by server-header taggers
5510 doesn't prevent the request from showing up in the server's log file.
5517 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5521 # Tag every request with the content type declared by the server
5522 {+server-header-tagger{content-type}}
5533 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5534 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="session-cookies-only">
5535 <title>session-cookies-only</title>
5539 <term>Typical use:</term>
5542 Allow only temporary <quote>session</quote> cookies (for the current
5543 browser session <emphasis>only</emphasis>).
5549 <term>Effect:</term>
5552 Deletes the <quote>expires</quote> field from <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote>
5553 server headers. Most browsers will not store such cookies permanently and
5554 forget them in between sessions.
5561 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5563 <para>Boolean.</para>
5568 <term>Parameter:</term>
5580 This is less strict than <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> /
5581 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal> and allows you to browse
5582 websites that insist or rely on setting cookies, without compromising your privacy too badly.
5585 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed by
5586 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal> and will forget about them between sessions.
5587 This makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
5588 that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
5589 sites, and is the recommended setting.
5592 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>
5593 together with <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> or
5594 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>. If you do, cookies
5595 will be plainly killed.
5598 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an <quote>expires</quote>
5599 field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out to be sure.
5602 This setting also has no effect on cookies that may have been stored
5603 previously by the browser before starting <application>Privoxy</application>.
5604 These would have to be removed manually.
5607 <application>Privoxy</application> also uses
5608 the <link linkend="filter-content-cookies">content-cookies filter</link>
5609 to block some types of cookies. Content cookies are not effected by
5610 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>.
5616 <term>Example usage:</term>
5619 <screen>+session-cookies-only</screen>
5627 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5628 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="set-image-blocker">
5629 <title>set-image-blocker</title>
5633 <term>Typical use:</term>
5635 <para>Choose the replacement for blocked images</para>
5640 <term>Effect:</term>
5643 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If <emphasis>both</emphasis>
5644 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><link
5645 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> <emphasis>also</emphasis>
5646 apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an image,
5647 <emphasis>then</emphasis> the parameter of this action decides what will be
5648 sent as a replacement.
5655 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5657 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5662 <term>Parameter:</term>
5667 <quote>pattern</quote> to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is visually
5668 decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners were busted.
5673 <quote>blank</quote> to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners disappear
5674 completely, but makes it hard to detect where <application>Privoxy</application> has blocked
5675 images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if <application>Privoxy</application>
5676 has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
5681 <quote><replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable></quote> to
5682 send a redirect to <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>. You can redirect
5683 to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem via <quote>file:///</quote> URL.
5684 (But note that not all browsers support redirecting to a local file system).
5687 A good application of redirects is to use special <application>Privoxy</application>-built-in
5688 URLs, which send the built-in images, as <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>.
5689 This has the same visual effect as specifying <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote> in
5690 the first place, but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of requesting
5691 it over and over again.
5702 The URLs for the built-in images are <quote>http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=<replaceable
5703 class="parameter">type</replaceable></quote>, where <replaceable class="parameter">type</replaceable> is
5704 either <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote>.
5707 There is a third (advanced) type, called <quote>auto</quote>. It is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> to be
5708 used in <literal>set-image-blocker</literal>, but meant for use from <link linkend="filter-file">filters</link>.
5709 Auto will select the type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an image.
5715 <term>Example usage:</term>
5721 <screen>+set-image-blocker{pattern}</screen>
5724 Redirect to the BSD daemon:
5727 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}</screen>
5730 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
5733 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}</screen>
5741 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5743 <title>Summary</title>
5745 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
5746 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
5747 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
5748 content, and other criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard
5749 and fast rules for all sites. See the <link
5750 linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link> for a brief example on troubleshooting
5756 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5757 <sect2 id="aliases">
5758 <title>Aliases</title>
5760 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
5761 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other actions.
5762 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
5763 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab,
5765 <quote>{</quote> and <quote>}</quote>, but we <emphasis>strongly
5766 recommend</emphasis> that you only use <quote>a</quote> to <quote>z</quote>,
5767 <quote>0</quote> to <quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and <quote>-</quote>.
5768 Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start with a
5769 <quote>+</quote> or <quote>-</quote> sign, since they are merely textually
5773 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they <emphasis>must be
5774 defined in a special section at the top of the file!</emphasis>
5775 And there can only be one such section per actions file. Each actions file may
5776 have its own alias section, and the aliases defined in it are only visible
5780 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
5781 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
5782 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called
5783 <quote>shop</quote>, you can later change your policy on shops in
5784 <emphasis>one</emphasis> place, and your changes will take effect everywhere
5785 in the actions file where the <quote>shop</quote> alias is used. Calling aliases
5786 by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
5789 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though:
5790 <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in web-based action file
5791 editor honors aliases when reading the actions files, but it expands
5792 them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are of course preserved,
5793 but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
5798 Now let's define some aliases...
5803 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
5805 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
5806 # must be at the top of the actions file!
5810 # These aliases just save typing later:
5811 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5813 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5814 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5815 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked image.} +handle-as-image
5816 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
5818 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5819 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5821 fragile = -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer</link> -<link linkend="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link>
5823 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link>
5825 # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
5827 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
5828 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies</screen>
5832 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
5833 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
5834 up for the <quote>/</quote> pattern):
5839 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
5840 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
5843 .office.microsoft.com
5844 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
5845 # Gmail is really mail.google.com, not gmail.com
5849 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
5853 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
5856 # These shops require pop-ups:
5858 {-filter{all-popups} -filter{unsolicited-popups}}
5860 .overclockers.co.uk</screen>
5864 Aliases like <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote> are typically used for
5865 <quote>problem</quote> sites that require more than one action to be disabled
5866 in order to function properly.
5872 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5873 <sect2 id="act-examples">
5874 <title>Actions Files Tutorial</title>
5876 The above chapters have shown <link linkend="actions-file">which actions files
5877 there are and how they are organized</link>, how actions are <link
5878 linkend="actions">specified</link> and <link linkend="actions-apply">applied
5879 to URLs</link>, how <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> work, and how to
5880 define and use <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link>. Now, let's look at an
5881 example <filename>match-all.action</filename>, <filename>default.action</filename>
5882 and <filename>user.action</filename> file and see how all these pieces come together:
5886 <title>match-all.action</title>
5888 Remember <emphasis>all actions are disabled when matching starts</emphasis>,
5889 so we have to explicitly enable the ones we want.
5893 While the <filename>match-all.action</filename> file only contains a
5894 single section, it is probably the most important one. It has only one
5895 pattern, <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, but this pattern
5896 <link linkend="af-patterns">matches all URLs</link>. Therefore, the set of
5897 actions used in this <quote>default</quote> section <emphasis>will
5898 be applied to all requests as a start</emphasis>. It can be partly or
5899 wholly overridden by other actions files like <filename>default.action</filename>
5900 and <filename>user.action</filename>, but it will still be largely responsible
5901 for your overall browsing experience.
5905 Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
5906 no need to disable any actions here. (Remember: a <quote>+</quote>
5907 preceding the action name enables the action, a <quote>-</quote> disables!).
5908 Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
5909 multiple lines with line continuation.
5915 +<link linkend="CHANGE-X-FORWARDED-FOR">change-x-forwarded-for{block}</link> \
5916 +<link linkend="HIDE-FROM-HEADER">hide-from-header{block}</link> \
5917 +<link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER">set-image-blocker{pattern}</link> \
5924 The default behavior is now set.
5929 <title>default.action</title>
5932 If you aren't a developer, there's no need for you to edit the
5933 <filename>default.action</filename> file. It is maintained by
5934 the &my-app; developers and if you disagree with some of the
5935 sections, you should overrule them in your <filename>user.action</filename>.
5939 Understanding the <filename>default.action</filename> file can
5940 help you with your <filename>user.action</filename>, though.
5944 The first section in this file is a special section for internal use
5945 that prevents older &my-app; versions from reading the file:
5950 ##########################################################################
5951 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
5952 ##########################################################################
5954 for-privoxy-version=3.0.11</screen>
5958 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
5959 section from the above <link linkend="aliases">chapter on aliases</link>,
5960 that also explains why and how aliases are used:
5965 ##########################################################################
5967 ##########################################################################
5970 # These aliases just save typing later:
5971 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5973 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5974 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5975 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked image.} +handle-as-image
5976 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
5978 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5979 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5981 fragile = -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer</link>
5982 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link></screen>
5986 The first of our specialized sections is concerned with <quote>fragile</quote>
5987 sites, i.e. sites that require minimum interference, because they are either
5988 very complex or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that
5989 make them unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will simply use
5990 our pre-defined <literal>fragile</literal> alias instead of stating the list
5991 of actions explicitly:
5996 ##########################################################################
5997 # Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
5998 ##########################################################################
6000 # "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
6003 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
6004 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
6005 mail.google.com</screen>
6009 Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically
6010 require cookies to log in, and pop-up windows for shopping
6011 carts or item details. Again, we'll use a pre-defined alias:
6020 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
6022 .scan.co.uk</screen>
6026 The <literal><link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link></literal>
6027 action, which may have been enabled in <filename>match-all.action</filename>,
6028 breaks some sites. So disable it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
6033 { -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> }
6037 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
6038 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
6039 .nytimes.com</screen>
6043 It is important that <application>Privoxy</application> knows which
6044 URLs belong to images, so that <emphasis>if</emphasis> they are to
6045 be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
6046 Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it
6047 would destroy the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it
6048 would feed the advertisers information about you. We can mark any
6049 URL as an image with the <literal><link
6050 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action,
6051 and marking all URLs that end in a known image file extension is a
6057 ##########################################################################
6059 ##########################################################################
6061 # Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
6062 # blocked further down this file:
6064 { +<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> }
6065 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$</screen>
6069 And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to
6070 generate the banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the
6071 request is for an image. Hence we block them <emphasis>and</emphasis>
6072 mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
6073 <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above. (We could of
6074 course just as well use <literal>+<link linkend="block">block</link>
6075 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> here.)
6076 Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
6077 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
6078 action. Since all URLs have matched the default section with its
6079 <literal>+<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link>{pattern}</literal>
6080 action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:
6085 # Known ad generators:
6090 .ad.*.doubleclick.net
6091 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6092 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6098 One of the most important jobs of <application>Privoxy</application>
6099 is to block banners. Many of these can be <quote>blocked</quote>
6100 by the <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{banners-by-size}</literal>
6101 action, which we enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner
6102 images from the pages while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request
6103 them anymore, and hence they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally
6104 doesn't catch all banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we
6105 need a comprehensive list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the
6106 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action to them.
