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 "3.0.10">
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 2.83 2008/08/16 09:32:02 fabiankeil Exp $
38 Copyright (C) 2001-2008 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 - 2008 by
58 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
62 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.83 2008/08/16 09:32:02 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 rsync</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 many improvements and new features since <application>Privoxy 3.0.8</application>, the last stable release:
446 Added SOCKS5 support (with address resolution done by
447 the SOCKS5 server). Patch provided by Eric M. Hopper.
452 The "blocked" CGI pages include a block reason that was
453 provided as argument to the last-applying block action.
458 If enable-edit-actions is disabled (the default since 3.0.7 beta)
459 the show-status page hides the edit buttons and explains why.
460 Previously the user would get the "this feature has been disabled"
461 message after using the edit button.
466 Forbidden CONNECT requests are treated like blocks by default.
467 The now-pointless treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks action
473 Not enabling limit-connect now allows CONNECT requests to all ports.
474 In previous versions it would only allow CONNECT requests to port 443.
475 Use +limit-connect{443} if you think you need the old default behaviour.
480 The CGI editor gets turned off after three edit requests with invalid
481 file modification timestamps. This makes life harder for attackers
482 who can leverage browser bugs to send fake Referers and intend to
483 brute-force edit URLs.
488 Action settings for multiple patterns in the same section are
489 shared in memory. As a result these sections take up less space
490 (and are loaded slightly faster). Problem reported by Franz Schwartau.
495 Linear white space in HTTP headers will be normalized to single
496 spaces before parsing the header's content, headers split across
497 multiple lines get merged first.
502 Host information is gathered outside the main thread so it's less
503 likely to delay other incoming connections if the host is misconfigured.
508 New config option "hostname" to use a hostname other than
509 the one returned by the operating system. Useful to speed-up responses
510 for CGI requests on misconfigured systems. Requested by Max Khon.
515 The CGI editor supports the "disable all filters of this type"
516 directives "-client-header-filter", "-server-header-filter",
517 "-client-header-tagger" and "-server-header-tagger".
522 Fixed false-positives with the link-by-url filter and URLs that
523 contain the pattern "/jump/".
528 The less-download-windows filter no longer messes
529 "Content-Type: application/x-shockwave-flash" headers up.
534 In the show-url-info page's "Final results" section active and
535 inactive actions are listed separately. Patch provided by Lee.
540 The GNUmakefile supports the DESTDIR variable. Patch for
541 the install target submitted by Radoslaw Zielinski.
546 Embedding the content of configuration files in the show-status
547 page is significantly faster now. For a largish action file (1 MB)
548 a speedup of about 2450 times has been measured. This is mostly
549 interesting if you are using large action files or regularly use
550 Privoxy-Regression-Test while running Privoxy through Valgrind,
551 for stock configuration files it doesn't really matter.
556 If zlib support is unavailable and there are content
557 filters active but the prevent-compression action is disabled,
558 the show-url-info page includes a warning that compression
559 might prevent filtering.
564 The show-url-info page provides an OpenSearch Description that
565 allows to access the page through browser search plugins.
570 The obsolete kill-popups action has been removed as the
571 PCRS-based popup filters can do the same and are slightly
577 The inspect-jpegs action has been removed.
582 The send-wafer and send-vanilla-wafer actions have been removed.
583 They weren't particular useful and their behaviour could be emulated
584 with add-header anyway.
589 Privoxy-Regression-Test has been significantly improved.
594 Most sections in the default.action file contain tests for
595 Privoxy-Regression-Test to verify that they are working as intended.
600 Parts of Privoxy have been refactored to increase maintainability.
605 Building with zlib (if available) is done by default.
611 Ordinary configuration file changes no longer cause program
612 termination on OS/2 if the name of the logfile hasn't been
613 changed as well. This regression probably crept in with the
614 logging improvements in 3.0.7. Reported by Maynard.
619 The img-reorder filter is less likely to mess up JavaScript code in
620 img tags. Problem and solution reported by Glenn Washburn in #2014552.
625 The source tar ball now includes Privoxy-Log-Parser,
626 a syntax-highlighter for Privoxy logs. For fancy screenshots see:
627 <link url="http://www.fabiankeil.de/sourcecode/privoxy-log-parser/"
628 >http://www.fabiankeil.de/sourcecode/privoxy-log-parser/</link>
629 Documentation is available through perldoc(1).
637 For a more detailed list of changes please have a look at the ChangeLog.
640 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
642 <sect2 id="upgradersnote">
643 <title>Note to Upgraders</title>
646 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier
647 versions of <application>Privoxy</application>:
655 The recommended way to upgrade &my-app; is to backup your old
656 configuration files, install the new ones, verify that &my-app;
657 is working correctly and finally merge back your changes using
658 <application>diff</application> and maybe <application>patch</application>.
661 There are a number of new features in each &my-app; release and
662 most of them have to be explicitly enabled in the configuration
663 files. Old configuration files obviously don't do that and due
664 to syntax changes using old configuration files with a new
665 &my-app; isn't always possible anyway.
670 Note that some installers remove earlier versions completely,
671 including configuration files, therefore you should really save
672 any important configuration files!
677 On the other hand, other installers don't overwrite existing configuration
678 files, thinking you will want to do that yourself.
683 <filename>standard.action</filename> now only includes the enabled actions.
684 Not all actions as before.
689 In the default configuration only fatal errors are logged now.
690 You can change that in the <link linkend="DEBUG">debug section</link>
691 of the configuration file. You may also want to enable more verbose
692 logging until you verified that the new &my-app; version is working
699 Three other config file settings are now off by default:
700 <link linkend="enable-remote-toggle">enable-remote-toggle</link>,
701 <link linkend="enable-remote-http-toggle">enable-remote-http-toggle</link>,
702 and <link linkend="enable-edit-actions">enable-edit-actions</link>.
703 If you use or want these, you will need to explicitly enable them, and
704 be aware of the security issues involved.
710 The <quote>filter-client-headers</quote> and
711 <quote>filter-server-headers</quote> actions that were introduced with
712 <application>Privoxy 3.0.5</application> to apply content filters to
713 the headers have been removed and replaced with new actions.
715 linkend="whatsnew">What's New section</link> above.
723 What constitutes a <quote>default</quote> configuration has changed,
724 and you may want to review which actions are <quote>on</quote> by
725 default. This is primarily a matter of emphasis, but some features
726 you may have been used to, may now be <quote>off</quote> by default.
727 There are also a number of new actions and filters you may want to
728 consider, most of which are not fully incorporated into the default
729 settings as yet (see above).
736 The default actions setting is now <literal>Cautious</literal>. Previous
737 releases had a default setting of <literal>Medium</literal>. Experienced
738 users may want to adjust this, as it is fairly conservative by &my-app;
739 standards and past practices. See <ulink
740 url="http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default">
741 http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default</ulink>. New users
742 should try the default settings for a while before turning up the volume.
748 The default setting has filtering turned <emphasis>off</emphasis>, which
749 subsequently means that compression is <emphasis>on</emphasis>. Remember
750 that filtering does not work on compressed pages, so if you use, or want to
751 use, filtering, you will need to force compression off. Example:
755 { +<link linkend="filter">filter</link>{google} +<link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link> }
759 Or if you use a number of filters, or filter many sites, you may just want
760 to turn off compression for all sites in
761 <filename>default.action</filename> (or
762 <filename>user.action</filename>).
769 Also, <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> is
770 off by default now. If you've liked this feature in the past, you may want
771 to turn it back on in <filename>user.action</filename> now.
778 Some installers may not automatically start
779 <application>Privoxy</application> after installation.
790 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
791 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using Privoxy</title>
797 Install <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
798 linkend="installation">Installation Section</link> below for platform specific
805 Advanced users and those who want to offer <application>Privoxy</application>
806 service to more than just their local machine should check the <link
807 linkend="config">main config file</link>, especially the <link
808 linkend="access-control">security-relevant</link> options. These are
815 Start <application>Privoxy</application>, if the installation program has
816 not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
817 <link linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link>.
823 Set your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application> as HTTP and
824 HTTPS (SSL) <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>
825 by setting the proxy configuration for address of
826 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> and port <literal>8118</literal>.
827 <emphasis>DO NOT</emphasis> activate proxying for <literal>FTP</literal> or
828 any protocols besides HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) unless you intend to prevent your
829 browser from using these protocols.
835 Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad images.
836 If using <application>Privoxy</application> to manage
837 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
838 you should remove any currently stored cookies too.
844 A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for
845 most. There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
846 configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little
847 to no initial configuration is required in most cases, you may want
849 <ulink url="config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">web-based action editor</ulink> though.
850 Be sure to read the warnings first.
853 See the <link linkend="configuration">Configuration section</link> for more
854 configuration options, and how to customize your installation.
855 You might also want to look at the <link
856 linkend="quickstart-ad-blocking">next section</link> for a quick
857 introduction to how <application>Privoxy</application> blocks ads and
864 If you experience ads that slip through, innocent images that are
865 blocked, or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune
866 <application>Privoxy's</application> behavior, take a look at the <link
867 linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>. As a quick start, you might
868 find the <link linkend="act-examples">richly commented examples</link>
869 helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files through the <ulink
870 url="http://config.privoxy.org">web-based user interface</ulink>. The
871 Appendix <quote><link linkend="actionsanat">Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an
872 Action</link></quote> has hints on how to understand and debug actions that
873 <quote>misbehave</quote>.
878 Did anyone test these lately?
882 For easy access to &my-app;'s most important controls, drag the provided
883 <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklets</link> into your browser's
891 Please see the section <link linkend="contact">Contacting the
892 Developers</link> on how to report bugs, problems with websites or to get
899 Now enjoy surfing with enhanced control, comfort and privacy!
907 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
909 <sect2 id="quickstart-ad-blocking">
910 <title>Quickstart to Ad Blocking</title>
912 NOTE: This section is deliberately redundant for those that don't
913 want to read the whole thing (which is getting lengthy).
916 Ad blocking is but one of <application>Privoxy's</application>
917 array of features. Many of these features are for the technically minded advanced
918 user. But, ad and banner blocking is surely common ground for everybody.
921 This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so
922 you can get up to speed quickly without having to read the more extensive
923 information provided below, though this is highly recommended.
926 First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the
927 more aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block
928 things that were not intended. And the more likely that some things
929 may not work as intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want
930 extreme ad free browsing, be prepared to deal with more
931 <quote>problem</quote> sites, and to spend more time adjusting the
932 configuration to solve these unintended consequences. In short, there is
933 not an easy way to eliminate <emphasis>all</emphasis> ads. Either take
934 the easy way and settle for <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads blocked with the
935 default configuration, or jump in and tweak it for your personal surfing
936 habits and preferences.
939 Secondly, a brief explanation of <application>Privoxy's </application>
940 <quote>actions</quote>. <quote>Actions</quote> in this context, are
941 the directives we use to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to perform
942 some task relating to HTTP transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell
943 <application>Privoxy</application> to take some <quote>action</quote>. Each
944 action has a unique name and function. While there are many potential
945 <application>actions</application> in <application>Privoxy's</application>
946 arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking. <link
947 linkend="actions">Actions</link>, and <link linkend="actions-file">action
948 configuration files</link>, are explained in depth below.
951 Actions are specified in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
952 followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
953 can actually be URL type <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> that use
954 wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs. The
955 actions, together with the URL patterns are called a section.
958 When you connect to a website, the full URL will either match one or more
959 of the sections as defined in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
960 or not. If so, then <application>Privoxy</application> will perform the
961 respective actions. If not, then nothing special happens. Furthermore, web
962 pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web browser will
963 use to load additional components of the page, as it parses the
964 original page's HTML content. An ad image for instance, is just an URL
965 embedded in the page somewhere. The image itself may be on the same server,
966 or a server somewhere else on the Internet. Complex web pages will have many
967 such embedded URLs. &my-app; can deal with each URL individually, so, for
968 instance, the main page text is not touched, but images from such-and-such
973 The most important actions for basic ad blocking are: <literal><link
974 linkend="block">block</link></literal>, <literal><link
975 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
977 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal>,and
978 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>:
986 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> - this is perhaps
987 the single most used action, and is particularly important for ad blocking.
988 This action stops any contact between your browser and any URL patterns
989 that match this action's configuration. It can be used for blocking ads,
990 but also anything that is determined to be unwanted. By itself, it simply
991 stops any communication with the remote server and sends
992 <application>Privoxy</application>'s own built-in BLOCKED page instead to
993 let you now what has happened (with some exceptions, see below).
999 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> -
1000 tells <application>Privoxy</application> to treat this URL as an image.
1001 <application>Privoxy</application>'s default configuration already does this
1002 for all common image types (e.g. GIF), but there are many situations where this
1003 is not so easy to determine. So we'll force it in these cases. This is particularly
1004 important for ad blocking, since only if we know that it's an image of
1005 some kind, can we replace it with an image of our choosing, instead of the
1006 <application>Privoxy</application> BLOCKED page (which would only result in
1007 a <quote>broken image</quote> icon). There are some limitations to this
1008 though. For instance, you can't just brute-force an image substitution for
1009 an entire HTML page in most situations.
1015 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> -
1016 sends an empty document instead of <application>Privoxy's</application>
1017 normal BLOCKED HTML page. This is useful for file types that are neither
1018 HTML nor images, such as blocking JavaScript files.
1025 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> - tells
1026 <application>Privoxy</application> what to display in place of an ad image that
1027 has hit a block rule. For this to come into play, the URL must match a
1028 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action somewhere in the
1029 configuration, <emphasis>and</emphasis>, it must also match an
1030 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action.
1033 The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
1037 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad
1038 replacement is obvious. This is the default.
1043 <emphasis>blank</emphasis> - A very small empty GIF image is displayed.
1044 This is the so-called <quote>invisible</quote> configuration option.
1049 <emphasis>http://<URL></emphasis> - A redirect to any image anywhere
1050 of the user's choosing (advanced usage).
1059 Advanced users will eventually want to explore &my-app;
1060 <literal><link linkend="filter">filters</link></literal> as well. Filters
1061 are very different from <literal><link
1062 linkend="block">blocks</link></literal>.
1063 A <quote>block</quote> blocks a site, page, or unwanted contented. Filters
1064 are a way of filtering or modifying what is actually on the page. An example
1065 filter usage: a text replacement of <quote>no-no</quote> for
1066 <quote>nasty-word</quote>. That is a very simple example. This process can be
1067 used for ad blocking, but it is more in the realm of advanced usage and has
1068 some pitfalls to be wary off.
1072 The quickest way to adjust any of these settings is with your browser through
1073 the special <application>Privoxy</application> editor at <ulink
1074 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1075 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>). This
1076 is an internal page, and does not require Internet access.
1080 Note that as of <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.7 beta the
1081 action editor is disabled by default. Check the
1082 <ulink url="config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions
1083 section in the configuration file</ulink> to learn why and in which
1084 cases it's safe to enable again.
1088 If you decided to enable the action editor, select the appropriate
1089 <quote>actions</quote> file, and click
1090 <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>. It is best to put personal or
1091 local preferences in <filename>user.action</filename> since this is not
1092 meant to be overwritten during upgrades, and will over-ride the settings in
1093 other files. Here you can insert new <quote>actions</quote>, and URLs for ad
1094 blocking or other purposes, and make other adjustments to the configuration.
1095 <application>Privoxy</application> will detect these changes automatically.
1099 A quick and simple step by step example:
1107 Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select
1108 <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote> from the
1116 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1121 Find <filename>user.action</filename> in the top section, and click
1122 on <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>:
1125 <!-- image of editor and actions files selections -->
1127 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Actions Files in Use</title>
1130 <imagedata fileref="files-in-use.jpg" format="jpg">
1133 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Actions Files in Use ]</phrase>
1142 You should have a section with only
1143 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> listed under
1144 <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1145 If not, click a <quote><guibutton>Insert new section below</guibutton></quote>
1146 button, and in the new section that just appeared, click the
1147 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button right under the word <quote>Actions:</quote>.
1148 This will bring up a list of all actions. Find
1149 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> near the top, and click
1150 in the <quote>Enabled</quote> column, then <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote>
1151 just below the list.
1156 Now, in the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> actions section,
1157 click the <quote><guibutton>Add</guibutton></quote> button, and paste the URL the
1158 browser got from <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote>.
1159 Remove the <literal>http://</literal> at the beginning of the URL. Then, click
1160 <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote> (or
1161 <quote><guibutton>OK</guibutton></quote> if in a pop-up window).
1166 Now go back to the original page, and press <keycap>SHIFT-Reload</keycap>
1167 (or flush all browser caches). The image should be gone now.
1175 This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
1176 wildcard pattern match to include potentially similar images from the same
1177 site. For a more extensive explanation of <quote>patterns</quote>, and
1178 the entire actions concept, see <link linkend="actions-file">the Actions
1183 For advanced users who want to hand edit their config files, you might want
1184 to now go to the <link linkend="act-examples">Actions Files Tutorial</link>.
1185 The ideas explained therein also apply to the web-based editor.
1188 There are also various
1189 <link linkend="filter">filters</link> that can be used for ad blocking
1190 (filters are a special subset of actions). These
1191 fall into the <quote>advanced</quote> usage category, and are explained in
1192 depth in later sections.
1199 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1202 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1203 <sect1 id="startup">
1204 <title>Starting Privoxy</title>
1206 Before launching <application>Privoxy</application> for the first time, you
1207 will want to configure your browser(s) to use
1208 <application>Privoxy</application> as a HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)
1209 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>. The default is
1210 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions
1211 used port 8000). This is the one configuration step <emphasis>that must be done
1215 Please note that <application>Privoxy</application> can only proxy HTTP and
1216 HTTPS traffic. It will not work with FTP or other protocols.
1219 <!-- image of Mozilla Proxy configuration -->
1221 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1222 Mozilla/Netscape HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) Settings</title>
1225 <imagedata fileref="proxy_setup.jpg" format="jpg">
1228 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Mozilla Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1236 With <application>Firefox</application>, this is typically set under:
1240 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Network</guibutton> -><guibutton>Connection</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Settings</guibutton>
1245 Or optionally on some platforms:
1249 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>General</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connection Settings</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Manual Proxy Configuration</guibutton>
1255 With <application>Netscape</application> (and
1256 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under:
1261 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
1262 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
1263 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Proxies</guibutton> -> <guibutton>HTTP Proxy</guibutton>
1268 For <application>Internet Explorer v.5-7</application>:
1272 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Internet Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connections</guibutton> -> <guibutton>LAN Settings</guibutton>
1276 Then, check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info
1277 (Address: 127.0.0.1, Port: 8118). Include HTTPS (SSL), if you want HTTPS
1278 proxy support too (sometimes labeled <quote>Secure</quote>). Make sure any
1279 checkboxes like <quote>Use the same proxy server for all protocols</quote> is
1280 <emphasis>UNCHECKED</emphasis>. You want only HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)!
1283 <!-- image of IE Proxy configuration -->
1285 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1286 Internet Explorer HTTP and HTTPS (Secure) Settings</title>
1289 <imagedata fileref="proxy2.jpg" format="jpg">
1292 <phrase>[ Screenshot of IE Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1300 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
1301 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. Remove
1302 any <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
1303 if you want <application>Privoxy</application> to manage that. You are now
1304 ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
1305 <application>Privoxy</application>!
1309 <application>Privoxy</application> itself is typically started by specifying the
1310 main configuration file to be used on the command line. If no configuration
1311 file is specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application>
1312 will look for a file named <filename>config</filename> in the current
1313 directory. Except on Win32 where it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>.
1316 <sect2 id="start-redhat">
1317 <title>Red Hat and Fedora</title>
1319 A default Red Hat installation may not start &my-app; upon boot. It will use
1320 the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1325 # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
1333 # service privoxy start
1338 <sect2 id="start-debian">
1339 <title>Debian</title>
1341 We use a script. Note that Debian typically starts &my-app; upon booting per
1342 default. It will use the file
1343 <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1348 # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1353 <sect2 id="start-windows">
1354 <title>Windows</title>
1356 Click on the &my-app; Icon to start <application>Privoxy</application>. If no configuration file is
1357 specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application> will look
1358 for a file named <filename>config.txt</filename>. Note that Windows will
1359 automatically start &my-app; when the system starts if you chose that option
1363 <application>Privoxy</application> can run with full Windows service functionality.
1364 On Windows only, the &my-app; program has two new command line arguments
1365 to install and uninstall &my-app; as a service. See the
1366 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Windows Installation
1367 instructions</link> for details.
1371 <sect2 id="start-unices">
1372 <title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others</title>
1374 Example Unix startup command:
1378 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
1383 <sect2 id="start-os2">
1386 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
1387 start automatically when the system restarts. You can start it manually by
1388 double-clicking on the <application>Privoxy</application> icon in the
1389 <application>Privoxy</application> folder.
1393 <sect2 id="start-macosx">
1394 <title>Mac OS X</title>
1396 After downloading the privoxy software, unzip the downloaded file by
1397 double-clicking on the zip file icon. Then, double-click on the
1398 installer package icon and follow the installation process.
1401 The privoxy service will automatically start after a successful
1402 installation. In addition, the privoxy service will automatically
1403 start every time your computer starts up.
1406 To prevent the privoxy service from automatically starting when your
1407 computer starts up, remove or rename the folder named
1408 /Library/StartupItems/Privoxy.
1411 A simple application named Privoxy Utility has been created which
1412 enables administrators to easily start and stop the privoxy service.
1415 In addition, the Privoxy Utility presents a simple way for
1416 administrators to edit the various privoxy config files. A method
1417 to uninstall the software is also available.
1420 An administrator username and password must be supplied in order for
1421 the Privoxy Utility to perform any of the tasks.
1426 <sect2 id="start-amigaos">
1427 <title>AmigaOS</title>
1429 Start <application>Privoxy</application> (with RUN <>NIL:) in your
1430 <filename>startnet</filename> script (AmiTCP), in
1431 <filename>s:user-startup</filename> (RoadShow), as startup program in your
1432 startup script (Genesis), or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx).
1433 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically quit when you quit your
1434 TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack may display that
1435 <application>Privoxy</application> is still running).
1439 <sect2 id="start-gentoo">
1440 <title>Gentoo</title>
1442 A script is again used. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config
1443 </filename> as its main configuration file.
1447 /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1451 Note that <application>Privoxy</application> is not automatically started at
1452 boot time by default. You can change this with the <literal>rc-update</literal>
1457 rc-update add privoxy default
1465 See the section <link linkend="cmdoptions">Command line options</link> for
1469 must find a better place for this paragraph
1472 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
1473 point. Most of the per site configuration is done in the
1474 <ulink url="actions-file.html"><quote>actions</quote></ulink> files. These are
1475 where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking, and other
1476 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. There are several
1477 such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.
1481 You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites for which you may prefer
1482 persistent cookies, and add these to your actions configuration as needed. By
1483 default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser
1484 session (aka <quote>session cookies</quote>), unless you add them to the
1485 configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will need
1486 to edit <filename>user.action</filename> (or through the web based interface)
1487 and disable this feature. If you use more than one browser, it would make
1488 more sense to let <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which
1489 case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
1493 Another feature where you will probably want to define exceptions for trusted
1494 sites is the popup-killing (through <ulink
1495 url="actions-file.html#FILTER-POPUPS"><quote>+filter{popups}</quote></ulink>),
1496 because your favorite shopping, banking, or leisure site may need
1497 popups (explained below).
1501 <application>Privoxy</application> does not support all of the optional HTTP/1.1
1502 features yet. In the unlikely event that you experience inexplicable problems
1503 with browsers that use HTTP/1.1 per default
1504 (like <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.), you might
1505 try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look under <literal>Edit ->
1506 Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
1507 Alternatively, set the <quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote> config option in
1508 <filename>default.action</filename> which will downgrade your browser's HTTP
1509 requests from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0 before processing them.
1513 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
1514 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
1515 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
1516 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote>
1517 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
1518 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1519 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1520 and then follow the link to <quote>View & Change the Current Configuration</quote>.
1521 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
1525 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
1526 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
1527 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
1528 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
1529 to a given URL. In addition to the actions file
1530 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
1531 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> (toggled) from this page.
1535 If you encounter problems, try loading the page without
1536 <application>Privoxy</application>. If that helps, enter the URL where
1537 you have the problems into <ulink url="http://p.p/show-url-info">the browser
1538 based rule tracing utility</ulink>. See which rules apply and why, and
1539 then try turning them off for that site one after the other, until the problem
1540 is gone. When you have found the culprit, you might want to turn the rest on
1545 If the above paragraph sounds gibberish to you, you might want to <link
1546 linkend="actions-file">read more about the actions concept</link>
1547 or even dive deep into the <link linkend="actionsanat">Appendix
1552 If you can't get rid of the problem at all, think you've found a bug in
1553 Privoxy, want to propose a new feature or smarter rules, please see the
1554 section <link linkend="contact"><quote>Contacting the
1555 Developers</quote></link> below.
1560 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1561 <sect2 id="cmdoptions">
1562 <title>Command Line Options</title>
1564 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
1565 command-line options:
1573 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
1576 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
1581 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
1584 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
1589 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
1592 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
1593 leader, and don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
1598 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
1601 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
1602 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failure to create or delete the
1603 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
1604 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
1609 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
1612 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
1613 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
1614 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
1619 <emphasis>--chroot</emphasis>
1622 Before changing to the user ID given in the <emphasis>--user</emphasis> option,
1623 chroot to that user's home directory, i.e. make the kernel pretend to the &my-app;
1624 process that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
1625 the impact of possible vulnerabilities in &my-app; to the files contained in that hierarchy.
1631 <emphasis>--pre-chroot-nslookup hostname</emphasis>
1634 Specifies a hostname to look up before doing a chroot. On some systems, initializing the
1635 resolver library involves reading config files from /etc and/or loading additional shared
1636 libraries from /lib. On these systems, doing a hostname lookup before the chroot reduces
1637 the number of files that must be copied into the chroot tree.
1640 For fastest startup speed, a good value is a hostname that is not in /etc/hosts but that
1641 your local name server (listed in /etc/resolv.conf) can resolve without recursion
1642 (that is, without having to ask any other name servers). The hostname need not exist,
1643 but if it doesn't, an error message (which can be ignored) will be output.
1649 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
1652 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
1653 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
1654 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
1655 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
1656 full path to avoid confusion. If no config file is found,
1657 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
1665 On <application>MS Windows</application> only there are two additional
1666 command-line options to allow <application>Privoxy</application> to install and
1667 run as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>. See the
1668 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Window Installation section</link>
1676 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1679 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1680 <sect1 id="configuration"><title>Privoxy Configuration</title>
1682 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is stored
1683 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
1684 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
1685 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
1689 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1692 <title>Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser</title>
1694 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface can be reached through the special
1695 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1696 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1697 which is a built-in page and works without Internet access.
1698 You will see the following section:
1702 <!-- Needs to be put in a table and colorized -->
1705 <bridgehead renderas="sect2"> Privoxy Menu</bridgehead>
1709 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View & change the current configuration</ulink>
1712 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">View the source code version numbers</ulink>
1715 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">View the request headers.</ulink>
1718 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">Look up which actions apply to a URL and why</ulink>
1721 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">Toggle Privoxy on or off</ulink>
1724 ▪ <ulink
1725 url="http://www.privoxy.org/&p-version;/user-manual/">Documentation</ulink>
1733 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
1734 <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, which is where the ad, banner,
1735 cookie, and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
1736 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
1737 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
1738 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
1742 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
1743 have problems with your current actions and filters. You can in fact use
1744 it as a test to see whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
1745 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
1746 to run as a proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e.
1747 <application>Privoxy</application> acts like a normal forwarding proxy. There
1748 is even a toggle <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklet</link> offered, so
1749 that you can toggle <application>Privoxy</application> with one click from
1754 Note that several of the features described above are disabled by default
1755 in <application>Privoxy</application> 3.0.7 beta and later.
1757 <ulink url="config.html">configuration file</ulink> to learn why
1758 and in which cases it's safe to enable them again.
1763 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1768 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1770 <sect2 id="confoverview">
1771 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
1773 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
1774 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
1775 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
1776 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. <![%p-not-stable;[ The name
1777 and number of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
1778 subject to change as development progresses.]]>
1782 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though
1783 some settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the
1784 principle configuration files are:
1792 The <link linkend="config">main configuration file</link> is named <filename>config</filename>
1793 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
1794 on Windows. This is a required file.
1800 <filename>default.action</filename> (the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>)
1801 is used to define which <quote>actions</quote> relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups,
1802 content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default. It also defines many
1803 exceptions (both positive and negative) from this default set of actions that enable
1804 <application>Privoxy</application> to selectively eliminate the junk, and only the junk, on
1805 as many websites as possible.
1808 Multiple actions files may be defined in <filename>config</filename>. These
1809 are processed in the order they are defined. Local customizations and locally
1810 preferred exceptions to the default policies as defined in
1811 <filename>default.action</filename> (which you will most probably want
1812 to define sooner or later) are probably best applied in
1813 <filename>user.action</filename>, where you can preserve them across
1814 upgrades. <filename>standard.action</filename> is only for
1815 <application>Privoxy's</application> internal use.
1818 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from
1820 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1822 url="http://p.p/show-status">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>) for the
1823 various actions files.
1829 <quote>Filter files</quote> (the <link linkend="filter-file">filter
1830 file</link>) can be used to re-write the raw page content, including
1831 viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript, and whatever else
1832 lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only pre-defined here;
1833 whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
1834 <filename>default.filter</filename> includes various filters made
1835 available for use by the developers. Some are much more intrusive than
1836 others, and all should be used with caution. You may define additional
1837 filter files in <filename>config</filename> as you can with
1838 actions files. We suggest <filename>user.filter</filename> for any
1839 locally defined filters or customizations.
1847 The syntax of the configuration and filter files may change between different
1848 Privoxy versions, unfortunately some enhancements cost backwards compatibility.
1849 <!-- Add link to documentation-->
1853 All files use the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a
1854 comment (the rest of the line will be ignored) and understand line continuation
1855 through placing a backslash ("<literal>\</literal>") as the very last character
1856 in a line. If the <literal>#</literal> is preceded by a backslash, it looses
1857 its special function. Placing a <literal>#</literal> in front of an otherwise
1858 valid configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
1859 out" that line. Blank lines are ignored.
1863 The actions files and filter files
1864 can use Perl style <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> for
1865 maximum flexibility.
1869 After making any changes, there is no need to restart
1870 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
1871 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> detects such changes
1872 automatically. Note, however, that it may take one or two additional
1873 requests for the change to take effect. When changing the listening address
1874 of <application>Privoxy</application>, these <quote>wake up</quote> requests
1875 must obviously be sent to the <emphasis>old</emphasis> listening address.
1880 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
1881 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
1882 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
1883 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
1889 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1892 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1894 <!-- **************************************************** -->
1895 <!-- Include config.sgml here -->
1896 <!-- This is where the entire config file is detailed. -->
1898 <!-- end include -->
1901 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1905 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1907 <sect1 id="actions-file"><title>Actions Files</title>
1910 The actions files are used to define what <emphasis>actions</emphasis>
1911 <application>Privoxy</application> takes for which URLs, and thus determines
1912 how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
1913 transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof).
1914 There are a number of such actions, with a wide range of functionality.
1915 Each action does something a little different.
1916 These actions give us a veritable arsenal of tools with which to exert
1917 our control, preferences and independence. Actions can be combined so that
1918 their effects are aggregated when applied against a given set of URLs.
1922 are three action files included with <application>Privoxy</application> with
1930 <filename>default.action</filename> - is the primary action file
1931 that sets the initial values for all actions. It is intended to
1932 provide a base level of functionality for
1933 <application>Privoxy's</application> array of features. So it is
1934 a set of broad rules that should work reasonably well as-is for most users.
1935 This is the file that the developers are keeping updated, and <link
1936 linkend="installation-keepupdated">making available to users</link>.
1937 The user's preferences as set in <filename>standard.action</filename>,
1938 e.g. either <literal>Cautious</literal> (the default),
1939 <literal>Medium</literal>, or <literal>Advanced</literal> (see
1945 <filename>user.action</filename> - is intended to be for local site
1946 preferences and exceptions. As an example, if your ISP or your bank
1947 has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
1948 thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
1953 <filename>standard.action</filename> - is used only by the web based editor
1954 at <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default">
1955 http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default</ulink>,
1956 to set various pre-defined sets of rules for the default actions section
1957 in <filename>default.action</filename>.