6109 First comes many generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
6110 matching typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes
6111 a list of individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here
6112 to keep the example short:
6117 ##########################################################################
6118 # Block these fine banners:
6119 ##########################################################################
6120 { <link linkend="BLOCK">+block{Banner ads.}</link> }
6128 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
6129 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
6131 # Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
6133 .hitbox.com</screen>
6137 It's quite remarkable how many advertisers actually call their banner
6138 servers ads.<replaceable>company</replaceable>.com, or call the directory
6139 in which the banners are stored simply <quote>banners</quote>. So the above
6140 generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
6143 But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want
6144 to block. The pattern <literal>.*ads.</literal> e.g. catches
6145 <quote>nasty-<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.nasty-corp.com</quote> as intended,
6146 but also <quote>downlo<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.sourcefroge.net</quote> or
6147 <quote><emphasis>ads</emphasis>l.some-provider.net.</quote> So here come some
6148 well-known exceptions to the <literal>+<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6152 Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
6153 <quote>downloads.sourcefroge.net</quote>: Initially, all actions are deactivated,
6154 so it wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the
6155 URL, but just deactivates the <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6156 action once again. Then it matches <literal>.*ads.</literal>, an exception to the
6157 general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
6158 <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link></literal> applies. And now, it'll match
6159 <literal>.*loads.</literal>, where <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">-block</link></literal>
6160 applies, so (unless it matches <emphasis>again</emphasis> further down) it ends up
6161 with no <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal> action applying.
6166 ##########################################################################
6167 # Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
6168 ##########################################################################
6172 { -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
6173 adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
6174 adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
6175 adobe. # (has nothing to do with ads either)
6176 ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
6177 .edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
6178 .*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
6186 www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
6187 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv</screen>
6191 Filtering source code can have nasty side effects,
6192 so make an exception for our friends at sourceforge.net,
6193 and all paths with <quote>cvs</quote> in them. Note that
6194 <literal>-<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link></literal>
6195 disables <emphasis>all</emphasis> filters in one fell swoop!
6200 # Don't filter code!
6202 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6207 .sourceforge.net</screen>
6211 The actual <filename>default.action</filename> is of course much more
6212 comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
6217 <sect3><title>user.action</title>
6220 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies,
6221 which would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now,
6222 you might want to be more specific and have customized rules that
6223 are more suitable to your personal habits and preferences. These would
6224 be for narrowly defined situations like your ISP or your bank, and should
6225 be placed in <filename>user.action</filename>, which is parsed after all other
6226 actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any previously
6227 defined actions. <filename>user.action</filename> is also a
6228 <emphasis>safe</emphasis> place for your personal settings, since
6229 <filename>default.action</filename> is actively maintained by the
6230 <application>Privoxy</application> developers and you'll probably want
6231 to install updated versions from time to time.
6235 So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
6236 <filename>user.action</filename>:
6240 <!-- brief sample user.action here -->
6244 # My user.action file. <fred@example.com></screen>
6248 As <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link> are local to the actions
6249 file that they are defined in, you can't use the ones from
6250 <filename>default.action</filename>, unless you repeat them here:
6255 # Aliases are local to the file they are defined in.
6256 # (Re-)define aliases for this file:
6260 # These aliases just save typing later, and the alias names should
6261 # be self explanatory.
6263 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
6264 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6265 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
6266 allow-popups = -filter{all-popups}
6267 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked as image.} +handle-as-image
6268 -block-as-image = -block
6270 # These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
6271 # certain types of sites:
6273 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referrer
6274 shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
6276 # Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
6278 allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}
6280 # Alias for specific file types that are text, but might have conflicting
6281 # MIME types. We want the browser to force these to be text documents.
6282 handle-as-text = -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> +-<link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{text/plain}</link> +-<link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-CONTENT-DISPOSITION">hide-content-disposition</link></screen>
6287 Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and
6288 you don't want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like
6289 to allow persistent cookies for these sites. The
6290 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal> alias defined above does exactly
6291 that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
6292 processing of cookies to make them only temporary.
6297 { allow-all-cookies }
6301 .redhat.com</screen>
6305 Your bank is allergic to some filter, but you don't know which, so you disable them all:
6310 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6311 .your-home-banking-site.com</screen>
6315 Some file types you may not want to filter for various reasons:
6320 # Technical documentation is likely to contain strings that might
6321 # erroneously get altered by the JavaScript-oriented filters:
6326 # And this stupid host sends streaming video with a wrong MIME type,
6327 # so that Privoxy thinks it is getting HTML and starts filtering:
6329 stupid-server.example.com/</screen>
6333 Example of a simple <link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> action. Say you've
6334 seen an ad on your favourite page on example.com that you want to get rid of.
6335 You have right-clicked the image, selected <quote>copy image location</quote>
6336 and pasted the URL below while removing the leading http://, into a
6337 <literal>{ +block{} }</literal> section. Note that <literal>{ +handle-as-image
6338 }</literal> need not be specified, since all URLs ending in
6339 <literal>.gif</literal> will be tagged as images by the general rules as set
6340 in default.action anyway:
6345 { +<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link>{Nasty ads.} }
6346 www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor\.gif
6347 another.example.net/more/junk/here/</screen>
6351 The URLs of dynamically generated banners, especially from large banner
6352 farms, often don't use the well-known image file name extensions, which
6353 makes it impossible for <application>Privoxy</application> to guess
6354 the file type just by looking at the URL.
6355 You can use the <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above for
6357 Note that objects which match this rule but then turn out NOT to be an
6358 image are typically rendered as a <quote>broken image</quote> icon by the
6359 browser. Use cautiously.
6368 ar.atwola.com/</screen>
6372 Now you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine,
6373 but you were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you
6374 were again too lazy to give <link linkend="contact">feedback</link>, so
6375 you just used the <literal>fragile</literal> alias on the site, and
6376 -- <emphasis>whoa!</emphasis> -- it worked. The <literal>fragile</literal>
6377 aliases disables those actions that are most likely to break a site. Also,
6378 good for testing purposes to see if it is <application>Privoxy</application>
6379 that is causing the problem or not. We later find other regular sites
6380 that misbehave, and add those to our personalized list of troublemakers:
6388 .mybank.com</screen>
6392 You like the <quote>fun</quote> text replacements in <filename>default.filter</filename>,
6393 but it is disabled in the distributed actions file.
6394 So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
6395 update-safe config, once and for all:
6400 { +<link linkend="filter-fun">filter{fun}</link> }
6401 / # For ALL sites!</screen>
6405 Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions
6406 to the filters in <filename>default.action</filename> for things that
6407 really shouldn't be filtered, like code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since
6408 <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word, these exceptions
6409 won't be valid for the <quote>fun</quote> filtering specified here.
6413 You might also worry about how your favourite free websites are
6414 funded, and find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements
6415 to survive. So you might want to specifically allow banners for those
6416 sites that you feel provide value to you:
6428 Note that <literal>allow-ads</literal> has been aliased to
6429 <literal>-<link linkend="block">block</link></literal>,
6430 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-size">filter{banners-by-size}</link></literal>, and
6431 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-link">filter{banners-by-link}</link></literal> above.
6435 Invoke another alias here to force an over-ride of the MIME type <literal>
6436 application/x-sh</literal> which typically would open a download type
6437 dialog. In my case, I want to look at the shell script, and then I can save
6438 it should I choose to.
6448 <filename>user.action</filename> is generally the best place to define
6449 exceptions and additions to the default policies of
6450 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some actions are safe to have their
6451 default policies set here though. So let's set a default policy to have a
6452 <quote>blank</quote> image as opposed to the checkerboard pattern for
6453 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> sites. <quote>/</quote> of course matches all URL
6459 { +<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker{blank}</link> }
6460 / # ALL sites</screen>
6466 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6470 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6472 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6474 <sect1 id="filter-file">
6475 <title>Filter Files</title>
6478 On-the-fly text substitutions need
6479 to be defined in a <quote>filter file</quote>. Once defined, they
6480 can then be invoked as an <quote>action</quote>.
6484 &my-app; supports three different filter actions:
6485 <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> to
6486 rewrite the content that is send to the client,
6487 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header-filter</link></literal>
6488 to rewrite headers that are send by the client, and
6489 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header-filter</link></literal>
6490 to rewrite headers that are send by the server.
6494 &my-app; also supports two tagger actions:
6495 <literal><link linkend="client-header-tagger">client-header-tagger</link></literal>
6497 <literal><link linkend="server-header-tagger">server-header-tagger</link></literal>.
6498 Taggers and filters use the same syntax in the filter files, the difference
6499 is that taggers don't modify the text they are filtering, but use a rewritten
6500 version of the filtered text as tag. The tags can then be used to change the
6501 applying actions through sections with <link linkend="tag-pattern">tag-patterns</link>.
6506 Multiple filter files can be defined through the <literal> <link
6507 linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal> config directive. The filters
6508 as supplied by the developers are located in
6509 <filename>default.filter</filename>. It is recommended that any locally
6510 defined or modified filters go in a separately defined file such as
6511 <filename>user.filter</filename>.
6515 Common tasks for content filters are to eliminate common annoyances in
6516 HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows,
6517 exit consoles, crippled windows without navigation tools, the
6518 infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to suppress images with certain
6519 width and height attributes (standard banner sizes or web-bugs),
6520 or just to have fun.
6524 Enabled content filters are applied to any content whose
6525 <quote>Content Type</quote> header is recognised as a sign
6526 of text-based content, with the exception of <literal>text/plain</literal>.
6527 Use the <link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> action
6528 to also filter other content.
6532 Substitutions are made at the source level, so if you want to <quote>roll
6533 your own</quote> filters, you should first be familiar with HTML syntax,
6534 and, of course, regular expressions.
6538 Just like the <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, the
6539 filter file is organized in sections, which are called <emphasis>filters</emphasis>
6540 here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with one of the
6541 <emphasis>keywords</emphasis> <literal>FILTER:</literal>,
6542 <literal>CLIENT-HEADER-FILTER:</literal> or <literal>SERVER-HEADER-FILTER:</literal>
6543 followed by the filter's <emphasis>name</emphasis>, and a short (one line)
6544 <emphasis>description</emphasis> of what it does. Below that line
6545 come the <emphasis>jobs</emphasis>, i.e. lines that define the actual
6546 text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
6547 should describe what the filter <emphasis>eliminates</emphasis>. The
6548 comment is used in the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
6549 user interface</ulink>.
6553 Once a filter called <replaceable>name</replaceable> has been defined
6554 in the filter file, it can be invoked by using an action of the form
6555 +<literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>name</replaceable>}</literal>
6556 in any <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>.
6560 Filter definitions start with a header line that contains the filter
6561 type, the filter name and the filter description.
6562 A content filter header line for a filter called <quote>foo</quote> could look
6567 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"</screen>
6571 Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that
6572 define what text replacements the filter executes. They are specified
6573 in a syntax that imitates <ulink url="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</ulink>'s
6574 <literal>s///</literal> operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you
6575 will find this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the
6576 PCRS documentation for the subtle differences to Perl behaviour. Most
6577 notably, the non-standard option letter <literal>U</literal> is supported,
6578 which turns the default to ungreedy matching.
6583 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
6584 Expressions</quote></ulink>, you might want to take a look at
6585 the <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>, and
6586 see the <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl
6588 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlop.html">the
6589 <literal>s///</literal> operator's syntax</ulink> and <ulink
6590 url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl-style regular
6591 expressions</ulink> in general.