1960 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Cautious</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Medium</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Advanced</guibutton>
1963 These have increasing levels of aggressiveness <emphasis>and have no
1964 influence on your browsing unless you select them explicitly in the
1965 editor</emphasis>. A default installation should be pre-set to
1966 <literal>Cautious</literal> (versions prior to 3.0.5 were set to
1967 <literal>Medium</literal>). New users should try this for a while before
1968 adjusting the settings to more aggressive levels. The more aggressive
1969 the settings, then the more likelihood there is of problems such as sites
1970 not working as they should.
1973 The <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button allows you to turn each
1974 action on/off individually for fine-tuning. The <guibutton>Cautious</guibutton>
1975 button changes the actions list to low/safe settings which will activate
1976 ad blocking and a minimal set of &my-app;'s features, and subsequently
1977 there will be less of a chance for accidental problems. The
1978 <guibutton>Medium</guibutton> button sets the list to a medium level of
1979 other features and a low level set of privacy features. The
1980 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> button sets the list to a high level of
1981 ad blocking and medium level of privacy. See the chart below. The latter
1982 three buttons over-ride any changes via with the
1983 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button. More fine-tuning can be done in the
1984 lower sections of this internal page.
1987 It is not recommend to edit the <filename>standard.action</filename> file
1991 The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
1992 <filename>standard.action</filename> are:
1995 <table frame=all><title>Default Configurations</title>
1996 <tgroup cols=4 align=left colsep=1 rowsep=1>
1997 <colspec colname=c1>
1998 <colspec colname=c2>
1999 <colspec colname=c3>
2000 <colspec colname=c4>
2003 <entry>Feature</entry>
2004 <entry>Cautious</entry>
2005 <entry>Medium</entry>
2006 <entry>Advanced</entry>
2011 <!-- <entry>f1</entry> -->
2012 <!-- <entry>f2</entry> -->
2013 <!-- <entry>f3</entry> -->
2014 <!-- <entry>f4</entry> -->
2020 <entry>Ad-blocking Aggressiveness</entry>
2021 <entry>medium</entry>
2027 <entry>Ad-filtering by size</entry>
2034 <entry>Ad-filtering by link</entry>
2040 <entry>Pop-up killing</entry>
2041 <entry>blocks only</entry>
2042 <entry>blocks only</entry>
2043 <entry>blocks only</entry>
2047 <entry>Privacy Features</entry>
2049 <entry>medium</entry>
2050 <entry>medium/high</entry>
2054 <entry>Cookie handling</entry>
2056 <entry>session-only</entry>
2061 <entry>Referer forging</entry>
2069 <entry>GIF de-animation</entry>
2077 <entry>Fast redirects</entry>
2084 <entry>HTML taming</entry>
2091 <entry>JavaScript taming</entry>
2098 <entry>Web-bug killing</entry>
2105 <entry>Image tag reordering</entry>
2121 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
2122 file, and are processed in the order they are defined (e.g.
2123 <filename>default.action</filename> is typically processed before
2124 <filename>user.action</filename>). The content of these can all be viewed and
2126 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2127 The over-riding principle when applying actions, is that the last action that
2128 matches a given URL wins. The broadest, most general rules go first
2129 (defined in <filename>default.action</filename>),
2130 followed by any exceptions (typically also in
2131 <filename>default.action</filename>), which are then followed lastly by any
2132 local preferences (typically in <emphasis>user</emphasis><filename>.action</filename>).
2133 Generally, <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word.
2137 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use
2138 <quote>aliases</quote> in an actions file, you have to place the (optional)
2139 <link linkend="aliases">alias section</link> at the top of that file.
2140 Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally to all
2141 sites and pages (be <emphasis>very careful</emphasis> with using such a
2142 universal set in <filename>user.action</filename> or any other actions file after
2143 <filename>default.action</filename>, because it will override the result
2144 from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
2145 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard
2146 <filename>user.action</filename> as an appendix to <filename>default.action</filename>,
2147 with the advantage that it is a separate file, which makes preserving your
2148 personal settings across <application>Privoxy</application> upgrades easier.
2152 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
2153 just some obnoxious URL whose content you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
2154 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
2155 written to disk), content can be modified, some JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
2156 fooled, and much more. See below for a <link linkend="actions">complete list
2160 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2162 <title>Finding the Right Mix</title>
2164 Note that some <link linkend="actions">actions</link>, like cookie suppression
2165 or script disabling, may render some sites unusable that rely on these
2166 techniques to work properly. Finding the right mix of actions is not always easy and
2167 certainly a matter of personal taste. And, things can always change, requiring
2168 refinements in the configuration. In general, it can be said that the more
2169 <quote>aggressive</quote> your default settings (in the top section of the
2170 actions file) are, the more exceptions for <quote>trusted</quote> sites you
2171 will have to make later. If, for example, you want to crunch all cookies per
2172 default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for sites that you
2173 regularly use and that require cookies for actually useful purposes, like maybe
2174 your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
2178 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
2179 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
2180 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
2181 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again :).
2185 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2187 <title>How to Edit</title>
2189 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by
2190 using our browser-based editor, which can be reached from <ulink
2191 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
2192 Note: the config file option <link
2193 linkend="enable-edit-actions">enable-edit-actions</link> must be enabled for
2194 this to work. The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single
2195 feature on a per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults
2196 like <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> or
2197 <quote>Advanced</quote>. Warning: the <quote>Advanced</quote> setting is more
2198 aggressive, and will be more likely to cause problems for some sites.
2199 Experienced users only!
2203 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
2204 the actions files with your favorite text editor. Look at
2205 <filename>default.action</filename> which is richly commented with many
2211 <sect2 id="actions-apply">
2212 <title>How Actions are Applied to Requests</title>
2214 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections,
2215 like the <quote><link linkend="aliases">alias</link></quote> sections which will
2216 be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on regular sections: They have a
2217 heading line (often split up to multiple lines for readability) which consist
2218 of a list of actions, separated by whitespace and enclosed in curly braces.
2219 Below that, there is a list of URL and tag patterns, each on a separate line.
2223 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
2224 compared to all URL patterns in each <quote>action file</quote>.
2225 Every time it matches, the list of applicable actions for the request is
2226 incrementally updated, using the heading of the section in which the
2227 pattern is located. The same is done again for tags and tag patterns later on.
2231 If multiple applying sections set the same action differently,
2232 the last match wins. If not, the effects are aggregated.
2233 E.g. a URL might match a regular section with a heading line of <literal>{
2234 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link> }</literal>,
2235 then later another one with just <literal>{
2236 +<link linkend="block">block</link> }</literal>, resulting
2237 in <emphasis>both</emphasis> actions to apply. And there may well be
2238 cases where you will want to combine actions together. Such a section then
2244 { +<literal>handle-as-image</literal> +<literal>block{Banner ads.}</literal> }
2245 # Block these as if they were images. Send no block page.
2247 media.example.com/.*banners
2248 .example.com/images/ads/</screen>
2252 You can trace this process for URL patterns and any given URL by visiting <ulink
2253 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>.
2257 Examples and more detail on this is provided in the Appendix, <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">
2258 Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</link> section.
2262 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2263 <sect2 id="af-patterns">
2264 <title>Patterns</title>
2266 As mentioned, <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>patterns</quote>
2267 to determine what <emphasis>actions</emphasis> might apply to which sites and
2268 pages your browser attempts to access. These <quote>patterns</quote> use wild
2269 card type <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> matching to achieve a high degree of
2270 flexibility. This allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match
2271 against many similar patterns.
2275 Generally, an URL pattern has the form
2276 <literal><domain>/<path></literal>, where both the
2277 <literal><domain></literal> and <literal><path></literal> are
2278 optional. (This is why the special <literal>/</literal> pattern matches all
2279 URLs). Note that the protocol portion of the URL pattern (e.g.
2280 <literal>http://</literal>) should <emphasis>not</emphasis> be included in
2281 the pattern. This is assumed already!
2284 The pattern matching syntax is different for the domain and path parts of
2285 the URL. The domain part uses a simple globbing type matching technique,
2286 while the path part uses more flexible
2287 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2288 Expressions</quote></ulink> (POSIX 1003.2).
2293 <term><literal>www.example.com/</literal></term>
2296 is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2297 regardless of which document on that server is requested. So ALL pages in
2298 this domain would be covered by the scope of this action. Note that a
2299 simple <literal>example.com</literal> is different and would NOT match.
2304 <term><literal>www.example.com</literal></term>
2307 means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing <literal>/</literal> may
2313 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html</literal></term>
2316 matches all the documents on <literal>www.example.com</literal>
2317 whose name starts with <literal>/index.html</literal>.
2322 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html$</literal></term>
2325 matches only the single document <literal>/index.html</literal>
2326 on <literal>www.example.com</literal>.
2331 <term><literal>/index.html$</literal></term>
2334 matches the document <literal>/index.html</literal>, regardless of the domain,
2335 i.e. on <emphasis>any</emphasis> web server anywhere.
2340 <term><literal>index.html</literal></term>
2343 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
2344 there is no top-level domain called <literal>.html</literal>. So its
2352 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2353 <sect3><title>The Domain Pattern</title>
2356 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
2357 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
2363 <term><literal>.example.com</literal></term>
2366 matches any domain with first-level domain <literal>com</literal>
2367 and second-level domain <literal>example</literal>.
2368 For example <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2369 <literal>example.com</literal> and <literal>foo.bar.baz.example.com</literal>.
2370 Note that it wouldn't match if the second-level domain was <literal>another-example</literal>.
2375 <term><literal>www.</literal></term>
2378 matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
2379 <literal>www.</literal> (It also matches the domain
2380 <literal>www</literal> but most of the time that doesn't matter.)
2385 <term><literal>.example.</literal></term>
2388 matches any domain that <emphasis>CONTAINS</emphasis> <literal>.example.</literal>.
2389 And, by the way, also included would be any files or documents that exist
2390 within that domain since no path limitations are specified. (Correctly
2391 speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains <literal>example</literal> as
2392 a domain.) This might be <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2393 <literal>news.example.de</literal>, or
2394 <literal>www.example.net/cgi/testing.pl</literal> for instance. All these
2402 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
2403 themselves. These work similarly to shell globbing type wild-cards:
2404 <quote>*</quote> represents zero or more arbitrary characters (this is
2406 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2407 Expression</quote></ulink> based syntax of <quote>.*</quote>),
2408 <quote>?</quote> represents any single character (this is equivalent to the
2409 regular expression syntax of a simple <quote>.</quote>), and you can define
2410 <quote>character classes</quote> in square brackets which is similar to
2411 the same regular expression technique. All of this can be freely mixed:
2416 <term><literal>ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2419 matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
2420 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>
2425 <term><literal>*ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2428 matches all of the above, and then some.
2433 <term><literal>.?pix.com</literal></term>
2436 matches <literal>www.ipix.com</literal>,
2437 <literal>pictures.epix.com</literal>, <literal>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</literal> etc.
2442 <term><literal>www[1-9a-ez].example.c*</literal></term>
2445 matches <literal>www1.example.com</literal>,
2446 <literal>www4.example.cc</literal>, <literal>wwwd.example.cy</literal>,
2447 <literal>wwwz.example.com</literal> etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
2448 <literal>wwww.example.com</literal>.
2455 While flexible, this is not the sophistication of full regular expression based syntax.
2460 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2463 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2464 <sect3><title>The Path Pattern</title>
2467 <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>modern</quote> POSIX 1003.2
2468 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2469 Expressions</quote></ulink> for matching the path portion (after the slash),
2470 and is thus more flexible.
2474 There is an <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link> with a brief quick-start into regular
2475 expressions, you also might want to have a look at your operating system's documentation
2476 on regular expressions (try <literal>man re_format</literal>).
2480 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the <quote>/</quote>,
2481 i.e. it matches as if it would start with a <quote>^</quote> (regular expression speak
2482 for the beginning of a line).
2486 Please also note that matching in the path is <emphasis>CASE INSENSITIVE</emphasis>
2487 by default, but you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
2488 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch: <literal>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</literal> will match
2489 only documents whose path starts with <literal>PaTtErN</literal> in
2490 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
2495 <term><literal>.example.com/.*</literal></term>
2498 Is equivalent to just <quote>.example.com</quote>, since any documents
2499 within that domain are matched with or without the <quote>.*</quote>
2500 regular expression. This is redundant
2505 <term><literal>.example.com/.*/index.html$</literal></term>
2508 Will match any page in the domain of <quote>example.com</quote> that is
2509 named <quote>index.html</quote>, and that is part of some path. For
2510 example, it matches <quote>www.example.com/testing/index.html</quote> but
2511 NOT <quote>www.example.com/index.html</quote> because the regular
2512 expression called for at least two <quote>/'s</quote>, thus the path
2513 requirement. It also would match
2514 <quote>www.example.com/testing/index_html</quote>, because of the
2515 special meta-character <quote>.</quote>.
2520 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)?index\.html$</literal></term>
2523 This regular expression is conditional so it will match any page
2524 named <quote>index.html</quote> regardless of path which in this case can
2525 have one or more <quote>/'s</quote>. And this one must contain exactly
2526 <quote>.html</quote> (but does not have to end with that!).
2531 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)</literal></term>
2534 This regular expression will match any path of <quote>example.com</quote>
2535 that contains any of the words <quote>ads</quote>, <quote>banner</quote>,
2536 <quote>banners</quote> (because of the <quote>?</quote>) or <quote>junk</quote>.
2537 The path does not have to end in these words, just contain them.
2542 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)/.*\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$</literal></term>
2545 This is very much the same as above, except now it must end in either
2546 <quote>.jpg</quote>, <quote>.jpeg</quote>, <quote>.gif</quote> or <quote>.png</quote>. So this
2547 one is limited to common image formats.
2554 There are many, many good examples to be found in <filename>default.action</filename>,
2555 and more tutorials below in <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>.
2560 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2563 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2564 <sect3 id="tag-pattern"><title>The Tag Pattern</title>
2567 Tag patterns are used to change the applying actions based on the
2568 request's tags. Tags can be created with either the
2569 <link linkend="CLIENT-HEADER-TAGGER">client-header-tagger</link>
2570 or the <link linkend="SERVER-HEADER-TAGGER">server-header-tagger</link> action.
2574 Tag patterns have to start with <quote>TAG:</quote>, so &my-app;
2575 can tell them apart from URL patterns. Everything after the colon
2576 including white space, is interpreted as a regular expression with
2577 path pattern syntax, except that tag patterns aren't left-anchored
2578 automatically (&my-app; doesn't silently add a <quote>^</quote>,
2579 you have to do it yourself if you need it).
2583 To match all requests that are tagged with <quote>foo</quote>
2584 your pattern line should be <quote>TAG:^foo$</quote>,
2585 <quote>TAG:foo</quote> would work as well, but it would also
2586 match requests whose tags contain <quote>foo</quote> somewhere.
2587 <quote>TAG: foo</quote> wouldn't work as it requires white space.
2591 Sections can contain URL and tag patterns at the same time,
2592 but tag patterns are checked after the URL patterns and thus
2593 always overrule them, even if they are located before the URL patterns.
2597 Once a new tag is added, Privoxy checks right away if it's matched by one
2598 of the tag patterns and updates the action settings accordingly. As a result
2599 tags can be used to activate other tagger actions, as long as these other
2600 taggers look for headers that haven't already be parsed.
2604 For example you could tag client requests which use the
2605 <literal>POST</literal> method,
2606 then use this tag to activate another tagger that adds a tag if cookies
2607 are sent, and then use a block action based on the cookie tag. This allows
2608 the outcome of one action, to be input into a subsequent action. However if
2609 you'd reverse the position of the described taggers, and activated the
2610 method tagger based on the cookie tagger, no method tags would be created.
2611 The method tagger would look for the request line, but at the time
2612 the cookie tag is created, the request line has already been parsed.
2616 While this is a limitation you should be aware of, this kind of
2617 indirection is seldom needed anyway and even the example doesn't
2618 make too much sense.
2625 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2628 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2630 <sect2 id="actions">
2631 <title>Actions</title>
2633 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
2634 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a
2635 <quote>+</quote>, and turned off if preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. So a
2636 <literal>+action</literal> means <quote>do that action</quote>, e.g.