6592 The below examples might also help to get you started.
6596 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6598 <sect2><title>Filter File Tutorial</title>
6600 Now, let's complete our <quote>foo</quote> content filter. We have already defined
6601 the heading, but the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace
6602 <quote>foo</quote> with <quote>bar</quote>, there is only one (trivial) job
6607 <screen>s/foo/bar/</screen>
6611 But wait! Didn't the comment say that <emphasis>all</emphasis> occurrences
6612 of <quote>foo</quote> should be replaced? Our current job will only take
6613 care of the first <quote>foo</quote> on each page. For global substitution,
6614 we'll need to add the <literal>g</literal> option:
6618 <screen>s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6622 Our complete filter now looks like this:
6625 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
6626 s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6630 Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see
6631 a filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
6632 abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
6638 FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
6640 # Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
6642 s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg</screen>
6646 Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses
6647 <literal>|</literal> as the delimiter instead of <literal>/</literal>, because
6648 the pattern contains a forward slash, which would otherwise have to be escaped
6649 by a backslash (<literal>\</literal>).
6653 Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <literal><script.*</literal>
6654 enclosed in parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and <literal>*</literal>
6655 means: <quote>Match an arbitrary number of the element left of myself</quote>, this
6656 matches <quote><script</quote>, followed by <emphasis>any</emphasis> text, i.e.
6657 it matches the whole page, from the start of the first <script> tag.
6661 That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: <literal>document\.referrer</literal>
6662 matches only the exact string <quote>document.referrer</quote>. The dot needed to
6663 be <emphasis>escaped</emphasis>, i.e. preceded by a backslash, to take away its
6664 special meaning as a joker, and make it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is:
6665 Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including,
6666 the text <quote>document.referrer</quote>, if <emphasis>both</emphasis> are present
6667 in the page (and appear in that order).
6671 But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in parentheses,
6672 is <literal>.*</script></literal>. You already know what <literal>.*</literal>
6673 means, so the whole pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script>
6674 tag in a page to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text
6675 <quote>document.referrer</quote> appears somewhere in between.
6679 This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the parentheses:
6680 The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed in parentheses, will be
6681 remembered and be available through the variables <literal>$1, $2, ...</literal> in
6682 the substitute. The <literal>U</literal> option switches to ungreedy matching, which means
6683 that the first <literal>.*</literal> in the pattern will only <quote>eat up</quote> all
6684 text in between <quote><script</quote> and the <emphasis>first</emphasis> occurrence
6685 of <quote>document.referrer</quote>, and that the second <literal>.*</literal> will
6686 only span the text up to the <emphasis>first</emphasis> <quote></script></quote>
6687 tag. Furthermore, the <literal>s</literal> option says that the match may span
6688 multiple lines in the page, and the <literal>g</literal> option again means that the
6689 substitution is global.
6693 So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
6694 <quote>document.referrer</quote>. Remember the parts of the script from
6695 (and including) the start tag up to (and excluding) the string
6696 <quote>document.referrer</quote> as <literal>$1</literal>, and the part following
6697 that string, up to and including the closing tag, as <literal>$2</literal>.
6701 Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
6702 lets look at the substitute: <literal>$1"Not Your Business!"$2</literal> is
6703 easy to read: The text remembered as <literal>$1</literal>, followed by
6704 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> (<emphasis>including</emphasis>
6705 the quotation marks!), followed by the text remembered as <literal>$2</literal>.
6706 This produces an exact copy of the original string, with the middle part
6707 (the <quote>document.referrer</quote>) replaced by <literal>"Not Your
6708 Business!"</literal>.
6712 The whole job now reads: Replace <quote>document.referrer</quote> by
6713 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> wherever it appears inside a
6714 <script> tag. Note that this job won't break JavaScript syntax,
6715 since both the original and the replacement are syntactically valid
6716 string objects. The script just won't have access to the referrer
6717 information anymore.
6721 We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but
6722 this time only point out the constructs of special interest:
6727 # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
6729 s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig</screen>
6733 <literal>\s</literal> stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline,
6734 carriage return, form feed), so that <literal>\s*</literal> means: <quote>zero
6735 or more whitespace</quote>. The <literal>?</literal> in <literal>.*?</literal>
6736 makes this matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the <literal>U</literal>
6737 option is not set). The <literal>['"]</literal> construct means: <quote>a single
6738 <emphasis>or</emphasis> a double quote</quote>. Finally, <literal>\1</literal> is
6739 a back-reference to the first parenthesis just like <literal>$1</literal> above,
6740 with the difference that in the <emphasis>pattern</emphasis>, a backslash indicates
6741 a back-reference, whereas in the <emphasis>substitute</emphasis>, it's the dollar.
6745 So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
6746 strings to the <quote>window.status</quote> object with a dummy assignment
6747 (using a variable name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with
6748 real variables in scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless
6749 descriptions are displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when
6750 you move your mouse over links.
6755 # Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
6757 s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU</screen>
6762 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">OnUnload
6763 event binding</ulink> in the HTML DOM was a <emphasis>CRIME</emphasis>.
6764 When I close a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta.
6765 This job replaces the <quote>onunload</quote> attribute in
6766 <quote><body></quote> tags with the dummy word <literal>never</literal>.
6767 Note that the <literal>i</literal> option makes the pattern matching
6768 case-insensitive. Also note that ungreedy matching alone doesn't always guarantee
6769 a minimal match: In the first parenthesis, we had to use <literal>[^>]*</literal>
6770 instead of <literal>.*</literal> to prevent the match from exceeding the
6771 <body> tag if it doesn't contain <quote>OnUnload</quote>, but the page's
6776 The last example is from the fun department:
6781 FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
6783 # Spice the daily news:
6785 s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig</screen>
6789 Note the <literal>(?!\.com)</literal> part (a so-called negative lookahead)
6790 in the job's pattern, which means: Don't match, if the string
6791 <quote>.com</quote> appears directly following <quote>microsoft</quote>
6792 in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being trashed, while
6793 still replacing the word everywhere else.
6798 # Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
6800 s* industry[ -]leading \
6802 | customer[ -]focused \
6803 | market[ -]driven \
6804 | award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
6805 | high[ -]performance \
6806 | solutions[ -]based \
6810 *<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
6815 The <literal>x</literal> option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for
6816 e.g. the liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
6824 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6826 <sect2 id="predefined-filters"><title>The Pre-defined Filters</title>
6830 Note each filter is also listed in the +filter action section above. Please
6831 keep these listings in sync.
6836 The distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file contains a selection of
6837 pre-defined filters for your convenience:
6842 <term><emphasis>js-annoyances</emphasis></term>
6845 The purpose of this filter is to get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.
6850 replaces JavaScript references to the browser's referrer information
6851 with the string "Not Your Business!". This compliments the <literal><link
6852 linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal> action on the content level.
6857 removes the bindings to the DOM's
6858 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">unload
6859 event</ulink> which we feel has no right to exist and is responsible for most <quote>exit consoles</quote>, i.e.
6860 nasty windows that pop up when you close another one.
6865 removes code that causes new windows to be opened with undesired properties, such as being
6866 full-screen, non-resizeable, without location, status or menu bar etc.
6872 Use with caution. This is an aggressive filter, and can break sites that
6873 rely heavily on JavaScript.
6879 <term><emphasis>js-events</emphasis></term>
6882 This is a very radical measure. It removes virtually all JavaScript event bindings, which
6883 means that scripts can not react to user actions such as mouse movements or clicks, window
6884 resizing etc, anymore. Use with caution!
6887 We <emphasis>strongly discourage</emphasis> using this filter as a default since it breaks
6888 many legitimate scripts. It is meant for use only on extra-nasty sites (should you really
6895 <term><emphasis>html-annoyances</emphasis></term>
6898 This filter will undo many common instances of HTML based abuse.
6901 The <literal>BLINK</literal> and <literal>MARQUEE</literal> tags
6902 are neutralized (yeah baby!), and browser windows will be created as
6903 resizeable (as of course they should be!), and will have location,
6904 scroll and menu bars -- even if specified otherwise.
6910 <term><emphasis>content-cookies</emphasis></term>
6913 Most cookies are set in the HTTP dialog, where they can be intercepted
6915 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>
6916 and <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>
6917 actions. But web sites increasingly make use of HTML meta tags and JavaScript
6918 to sneak cookies to the browser on the content level.
6921 This filter disables most HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets
6922 cookies. It cannot detect all clever uses of these types of code, so it
6923 should not be relied on as an absolute fix. Use it wherever you would also
6924 use the cookie crunch actions.
6930 <term><emphasis>refresh tags</emphasis></term>
6933 Disable any refresh tags if the interval is greater than nine seconds (so
6934 that redirections done via refresh tags are not destroyed). This is useful
6935 for dial-on-demand setups, or for those who find this HTML feature
6942 <term><emphasis>unsolicited-popups</emphasis></term>
6945 This filter attempts to prevent only <quote>unsolicited</quote> pop-up
6946 windows from opening, yet still allow pop-up windows that the user
6947 has explicitly chosen to open. It was added in version 3.0.1,
6948 as an improvement over earlier such filters.
6951 Technical note: The filter works by redefining the window.open JavaScript
6952 function to a dummy function, <literal>PrivoxyWindowOpen()</literal>,
6953 during the loading and rendering phase of each HTML page access, and
6954 restoring the function afterward.
6957 This is recommended only for browsers that cannot perform this function
6958 reliably themselves. And be aware that some sites require such windows
6959 in order to function normally. Use with caution.
6965 <term><emphasis>all-popups</emphasis></term>
6968 Attempt to prevent <emphasis>all</emphasis> pop-up windows from opening.
6969 Note this should be used with even more discretion than the above, since
6970 it is more likely to break some sites that require pop-ups for normal
6971 usage. Use with caution.
6977 <term><emphasis>img-reorder</emphasis></term>
6980 This is a helper filter that has no value if used alone. It makes the
6981 <literal>banners-by-size</literal> and <literal>banners-by-link</literal>
6982 (see below) filters more effective and should be enabled together with them.
6988 <term><emphasis>banners-by-size</emphasis></term>
6991 This filter removes image tags purely based on what size they are. Fortunately
6992 for us, many ads and banner images tend to conform to certain standardized
6993 sizes, which makes this filter quite effective for ad stripping purposes.
6996 Occasionally this filter will cause false positives on images that are not ads,
6997 but just happen to be of one of the standard banner sizes.
7000 Recommended only for those who require extreme ad blocking. The default
7001 block rules should catch 95+% of all ads <emphasis>without</emphasis> this filter enabled.
7007 <term><emphasis>banners-by-link</emphasis></term>
7010 This is an experimental filter that attempts to kill any banners if
7011 their URLs seem to point to known or suspected click trackers. It is currently
7012 not of much value and is not recommended for use by default.
7018 <term><emphasis>webbugs</emphasis></term>
7021 Webbugs are small, invisible images (technically 1X1 GIF images), that
7022 are used to track users across websites, and collect information on them.
7023 As an HTML page is loaded by the browser, an embedded image tag causes the
7024 browser to contact a third-party site, disclosing the tracking information
7025 through the requested URL and/or cookies for that third-party domain, without
7026 the user ever becoming aware of the interaction with the third-party site.
7027 HTML-ized spam also uses a similar technique to verify email addresses.
7030 This filter removes the HTML code that loads such <quote>webbugs</quote>.
7036 <term><emphasis>tiny-textforms</emphasis></term>
7039 A rather special-purpose filter that can be used to enlarge textareas (those
7040 multi-line text boxes in web forms) and turn off hard word wrap in them.
7041 It was written for the sourceforge.net tracker system where such boxes are
7042 a nuisance, but it can be handy on other sites, too.