2637 <literal>+block</literal> means <quote>please block URLs that match the
2638 following patterns</quote>, and <literal>-block</literal> means <quote>don't
2639 block URLs that match the following patterns, even if <literal>+block</literal>
2640 previously applied.</quote>
2645 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
2646 separated by whitespace, like in
2647 <literal>{+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}}</literal>,
2648 followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which they apply.
2649 Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up a section
2650 of the actions file.
2654 Actions fall into three categories:
2661 Boolean, i.e the action can only be <quote>enabled</quote> or
2662 <quote>disabled</quote>. Syntax:
2666 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # enable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
2667 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable></screen>
2670 Example: <literal>+handle-as-image</literal>
2677 Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of action.
2682 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and set parameter to <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>,
2683 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
2684 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action. The parameter can be omitted</screen>
2687 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized action,
2688 the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are simply ignored.
2691 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>
2697 Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions,
2698 but they behave differently: If the action applies multiple times to the
2699 same URL, but with different parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> the parameters
2700 from <emphasis>all</emphasis> matches are remembered. This is used for actions
2701 that can be executed for the same request repeatedly, like adding multiple
2702 headers, or filtering through multiple filters. Syntax:
2706 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and add <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> to the list of parameters
2707 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # remove the parameter <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> from the list of parameters
2708 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
2709 <replaceable class="parameter">-name</replaceable> # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list</screen>
2712 Examples: <literal>+add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text}</literal> and
2713 <literal>+filter{html-annoyances}</literal>
2721 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no <quote>actions</quote> are
2722 taken. So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
2723 normal, non-blocking, non-filtering proxy. You must specifically enable the
2724 privacy and blocking features you need (although the provided default actions
2725 files will give a good starting point).
2729 Later defined action sections always over-ride earlier ones of the same type.
2730 So exceptions to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
2731 in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files such
2732 as <filename>user.action</filename>). For multi-valued actions, the actions
2733 are applied in the order they are specified. Actions files are processed in
2734 the order they are defined in <filename>config</filename> (the default
2735 installation has three actions files). It also quite possible for any given
2736 URL to match more than one <quote>pattern</quote> (because of wildcards and
2737 regular expressions), and thus to trigger more than one set of actions! Last
2741 <!-- start actions listing -->
2743 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> actions are:
2747 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2748 <!-- Please note the below defined actions use id's that are -->
2749 <!-- probably linked from other places, so please don't change. -->
2751 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2754 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2756 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="add-header">
2757 <title>add-header</title>
2761 <term>Typical use:</term>
2763 <para>Confuse log analysis, custom applications</para>
2768 <term>Effect:</term>
2771 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
2778 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2780 <para>Multi-value.</para>
2785 <term>Parameter:</term>
2788 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not checked.
2789 It is recommended that you use the <quote><literal>X-</literal></quote> prefix
2799 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
2800 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
2801 <quote>HTTP headers</quote> are, you definitely don't need to worry about this
2808 <term>Example usage:</term>
2811 <screen>+add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}</screen>
2819 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2820 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="block">
2821 <title>block</title>
2825 <term>Typical use:</term>
2827 <para>Block ads or other unwanted content</para>
2832 <term>Effect:</term>
2835 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the
2836 requests are trapped by &my-app; and the requested URL is never retrieved,
2837 but is answered locally with a substitute page or image, as determined by
2839 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2841 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>, and
2843 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> actions.
2851 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2853 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2858 <term>Parameter:</term>
2860 <para>A block reason that should be given to the user.</para>
2868 <application>Privoxy</application> sends a special <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page
2869 for requests to blocked pages. This page contains the block reason given as
2870 parameter, a link to find out why the block action applies, and a click-through
2871 to the blocked content (the latter only if the force feature is available and
2875 A very important exception occurs if <emphasis>both</emphasis>
2876 <literal>block</literal> and <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2877 apply to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
2878 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
2879 (see below) also applies, the type of image will be determined by its parameter,
2880 if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is sent.
2883 It is important to understand this process, in order
2884 to understand how <application>Privoxy</application> deals with
2885 ads and other unwanted content. Blocking is a core feature, and one
2886 upon which various other features depend.
2889 The <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
2890 action can perform a very similar task, by <quote>blocking</quote>
2891 banner images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
2892 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
2893 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse the two.
2899 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2902 <screen>{+block{No nasty stuff for you.}}
2903 # Block and replace with "blocked" page
2904 .nasty-stuff.example.com
2906 {+block{Doubleclick banners.} +handle-as-image}
2907 # Block and replace with image
2911 {+block{Layered ads.} +handle-as-empty-document}
2912 # Block and then ignore
2913 adserver.example.net/.*\.js$</screen>
2923 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2924 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-header-filter">
2925 <title>client-header-filter</title>
2929 <term>Typical use:</term>
2932 Rewrite or remove single client headers.
2938 <term>Effect:</term>
2941 All client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
2942 the specified regular expression based substitutions.
2949 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2951 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2956 <term>Parameter:</term>
2959 The name of a client-header filter, as defined in one of the
2960 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
2969 Client-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
2970 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
2971 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
2972 You can do that by using tags though.
2975 Client-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
2976 and use their output as input.
2979 If the request URL gets changed, &my-app; will detect that and use the new
2980 one. This can be used to rewrite the request destination behind the client's
2981 back, for example to specify a Tor exit relay for certain requests.
2984 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
2985 to learn which client-header filters are available by default, and how to
2993 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2997 # Hide Tor exit notation in Host and Referer Headers
2998 {+client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}}
3009 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3010 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="client-header-tagger">
3011 <title>client-header-tagger</title>
3015 <term>Typical use:</term>
3018 Block requests based on their headers.
3024 <term>Effect:</term>
3027 Client headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
3028 the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
3036 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3038 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3043 <term>Parameter:</term>
3046 The name of a client-header tagger, as defined in one of the
3047 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
3056 Client-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
3057 and as the header isn't modified, each tagger <quote>sees</quote>
3061 Client-header taggers are the first actions that are executed
3062 and their tags can be used to control every other action.
3068 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3072 # Tag every request with the User-Agent header
3073 {+client-header-tagger{user-agent}}
3076 # Tagging itself doesn't change the action
3077 # settings, sections with TAG patterns do:
3079 # If it's a download agent, use a different forwarding proxy,
3080 # show the real User-Agent and make sure resume works.
3081 {+forward-override{forward-socks5 10.0.0.2:2222 .} \
3082 -hide-if-modified-since \
3083 -overwrite-last-modified \
3088 TAG:^User-Agent: NetBSD-ftp/
3089 TAG:^User-Agent: Novell ZYPP Installer
3090 TAG:^User-Agent: RPM APT-HTTP/
3091 TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/
3092 TAG:^User-Agent: Ubuntu APT-HTTP/
3093 TAG:^User-Agent: MPlayer/
3103 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3104 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="content-type-overwrite">
3105 <title>content-type-overwrite</title>
3109 <term>Typical use:</term>
3111 <para>Stop useless download menus from popping up, or change the browser's rendering mode</para>
3116 <term>Effect:</term>
3119 Replaces the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header.
3126 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3128 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3133 <term>Parameter:</term>
3145 The <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header is used by the
3146 browser to decide what to do with the document. The value of this
3147 header can cause the browser to open a download menu instead of
3148 displaying the document by itself, even if the document's format is
3149 supported by the browser.
3152 The declared content type can also affect which rendering mode
3153 the browser chooses. If XHTML is delivered as <quote>text/html</quote>,
3154 many browsers treat it as yet another broken HTML document.
3155 If it is send as <quote>application/xml</quote>, browsers with
3156 XHTML support will only display it, if the syntax is correct.
3159 If you see a web site that proudly uses XHTML buttons, but sets
3160 <quote>Content-Type: text/html</quote>, you can use &my-app;
3161 to overwrite it with <quote>application/xml</quote> and validate
3162 the web master's claim inside your XHTML-supporting browser.
3163 If the syntax is incorrect, the browser will complain loudly.
3166 You can also go the opposite direction: if your browser prints
3167 error messages instead of rendering a document falsely declared
3168 as XHTML, you can overwrite the content type with
3169 <quote>text/html</quote> and have it rendered as broken HTML document.
3172 By default <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal> only replaces
3173 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> headers that look like some kind of text.
3174 If you want to overwrite it unconditionally, you have to combine it with
3175 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>.
3176 This limitation exists for a reason, think twice before circumventing it.
3179 Most of the time it's easier to replace this action with a custom
3180 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
3181 It allows you to activate it for every document of a certain site and it will still
3182 only replace the content types you aimed at.
3185 Of course you can apply <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal>
3186 to a whole site and then make URL based exceptions, but it's a lot
3187 more work to get the same precision.
3193 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
3196 <screen># Check if www.example.net/ really uses valid XHTML
3197 { +content-type-overwrite{application/xml} }
3200 # but leave the content type unmodified if the URL looks like a style sheet
3201 {-content-type-overwrite}
3202 www.example.net/.*\.css$
3203 www.example.net/.*style
3212 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3213 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-client-header">
3217 <title>crunch-client-header</title>
3221 <term>Typical use:</term>
3223 <para>Remove a client header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3228 <term>Effect:</term>
3231 Deletes every header sent by the client that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3238 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3240 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3245 <term>Parameter:</term>
3257 This action allows you to block client headers for which no dedicated
3258 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists.
3259 <application>Privoxy</application> will remove every client header that
3260 contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3263 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3264 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3265 they contain the same string.
3268 <literal>crunch-client-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3269 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3270 parts of them, you should use a
3271 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header filter</link></literal>.
3275 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3282 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3285 <screen># Block the non-existent "Privacy-Violation:" client header
3286 { +crunch-client-header{Privacy-Violation:} }
3296 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3297 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-if-none-match">
3298 <title>crunch-if-none-match</title>
3304 <term>Typical use:</term>
3306 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
3311 <term>Effect:</term>
3314 Deletes the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header.
3321 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3323 <para>Boolean.</para>
3328 <term>Parameter:</term>
3340 Removing the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header
3341 is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
3342 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote> which
3343 would cause the browser to use a cached copy of the page.
3346 It is also useful to make sure the header isn't used as a cookie
3347 replacement (unlikely but possible).
3350 Blocking the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> header shouldn't cause any
3351 caching problems, as long as the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> header
3352 isn't blocked or missing as well.
3355 It is recommended to use this action together with
3356 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
3358 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>.
3364 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3367 <screen># Let the browser revalidate cached documents but don't
3368 # allow the server to use the revalidation headers for user tracking.
3369 {+hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
3370 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
3371 +crunch-if-none-match}
3380 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3381 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-incoming-cookies">
3382 <title>crunch-incoming-cookies</title>
3386 <term>Typical use:</term>
3389 Prevent the web server from setting HTTP cookies on your system
3395 <term>Effect:</term>
3398 Deletes any <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from server replies.
3405 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3407 <para>Boolean.</para>
3412 <term>Parameter:</term>
3424 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> HTTP cookies. For
3425 <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> HTTP cookies, use
3426 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>.
3427 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable HTTP cookies completely.
3430 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3431 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3432 since it would prevent the session cookies from being set. See also
3433 <literal><link linkend="filter-content-cookies">filter-content-cookies</link></literal>.
3439 <term>Example usage:</term>
3442 <screen>+crunch-incoming-cookies</screen>
3450 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3451 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-server-header">
3452 <title>crunch-server-header</title>
3458 <term>Typical use:</term>
3460 <para>Remove a server header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3465 <term>Effect:</term>
3468 Deletes every header sent by the server that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3475 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3477 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3482 <term>Parameter:</term>
3494 This action allows you to block server headers for which no dedicated
3495 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists. <application>Privoxy</application>
3496 will remove every server header that contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3499 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3500 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3501 they contain the same string.
3504 <literal>crunch-server-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3505 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3506 parts of them, you should use a custom
3507 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header filter</link></literal>.
3511 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3518 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3521 <screen># Crunch server headers that try to prevent caching
3522 { +crunch-server-header{no-cache} }
3531 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3532 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-outgoing-cookies">
3533 <title>crunch-outgoing-cookies</title>
3537 <term>Typical use:</term>
3540 Prevent the web server from reading any HTTP cookies from your system
3546 <term>Effect:</term>
3549 Deletes any <quote>Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from client requests.
3556 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3558 <para>Boolean.</para>
3563 <term>Parameter:</term>
3575 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> HTTP cookies. For
3576 <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> HTTP cookies, use
3577 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>.
3578 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable HTTP cookies completely.
3581 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3582 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3583 since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
3589 <term>Example usage:</term>
3592 <screen>+crunch-outgoing-cookies</screen>
3601 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3602 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="deanimate-gifs">
3603 <title>deanimate-gifs</title>
3607 <term>Typical use:</term>
3609 <para>Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.</para>
3614 <term>Effect:</term>
3617 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
3624 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3626 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3631 <term>Parameter:</term>
3634 <quote>last</quote> or <quote>first</quote>
3643 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
3644 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
3645 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last
3646 frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
3647 most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
3648 last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
3651 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
3652 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
3659 <term>Example usage:</term>
3662 <screen>+deanimate-gifs{last}</screen>
3669 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3670 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="downgrade-http-version">
3671 <title>downgrade-http-version</title>
3675 <term>Typical use:</term>
3677 <para>Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1</para>
3682 <term>Effect:</term>
3685 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
3692 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3694 <para>Boolean.</para>
3699 <term>Parameter:</term>
3711 This is a left-over from the time when <application>Privoxy</application>
3712 didn't support important HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the
3713 unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server
3714 out there. Not all HTTP/1.1 features and requirements are supported yet,
3715 so there is a chance you might need this action.
3721 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3724 <screen>{+downgrade-http-version}
3725 problem-host.example.com</screen>
3733 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3734 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="fast-redirects">
3735 <title>fast-redirects</title>
3739 <term>Typical use:</term>
3741 <para>Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links.</para>
3746 <term>Effect:</term>
3749 Detects redirection URLs and redirects the browser without contacting
3750 the redirection server first.
3757 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3759 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3764 <term>Parameter:</term>
3769 <quote>simple-check</quote> to just search for the string <quote>http://</quote>
3770 to detect redirection URLs.
3775 <quote>check-decoded-url</quote> to decode URLs (if necessary) before searching
3776 for redirection URLs.
3787 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
3788 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
3789 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
3790 resulting from this scheme typically look like:
3791 <quote>http://www.example.org/click-tracker.cgi?target=http%3a//www.example.net/</quote>.
3794 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
3795 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
3796 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
3797 to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
3798 browser asks the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
3802 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
3803 If it is enabled by default, you will have to create some exceptions to
3804 this action. It can lead to failures in several ways:
3807 Not every URLs with other URLs as parameters is evil.
3808 Some sites offer a real service that requires this information to work.
3809 For example a validation service needs to know, which document to validate.
3810 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> assumes that every URL parameter that
3811 looks like another URL is a redirection target, and will always redirect to
3812 the last one. Most of the time the assumption is correct, but if it isn't,
3813 the user gets redirected anyway.
3816 Another failure occurs if the URL contains other parameters after the URL parameter.
3818 <quote>http://www.example.org/?redirect=http%3a//www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3819 contains the redirection URL <quote>http://www.example.net/</quote>,
3820 followed by another parameter. <literal>fast-redirects</literal> doesn't know that
3821 and will cause a redirect to <quote>http://www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3822 Depending on the target server configuration, the parameter will be silently ignored
3823 or lead to a <quote>page not found</quote> error. You can prevent this problem by
3824 first using the <literal><link linkend="redirect">redirect</link></literal> action
3825 to remove the last part of the URL, but it requires a little effort.
3828 To detect a redirection URL, <literal>fast-redirects</literal> only
3829 looks for the string <quote>http://</quote>, either in plain text
3830 (invalid but often used) or encoded as <quote>http%3a//</quote>.
3831 Some sites use their own URL encoding scheme, encrypt the address
3832 of the target server or replace it with a database id. In theses cases
3833 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> is fooled and the request reaches the
3834 redirection server where it probably gets logged.
3840 <term>Example usage:</term>
3844 { +fast-redirects{simple-check} }
3847 { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
3848 another.example.com/testing</screen>
3857 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3858 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter">
3859 <title>filter</title>
3863 <term>Typical use:</term>
3865 <para>Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
3866 do fun text replacements, add personalized effects, etc.</para>
3871 <term>Effect:</term>
3874 All instances of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which
3875 this action applies, can be filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular
3876 expression based substitutions. (Note: as of version 3.0.3 plain text documents
3877 are exempted from filtering, because web servers often use the
3878 <literal>text/plain</literal> MIME type for all files whose type they don't know.)
3885 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3887 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3892 <term>Parameter:</term>
3895 The name of a content filter, as defined in the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>.
3896 Filters can be defined in one or more files as defined by the
3897 <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
3898 option in the <link linkend="config">config file</link>.
3899 <filename>default.filter</filename> is the collection of filters
3900 supplied by the developers. Locally defined filters should go
3901 in their own file, such as <filename>user.filter</filename>.
3904 When used in its negative form,
3905 and without parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> filtering is completely disabled.
3914 For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
3915 in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below for
3919 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
3920 slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
3921 passed the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way
3922 since the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more
3923 noticeable on slower connections.
3926 <quote>Rolling your own</quote>
3927 filters requires a knowledge of
3928 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
3929 Expressions</quote></ulink> and
3930 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html"><quote>HTML</quote></ulink>.
3931 This is very powerful feature, and potentially very intrusive.
3932 Filters should be used with caution, and where an equivalent
3933 <quote>action</quote> is not available.
3936 The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
3937 <literal><link linkend="buffer-limit">buffer-limit</link></literal>
3938 option in the main <link linkend="config">config file</link>. The
3939 default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the buffered
3940 data, and all pending data, is passed through unfiltered.
3943 Inappropriate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
3944 (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data
3945 (from HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate
3946 the integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might
3947 be necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering
3948 by defining appropriate <literal>-filter</literal> exceptions.
3951 Compressed content can't be filtered either, unless &my-app;
3952 is compiled with zlib support (requires at least &my-app; 3.0.7),
3953 in which case &my-app; will decompress the content before filtering
3957 If you use a &my-app; version without zlib support, but want filtering to work on
3958 as much documents as possible, even those that would normally be sent compressed,
3959 you must use the <literal><link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link></literal>
3960 action in conjunction with <literal>filter</literal>.
3963 Content filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
3964 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
3965 action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism
3966 works quite differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners
3967 based on their size (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat
3971 <link linkend="contact">Feedback</link> with suggestions for new or
3972 improved filters is particularly welcome!
3975 The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
3976 predefined filter. There are <link linkend="predefined-filters">more
3977 verbose explanations</link> of what these filters do in the <link
3978 linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>.
3984 <term>Example usage (with filters from the distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file).
3985 See <link linkend="PREDEFINED-FILTERS">the Predefined Filters section</link> for
3986 more explanation on each:</term>
3989 <anchor id="filter-js-annoyances">
3990 <screen>+filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.</screen>
3993 <anchor id="filter-js-events">
3994 <screen>+filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings and timers (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites).</screen>
3997 <anchor id="filter-html-annoyances">
3998 <screen>+filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse.</screen>
4001 <anchor id="filter-content-cookies">
4002 <screen>+filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content.</screen>
4005 <anchor id="filter-refresh-tags">
4006 <screen>+filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups).</screen>
4009 <anchor id="filter-unsolicited-popups">
4010 <screen>+filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
4013 <anchor id="filter-all-popups">
4014 <screen>+filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
4017 <anchor id="filter-img-reorder">
4018 <screen>+filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective.</screen>
4021 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-size">
4022 <screen>+filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size.</screen>
4025 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-link">
4026 <screen>+filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers.</screen>
4029 <anchor id="filter-webbugs">
4030 <screen>+filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking).</screen>
4033 <anchor id="filter-tiny-textforms">
4034 <screen>+filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap.</screen>
4037 <anchor id="filter-jumping-windows">
4038 <screen>+filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves.</screen>
4041 <anchor id="filter-frameset-borders">
4042 <screen>+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizable.</screen>
4045 <anchor id="filter-demoronizer">
4046 <screen>+filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets.</screen>
4049 <anchor id="filter-shockwave-flash">
4050 <screen>+filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects.</screen>
4053 <anchor id="filter-quicktime-kioskmode">
4054 <screen>+filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies saveable.</screen>
4057 <anchor id="filter-fun">
4058 <screen>+filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!</screen>
4061 <anchor id="filter-crude-parental">
4062 <screen>+filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering. Note that this filter doesn't work reliably.</screen>
4065 <anchor id="filter-ie-exploits">
4066 <screen>+filter{ie-exploits} # Disable some known Internet Explorer bug exploits.</screen>
4069 <anchor id="filter-site-specifics">
4070 <screen>+filter{site-specifics} # Cure for site-specific problems. Don't apply generally!</screen>
4073 <anchor id="filter-no-ping">
4074 <screen>+filter{no-ping} # Removes non-standard ping attributes in <a> and <area> tags.</screen>
4077 <anchor id="filter-google">
4078 <screen>+filter{google} # CSS-based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation and the toolbar advertisement.</screen>
4081 <anchor id="filter-yahoo">
4082 <screen>+filter{yahoo} # CSS-based block for Yahoo text ads. Also removes a width limitation.</screen>
4085 <anchor id="filter-msn">
4086 <screen>+filter{msn} # CSS-based block for MSN text ads. Also removes tracking URLs and a width limitation.</screen>
4089 <anchor id="filter-blogspot">
4090 <screen>+filter{blogspot} # Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this.</screen>
4098 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4099 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="force-text-mode">
4100 <title>force-text-mode</title>
4106 <term>Typical use:</term>
4108 <para>Force <application>Privoxy</application> to treat a document as if it was in some kind of <emphasis>text</emphasis> format. </para>
4113 <term>Effect:</term>
4116 Declares a document as text, even if the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> isn't detected as such.
4123 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4125 <para>Boolean.</para>
4130 <term>Parameter:</term>
4142 As explained <literal><link linkend="filter">above</link></literal>,
4143 <application>Privoxy</application> tries to only filter files that are
4144 in some kind of text format. The same restrictions apply to
4145 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite</link></literal>.
4146 <literal>force-text-mode</literal> declares a document as text,
4147 without looking at the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> first.
4151 Think twice before activating this action. Filtering binary data
4152 with regular expressions can cause file damage.
4159 <term>Example usage:</term>
4172 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4173 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="forward-override">
4174 <title>forward-override</title>
4180 <term>Typical use:</term>
4182 <para>Change the forwarding settings based on User-Agent or request origin</para>
4187 <term>Effect:</term>
4190 Overrules the forward directives in the configuration file.
4197 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4199 <para>Multi-value.</para>
4204 <term>Parameter:</term>
4208 <para><quote>forward .</quote> to use a direct connection without any additional proxies.</para>
4212 <quote>forward 127.0.0.1:8123</quote> to use the HTTP proxy listening at 127.0.0.1 port 8123.
4217 <quote>forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 .</quote> to use the socks4a proxy listening at
4218 127.0.0.1 port 9050. Replace <quote>forward-socks4a</quote> with <quote>forward-socks4</quote>
4219 to use a socks4 connection (with local DNS resolution) instead, use <quote>forward-socks5</quote>
4220 for socks5 connections (with remote DNS resolution).
4225 <quote>forward-socks4a 127.0.0.1:9050 proxy.example.org:8000</quote> to use the socks4a proxy
4226 listening at 127.0.0.1 port 9050 to reach the HTTP proxy listening at proxy.example.org port 8000.
4227 Replace <quote>forward-socks4a</quote> with <quote>forward-socks4</quote> to use a socks4 connection
4228 (with local DNS resolution) instead, use <quote>forward-socks5</quote>
4229 for socks5 connections (with remote DNS resolution).
4240 This action takes parameters similar to the
4241 <link linkend="forwarding">forward</link> directives in the configuration
4242 file, but without the URL pattern. It can be used as replacement, but normally it's only
4243 used in cases where matching based on the request URL isn't sufficient.
4247 Please read the description for the <link linkend="forwarding">forward</link> directives before
4248 using this action. Forwarding to the wrong people will reduce your privacy and increase the
4249 chances of man-in-the-middle attacks.
4252 If the ports are missing or invalid, default values will be used. This might change
4253 in the future and you shouldn't rely on it. Otherwise incorrect syntax causes Privoxy
4257 Use the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">show-url-info CGI page</ulink>
4258 to verify that your forward settings do what you thought the do.
4265 <term>Example usage:</term>
4269 # Always use direct connections for requests previously tagged as
4270 # <quote>User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2.0</quote> and make sure
4271 # resuming downloads continues to work.
4272 # This way you can continue to use Tor for your normal browsing,
4273 # without overloading the Tor network with your FreeBSD ports updates
4274 # or downloads of bigger files like ISOs.
4275 # Note that HTTP headers are easy to fake and therefore their
4276 # values are as (un)trustworthy as your clients and users.
4277 {+forward-override{forward .} \
4278 -hide-if-modified-since \
4279 -overwrite-last-modified \
4281 TAG:^User-Agent: fetch libfetch/2\.0$
4290 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4291 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-empty-document">
4292 <title>handle-as-empty-document</title>
4298 <term>Typical use:</term>
4300 <para>Mark URLs that should be replaced by empty documents <emphasis>if they get blocked</emphasis></para>
4305 <term>Effect:</term>
4308 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs.
4309 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
4310 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote>
4311 page, or an empty document will be sent to the client as a substitute for the blocked content.
4312 The <emphasis>empty</emphasis> document isn't literally empty, but actually contains a single space.
4319 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4321 <para>Boolean.</para>
4326 <term>Parameter:</term>
4338 Some browsers complain about syntax errors if JavaScript documents
4339 are blocked with <application>Privoxy's</application>
4340 default HTML page; this option can be used to silence them.
4341 And of course this action can also be used to eliminate the &my-app;
4342 BLOCKED message in frames.
4345 The content type for the empty document can be specified with
4346 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{}</link></literal>,
4347 but usually this isn't necessary.
4353 <term>Example usage:</term>
4356 <screen># Block all documents on example.org that end with ".js",
4357 # but send an empty document instead of the usual HTML message.
4358 {+block{Blocked JavaScript} +handle-as-empty-document}
4368 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4369 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-image">
4370 <title>handle-as-image</title>
4374 <term>Typical use:</term>
4376 <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>
4381 <term>Effect:</term>
4384 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
4385 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
4386 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
4387 page, or a replacement image (as determined by the <literal><link
4388 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> action) will be sent to the
4389 client as a substitute for the blocked content.
4396 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4398 <para>Boolean.</para>
4403 <term>Parameter:</term>
4415 The below generic example section is actually part of <filename>default.action</filename>.
4416 It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
4420 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
4421 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
4422 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
4425 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (in-line) ad
4426 frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
4427 Forcing <literal>handle-as-image</literal> in this situation will not replace the
4428 ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
4434 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
4437 <screen># Generic image extensions:
4440 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
4442 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
4443 # blocked as images:
4445 {+block{Nasty banners.} +handle-as-image}
4446 nasty-banner-server.example.com/junk.cgi\?output=trash
4455 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4456 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-accept-language">
4457 <title>hide-accept-language</title>
4463 <term>Typical use:</term>
4465 <para>Pretend to use different language settings.</para>
4470 <term>Effect:</term>
4473 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> HTTP header in client requests.
4480 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4482 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4487 <term>Parameter:</term>
4490 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4499 Faking the browser's language settings can be useful to make a
4500 foreign User-Agent set with
4501 <literal><link linkend="hide-user-agent">hide-user-agent</link></literal>
4505 However some sites with content in different languages check the
4506 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> to decide which one to take by default.
4507 Sometimes it isn't possible to later switch to another language without
4508 changing the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header first.
4511 Therefore it's a good idea to either only change the
4512 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header to languages you understand,
4513 or to languages that aren't wide spread.
4516 Before setting the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header
4517 to a rare language, you should consider that it helps to
4518 make your requests unique and thus easier to trace.
4519 If you don't plan to change this header frequently,
4520 you should stick to a common language.
4526 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4529 <screen># Pretend to use Canadian language settings.
4530 {+hide-accept-language{en-ca} \
4531 +hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenBSD i386; en-CA; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060628 Firefox/1.5.0.4} \
4541 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4542 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-content-disposition">
4543 <title>hide-content-disposition</title>
4549 <term>Typical use:</term>
4551 <para>Prevent download menus for content you prefer to view inside the browser.</para>
4556 <term>Effect:</term>
4559 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header set by some servers.
4566 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4568 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4573 <term>Parameter:</term>
4576 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4585 Some servers set the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header for
4586 documents they assume you want to save locally before viewing them.
4587 The <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header contains the file name
4588 the browser is supposed to use by default.
4591 In most browsers that understand this header, it makes it impossible to
4592 <emphasis>just view</emphasis> the document, without downloading it first,
4593 even if it's just a simple text file or an image.
4596 Removing the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header helps
4597 to prevent this annoyance, but some browsers additionally check the
4598 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> header, before they decide if they can
4599 display a document without saving it first. In these cases, you have
4600 to change this header as well, before the browser stops displaying
4604 It is also possible to change the server's file name suggestion
4605 to another one, but in most cases it isn't worth the time to set
4609 This action will probably be removed in the future,
4610 use server-header filters instead.
4616 <term>Example usage:</term>
4619 <screen># Disarm the download link in Sourceforge's patch tracker
4621 +content-type-overwrite{text/plain}\
4622 +hide-content-disposition{block} }
4623 .sourceforge.net/tracker/download\.php</screen>
4631 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4632 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-if-modified-since">
4633 <title>hide-if-modified-since</title>
4639 <term>Typical use:</term>
4641 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
4646 <term>Effect:</term>
4649 Deletes the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> HTTP client header or modifies its value.
4656 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4658 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4663 <term>Parameter:</term>
4666 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or a user defined value that specifies a range of hours.
4675 Removing this header is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
4676 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the
4677 browser to use a cached copy of the page.
4680 Instead of removing the header, <literal>hide-if-modified-since</literal> can
4681 also add or subtract a random amount of time to/from the header's value.
4682 You specify a range of minutes where the random factor should be chosen from and
4683 <application>Privoxy</application> does the rest. A negative value means
4684 subtracting, a positive value adding.
4687 Randomizing the value of the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> makes
4688 it less likely that the server can use the time as a cookie replacement,
4689 but you will run into caching problems if the random range is too high.
4692 It is a good idea to only use a small negative value and let
4693 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>
4694 handle the greater changes.
4697 It is also recommended to use this action together with
4698 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>,
4699 otherwise it's more or less pointless.
4705 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4708 <screen># Let the browser revalidate but make tracking based on the time less likely.
4709 {+hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
4710 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
4711 +crunch-if-none-match}
4720 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4721 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-forwarded-for-headers">
4722 <title>hide-forwarded-for-headers</title>
4725 <term>Typical use:</term>
4727 <para>Improve privacy by not forwarding the source of the request in the HTTP headers.</para>
4732 <term>Effect:</term>
4735 Deletes any existing <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> HTTP header from client requests.
4742 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4744 <para>Boolean.</para>
4749 <term>Parameter:</term>
4761 It is safe and recommended to leave this on.
4767 <term>Example usage:</term>
4770 <screen>+hide-forwarded-for-headers</screen>
4778 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4779 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-from-header">
4780 <title>hide-from-header</title>
4784 <term>Typical use:</term>
4786 <para>Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address</para>
4791 <term>Effect:</term>
4794 Deletes any existing <quote>From:</quote> HTTP header, or replaces it with the
4802 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4804 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4809 <term>Parameter:</term>
4812 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4821 The keyword <quote>block</quote> will completely remove the header
4822 (not to be confused with the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
4826 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
4827 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
4828 is actually used by a real person.
4831 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send
4832 <quote>From:</quote> headers anymore.
4838 <term>Example usage:</term>
4841 <screen>+hide-from-header{block}</screen> or
4842 <screen>+hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}</screen>
4850 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4851 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-referrer">
4852 <title>hide-referrer</title>
4853 <anchor id="hide-referer">
4856 <term>Typical use:</term>
4858 <para>Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site</para>
4863 <term>Effect:</term>
4866 Deletes the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) HTTP header from the client request,
4867 or replaces it with a forged one.