7045 It is not recommended to use this filter as a default.
7051 <term><emphasis>jumping-windows</emphasis></term>
7054 Many consider windows that move, or resize themselves to be abusive. This filter
7055 neutralizes the related JavaScript code. Note that some sites might not display
7056 or behave as intended when using this filter. Use with caution.
7062 <term><emphasis>frameset-borders</emphasis></term>
7065 Some web designers seem to assume that everyone in the world will view their
7066 web sites using the same browser brand and version, screen resolution etc,
7067 because only that assumption could explain why they'd use static frame sizes,
7068 yet prevent their frames from being resized by the user, should they be too
7069 small to show their whole content.
7072 This filter removes the related HTML code. It should only be applied to sites
7079 <term><emphasis>demoronizer</emphasis></term>
7082 Many Microsoft products that generate HTML use non-standard extensions (read:
7083 violations) of the ISO 8859-1 aka Latin-1 character set. This can cause those
7084 HTML documents to display with errors on standard-compliant platforms.
7087 This filter translates the MS-only characters into Latin-1 equivalents.
7088 It is not necessary when using MS products, and will cause corruption of
7089 all documents that use 8-bit character sets other than Latin-1. It's mostly
7090 worthwhile for Europeans on non-MS platforms, if weird garbage characters
7091 sometimes appear on some pages, or user agents that don't correct for this on
7094 My version of Mozilla (ancient) shows litte square boxes for quote
7095 characters, and apostrophes on moronized pages. So many pages have this, I
7096 can read them fine now. HB 08/27/06
7103 <term><emphasis>shockwave-flash</emphasis></term>
7106 A filter for shockwave haters. As the name suggests, this filter strips code
7107 out of web pages that is used to embed shockwave flash objects.
7115 <term><emphasis>quicktime-kioskmode</emphasis></term>
7118 Change HTML code that embeds Quicktime objects so that kioskmode, which
7119 prevents saving, is disabled.
7125 <term><emphasis>fun</emphasis></term>
7128 Text replacements for subversive browsing fun. Make fun of your favorite
7129 Monopolist or play buzzword bingo.
7135 <term><emphasis>crude-parental</emphasis></term>
7138 A demonstration-only filter that shows how <application>Privoxy</application>
7139 can be used to delete web content on a keyword basis.
7145 <term><emphasis>ie-exploits</emphasis></term>
7148 An experimental collection of text replacements to disable malicious HTML and JavaScript
7149 code that exploits known security holes in Internet Explorer.
7152 Presently, it only protects against Nimda and a cross-site scripting bug, and
7153 would need active maintenance to provide more substantial protection.
7159 <term><emphasis>site-specifics</emphasis></term>
7162 Some web sites have very specific problems, the cure for which doesn't apply
7163 anywhere else, or could even cause damage on other sites.
7166 This is a collection of such site-specific cures which should only be applied
7167 to the sites they were intended for, which is what the supplied
7168 <filename>default.action</filename> file does. Users shouldn't need to change
7169 anything regarding this filter.
7175 <term><emphasis>google</emphasis></term>
7178 A CSS based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation
7179 and the toolbar advertisement.
7185 <term><emphasis>yahoo</emphasis></term>
7188 Another CSS based block, this time for Yahoo text ads. And removes
7189 a width limitation as well.
7195 <term><emphasis>msn</emphasis></term>
7198 Another CSS based block, this time for MSN text ads. And removes
7199 tracking URLs, as well as a width limitation.
7205 <term><emphasis>blogspot</emphasis></term>
7208 Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this one!
7211 This filter also intentionally removes some navigation stuff and sets the
7212 page width to 100%. As a result, some rounded <quote>corners</quote> would
7213 appear to early or not at all and as fixing this would require a browser
7214 that understands background-size (CSS3), they are removed instead.
7220 <term><emphasis>xml-to-html</emphasis></term>
7223 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from xml to html.
7229 <term><emphasis>html-to-xml</emphasis></term>
7232 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from html to xml.
7238 <term><emphasis>no-ping</emphasis></term>
7241 Removes the non-standard <literal>ping</literal> attribute from
7242 anchor and area HTML tags.
7248 <term><emphasis>hide-tor-exit-notation</emphasis></term>
7251 Client-header filter to remove the <command>Tor</command> exit node notation
7252 found in Host and Referer headers.
7255 If &my-app; and <command>Tor</command> are chained and &my-app;
7256 is configured to use socks4a, one can use <quote>http://www.example.org.foobar.exit/</quote>
7257 to access the host <quote>www.example.org</quote> through the
7258 <command>Tor</command> exit node <quote>foobar</quote>.
7261 As the HTTP client isn't aware of this notation, it treats the
7262 whole string <quote>www.example.org.foobar.exit</quote> as host and uses it
7263 for the <quote>Host</quote> and <quote>Referer</quote> headers. From the
7264 server's point of view the resulting headers are invalid and can cause problems.
7267 An invalid <quote>Referer</quote> header can trigger <quote>hot-linking</quote>
7268 protections, an invalid <quote>Host</quote> header will make it impossible for
7269 the server to find the right vhost (several domains hosted on the same IP address).
7272 This client-header filter removes the <quote>foo.exit</quote> part in those headers
7273 to prevent the mentioned problems. Note that it only modifies
7274 the HTTP headers, it doesn't make it impossible for the server
7275 to detect your <command>Tor</command> exit node based on the IP address
7276 the request is coming from.
7283 <term><emphasis> </emphasis></term>
7297 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7301 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7303 <sect1 id="templates">
7304 <title>Privoxy's Template Files</title>
7306 All <application>Privoxy</application> built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the
7307 <ulink url="http://show-the-404-error.page"><quote>404 - No Such Domain</quote>
7308 error page</ulink>, the <ulink
7309 url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
7311 and all pages of its <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
7312 user interface</ulink>, are generated from <emphasis>templates</emphasis>.
7313 (<application>Privoxy</application> must be running for the above links to work as
7318 These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the <link linkend="confdir">configuration
7319 directory</link> called <filename>templates</filename>. On Unixish platforms,
7321 <ulink url="file:///etc/privoxy/templates/"><filename>/etc/privoxy/templates/</filename></ulink>.
7325 The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called symbols
7326 or exports), which <application>Privoxy</application> fills at run time. It
7327 is possible to edit the templates with a normal text editor, should you want
7328 to customize them. (<emphasis>Not recommended for the casual
7329 user</emphasis>). Should you create your own custom templates, you should use
7330 the <filename>config</filename> setting <link linkend="templdir">templdir</link>
7331 to specify an alternate location, so your templates do not get overwritten
7335 Note that just like in configuration files, lines starting
7336 with <literal>#</literal> are ignored when the templates are filled in.
7340 The place-holders are of the form <literal>@name@</literal>, and you will
7341 find a list of available symbols, which vary from template to template,
7342 in the comments at the start of each file. Note that these comments are not
7343 always accurate, and that it's probably best to look at the existing HTML
7344 code to find out which symbols are supported and what they are filled in with.
7348 A special application of this substitution mechanism is to make whole
7349 blocks of HTML code disappear when a specific symbol is set. We use this
7350 for many purposes, one of them being to include the beta warning in all
7351 our user interface (CGI) pages when <application>Privoxy</application>
7352 is in an alpha or beta development stage:
7357 <!-- @if-unstable-start -->
7359 ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
7361 <!-- if-unstable-end@ --></screen>
7365 If the "unstable" symbol is set, everything in between and including
7366 <literal>@if-unstable-start</literal> and <literal>if-unstable-end@</literal>
7367 will disappear, leaving nothing but an empty comment:
7371 <screen><!-- --></screen>
7375 There's also an if-then-else construct and an <literal>#include</literal>
7376 mechanism, but you'll sure find out if you are inclined to edit the
7381 All templates refer to a style located at
7382 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet"><literal>http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet</literal></ulink>.
7383 This is, of course, locally served by <application>Privoxy</application>
7384 and the source for it can be found and edited in the
7385 <filename>cgi-style.css</filename> template.
7390 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7394 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7396 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
7399 <!-- Include contacting.sgml boilerplate: -->
7401 <!-- end boilerplate -->
7405 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7408 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7409 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Privoxy Copyright, License and History</title>
7411 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
7413 <!-- end copyright -->
7415 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7416 <sect2><title>License</title>
7417 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
7419 <!-- end copyright -->
7421 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7424 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7426 <sect2 id="history"><title>History</title>
7427 <!-- Include history.sgml: -->
7429 <!-- end history -->
7432 <sect2 id="authors"><title>Authors</title>
7433 <!-- Include p-authors.sgml: -->
7435 <!-- end authors -->
7440 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7443 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7444 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See Also</title>
7445 <!-- Include seealso.sgml: -->
7447 <!-- end seealso -->
7452 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7453 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
7456 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7458 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
7460 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl-style <quote>regular
7461 expressions</quote> in its <link linkend="actions-file">actions
7462 files</link> and <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>,
7463 through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> and
7466 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/">PCRS</ulink> libraries.
7468 <application>PCRS</application> libraries.
7472 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
7473 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
7474 introduction only. A full explanation would require a <ulink
7475 url="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/">book</ulink> ;-)
7479 Regular expressions provide a language to describe patterns that can be
7480 run against strings of characters (letter, numbers, etc), to see if they
7481 match the string or not. The patterns are themselves (sometimes complex)
7482 strings of literal characters, combined with wild-cards, and other special
7483 characters, called meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have
7484 special meanings and are used to build complex patterns to be matched against.
7485 Perl Compatible Regular Expressions are an especially convenient
7486 <quote>dialect</quote> of the regular expression language.
7490 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
7491 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
7492 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
7493 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
7494 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
7495 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
7496 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
7497 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
7501 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
7502 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
7503 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
7504 and then some examples:
7509 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
7510 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
7512 </simplelist></para>
7516 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
7519 </simplelist></para>
7523 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
7526 </simplelist></para>
7530 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
7533 </simplelist></para>
7537 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
7538 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
7539 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
7540 not as a special meta-character. Example: <quote>example\.com</quote>, makes
7541 sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded to its
7542 meta-character meaning of any single character).
7544 </simplelist></para>
7548 <emphasis>[ ]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
7549 any of the enclosed characters are encountered. For instance, <quote>[0-9]</quote>
7550 matches any numeric digit (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine
7551 this with <quote>+</quote> to match any digit one of more times: <quote>[0-9]+</quote>.
7553 </simplelist></para>
7557 <emphasis>( )</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
7558 or multiple sub-expressions.
7560 </simplelist></para>
7564 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
7565 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
7566 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches. As an example:
7567 <quote>/(this|that) example/</quote> uses grouping and the bar character
7568 and would match either <quote>this example</quote> or <quote>that
7569 example</quote>, and nothing else.