4874 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4876 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4881 <term>Parameter:</term>
4885 <para><quote>conditional-block</quote> to delete the header completely if the host has changed.</para>
4888 <para><quote>conditional-forge</quote> to forge the header if the host has changed.</para>
4891 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header unconditionally.</para>
4894 <para><quote>forge</quote> to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are talking to.</para>
4897 <para>Any other string to set a user defined referrer.</para>
4907 <literal>conditional-block</literal> is the only parameter,
4908 that isn't easily detected in the server's log file. If it blocks the
4909 referrer, the request will look like the visitor used a bookmark or
4910 typed in the address directly.
4913 Leaving the referrer unmodified for requests on the same host
4914 allows the server owner to see the visitor's <quote>click path</quote>,
4915 but in most cases she could also get that information by comparing
4916 other parts of the log file: for example the User-Agent if it isn't
4917 a very common one, or the user's IP address if it doesn't change between
4921 Always blocking the referrer, or using a custom one, can lead to
4922 failures on servers that check the referrer before they answer any
4923 requests, in an attempt to prevent their content from being
4924 embedded or linked to elsewhere.
4927 Both <literal>conditional-block</literal> and <literal>forge</literal>
4928 will work with referrer checks, as long as content and valid referring page
4929 are on the same host. Most of the time that's the case.
4932 <literal>hide-referer</literal> is an alternate spelling of
4933 <literal>hide-referrer</literal> and the two can be can be freely
4934 substituted with each other. (<quote>referrer</quote> is the
4935 correct English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it
4936 requires it to be spelled as <quote>referer</quote>.)
4942 <term>Example usage:</term>
4945 <screen>+hide-referrer{forge}</screen> or
4946 <screen>+hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}</screen>
4954 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4955 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-user-agent">
4956 <title>hide-user-agent</title>
4960 <term>Typical use:</term>
4962 <para>Try to conceal your type of browser and client operating system</para>
4967 <term>Effect:</term>
4970 Replaces the value of the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> HTTP header
4971 in client requests with the specified value.
4978 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4980 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4985 <term>Parameter:</term>
4988 Any user-defined string.
4998 This can lead to problems on web sites that depend on looking at this header in
4999 order to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
5000 way, is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> the right thing to do: good web sites
5001 work browser-independently).
5005 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
5006 browsers will access the same <application>Privoxy</application> is
5007 <emphasis>not recommended</emphasis>. In single-user, single-browser
5008 setups, you might use it to delete your OS version information from
5009 the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known bugs for your
5010 OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to access
5011 sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
5012 reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not
5013 let <application>Mozilla</application> enter, yet forging to a
5014 <application>Netscape 6.1</application> user-agent works just fine.
5015 (Must be just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
5018 More information on known user-agent strings can be found at
5019 <ulink url="http://www.user-agents.org/">http://www.user-agents.org/</ulink>
5021 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent</ulink>.
5027 <term>Example usage:</term>
5030 <screen>+hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}</screen>
5038 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5039 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="limit-connect">
5040 <title>limit-connect</title>
5044 <term>Typical use:</term>
5046 <para>Prevent abuse of <application>Privoxy</application> as a TCP proxy relay or disable SSL for untrusted sites</para>
5051 <term>Effect:</term>
5054 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
5061 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5063 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5068 <term>Parameter:</term>
5071 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
5072 defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
5081 By default, i.e. if no <literal>limit-connect</literal> action applies,
5082 <application>Privoxy</application> allows HTTP CONNECT requests to all
5083 ports. Use <literal>limit-connect</literal> if fine-grained control
5084 is desired for some or all destinations.
5087 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
5088 (<quote>https://</quote> URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
5089 the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
5090 short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
5091 This means CONNECT-enabled proxies can be used as TCP relays very easily.
5094 <application>Privoxy</application> relays HTTPS traffic without seeing
5095 the decoded content. Websites can leverage this limitation to circumvent &my-app;'s
5096 filters. By specifying an invalid port range you can disable HTTPS entirely.
5102 <term>Example usages:</term>
5104 <!-- I had trouble getting the spacing to look right in my browser -->
5105 <!-- I probably have the wrong font setup, bollocks. -->
5106 <!-- Apparently the emphasis tag uses a proportional font no matter what -->
5108 <screen>+limit-connect{443} # Port 443 is OK.
5109 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
5110 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
5111 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK
5112 +limit-connect{,} # No HTTPS/SSL traffic is allowed</screen>
5119 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5120 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="prevent-compression">
5121 <title>prevent-compression</title>
5125 <term>Typical use:</term>
5128 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
5129 passed through <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>s.
5135 <term>Effect:</term>
5138 Removes the Accept-Encoding header which can be used to ask for compressed transfer.
5145 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5147 <para>Boolean.</para>
5152 <term>Parameter:</term>
5164 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
5165 is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But the <literal><link
5166 linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> and
5167 <literal><link linkend="deanimate-gifs">deanimate-gifs</link></literal>
5168 actions need access to the uncompressed data.
5171 When compiled with zlib support (available since &my-app; 3.0.7), content that should be
5172 filtered is decompressed on-the-fly and you don't have to worry about this action.
5173 If you are using an older &my-app; version, or one that hasn't been compiled with zlib
5174 support, this action can be used to convince the server to send the content uncompressed.
5177 Most text-based instances compress very well, the size is seldom decreased by less than 50%,
5178 for markup-heavy instances like news feeds saving more than 90% of the original size isn't
5182 Not using compression will therefore slow down the transfer, and you should only
5183 enable this action if you really need it. As of &my-app; 3.0.7 it's disabled in all
5184 predefined action settings.
5187 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
5188 documents correctly. Broken PHP applications tend to send an empty document body,
5189 some IIS versions only send the beginning of the content. If you enable
5190 <literal>prevent-compression</literal> per default, you might want to add
5191 exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
5197 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
5201 # Selectively turn off compression, and enable a filter
5203 { +filter{tiny-textforms} +prevent-compression }
5204 # Match only these sites
5209 # Or instead, we could set a universal default:
5211 { +prevent-compression }
5214 # Then maybe make exceptions for broken sites:
5216 { -prevent-compression }
5217 .compusa.com/</screen>
5226 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5227 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="overwrite-last-modified">
5228 <title>overwrite-last-modified</title>
5234 <term>Typical use:</term>
5236 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
5241 <term>Effect:</term>
5244 Deletes the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> HTTP server header or modifies its value.
5251 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5253 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5258 <term>Parameter:</term>
5261 One of the keywords: <quote>block</quote>, <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote>
5262 and <quote>randomize</quote>
5271 Removing the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header is useful for filter
5272 testing, where you want to force a real reload instead of getting status
5273 code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the browser to reuse the old
5274 version of the page.
5277 The <quote>randomize</quote> option overwrites the value of the
5278 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with a randomly chosen time
5279 between the original value and the current time. In theory the server
5280 could send each document with a different <quote>Last-Modified:</quote>
5281 header to track visits without using cookies. <quote>Randomize</quote>
5282 makes it impossible and the browser can still revalidate cached documents.
5285 <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote> overwrites the value of the
5286 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with the current time. You could use
5287 this option together with
5288 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>
5289 to further customize your random range.
5292 The preferred parameter here is <quote>randomize</quote>. It is safe
5293 to use, as long as the time settings are more or less correct.
5294 If the server sets the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header to the time
5295 of the request, the random range becomes zero and the value stays the same.
5296 Therefore you should later randomize it a second time with
5297 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>,
5301 It is also recommended to use this action together with
5302 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>.
5308 <term>Example usage:</term>
5311 <screen># Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
5312 { +hide-if-modified-since{-60} \
5313 +overwrite-last-modified{randomize} \
5314 +crunch-if-none-match}
5323 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5324 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="redirect">
5325 <title>redirect</title>
5331 <term>Typical use:</term>
5334 Redirect requests to other sites.
5340 <term>Effect:</term>
5343 Convinces the browser that the requested document has been moved
5344 to another location and the browser should get it from there.
5351 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5353 <para>Parameterized</para>
5358 <term>Parameter:</term>
5361 An absolute URL or a single pcrs command.
5370 Requests to which this action applies are answered with a
5371 HTTP redirect to URLs of your choosing. The new URL is
5372 either provided as parameter, or derived by applying a
5373 single pcrs command to the original URL.
5376 This action will be ignored if you use it together with
5377 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>.
5378 It can be combined with
5379 <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects{check-decoded-url}</link></literal>
5380 to redirect to a decoded version of a rewritten URL.
5383 Use this action carefully, make sure not to create redirection loops
5384 and be aware that using your own redirects might make it
5385 possible to fingerprint your requests.
5388 In case of problems with your redirects, or simply to watch
5389 them working, enable <link linkend="DEBUG">debug 128</link>.
5395 <term>Example usages:</term>
5398 <screen># Replace example.com's style sheet with another one
5399 { +redirect{http://localhost/css-replacements/example.com.css} }
5400 example.com/stylesheet\.css
5402 # Create a short, easy to remember nickname for a favorite site
5403 # (relies on the browser accept and forward invalid URLs to &my-app;)
5404 { +redirect{http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html} }
5407 # Always use the expanded view for Undeadly.org articles
5408 # (Note the $ at the end of the URL pattern to make sure
5409 # the request for the rewritten URL isn't redirected as well)
5410 {+redirect{s@$@&mode=expanded@}}
5411 undeadly.org/cgi\?action=article&sid=\d*$
5413 # Redirect Google search requests to MSN
5414 {+redirect{s@^http://[^/]*/search\?q=([^&]*).*@http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=$1@}}
5417 # Redirect MSN search requests to Yahoo
5418 {+redirect{s@^http://[^/]*/results\.aspx\?q=([^&]*).*@http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=$1@}}
5419 search.msn.com//results\.aspx\?q=
5421 # Redirect remote requests for this manual
5422 # to the local version delivered by Privoxy
5423 {+redirect{s@^http://www@http://config@}}
5424 www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</screen>
5433 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5434 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="server-header-filter">
5435 <title>server-header-filter</title>
5439 <term>Typical use:</term>
5442 Rewrite or remove single server headers.
5448 <term>Effect:</term>
5451 All server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly
5452 through the specified regular expression based substitutions.
5459 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
5461 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5466 <term>Parameter:</term>
5469 The name of a server-header filter, as defined in one of the
5470 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
5479 Server-header filters are applied to each header on its own, not to
5480 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
5481 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is z.
5482 You can do that by using tags though.
5485 Server-header filters are executed after the other header actions have finished
5486 and use their output as input.
5489 Please refer to the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>
5490 to learn which server-header filters are available by default, and how to
5497 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5501 {+server-header-filter{html-to-xml}}
5502 example.org/xml-instance-that-is-delivered-as-html
5504 {+server-header-filter{xml-to-html}}
5505 example.org/instance-that-is-delivered-as-xml-but-is-not
5515 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5516 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="server-header-tagger">
5517 <title>server-header-tagger</title>
5521 <term>Typical use:</term>
5524 Enable or disable filters based on the Content-Type header.
5530 <term>Effect:</term>
5533 Server headers to which this action applies are filtered on-the-fly through
5534 the specified regular expression based substitutions, the result is used as
5542 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
5544 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5549 <term>Parameter:</term>
5552 The name of a server-header tagger, as defined in one of the
5553 <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link>.
5562 Server-header taggers are applied to each header on its own,
5563 and as the header isn't modified, each tagger <quote>sees</quote>
5567 Server-header taggers are executed before all other header actions
5568 that modify server headers. Their tags can be used to control
5569 all of the other server-header actions, the content filters
5570 and the crunch actions (<link linkend="redirect">redirect</link>
5571 and <link linkend="block">block</link>).
5574 Obviously crunching based on tags created by server-header taggers
5575 doesn't prevent the request from showing up in the server's log file.
5582 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5586 # Tag every request with the content type declared by the server
5587 {+server-header-tagger{content-type}}
5598 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5599 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="session-cookies-only">
5600 <title>session-cookies-only</title>
5604 <term>Typical use:</term>
5607 Allow only temporary <quote>session</quote> cookies (for the current
5608 browser session <emphasis>only</emphasis>).
5614 <term>Effect:</term>
5617 Deletes the <quote>expires</quote> field from <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote>
5618 server headers. Most browsers will not store such cookies permanently and
5619 forget them in between sessions.
5626 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5628 <para>Boolean.</para>
5633 <term>Parameter:</term>
5645 This is less strict than <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> /
5646 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal> and allows you to browse
5647 websites that insist or rely on setting cookies, without compromising your privacy too badly.
5650 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed by
5651 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal> and will forget about them between sessions.
5652 This makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
5653 that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
5654 sites, and is the recommended setting.
5657 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>
5658 together with <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> or
5659 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>. If you do, cookies
5660 will be plainly killed.
5663 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an <quote>expires</quote>
5664 field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out to be sure.
5667 This setting also has no effect on cookies that may have been stored
5668 previously by the browser before starting <application>Privoxy</application>.
5669 These would have to be removed manually.
5672 <application>Privoxy</application> also uses
5673 the <link linkend="filter-content-cookies">content-cookies filter</link>
5674 to block some types of cookies. Content cookies are not effected by
5675 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>.
5681 <term>Example usage:</term>
5684 <screen>+session-cookies-only</screen>
5692 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5693 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="set-image-blocker">
5694 <title>set-image-blocker</title>
5698 <term>Typical use:</term>
5700 <para>Choose the replacement for blocked images</para>
5705 <term>Effect:</term>
5708 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If <emphasis>both</emphasis>
5709 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><link
5710 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> <emphasis>also</emphasis>
5711 apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an image,
5712 <emphasis>then</emphasis> the parameter of this action decides what will be
5713 sent as a replacement.
5720 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5722 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5727 <term>Parameter:</term>
5732 <quote>pattern</quote> to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is visually
5733 decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners were busted.
5738 <quote>blank</quote> to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners disappear
5739 completely, but makes it hard to detect where <application>Privoxy</application> has blocked
5740 images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if <application>Privoxy</application>
5741 has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
5746 <quote><replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable></quote> to
5747 send a redirect to <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>. You can redirect
5748 to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem via <quote>file:///</quote> URL.
5749 (But note that not all browsers support redirecting to a local file system).
5752 A good application of redirects is to use special <application>Privoxy</application>-built-in
5753 URLs, which send the built-in images, as <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>.
5754 This has the same visual effect as specifying <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote> in
5755 the first place, but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of requesting
5756 it over and over again.
5767 The URLs for the built-in images are <quote>http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=<replaceable
5768 class="parameter">type</replaceable></quote>, where <replaceable class="parameter">type</replaceable> is
5769 either <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote>.
5772 There is a third (advanced) type, called <quote>auto</quote>. It is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> to be
5773 used in <literal>set-image-blocker</literal>, but meant for use from <link linkend="filter-file">filters</link>.
5774 Auto will select the type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an image.
5780 <term>Example usage:</term>
5786 <screen>+set-image-blocker{pattern}</screen>
5789 Redirect to the BSD daemon:
5792 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}</screen>
5795 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
5798 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}</screen>
5806 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5808 <title>Summary</title>
5810 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
5811 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
5812 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
5813 content, and other criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard
5814 and fast rules for all sites. See the <link
5815 linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link> for a brief example on troubleshooting
5821 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5822 <sect2 id="aliases">
5823 <title>Aliases</title>
5825 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
5826 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other actions.
5827 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
5828 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab,
5830 <quote>{</quote> and <quote>}</quote>, but we <emphasis>strongly
5831 recommend</emphasis> that you only use <quote>a</quote> to <quote>z</quote>,
5832 <quote>0</quote> to <quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and <quote>-</quote>.
5833 Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start with a
5834 <quote>+</quote> or <quote>-</quote> sign, since they are merely textually
5838 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they <emphasis>must be
5839 defined in a special section at the top of the file!</emphasis>
5840 And there can only be one such section per actions file. Each actions file may
5841 have its own alias section, and the aliases defined in it are only visible
5845 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
5846 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
5847 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called
5848 <quote>shop</quote>, you can later change your policy on shops in
5849 <emphasis>one</emphasis> place, and your changes will take effect everywhere
5850 in the actions file where the <quote>shop</quote> alias is used. Calling aliases
5851 by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
5854 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though:
5855 <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in web-based action file
5856 editor honors aliases when reading the actions files, but it expands
5857 them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are of course preserved,
5858 but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
5863 Now let's define some aliases...
5868 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
5870 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
5871 # must be at the top of the actions file!
5875 # These aliases just save typing later:
5876 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5878 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5879 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5880 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked image.} +handle-as-image
5881 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
5883 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5884 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5886 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>
5888 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link>
5890 # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
5892 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
5893 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies</screen>
5897 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
5898 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
5899 up for the <quote>/</quote> pattern):
5904 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
5905 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
5908 .office.microsoft.com
5909 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
5910 # Gmail is really mail.google.com, not gmail.com
5914 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
5918 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
5921 # These shops require pop-ups:
5923 {-filter{all-popups} -filter{unsolicited-popups}}
5925 .overclockers.co.uk</screen>
5929 Aliases like <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote> are typically used for
5930 <quote>problem</quote> sites that require more than one action to be disabled
5931 in order to function properly.
5937 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5938 <sect2 id="act-examples">
5939 <title>Actions Files Tutorial</title>
5941 The above chapters have shown <link linkend="actions-file">which actions files
5942 there are and how they are organized</link>, how actions are <link
5943 linkend="actions">specified</link> and <link linkend="actions-apply">applied
5944 to URLs</link>, how <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> work, and how to
5945 define and use <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link>. Now, let's look at an
5946 example <filename>default.action</filename> and <filename>user.action</filename>
5947 file and see how all these pieces come together:
5950 <sect3><title>default.action</title>
5953 Every config file should start with a short comment stating its purpose:
5957 <screen># Sample default.action file <ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net></screen>
5961 Then, since this is the <filename>default.action</filename> file, the
5962 first section is a special section for internal use that you needn't
5963 change or worry about:
5968 ##########################################################################
5969 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
5970 ##########################################################################
5973 for-privoxy-version=3.0</screen>
5977 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
5978 section from the above <link linkend="aliases">chapter on aliases</link>,
5979 that also explains why and how aliases are used:
5984 ##########################################################################
5986 ##########################################################################
5989 # These aliases just save typing later:
5990 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5992 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5993 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5994 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked image.} +handle-as-image
5995 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
5997 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5998 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
6000 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>
6001 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link></screen>
6005 Now come the regular sections, i.e. sets of actions, accompanied
6006 by URL patterns to which they apply. Remember <emphasis>all actions
6007 are disabled when matching starts</emphasis>, so we have to explicitly
6008 enable the ones we want.
6012 The first regular section is probably the most important. It has only
6013 one pattern, <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, but this pattern
6014 <link linkend="af-patterns">matches all URLs</link>. Therefore, the
6015 set of actions used in this <quote>default</quote> section <emphasis>will
6016 be applied to all requests as a start</emphasis>. It can be partly or
6017 wholly overridden by later matches further down this file, or in user.action,
6018 but it will still be largely responsible for your overall browsing
6023 Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
6024 no need to disable any actions here. (Remember: a <quote>+</quote>
6025 preceding the action name enables the action, a <quote>-</quote> disables!).
6026 Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
6027 multiple lines with line continuation.
6032 ##########################################################################
6033 # "Defaults" section:
6034 ##########################################################################
6036 +<link linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</link> \
6037 +<link linkend="FILTER-HTML-ANNOYANCES">filter{html-annoyances}</link> \
6038 +<link linkend="FILTER-REFRESH-TAGS">filter{refresh-tags}</link> \
6039 +<link linkend="FILTER-WEBBUGS">filter{webbugs}</link> \
6040 +<link linkend="FILTER-IE-EXPLOITS">filter{ie-exploits}</link> \
6041 +<link linkend="HIDE-FORWARDED-FOR-HEADERS">hide-forwarded-for-headers</link> \
6042 +<link linkend="HIDE-FROM-HEADER">hide-from-header{block}</link> \
6043 +<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer{forge}</link> \
6044 +<link linkend="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link> \
6045 +<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> \
6046 +<link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER">set-image-blocker{pattern}</link> \
6048 / # forward slash will match *all* potential URL patterns.</screen>
6052 The default behavior is now set.
6054 This needs rewording, but it can wait for now.
6057 Note that some actions, like not hiding
6058 the user agent, are part of a <quote>general policy</quote> that applies
6059 universally and won't get any exceptions defined later. Other choices,
6060 like not blocking (which is <emphasis>understandably</emphasis> the
6061 default!) need exceptions, i.e. we need to specify explicitly what we
6062 want to block in later sections.
6067 The first of our specialized sections is concerned with <quote>fragile</quote>
6068 sites, i.e. sites that require minimum interference, because they are either
6069 very complex or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that
6070 make them unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will simply use
6071 our pre-defined <literal>fragile</literal> alias instead of stating the list
6072 of actions explicitly:
6077 ##########################################################################
6078 # Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
6079 ##########################################################################
6081 # "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
6084 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
6085 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
6086 mail.google.com</screen>
6090 Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically
6091 require cookies to log in, and pop-up windows for shopping
6092 carts or item details. Again, we'll use a pre-defined alias:
6101 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
6103 .scan.co.uk</screen>
6106 <!-- No longer needed BEGIN OF COMMENTED OUT BLOCK
6109 Then, there are sites which rely on pop-up windows (yuck!) to work.
6110 Since we made pop-up-killing our default above, we need to make exceptions
6111 now. <ulink url="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla</ulink> users, who
6112 can turn on smart handling of unwanted pop-ups in their browsers, can
6114 -<literal><link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link></literal> above
6115 and hence don't need this section. Anyway, disabling an already disabled
6116 action doesn't hurt, so we'll define our exceptions regardless of what was
6117 chosen in the defaults section:
6122 # These sites require pop-ups too :(
6124 { -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link> }
6127 .deutsche-bank-24.de</screen>
6130 END OF COMMENTED OUT BLOCK -->
6133 The <literal><link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link></literal>
6134 action, which we enabled per default above, breaks some sites. So disable
6135 it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
6140 { -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> }
6144 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
6145 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
6146 .nytimes.com</screen>
6150 It is important that <application>Privoxy</application> knows which
6151 URLs belong to images, so that <emphasis>if</emphasis> they are to
6152 be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
6153 Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it
6154 would destroy the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it
6155 would feed the advertisers (in terms of money <emphasis>and</emphasis>
6156 information). We can mark any URL as an image with the <literal><link
6157 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action,
6158 and marking all URLs that end in a known image file extension is a
6164 ##########################################################################
6166 ##########################################################################
6168 # Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
6169 # blocked further down this file:
6171 { +<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> }
6172 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$</screen>
6176 And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to
6177 generate the banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the
6178 request is for an image. Hence we block them <emphasis>and</emphasis>
6179 mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
6180 <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above. (We could of
6181 course just as well use <literal>+<link linkend="block">block</link>
6182 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> here.)
6183 Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
6184 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
6185 action. Since all URLs have matched the default section with its
6186 <literal>+<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link>{pattern}</literal>
6187 action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:
6192 # Known ad generators:
6197 .ad.*.doubleclick.net
6198 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6199 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6205 One of the most important jobs of <application>Privoxy</application>
6206 is to block banners. Many of these can be <quote>blocked</quote>
6207 by the <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{banners-by-size}</literal>
6208 action, which we enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner
6209 images from the pages while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request
6210 them anymore, and hence they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally
6211 doesn't catch all banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we
6212 need a comprehensive list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the
6213 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action to them.
6216 First comes many generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
6217 matching typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes
6218 a list of individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here
6219 to keep the example short:
6224 ##########################################################################
6225 # Block these fine banners:
6226 ##########################################################################
6227 { <link linkend="BLOCK">+block{Banner ads.}</link> }
6235 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
6236 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
6238 # Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
6240 .hitbox.com</screen>
6244 It's quite remarkable how many advertisers actually call their banner
6245 servers ads.<replaceable>company</replaceable>.com, or call the directory
6246 in which the banners are stored simply <quote>banners</quote>. So the above
6247 generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
6250 But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want
6251 to block. The pattern <literal>.*ads.</literal> e.g. catches
6252 <quote>nasty-<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.nasty-corp.com</quote> as intended,
6253 but also <quote>downlo<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.sourcefroge.net</quote> or
6254 <quote><emphasis>ads</emphasis>l.some-provider.net.</quote> So here come some
6255 well-known exceptions to the <literal>+<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6259 Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
6260 <quote>downloads.sourcefroge.net</quote>: Initially, all actions are deactivated,
6261 so it wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the
6262 URL, but just deactivates the <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6263 action once again. Then it matches <literal>.*ads.</literal>, an exception to the
6264 general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
6265 <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link></literal> applies. And now, it'll match
6266 <literal>.*loads.</literal>, where <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">-block</link></literal>
6267 applies, so (unless it matches <emphasis>again</emphasis> further down) it ends up
6268 with no <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal> action applying.
6273 ##########################################################################
6274 # Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
6275 ##########################################################################
6279 { -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
6280 adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
6281 adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
6282 adobe. # (has nothing to do with ads either)
6283 ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
6284 .edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
6285 .*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
6293 www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
6294 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv</screen>
6298 Filtering source code can have nasty side effects,
6299 so make an exception for our friends at sourceforge.net,
6300 and all paths with <quote>cvs</quote> in them. Note that
6301 <literal>-<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link></literal>
6302 disables <emphasis>all</emphasis> filters in one fell swoop!
6307 # Don't filter code!
6309 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6314 .sourceforge.net</screen>
6318 The actual <filename>default.action</filename> is of course much more
6319 comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
6324 <sect3><title>user.action</title>
6327 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies,
6328 which would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now,
6329 you might want to be more specific and have customized rules that
6330 are more suitable to your personal habits and preferences. These would
6331 be for narrowly defined situations like your ISP or your bank, and should
6332 be placed in <filename>user.action</filename>, which is parsed after all other
6333 actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any previously
6334 defined actions. <filename>user.action</filename> is also a
6335 <emphasis>safe</emphasis> place for your personal settings, since
6336 <filename>default.action</filename> is actively maintained by the
6337 <application>Privoxy</application> developers and you'll probably want
6338 to install updated versions from time to time.
6342 So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
6343 <filename>user.action</filename>:
6347 <!-- brief sample user.action here -->
6351 # My user.action file. <fred@example.com></screen>
6355 As <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link> are local to the actions
6356 file that they are defined in, you can't use the ones from
6357 <filename>default.action</filename>, unless you repeat them here:
6362 # Aliases are local to the file they are defined in.
6363 # (Re-)define aliases for this file:
6367 # These aliases just save typing later, and the alias names should
6368 # be self explanatory.
6370 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
6371 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6372 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
6373 allow-popups = -filter{all-popups}
6374 +block-as-image = +block{Blocked as image.} +handle-as-image
6375 -block-as-image = -block
6377 # These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
6378 # certain types of sites:
6380 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referrer
6381 shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
6383 # Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
6385 allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}
6387 # Alias for specific file types that are text, but might have conflicting
6388 # MIME types. We want the browser to force these to be text documents.
6389 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>
6394 Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and
6395 you don't want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like
6396 to allow persistent cookies for these sites. The
6397 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal> alias defined above does exactly
6398 that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
6399 processing of cookies to make them only temporary.
6404 { allow-all-cookies }
6408 .redhat.com</screen>
6412 Your bank is allergic to some filter, but you don't know which, so you disable them all:
6417 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6418 .your-home-banking-site.com</screen>
6422 Some file types you may not want to filter for various reasons:
6427 # Technical documentation is likely to contain strings that might
6428 # erroneously get altered by the JavaScript-oriented filters:
6433 # And this stupid host sends streaming video with a wrong MIME type,
6434 # so that Privoxy thinks it is getting HTML and starts filtering:
6436 stupid-server.example.com/</screen>
6440 Example of a simple <link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> action. Say you've
6441 seen an ad on your favourite page on example.com that you want to get rid of.
6442 You have right-clicked the image, selected <quote>copy image location</quote>
6443 and pasted the URL below while removing the leading http://, into a
6444 <literal>{ +block{} }</literal> section. Note that <literal>{ +handle-as-image
6445 }</literal> need not be specified, since all URLs ending in
6446 <literal>.gif</literal> will be tagged as images by the general rules as set
6447 in default.action anyway:
6452 { +<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link>{Nasty ads.} }
6453 www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor\.gif
6454 another.example.net/more/junk/here/</screen>
6458 The URLs of dynamically generated banners, especially from large banner
6459 farms, often don't use the well-known image file name extensions, which
6460 makes it impossible for <application>Privoxy</application> to guess
6461 the file type just by looking at the URL.
6462 You can use the <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above for
6464 Note that objects which match this rule but then turn out NOT to be an
6465 image are typically rendered as a <quote>broken image</quote> icon by the
6466 browser. Use cautiously.
6475 ar.atwola.com/</screen>
6479 Now you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine,
6480 but you were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you
6481 were again too lazy to give <link linkend="contact">feedback</link>, so
6482 you just used the <literal>fragile</literal> alias on the site, and
6483 -- <emphasis>whoa!</emphasis> -- it worked. The <literal>fragile</literal>
6484 aliases disables those actions that are most likely to break a site. Also,
6485 good for testing purposes to see if it is <application>Privoxy</application>
6486 that is causing the problem or not. We later find other regular sites
6487 that misbehave, and add those to our personalized list of troublemakers:
6495 .mybank.com</screen>
6499 You like the <quote>fun</quote> text replacements in <filename>default.filter</filename>,
6500 but it is disabled in the distributed actions file.
6501 So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
6502 update-safe config, once and for all:
6507 { +<link linkend="filter-fun">filter{fun}</link> }
6508 / # For ALL sites!</screen>
6512 Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions
6513 to the filters in <filename>default.action</filename> for things that
6514 really shouldn't be filtered, like code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since
6515 <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word, these exceptions
6516 won't be valid for the <quote>fun</quote> filtering specified here.
6520 You might also worry about how your favourite free websites are
6521 funded, and find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements
6522 to survive. So you might want to specifically allow banners for those
6523 sites that you feel provide value to you:
6535 Note that <literal>allow-ads</literal> has been aliased to
6536 <literal>-<link linkend="block">block</link></literal>,
6537 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-size">filter{banners-by-size}</link></literal>, and
6538 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-link">filter{banners-by-link}</link></literal> above.
6542 Invoke another alias here to force an over-ride of the MIME type <literal>
6543 application/x-sh</literal> which typically would open a download type
6544 dialog. In my case, I want to look at the shell script, and then I can save
6545 it should I choose to.
6555 <filename>user.action</filename> is generally the best place to define
6556 exceptions and additions to the default policies of
6557 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some actions are safe to have their
6558 default policies set here though. So let's set a default policy to have a
6559 <quote>blank</quote> image as opposed to the checkerboard pattern for
6560 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> sites. <quote>/</quote> of course matches all URL
6566 { +<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker{blank}</link> }
6567 / # ALL sites</screen>
6573 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6577 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6579 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6581 <sect1 id="filter-file">
6582 <title>Filter Files</title>
6585 On-the-fly text substitutions need
6586 to be defined in a <quote>filter file</quote>. Once defined, they
6587 can then be invoked as an <quote>action</quote>.
6591 &my-app; supports three different filter actions:
6592 <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> to
6593 rewrite the content that is send to the client,
6594 <literal><link linkend="client-header-filter">client-header-filter</link></literal>
6595 to rewrite headers that are send by the client, and
6596 <literal><link linkend="server-header-filter">server-header-filter</link></literal>
6597 to rewrite headers that are send by the server.
6601 &my-app; also supports two tagger actions:
6602 <literal><link linkend="client-header-tagger">client-header-tagger</link></literal>
6604 <literal><link linkend="server-header-tagger">server-header-tagger</link></literal>.
6605 Taggers and filters use the same syntax in the filter files, the difference
6606 is that taggers don't modify the text they are filtering, but use a rewritten
6607 version of the filtered text as tag. The tags can then be used to change the
6608 applying actions through sections with <link linkend="tag-pattern">tag-patterns</link>.
6613 Multiple filter files can be defined through the <literal> <link
6614 linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal> config directive. The filters
6615 as supplied by the developers are located in
6616 <filename>default.filter</filename>. It is recommended that any locally
6617 defined or modified filters go in a separately defined file such as
6618 <filename>user.filter</filename>.
6622 Common tasks for content filters are to eliminate common annoyances in
6623 HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows,
6624 exit consoles, crippled windows without navigation tools, the
6625 infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to suppress images with certain
6626 width and height attributes (standard banner sizes or web-bugs),
6627 or just to have fun.
6631 Enabled content filters are applied to any content whose
6632 <quote>Content Type</quote> header is recognised as a sign
6633 of text-based content, with the exception of <literal>text/plain</literal>.