7571 </simplelist></para>
7574 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
7575 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
7576 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
7577 be more illuminating:
7581 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
7582 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
7583 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
7584 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
7585 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
7586 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
7587 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
7588 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
7589 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
7590 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
7591 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
7592 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
7593 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
7594 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
7599 And now something a little more complex:
7603 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
7604 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
7605 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
7606 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
7607 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
7608 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
7609 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
7614 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
7615 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
7616 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
7617 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
7618 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
7619 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
7620 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
7621 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
7622 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
7623 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
7624 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
7625 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
7626 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
7627 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
7628 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
7629 changing our regular expression to:
7630 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
7635 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
7636 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
7637 <quote>[ ]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
7638 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
7639 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
7640 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
7641 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
7642 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
7643 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
7644 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
7645 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
7646 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
7647 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
7648 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
7649 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
7650 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
7651 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
7652 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
7653 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
7654 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
7655 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
7656 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
7657 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
7658 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
7659 in the expression anywhere).
7663 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
7664 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
7665 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
7666 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
7667 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
7672 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
7673 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html</ulink>
7677 For information on regular expression based substitutions and their applications
7678 in filters, please see the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file tutorial</link>
7683 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7686 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7688 <title>Privoxy's Internal Pages</title>
7691 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
7692 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
7693 trap certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
7694 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
7695 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
7696 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
7697 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
7703 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
7704 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
7705 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
7706 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
7719 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
7723 There is a shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (But it
7724 doesn't provide a fall-back to a real page, in case the request is not
7725 sent through <application>Privoxy</application>)
7731 Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
7732 editing of actions files:
7736 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
7743 Show the source code version numbers:
7747 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">http://config.privoxy.org/show-version</ulink>
7754 Show the browser's request headers:
7758 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">http://config.privoxy.org/show-request</ulink>
7765 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
7769 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
7776 Toggle Privoxy on or off. This feature can be turned off/on in the main
7777 <filename>config</filename> file. When toggled <quote>off</quote>, <quote>Privoxy</quote>
7778 continues to run, but only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking
7783 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
7787 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
7791 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
7796 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
7805 These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
7809 <sect3 id="bookmarklets">
7810 <title>Bookmarklets</title>
7812 Below are some <quote>bookmarklets</quote> to allow you to easily access a
7813 <quote>mini</quote> version of some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
7814 special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer, but should work
7815 equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which support
7816 JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not by
7817 clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
7820 To save them, right-click the link and choose <quote>Add to Favorites</quote>
7821 (IE) or <quote>Add Bookmark</quote> (Netscape). You will get a warning that
7822 the bookmark <quote>may not be safe</quote> - just click OK. Then you can run the
7823 Bookmarklet directly from your favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access,
7824 you can put them on the <quote>Links</quote> bar (IE) or the <quote>Personal
7825 Toolbar</quote> (Netscape), and run them with a single click.
7834 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=enabled','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Enable</ulink>
7841 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=disabled','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Disable</ulink>
7848 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=toggle','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Toggle Privoxy</ulink> (Toggles between enabled and disabled)
7855 url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y','ijbstatus','width=250,height=2,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy- View Status</ulink>
7861 <ulink url="javascript:w=Math.floor(screen.width/2);h=Math.floor(screen.height*0.9);void(window.open('http://www.privoxy.org/actions/index.php?url='+escape(location.href),'Feedback','screenx='+w+',width='+w+',height='+h+',scrollbars=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Submit Actions File Feedback</ulink>
7867 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info?url='+escape(location.href),'Why').focus());">Privoxy - Why?</ulink>
7874 Credit: The site which gave us the general idea for these bookmarklets is
7875 <ulink url="http://www.bookmarklets.com/">www.bookmarklets.com</ulink>. They
7876 have more information about bookmarklets.
7885 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7887 <title>Chain of Events</title>
7889 Let's take a quick look at how some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
7890 core features are triggered, and the ensuing sequence of events when a web
7891 page is requested by your browser:
7898 First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send
7899 the request to <application>Privoxy</application>, which will in turn,
7900 relay the request to the remote web server after passing the following
7906 <application>Privoxy</application> traps any request for its own internal CGI
7907 pages (e.g <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>) and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
7912 Next, <application>Privoxy</application> checks to see if the URL
7914 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link> patterns. If
7915 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be contacted.
7916 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>
7918 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-EMPTY-DOCUMENT"><quote>+handle-as-empty-document</quote></link>
7919 are then checked, and if there is no match, an
7920 HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page is sent back to the browser. Otherwise, if
7921 it does match, an image is returned for the former, and an empty text
7922 document for the latter. The type of image would depend on the setting of
7923 <link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><quote>+set-image-blocker</quote></link>
7924 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
7929 Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the
7930 <filename>trust</filename> file, then that is done.
7935 If the URL pattern matches the <link
7936 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link> action,
7937 it is then processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
7942 Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
7943 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. <link
7944 linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT"><quote>+hide-user-agent</quote></link>,
7945 etc.), headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and
7951 Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web
7957 First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
7958 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
7959 filtered as determined by the
7960 <link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES"><quote>+crunch-incoming-cookies</quote></link>,
7961 <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>,
7962 and <link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION"><quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote></link>
7968 If any <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
7970 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
7971 action applies (and the document type fits the action), the rest of the page is
7972 read into memory (up to a configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from
7973 <filename>default.filter</filename> and any other filter files) are
7974 processed against the buffered content. Filters are applied in the order
7975 they are specified in one of the filter files. Animated GIFs, if present,
7976 are reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
7977 setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by
7978 <application>Privoxy</application> back to your browser.
7981 If neither a <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
7983 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
7984 matches, then <application>Privoxy</application> passes the raw data through
7985 to the client browser as it becomes available.
7990 As the browser receives the now (possibly filtered) page content, it
7991 reads and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page
7992 source, e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
7993 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a
7994 separate request (this is easily viewable in <application>Privoxy's</application>
7995 logs). And each such request is in turn processed just as above. Note that a
7996 complex web page will have many, many such embedded URLs. If these
7997 secondary requests are to a different server, then quite possibly a very
7998 differing set of actions is triggered.
8005 NOTE: This is somewhat of a simplistic overview of what happens with each URL
8006 request. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, we have focused on
8007 <application>Privoxy's</application> core features only.
8013 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8014 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
8015 <title>Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</title>
8018 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies
8019 <link linkend="ACTIONS">actions</link> and <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>
8020 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so
8021 easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to
8022 <emphasis>see</emphasis> just what <application>Privoxy</application> is
8023 doing. Especially, if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing
8024 is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to look at
8025 the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
8026 <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> whose consequences are not
8031 One quick test to see if <application>Privoxy</application> is causing a problem
8032 or not, is to disable it temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting
8033 step. See <link linkend="bookmarklets">the Bookmarklets</link> section on a quick
8034 and easy way to do this (be sure to flush caches afterward!). Looking at the
8035 logs is a good idea too. (Note that both the toggle feature and logging are
8036 enabled via <filename>config</filename> file settings, and may need to be
8037 turned <quote>on</quote>.)
8040 Another easy troubleshooting step to try is if you have done any
8041 customization of your installation, revert back to the installed
8042 defaults and see if that helps. There are times the developers get complaints
8043 about one thing or another, and the problem is more related to a customized
8044 configuration issue.
8048 <application>Privoxy</application> also provides the
8049 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
8050 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
8051 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
8055 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
8056 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
8057 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
8058 help with filtering effects (i.e. the <link
8059 linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action) from
8060 one of the filter files since this is handled very
8061 differently and not so easy to trap! It also will not tell you about any other
8062 URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are testing. For instance, images
8063 such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw page source of HTML pages. So
8064 you will only get info for the actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area
8065 -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you
8066 will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View
8067 Page Source</quote> option for this. Or right click on the ad, and grab the
8072 Let's try an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
8073 and look at it one section at a time in a sample configuration (your real
8074 configuration may vary):
8079 Matches for http://www.google.com:
8081 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8083 {+change-x-forwarded-for{block}
8084 +deanimate-gifs {last}
8085 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8086 +filter {refresh-tags}
8087 +filter {img-reorder}
8088 +filter {banners-by-size}
8090 +filter {jumping-windows}
8091 +filter {ie-exploits}
8092 +hide-from-header {block}
8093 +hide-referrer {forge}
8094 +session-cookies-only
8095 +set-image-blocker {pattern}
8098 { -session-cookies-only }
8104 In file: user.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8105 (no matches in this file)
8110 This is telling us how we have defined our
8111 <link linkend="ACTIONS"><quote>actions</quote></link>, and
8112 which ones match for our test case, <quote>google.com</quote>.
8113 Displayed is all the actions that are available to us. Remember,
8114 the <literal>+</literal> sign denotes <quote>on</quote>. <literal>-</literal>
8115 denotes <quote>off</quote>. So some are <quote>on</quote> here, but many
8116 are <quote>off</quote>. Each example we try may provide a slightly different
8117 end result, depending on our configuration directives.
8121 is for our <filename>default.action</filename> file. The large, multi-line
8122 listing, is how the actions are set to match for all URLs, i.e. our default
8123 settings. If you look at your <quote>actions</quote> file, this would be the
8124 section just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section near the top. This
8125 will apply to all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end
8126 of the listing -- <quote> / </quote>.
8130 But we have defined additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
8131 rules, and then we list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions
8132 would apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit
8133 matches for <quote>.google.com</quote>. The first is negating our previous
8134 cookie setting, which was for <link
8135 linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>
8136 (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent cookies for google, at
8137 least that is how it is in this example. The second turns
8138 <emphasis>off</emphasis> any <link
8139 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link>
8140 action, allowing this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading
8141 dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will match any hosts and
8142 sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
8143 <quote>www.google.com</quote> or <quote>mail.google.com</quote>. But it would not
8144 match <quote>www.google.de</quote>! So, apparently, we have these two actions
8145 defined as exceptions to the general rules at the top somewhere in the lower
8146 part of our <filename>default.action</filename> file, and
8147 <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced somewhere in these latter sections.
8151 Then, for our <filename>user.action</filename> file, we again have no hits.
8152 So there is nothing google-specific that we might have added to our own, local
8153 configuration. If there was, those actions would over-rule any actions from
8154 previously processed files, such as <filename>default.action</filename>.
8155 <filename>user.action</filename> typically has the last word. This is the
8156 best place to put hard and fast exceptions,
8160 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
8161 <application>Privoxy</application> is applying all its <quote>actions</quote>
8162 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
8173 +change-x-forwarded-for{block}
8174 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
8175 -content-type-overwrite
8176 -crunch-client-header
8177 -crunch-if-none-match
8178 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8179 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8180 -crunch-server-header
8181 +deanimate-gifs {last}
8182 -downgrade-http-version
8185 -filter {content-cookies}
8186 -filter {all-popups}
8187 -filter {banners-by-link}
8188 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8189 -filter {frameset-borders}
8190 -filter {demoronizer}
8191 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8192 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8194 -filter {crude-parental}
8195 -filter {site-specifics}
8196 -filter {js-annoyances}
8197 -filter {html-annoyances}
8198 +filter {refresh-tags}
8199 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8200 +filter {img-reorder}
8201 +filter {banners-by-size}
8203 +filter {jumping-windows}
8204 +filter {ie-exploits}
8211 -handle-as-empty-document
8213 -hide-accept-language
8214 -hide-content-disposition
8215 +hide-from-header {block}
8216 -hide-if-modified-since
8217 +hide-referrer {forge}
8220 -overwrite-last-modified
8221 -prevent-compression
8223 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
8224 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
8225 -session-cookies-only
8226 +set-image-blocker {pattern} </screen>
8230 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
8231 <quote>fast-redirects</quote> and <quote>session-cookies-only</quote>,
8232 which are activated specifically for this site in our configuration,
8233 and thus show in the <quote>Final Results</quote>.
8237 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
8243 { +block{Domains starts with "ad"} }
8246 { +block{Domain contains "ad"} }
8249 { +block{Doubleclick banner server} +handle-as-image }
8250 .[a-vx-z]*.doubleclick.net
8255 We'll just show the interesting part here - the explicit matches. It is
8256 matched three different times. Two <quote>+block{}</quote> sections,
8257 and a <quote>+block{} +handle-as-image</quote>,
8258 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
8259 <quote>+block-as-image</quote>. (<link
8260 linkend="ALIASES"><quote>Aliases</quote></link> are defined in
8261 the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
8266 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
8267 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
8268 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
8269 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
8270 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
8271 is done here -- as both a <link
8272 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block{}</quote></link>
8273 <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
8274 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>.
8275 The custom alias <quote><literal>+block-as-image</literal></quote> just
8276 simplifies the process and make it more readable.
8280 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
8281 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
8287 Matches for http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
8289 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8293 +change-x-forwarded-for{block}
8294 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
8295 -content-type-overwrite
8296 -crunch-client-header
8297 -crunch-if-none-match
8298 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8299 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8300 -crunch-server-header
8302 -downgrade-http-version
8303 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8305 -filter {content-cookies}
8306 -filter {all-popups}
8307 -filter {banners-by-link}
8308 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8309 -filter {frameset-borders}
8310 -filter {demoronizer}
8311 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8312 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8314 -filter {crude-parental}
8315 -filter {site-specifics}
8316 -filter {js-annoyances}
8317 -filter {html-annoyances}
8318 +filter {refresh-tags}
8319 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8320 +filter {img-reorder}
8321 +filter {banners-by-size}
8323 +filter {jumping-windows}
8324 +filter {ie-exploits}
8331 -handle-as-empty-document
8333 -hide-accept-language
8334 -hide-content-disposition
8335 +hide-from-header{block}
8336 +hide-referer{forge}
8338 -overwrite-last-modified
8339 +prevent-compression
8341 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
8342 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
8343 +session-cookies-only
8344 +set-image-blocker{blank} }
8347 { +block{Path contains "ads".} +handle-as-image }
8353 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote> in our
8354 configuration! But we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the
8355 blank page. It is actually triggering two different actions here, and
8356 the effects are aggregated so that the URL is blocked, and &my-app; is told
8357 to treat the block as if it were an image. But this is, of course, all wrong.
8358 We could now add a new action below this (or better in our own
8359 <filename>user.action</filename> file) that explicitly
8360 <emphasis>un</emphasis> blocks (
8361 <link linkend="BLOCK"><quote>{-block}</quote></link>) paths with
8362 <quote>adsl</quote> in them (remember, last match in the configuration
8363 wins). There are various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
8375 Now the page displays ;-)
8376 Remember to flush your browser's caches when making these kinds of changes to
8377 your configuration to insure that you get a freshly delivered page! Or, try
8378 using <literal>Shift+Reload</literal>.
8382 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
8389 { +block{Path starts with "ads".} +handle-as-image }
8395 That actually was very helpful and pointed us quickly to where the problem
8396 was. If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default
8397 rules in the first section of <filename>default.action</filename> is causing
8398 the problem. This would require some guesswork, and maybe a little trial and
8399 error to isolate the offending rule. One likely cause would be one of the
8400 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> actions.
8401 These tend to be harder to troubleshoot.
8402 Try adding the URL for the site to one of aliases that turn off
8403 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>:
8411 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
8419 <quote><literal>{ shop }</literal></quote> is an <quote>alias</quote> that expands to
8420 <quote><literal>{ -filter -session-cookies-only }</literal></quote>.
8421 Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
8429 # Disable ALL filter actions for sites in this section
8437 This would turn off all filtering for these sites. This is best
8438 put in <filename>user.action</filename>, for local site
8439 exceptions. Note that when a simple domain pattern is used by itself (without
8440 the subsequent path portion), all sub-pages within that domain are included
8441 automatically in the scope of the action.
8445 Images that are inexplicably being blocked, may well be hitting the
8446 <link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE"><quote>+filter{banners-by-size}</quote></link>
8448 that images of certain sizes are ad banners (works well
8449 <emphasis>most of the time</emphasis> since these tend to be standardized).
8453 <quote><literal>{ fragile }</literal></quote> is an alias that disables most
8454 actions that are the most likely to cause trouble. This can be used as a
8455 last resort for problem sites.
8461 # Handle with care: easy to break
8463 mybank.example.com</screen>
8468 <emphasis>Remember to flush caches!</emphasis> Note that the
8469 <literal>mail.google</literal> reference lacks the TLD portion (e.g.
8470 <quote>.com</quote>). This will effectively match any TLD with
8471 <literal>google</literal> in it, such as <literal>mail.google.de.</literal>,
8475 If this still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining
8476 actions one by one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
8485 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
8486 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
8487 Public License as published by the Free Software
8488 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
8489 your option) any later version.
8491 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
8492 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
8493 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
8494 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
8495 License for more details.
8497 The GNU General Public License should be included with
8498 this file. If not, you can view it at
8499 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
8500 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
8501 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301,
8504 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
8505 Revision 2.97 2009/02/14 18:01:00 fabiankeil
8508 Revision 2.96 2009/02/14 13:14:03 fabiankeil
8511 Revision 2.95 2009/02/14 12:51:26 fabiankeil
8512 Mention match-all.action in the "Actions Files Tutorial" section.
8514 Revision 2.94 2009/02/14 11:50:31 fabiankeil
8515 Some indentation fixes.
8517 Revision 2.93 2009/02/14 10:14:42 fabiankeil
8518 Mention match-all.action in the action file descriptions.
8520 Revision 2.92 2009/02/12 16:08:26 fabiankeil
8521 Declare the code stable.
8523 Revision 2.91 2009/01/13 16:50:35 fabiankeil
8524 The standard.action file is gone.
8526 Revision 2.90 2008/09/26 16:53:09 fabiankeil
8527 Update "What's new" section.
8529 Revision 2.89 2008/09/21 15:38:56 fabiankeil
8530 Fix Portage tree sync instructions in Gentoo section.
8531 Anonymously reported at ijbswa-developers@.
8533 Revision 2.88 2008/09/21 14:42:52 fabiankeil
8534 Add documentation for change-x-forwarded-for{},
8535 remove documentation for hide-forwarded-for-headers.
8537 Revision 2.87 2008/08/30 15:37:35 fabiankeil
8540 Revision 2.86 2008/08/16 10:12:23 fabiankeil
8541 Merge two sentences and move the URL to the end of the item.
8543 Revision 2.85 2008/08/16 10:04:59 fabiankeil
8544 Some more syntax fixes. This version actually builds.
8546 Revision 2.84 2008/08/16 09:42:45 fabiankeil
8547 Turns out building docs works better if the syntax is valid.
8549 Revision 2.83 2008/08/16 09:32:02 fabiankeil
8550 Mention changes since 3.0.9 beta.
8552 Revision 2.82 2008/08/16 09:00:52 fabiankeil
8553 Fix example URL pattern (once more with feeling).
8555 Revision 2.81 2008/08/16 08:51:28 fabiankeil
8556 Update version-related entities.
8558 Revision 2.80 2008/07/18 16:54:30 fabiankeil
8559 Remove erroneous whitespace in documentation link.
8560 Reported by John Chronister in #2021611.
8562 Revision 2.79 2008/06/27 18:00:53 markm68k
8563 remove outdated startup information for mac os x
8565 Revision 2.78 2008/06/21 17:03:03 fabiankeil
8568 Revision 2.77 2008/06/14 13:45:22 fabiankeil
8569 Re-add a colon I unintentionally removed a few revisions ago.
8571 Revision 2.76 2008/06/14 13:21:28 fabiankeil
8572 Prepare for the upcoming 3.0.9 beta release.
8574 Revision 2.75 2008/06/13 16:06:48 fabiankeil
8575 Update the "What's New in this Release" section with
8576 the ChangeLog entries changelog2doc.pl could handle.
8578 Revision 2.74 2008/05/26 15:55:46 fabiankeil
8579 - Update "default profiles" table.
8580 - Add some more pcrs redirect examples and note that
8581 enabling debug 128 helps to get redirects working.
8583 Revision 2.73 2008/05/23 14:43:18 fabiankeil
8584 Remove previously out-commented block that caused syntax problems.
8586 Revision 2.72 2008/05/12 10:26:14 fabiankeil
8587 Synchronize content filter descriptions with the ones in default.filter.
8589 Revision 2.71 2008/04/10 17:37:16 fabiankeil
8590 Actually we use "modern" POSIX 1003.2 regular
8591 expressions in path patterns, not PCRE.
8593 Revision 2.70 2008/04/10 15:59:12 fabiankeil
8594 Add another section to the client-header-tagger example that shows
8595 how to actually change the action settings once the tag is created.
8597 Revision 2.69 2008/03/29 12:14:25 fabiankeil
8598 Remove send-wafer and send-vanilla-wafer actions.
8600 Revision 2.68 2008/03/28 15:13:43 fabiankeil
8601 Remove inspect-jpegs action.
8603 Revision 2.67 2008/03/27 18:31:21 fabiankeil
8604 Remove kill-popups action.
8606 Revision 2.66 2008/03/06 16:33:47 fabiankeil
8607 If limit-connect isn't used, don't limit CONNECT requests to port 443.
8609 Revision 2.65 2008/03/04 18:30:40 fabiankeil
8610 Remove the treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks action. We now
8611 use the "blocked" page for forbidden CONNECT requests by default.
8613 Revision 2.64 2008/03/01 14:10:28 fabiankeil
8614 Use new block syntax. Still needs some polishing.
8616 Revision 2.63 2008/02/22 05:50:37 markm68k
8619 Revision 2.62 2008/02/11 11:52:23 hal9
8620 Fix entity ... s/&/&
8622 Revision 2.61 2008/02/11 03:41:47 markm68k
8623 more updates for mac os x
8625 Revision 2.60 2008/02/11 03:40:25 markm68k
8626 more updates for mac os x
8628 Revision 2.59 2008/02/11 00:52:34 markm68k
8629 reflect new changes for mac os x
8631 Revision 2.58 2008/02/03 21:37:40 hal9
8632 Apply patch from Mark: s/OSX/OS X/
8634 Revision 2.57 2008/02/03 19:10:14 fabiankeil
8635 Mention forward-socks5.
8637 Revision 2.56 2008/01/31 19:11:35 fabiankeil
8638 Let the +client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation} example apply
8639 to all requests as "tainted" Referers aren't limited to exit TLDs.
8641 Revision 2.55 2008/01/19 21:26:37 hal9
8642 Add IE7 to configuration section per Gerry.
8644 Revision 2.54 2008/01/19 17:52:39 hal9
8645 Re-commit to fix various minor issues for new release.
8647 Revision 2.53 2008/01/19 15:03:05 hal9
8648 Doc sources tagged for 3.0.8 release.
8650 Revision 2.52 2008/01/17 01:49:51 hal9
8651 Change copyright notice for docs s/2007/2008/. All these will be rebuilt soon
8654 Revision 2.51 2007/12/23 16:48:24 fabiankeil
8655 Use more precise example descriptions for the mysterious domain patterns.
8657 Revision 2.50 2007/12/08 12:44:36 fabiankeil
8658 - Remove already commented out pre-3.0.7 changes.
8659 - Update the "new log defaults" paragraph.
8661 Revision 2.49 2007/12/06 18:21:55 fabiankeil
8662 Update hide-forwarded-for-headers description.
8664 Revision 2.48 2007/11/24 19:07:17 fabiankeil
8665 - Mention request rewriting.
8666 - Enable the conditional-forge paragraph.
8669 Revision 2.47 2007/11/18 14:59:47 fabiankeil
8670 A few "Note to Upgraders" updates.
8672 Revision 2.46 2007/11/17 17:24:44 fabiankeil
8673 - Use new action defaults.
8674 - Minor fixes and rewordings.
8676 Revision 2.45 2007/11/16 11:48:46 hal9
8677 Fix one typo, and add a couple of small refinements.
8679 Revision 2.44 2007/11/15 03:30:20 hal9
8680 Results of spell check.
8682 Revision 2.43 2007/11/14 18:45:39 fabiankeil
8683 - Mention some more contributors in the "New in this Release" list.
8686 Revision 2.42 2007/11/12 03:32:40 hal9
8687 Updates for "What's New" and "Notes to Upgraders". Various other changes in
8688 preparation for new release. User Manual is almost ready.
8690 Revision 2.41 2007/11/11 16:32:11 hal9
8691 This is primarily syncing What's New and Note to Upgraders sections with the many
8692 new features and changes (gleaned from memory but mostly from ChangeLog).
8694 Revision 2.40 2007/11/10 17:10:59 fabiankeil
8695 In the first third of the file, mention several times that
8696 the action editor is disabled by default in 3.0.7 beta and later.
8698 Revision 2.39 2007/11/05 02:34:49 hal9
8699 Various changes in preparation for the upcoming release. Much yet to be done.
8701 Revision 2.38 2007/09/22 16:01:42 fabiankeil
8702 Update embedded show-url-info output.
8704 Revision 2.37 2007/08/27 16:09:55 fabiankeil
8705 Fix pre-chroot-nslookup description which I failed to
8706 copy and paste properly. Reported by Stephen Gildea.
8708 Revision 2.36 2007/08/26 16:47:14 fabiankeil
8709 Add Stephen Gildea's pre-chroot-nslookup patch [#1276666],
8710 extensive comments moved to user manual.
8712 Revision 2.35 2007/08/26 14:59:49 fabiankeil
8713 Minor rewordings and fixes.
8715 Revision 2.34 2007/08/05 15:19:50 fabiankeil
8716 - Don't claim HTTP/1.1 compliance.
8717 - Use $ in some of the path pattern examples.
8718 - Use a hide-user-agent example argument without
8719 leading and trailing space.
8720 - Make it clear that the cookie actions work with
8722 - Rephrase the inspect-jpegs text to underline
8723 that it's only meant to protect against a single
8726 Revision 2.33 2007/07/27 10:57:35 hal9
8727 Add references for user-agent strings for hide-user-agenet
8729 Revision 2.32 2007/06/07 12:36:22 fabiankeil
8730 Apply Roland's 29_usermanual.dpatch to fix a bunch
8731 of syntax errors I collected over the last months.
8733 Revision 2.31 2007/06/02 14:01:37 fabiankeil
8734 Start to document forward-override{}.
8736 Revision 2.30 2007/04/25 15:10:36 fabiankeil
8737 - Describe installation for FreeBSD.
8738 - Start to document taggers and tag patterns.
8739 - Don't confuse devils and daemons.
8741 Revision 2.29 2007/04/05 11:47:51 fabiankeil
8742 Some updates regarding header filtering,
8743 handling of compressed content and redirect's
8744 support for pcrs commands.
8746 Revision 2.28 2006/12/10 23:42:48 hal9
8747 Fix various typos reported by Adam P. Thanks.
8749 Revision 2.27 2006/11/14 01:57:47 hal9
8750 Dump all docs prior to 3.0.6 release. Various minor changes to faq and user
8753 Revision 2.26 2006/10/24 11:16:44 hal9
8756 Revision 2.25 2006/10/18 10:50:33 hal9
8757 Add note that since filters are off in Cautious, compression is ON. Turn off
8758 compression to make filters work on all sites.
8760 Revision 2.24 2006/10/03 11:13:54 hal9
8761 More references to the new filters. Include html this time around.
8763 Revision 2.23 2006/10/02 22:43:53 hal9
8764 Contains new filter definitions from Fabian, and few other miscellaneous
8767 Revision 2.22 2006/09/22 01:27:55 hal9
8768 Final commit of probably various minor changes here and there. Unless
8769 something changes this should be ready for pending release.
8771 Revision 2.21 2006/09/20 03:21:36 david__schmidt
8772 Just the tiniest tweak. Wafer thin!
8774 Revision 2.20 2006/09/10 14:53:54 hal9
8775 Results of spell check. User manual has some updates to standard.actions file
8778 Revision 2.19 2006/09/08 12:19:02 fabiankeil
8779 Adjust hide-if-modified-since example values
8780 to reflect the recent changes.
8782 Revision 2.18 2006/09/08 02:38:57 hal9
8784 -Fix a number of broken links.
8785 -Migrate the new Windows service command line options, and reference as
8787 -Rebuild so that can be used with the new "user-manual" config capabilities.
8790 Revision 2.17 2006/09/05 13:25:12 david__schmidt
8791 Add Windows service invocation stuff (duplicated) in FAQ and in user manual under Windows startup. One probably ought to reference the other.
8793 Revision 2.16 2006/09/02 12:49:37 hal9
8794 Various small updates for new actions, filterfiles, etc.
8796 Revision 2.15 2006/08/30 11:15:22 hal9
8797 More work on the new actions, especially filter-*-headers, and What's New
8798 section. User Manual is close to final form for 3.0.4 release. Some tinkering
8799 and proof reading left to do.
8801 Revision 2.14 2006/08/29 10:59:36 hal9
8802 Add a "Whats New in this release" Section. Further work on multiple filter
8803 files, and assorted other minor changes.
8805 Revision 2.13 2006/08/22 11:04:59 hal9
8806 Silence warnings and errors. This should build now. New filters were only
8807 stubbed in. More to be done.
8809 Revision 2.12 2006/08/14 08:40:39 fabiankeil
8810 Documented new actions that were part of
8811 the "minor Privoxy improvements".
8813 Revision 2.11 2006/07/18 14:48:51 david__schmidt
8814 Reorganizing the repository: swapping out what was HEAD (the old 3.1 branch)
8815 with what was really the latest development (the v_3_0_branch branch)
8817 Revision 1.123.2.43 2005/05/23 09:59:10 hal9
8820 Revision 1.123.2.42 2004/12/04 14:39:57 hal9
8821 Fix two minor typos per bug SF report.
8823 Revision 1.123.2.41 2004/03/23 12:58:42 oes
8826 Revision 1.123.2.40 2004/02/27 12:48:49 hal9
8827 Add comment re: redirecting to local file system for set-image-blocker may
8828 is dependent on browser.
8830 Revision 1.123.2.39 2004/01/30 22:31:40 oes
8831 Added a hint re bookmarklets to Quickstart section
8833 Revision 1.123.2.38 2004/01/30 16:47:51 oes
8834 Some minor clarifications
8836 Revision 1.123.2.37 2004/01/29 22:36:11 hal9
8837 Updates for no longer filtering text/plain, and demoronizer default settings,
8838 and copyright notice dates.
8840 Revision 1.123.2.36 2003/12/10 02:26:26 hal9
8841 Changed the demoronizer filter description.
8843 Revision 1.123.2.35 2003/11/06 13:36:37 oes
8844 Updated link to nightly CVS tarball
8846 Revision 1.123.2.34 2003/06/26 23:50:16 hal9
8847 Add a small bit on filtering and problems re: source code being corrupted.
8849 Revision 1.123.2.33 2003/05/08 18:17:33 roro
8850 Use apt-get instead of dpkg to install Debian package, which is more
8851 solid, uses the correct and most recent Debian version automatically.
8853 Revision 1.123.2.32 2003/04/11 03:13:57 hal9
8854 Add small note about only one filterfile (as opposed to multiple actions
8857 Revision 1.123.2.31 2003/03/26 02:03:43 oes
8858 Updated hard-coded copyright dates
8860 Revision 1.123.2.30 2003/03/24 12:58:56 hal9
8861 Add new section on Predefined Filters.
8863 Revision 1.123.2.29 2003/03/20 02:45:29 hal9
8864 More problems with \-\-chroot causing markup problems :(
8866 Revision 1.123.2.28 2003/03/19 00:35:24 hal9
8867 Manual edit of revision log because 'chroot' (even inside a comment) was
8868 causing Docbook to hang here (due to double hyphen and the processor thinking
8871 Revision 1.123.2.27 2003/03/18 19:37:14 oes
8872 s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
8874 Revision 1.123.2.26 2003/03/17 16:50:53 oes
8875 Added documentation for new chroot option
8877 Revision 1.123.2.25 2003/03/15 18:36:55 oes
8878 Adapted to the new filters
8880 Revision 1.123.2.24 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
8881 Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
8884 Revision 1.123.2.23 2002/10/21 02:32:01 hal9
8885 Updates to the user.action examples section. A few new ones.
8887 Revision 1.123.2.22 2002/10/12 00:51:53 hal9
8888 Add demoronizer to filter section.
8890 Revision 1.123.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
8891 s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
8893 Revision 1.123.2.20 2002/10/10 03:49:21 hal9
8894 Add notes to session-cookies-only and Quickstart about pre-existing
8895 cookies. Also, note content-cookies work differently.
8897 Revision 1.123.2.19 2002/09/26 01:25:36 hal9
8898 More explanation on Privoxy patterns, more on content-cookies and SSL.
8900 Revision 1.123.2.18 2002/08/22 23:47:58 hal9
8901 Add 'Documentation' to Privoxy Menu shot in Configuration section to match
8904 Revision 1.123.2.17 2002/08/18 01:13:05 hal9
8905 Spell checked (only one typo this time!).
8907 Revision 1.123.2.16 2002/08/09 19:20:54 david__schmidt
8908 Update to Mac OS X startup script name
8910 Revision 1.123.2.15 2002/08/07 17:32:11 oes
8911 Converted some internal links from ulink to link for PDF creation; no content changed
8913 Revision 1.123.2.14 2002/08/06 09:16:13 oes
8914 Nits re: actions file download
8916 Revision 1.123.2.13 2002/08/02 18:23:19 g_sauthoff
8917 Just 2 small corrections to the Gentoo sections
8919 Revision 1.123.2.12 2002/08/02 18:17:21 g_sauthoff
8920 Added 2 Gentoo sections
8922 Revision 1.123.2.11 2002/07/26 15:20:31 oes
8923 - Added version info to title
8924 - Added info on new filters
8925 - Revised parts of the filter file tutorial
8926 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
8928 Revision 1.123.2.10 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
8929 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
8931 Revision 1.123.2.9 2002/07/11 03:40:28 david__schmidt
8933 Updated Mac OS X sections due to installation location change
8935 Revision 1.123.2.8 2002/06/09 16:36:32 hal9
8936 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
8938 Revision 1.123.2.7 2002/06/09 00:29:34 hal9
8939 Touch ups on filtering, in actions section and Anatomy.
8941 Revision 1.123.2.6 2002/06/06 23:11:03 hal9
8942 Fix broken link. Linkchecked all docs.
8944 Revision 1.123.2.5 2002/05/29 02:01:02 hal9
8945 This is break out of the entire config section from u-m, so it can
8946 eventually be used to generate the comments, etc in the main config file
8947 so that these are in sync with each other.
8949 Revision 1.123.2.4 2002/05/27 03:28:45 hal9
8950 Ooops missed something from David.
8952 Revision 1.123.2.3 2002/05/27 03:23:17 hal9
8953 Fix FIXMEs for OS2 and Mac OS X startup. Fix Redhat typos (should be Red Hat).
8954 That's a wrap, I think.
8956 Revision 1.123.2.2 2002/05/26 19:02:09 hal9
8957 Move Amiga stuff around to take of FIXME in start up section.
8959 Revision 1.123.2.1 2002/05/26 17:04:25 hal9
8960 -Spellcheck, very minor edits, and sync across branches
8962 Revision 1.123 2002/05/24 23:19:23 hal9
8963 Include new image (Proxy setup). More fun with guibutton.
8964 Minor corrections/clarifications here and there.
8966 Revision 1.122 2002/05/24 13:24:08 oes
8967 Added Bookmarklet for one-click pre-filled access to show-url-info
8969 Revision 1.121 2002/05/23 23:20:17 oes
8970 - Changed more (all?) references to actions to the
8971 <literal><link> style.
8972 - Small fixes in the actions chapter
8973 - Small clarifications in the quickstart to ad blocking
8974 - Removed <emphasis> from <title>s since the new doc CSS
8975 renders them red (bad in TOC).
8977 Revision 1.120 2002/05/23 19:16:43 roro
8978 Correct Debian specials (installation and startup).
8980 Revision 1.119 2002/05/22 17:17:05 oes
8983 Revision 1.118 2002/05/21 04:54:55 hal9
8984 -New Section: Quickstart to Ad Blocking
8985 -Reformat Actions Anatomy to match new CGI layout
8987 Revision 1.117 2002/05/17 13:56:16 oes
8988 - Reworked & extended Templates chapter
8989 - Small changes to Regex appendix
8990 - #included authors.sgml into (C) and hist chapter
8992 Revision 1.116 2002/05/17 03:23:46 hal9
8993 Fixing merge conflict in Quickstart section.
8995 Revision 1.115 2002/05/16 16:25:00 oes
8996 Extended the Filter File chapter & minor fixes
8998 Revision 1.114 2002/05/16 09:42:50 oes
8999 More ulink->link, added some hints to Quickstart section
9001 Revision 1.113 2002/05/15 21:07:25 oes
9002 Extended and further commented the example actions files
9004 Revision 1.112 2002/05/15 03:57:14 hal9
9005 Spell check. A few minor edits here and there for better syntax and
9008 Revision 1.111 2002/05/14 23:01:36 oes
9011 Revision 1.110 2002/05/14 19:10:45 oes
9012 Restored alphabetical order of actions
9014 Revision 1.109 2002/05/14 17:23:11 oes
9015 Renamed the prevent-*-cookies actions, extended aliases section and moved it before the example AFs
9017 Revision 1.108 2002/05/14 15:29:12 oes
9018 Completed proofreading the actions chapter
9020 Revision 1.107 2002/05/12 03:20:41 hal9
9021 Small clarifications for 127.0.0.1 vs localhost for listen-address since this
9022 apparently an important distinction for some OS's.
9024 Revision 1.106 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
9025 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
9026 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
9027 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
9029 Revision 1.105 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
9030 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
9032 Revision 1.104 2002/05/04 08:44:45 swa
9035 Revision 1.103 2002/05/04 00:40:53 hal9
9036 -Remove the TOC first page kludge. It's fixed proper now in ldp.dsl.in.
9037 -Some minor additions to Quickstart.
9039 Revision 1.102 2002/05/03 17:46:00 oes
9040 Further proofread & reactivated short build instructions
9042 Revision 1.101 2002/05/03 03:58:30 hal9
9043 Move the user-manual config directive to top of section. Add note about
9044 Privoxy needing read permissions for configs, and write for logs.
9046 Revision 1.100 2002/04/29 03:05:55 hal9
9047 Add clarification on differences of new actions files.
9049 Revision 1.99 2002/04/28 16:59:05 swa
9050 more structure in starting section
9052 Revision 1.98 2002/04/28 05:43:59 hal9
9053 This is the break up of configuration.html into multiple files. This
9054 will probably break links elsewhere :(
9056 Revision 1.97 2002/04/27 21:04:42 hal9
9057 -Rewrite of Actions File example.
9058 -Add section for user-manual directive in config.
9060 Revision 1.96 2002/04/27 05:32:00 hal9
9061 -Add short section to Filter Files to tie in with +filter action.
9062 -Start rewrite of examples in Actions Examples (not finished).
9064 Revision 1.95 2002/04/26 17:23:29 swa
9065 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
9067 Revision 1.94 2002/04/26 05:24:36 hal9
9068 -Add most of Andreas suggestions to Chain of Events section.
9069 -A few other minor corrections and touch up.
9071 Revision 1.92 2002/04/25 18:55:13 hal9
9072 More catchups on new actions files, and new actions names.
9073 Other assorted cleanups, and minor modifications.
9075 Revision 1.91 2002/04/24 02:39:31 hal9
9076 Add 'Chain of Events' section.
9078 Revision 1.90 2002/04/23 21:41:25 hal9
9079 Linuxconf is deprecated on RH, substitute chkconfig.
9081 Revision 1.89 2002/04/23 21:05:28 oes
9082 Added hint for startup on Red Hat
9084 Revision 1.88 2002/04/23 05:37:54 hal9
9085 Add AmigaOS install stuff.
9087 Revision 1.87 2002/04/23 02:53:15 david__schmidt
9088 Updated Mac OS X installation section
9089 Added a few English tweaks here an there
9091 Revision 1.86 2002/04/21 01:46:32 hal9
9092 Re-write actions section.
9094 Revision 1.85 2002/04/18 21:23:23 hal9
9095 Fix ugly typo (mine).
9097 Revision 1.84 2002/04/18 21:17:13 hal9
9098 Spell Redhat correctly (ie Red Hat). A few minor grammar corrections.
9100 Revision 1.83 2002/04/18 18:21:12 oes
9101 Added RPM install detail
9103 Revision 1.82 2002/04/18 12:04:50 oes
9106 Revision 1.81 2002/04/18 11:50:24 oes
9107 Extended Install section - needs fixing by packagers
9109 Revision 1.80 2002/04/18 10:45:19 oes
9110 Moved text to buildsource.sgml, renamed some filters, details
9112 Revision 1.79 2002/04/18 03:18:06 hal9
9113 Spellcheck, and minor touchups.
9115 Revision 1.78 2002/04/17 18:04:16 oes
9118 Revision 1.77 2002/04/17 13:51:23 oes
9119 Proofreading, part one
9121 Revision 1.76 2002/04/16 04:25:51 hal9
9122 -Added 'Note to Upgraders' and re-ordered the 'Quickstart' section.
9123 -Note about proxy may need requests to re-read config files.
9125 Revision 1.75 2002/04/12 02:08:48 david__schmidt
9126 Remove OS/2 building info... it is already in the developer-manual
9128 Revision 1.74 2002/04/11 00:54:38 hal9
9129 Add small section on submitting actions.
9131 Revision 1.73 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
9134 Revision 1.72 2002/04/10 04:06:19 hal9
9135 Added actions feedback to Bookmarklets section
9137 Revision 1.71 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
9138 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
9140 Revision 1.70 2002/04/08 20:53:56 swa
9143 Revision 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9
9144 -Add privoxy-man-page.sgml, for man page.
9145 -Add authors.sgml for AUTHORS (and p-authors.sgml)
9146 -Reworked various aspects of various docs.
9147 -Added additional comments to sub-docs.
9149 Revision 1.68 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
9150 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
9152 Revision 1.67 2002/04/04 17:27:57 swa
9153 more single file to be included at multiple points. make maintaining easier
9155 Revision 1.66 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
9156 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
9157 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
9158 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
9159 eventually be set by Makefile.
9160 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
9162 Revision 1.65 2002/04/03 19:52:07 swa
9163 enhance squid section due to user suggestion
9165 Revision 1.64 2002/04/03 03:53:43 hal9
9166 A few minor bug fixes, and touch ups. Ready for review.
9168 Revision 1.63 2002/04/01 16:24:49 hal9
9169 Define entities to include boilerplate text. See doc/source/*.
9171 Revision 1.62 2002/03/30 04:15:53 hal9
9172 - Fix privoxy.org/config links.
9173 - Paste in Bookmarklets from Toggle page.
9174 - Move Quickstart nearer top, and minor rework.
9176 Revision 1.61 2002/03/29 01:31:08 hal9
9179 Revision 1.60 2002/03/27 01:57:34 hal9
9180 Added more to Anatomy section.
9182 Revision 1.59 2002/03/27 00:54:33 hal9
9183 Touch up intro for new name.
9185 Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
9186 we have a new homepage!
9188 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
9189 A few minor catch ups with name change.
9191 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
9192 configure needs to be generated.
9194 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
9195 we are too lazy to make a block-built
9196 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
9198 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
9199 name change related issue.
9201 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
9202 name change. changed filenames.
9204 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
9207 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
9208 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
9209 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
9210 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
9211 comments and remarks to history untouched.
9213 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
9216 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
9217 New section in Appendix.
9219 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
9220 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
9222 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
9223 correct feedback channels
9225 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
9226 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
9228 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
9231 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
9232 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
9234 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
9235 Added imageblock{pattern}.
9237 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
9240 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
9241 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
9243 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
9244 provide correct feedback channels
9246 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
9247 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
9249 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
9250 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
9252 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
9253 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
9255 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
9256 Add new - - user option.
9258 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
9259 Added section on command line options.
9261 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
9262 Changed default port to 8118
9264 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
9265 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
9267 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
9268 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
9269 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
9272 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
9275 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
9276 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
9278 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
9279 Update OS/2 build section
9281 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
9282 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
9283 will work - no other changes are needed.
9285 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
9286 Added a very short section on Templates
9288 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
9289 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
9291 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
9292 Touch ups for *.action files.
9294 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
9297 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
9298 Updates for recent changes.
9300 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
9301 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
9303 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
9304 Correct 2 minor errors
9306 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
9307 *** empty log message ***
9309 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
9310 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
9312 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
9313 wrong url in documentation
9315 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
9316 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
9318 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
9321 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
9324 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
9327 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
9328 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
9330 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
9331 Some additions, and re-arranging.
9333 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
9336 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
9337 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
9339 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
9342 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
9343 source files for junkbuster documentation
9345 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
9346 first proposal of a structure.
9348 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
9349 docs should have an author.
9351 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
9352 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.