6634 Use the <link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> action
6635 to also filter other content.
6639 Substitutions are made at the source level, so if you want to <quote>roll
6640 your own</quote> filters, you should first be familiar with HTML syntax,
6641 and, of course, regular expressions.
6645 Just like the <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, the
6646 filter file is organized in sections, which are called <emphasis>filters</emphasis>
6647 here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with one of the
6648 <emphasis>keywords</emphasis> <literal>FILTER:</literal>,
6649 <literal>CLIENT-HEADER-FILTER:</literal> or <literal>SERVER-HEADER-FILTER:</literal>
6650 followed by the filter's <emphasis>name</emphasis>, and a short (one line)
6651 <emphasis>description</emphasis> of what it does. Below that line
6652 come the <emphasis>jobs</emphasis>, i.e. lines that define the actual
6653 text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
6654 should describe what the filter <emphasis>eliminates</emphasis>. The
6655 comment is used in the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
6656 user interface</ulink>.
6660 Once a filter called <replaceable>name</replaceable> has been defined
6661 in the filter file, it can be invoked by using an action of the form
6662 +<literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>name</replaceable>}</literal>
6663 in any <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>.
6667 Filter definitions start with a header line that contains the filter
6668 type, the filter name and the filter description.
6669 A content filter header line for a filter called <quote>foo</quote> could look
6674 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"</screen>
6678 Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that
6679 define what text replacements the filter executes. They are specified
6680 in a syntax that imitates <ulink url="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</ulink>'s
6681 <literal>s///</literal> operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you
6682 will find this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the
6683 PCRS documentation for the subtle differences to Perl behaviour. Most
6684 notably, the non-standard option letter <literal>U</literal> is supported,
6685 which turns the default to ungreedy matching.
6690 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
6691 Expressions</quote></ulink>, you might want to take a look at
6692 the <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>, and
6693 see the <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl
6695 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlop.html">the
6696 <literal>s///</literal> operator's syntax</ulink> and <ulink
6697 url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl-style regular
6698 expressions</ulink> in general.
6699 The below examples might also help to get you started.
6703 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6705 <sect2><title>Filter File Tutorial</title>
6707 Now, let's complete our <quote>foo</quote> content filter. We have already defined
6708 the heading, but the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace
6709 <quote>foo</quote> with <quote>bar</quote>, there is only one (trivial) job
6714 <screen>s/foo/bar/</screen>
6718 But wait! Didn't the comment say that <emphasis>all</emphasis> occurrences
6719 of <quote>foo</quote> should be replaced? Our current job will only take
6720 care of the first <quote>foo</quote> on each page. For global substitution,
6721 we'll need to add the <literal>g</literal> option:
6725 <screen>s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6729 Our complete filter now looks like this:
6732 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
6733 s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6737 Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see
6738 a filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
6739 abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
6745 FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
6747 # Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
6749 s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg</screen>
6753 Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses
6754 <literal>|</literal> as the delimiter instead of <literal>/</literal>, because
6755 the pattern contains a forward slash, which would otherwise have to be escaped
6756 by a backslash (<literal>\</literal>).
6760 Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <literal><script.*</literal>
6761 enclosed in parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and <literal>*</literal>
6762 means: <quote>Match an arbitrary number of the element left of myself</quote>, this
6763 matches <quote><script</quote>, followed by <emphasis>any</emphasis> text, i.e.
6764 it matches the whole page, from the start of the first <script> tag.
6768 That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: <literal>document\.referrer</literal>
6769 matches only the exact string <quote>document.referrer</quote>. The dot needed to
6770 be <emphasis>escaped</emphasis>, i.e. preceded by a backslash, to take away its
6771 special meaning as a joker, and make it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is:
6772 Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including,
6773 the text <quote>document.referrer</quote>, if <emphasis>both</emphasis> are present
6774 in the page (and appear in that order).
6778 But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in parentheses,
6779 is <literal>.*</script></literal>. You already know what <literal>.*</literal>
6780 means, so the whole pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script>
6781 tag in a page to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text
6782 <quote>document.referrer</quote> appears somewhere in between.
6786 This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the parentheses:
6787 The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed in parentheses, will be
6788 remembered and be available through the variables <literal>$1, $2, ...</literal> in
6789 the substitute. The <literal>U</literal> option switches to ungreedy matching, which means
6790 that the first <literal>.*</literal> in the pattern will only <quote>eat up</quote> all
6791 text in between <quote><script</quote> and the <emphasis>first</emphasis> occurrence
6792 of <quote>document.referrer</quote>, and that the second <literal>.*</literal> will
6793 only span the text up to the <emphasis>first</emphasis> <quote></script></quote>
6794 tag. Furthermore, the <literal>s</literal> option says that the match may span
6795 multiple lines in the page, and the <literal>g</literal> option again means that the
6796 substitution is global.
6800 So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
6801 <quote>document.referrer</quote>. Remember the parts of the script from
6802 (and including) the start tag up to (and excluding) the string
6803 <quote>document.referrer</quote> as <literal>$1</literal>, and the part following
6804 that string, up to and including the closing tag, as <literal>$2</literal>.
6808 Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
6809 lets look at the substitute: <literal>$1"Not Your Business!"$2</literal> is
6810 easy to read: The text remembered as <literal>$1</literal>, followed by
6811 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> (<emphasis>including</emphasis>
6812 the quotation marks!), followed by the text remembered as <literal>$2</literal>.
6813 This produces an exact copy of the original string, with the middle part
6814 (the <quote>document.referrer</quote>) replaced by <literal>"Not Your
6815 Business!"</literal>.
6819 The whole job now reads: Replace <quote>document.referrer</quote> by
6820 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> wherever it appears inside a
6821 <script> tag. Note that this job won't break JavaScript syntax,
6822 since both the original and the replacement are syntactically valid
6823 string objects. The script just won't have access to the referrer
6824 information anymore.
6828 We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but
6829 this time only point out the constructs of special interest:
6834 # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
6836 s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig</screen>
6840 <literal>\s</literal> stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline,
6841 carriage return, form feed), so that <literal>\s*</literal> means: <quote>zero
6842 or more whitespace</quote>. The <literal>?</literal> in <literal>.*?</literal>
6843 makes this matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the <literal>U</literal>
6844 option is not set). The <literal>['"]</literal> construct means: <quote>a single
6845 <emphasis>or</emphasis> a double quote</quote>. Finally, <literal>\1</literal> is
6846 a back-reference to the first parenthesis just like <literal>$1</literal> above,
6847 with the difference that in the <emphasis>pattern</emphasis>, a backslash indicates
6848 a back-reference, whereas in the <emphasis>substitute</emphasis>, it's the dollar.
6852 So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
6853 strings to the <quote>window.status</quote> object with a dummy assignment
6854 (using a variable name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with
6855 real variables in scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless
6856 descriptions are displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when
6857 you move your mouse over links.
6862 # Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
6864 s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU</screen>
6869 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">OnUnload
6870 event binding</ulink> in the HTML DOM was a <emphasis>CRIME</emphasis>.
6871 When I close a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta.
6872 This job replaces the <quote>onunload</quote> attribute in
6873 <quote><body></quote> tags with the dummy word <literal>never</literal>.
6874 Note that the <literal>i</literal> option makes the pattern matching
6875 case-insensitive. Also note that ungreedy matching alone doesn't always guarantee
6876 a minimal match: In the first parenthesis, we had to use <literal>[^>]*</literal>
6877 instead of <literal>.*</literal> to prevent the match from exceeding the
6878 <body> tag if it doesn't contain <quote>OnUnload</quote>, but the page's
6883 The last example is from the fun department:
6888 FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
6890 # Spice the daily news:
6892 s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig</screen>
6896 Note the <literal>(?!\.com)</literal> part (a so-called negative lookahead)
6897 in the job's pattern, which means: Don't match, if the string
6898 <quote>.com</quote> appears directly following <quote>microsoft</quote>
6899 in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being trashed, while
6900 still replacing the word everywhere else.
6905 # Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
6907 s* industry[ -]leading \
6909 | customer[ -]focused \
6910 | market[ -]driven \
6911 | award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
6912 | high[ -]performance \
6913 | solutions[ -]based \
6917 *<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
6922 The <literal>x</literal> option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for
6923 e.g. the liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
6931 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6933 <sect2 id="predefined-filters"><title>The Pre-defined Filters</title>
6937 Note each filter is also listed in the +filter action section above. Please
6938 keep these listings in sync.
6943 The distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file contains a selection of
6944 pre-defined filters for your convenience:
6949 <term><emphasis>js-annoyances</emphasis></term>
6952 The purpose of this filter is to get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.
6957 replaces JavaScript references to the browser's referrer information
6958 with the string "Not Your Business!". This compliments the <literal><link
6959 linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal> action on the content level.
6964 removes the bindings to the DOM's
6965 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">unload
6966 event</ulink> which we feel has no right to exist and is responsible for most <quote>exit consoles</quote>, i.e.
6967 nasty windows that pop up when you close another one.
6972 removes code that causes new windows to be opened with undesired properties, such as being
6973 full-screen, non-resizeable, without location, status or menu bar etc.
6979 Use with caution. This is an aggressive filter, and can break sites that
6980 rely heavily on JavaScript.
6986 <term><emphasis>js-events</emphasis></term>
6989 This is a very radical measure. It removes virtually all JavaScript event bindings, which
6990 means that scripts can not react to user actions such as mouse movements or clicks, window
6991 resizing etc, anymore. Use with caution!
6994 We <emphasis>strongly discourage</emphasis> using this filter as a default since it breaks
6995 many legitimate scripts. It is meant for use only on extra-nasty sites (should you really
7002 <term><emphasis>html-annoyances</emphasis></term>
7005 This filter will undo many common instances of HTML based abuse.
7008 The <literal>BLINK</literal> and <literal>MARQUEE</literal> tags
7009 are neutralized (yeah baby!), and browser windows will be created as
7010 resizeable (as of course they should be!), and will have location,
7011 scroll and menu bars -- even if specified otherwise.
7017 <term><emphasis>content-cookies</emphasis></term>
7020 Most cookies are set in the HTTP dialog, where they can be intercepted
7022 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>
7023 and <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>
7024 actions. But web sites increasingly make use of HTML meta tags and JavaScript
7025 to sneak cookies to the browser on the content level.
7028 This filter disables most HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets
7029 cookies. It cannot detect all clever uses of these types of code, so it
7030 should not be relied on as an absolute fix. Use it wherever you would also
7031 use the cookie crunch actions.
7037 <term><emphasis>refresh tags</emphasis></term>
7040 Disable any refresh tags if the interval is greater than nine seconds (so
7041 that redirections done via refresh tags are not destroyed). This is useful
7042 for dial-on-demand setups, or for those who find this HTML feature
7049 <term><emphasis>unsolicited-popups</emphasis></term>
7052 This filter attempts to prevent only <quote>unsolicited</quote> pop-up
7053 windows from opening, yet still allow pop-up windows that the user
7054 has explicitly chosen to open. It was added in version 3.0.1,
7055 as an improvement over earlier such filters.
7058 Technical note: The filter works by redefining the window.open JavaScript
7059 function to a dummy function, <literal>PrivoxyWindowOpen()</literal>,
7060 during the loading and rendering phase of each HTML page access, and
7061 restoring the function afterward.
7064 This is recommended only for browsers that cannot perform this function
7065 reliably themselves. And be aware that some sites require such windows
7066 in order to function normally. Use with caution.
7072 <term><emphasis>all-popups</emphasis></term>
7075 Attempt to prevent <emphasis>all</emphasis> pop-up windows from opening.
7076 Note this should be used with even more discretion than the above, since
7077 it is more likely to break some sites that require pop-ups for normal
7078 usage. Use with caution.
7084 <term><emphasis>img-reorder</emphasis></term>
7087 This is a helper filter that has no value if used alone. It makes the
7088 <literal>banners-by-size</literal> and <literal>banners-by-link</literal>
7089 (see below) filters more effective and should be enabled together with them.
7095 <term><emphasis>banners-by-size</emphasis></term>
7098 This filter removes image tags purely based on what size they are. Fortunately
7099 for us, many ads and banner images tend to conform to certain standardized
7100 sizes, which makes this filter quite effective for ad stripping purposes.
7103 Occasionally this filter will cause false positives on images that are not ads,
7104 but just happen to be of one of the standard banner sizes.
7107 Recommended only for those who require extreme ad blocking. The default
7108 block rules should catch 95+% of all ads <emphasis>without</emphasis> this filter enabled.
7114 <term><emphasis>banners-by-link</emphasis></term>
7117 This is an experimental filter that attempts to kill any banners if
7118 their URLs seem to point to known or suspected click trackers. It is currently
7119 not of much value and is not recommended for use by default.
7125 <term><emphasis>webbugs</emphasis></term>
7128 Webbugs are small, invisible images (technically 1X1 GIF images), that
7129 are used to track users across websites, and collect information on them.
7130 As an HTML page is loaded by the browser, an embedded image tag causes the
7131 browser to contact a third-party site, disclosing the tracking information
7132 through the requested URL and/or cookies for that third-party domain, without
7133 the user ever becoming aware of the interaction with the third-party site.
7134 HTML-ized spam also uses a similar technique to verify email addresses.
7137 This filter removes the HTML code that loads such <quote>webbugs</quote>.
7143 <term><emphasis>tiny-textforms</emphasis></term>
7146 A rather special-purpose filter that can be used to enlarge textareas (those
7147 multi-line text boxes in web forms) and turn off hard word wrap in them.
7148 It was written for the sourceforge.net tracker system where such boxes are
7149 a nuisance, but it can be handy on other sites, too.
7152 It is not recommended to use this filter as a default.
7158 <term><emphasis>jumping-windows</emphasis></term>
7161 Many consider windows that move, or resize themselves to be abusive. This filter
7162 neutralizes the related JavaScript code. Note that some sites might not display
7163 or behave as intended when using this filter. Use with caution.
7169 <term><emphasis>frameset-borders</emphasis></term>
7172 Some web designers seem to assume that everyone in the world will view their
7173 web sites using the same browser brand and version, screen resolution etc,
7174 because only that assumption could explain why they'd use static frame sizes,
7175 yet prevent their frames from being resized by the user, should they be too
7176 small to show their whole content.
7179 This filter removes the related HTML code. It should only be applied to sites
7186 <term><emphasis>demoronizer</emphasis></term>
7189 Many Microsoft products that generate HTML use non-standard extensions (read:
7190 violations) of the ISO 8859-1 aka Latin-1 character set. This can cause those
7191 HTML documents to display with errors on standard-compliant platforms.
7194 This filter translates the MS-only characters into Latin-1 equivalents.
7195 It is not necessary when using MS products, and will cause corruption of
7196 all documents that use 8-bit character sets other than Latin-1. It's mostly
7197 worthwhile for Europeans on non-MS platforms, if weird garbage characters
7198 sometimes appear on some pages, or user agents that don't correct for this on
7201 My version of Mozilla (ancient) shows litte square boxes for quote
7202 characters, and apostrophes on moronized pages. So many pages have this, I
7203 can read them fine now. HB 08/27/06
7210 <term><emphasis>shockwave-flash</emphasis></term>
7213 A filter for shockwave haters. As the name suggests, this filter strips code
7214 out of web pages that is used to embed shockwave flash objects.
7222 <term><emphasis>quicktime-kioskmode</emphasis></term>
7225 Change HTML code that embeds Quicktime objects so that kioskmode, which
7226 prevents saving, is disabled.
7232 <term><emphasis>fun</emphasis></term>
7235 Text replacements for subversive browsing fun. Make fun of your favorite
7236 Monopolist or play buzzword bingo.
7242 <term><emphasis>crude-parental</emphasis></term>
7245 A demonstration-only filter that shows how <application>Privoxy</application>
7246 can be used to delete web content on a keyword basis.
7252 <term><emphasis>ie-exploits</emphasis></term>
7255 An experimental collection of text replacements to disable malicious HTML and JavaScript
7256 code that exploits known security holes in Internet Explorer.
7259 Presently, it only protects against Nimda and a cross-site scripting bug, and
7260 would need active maintenance to provide more substantial protection.
7266 <term><emphasis>site-specifics</emphasis></term>
7269 Some web sites have very specific problems, the cure for which doesn't apply
7270 anywhere else, or could even cause damage on other sites.
7273 This is a collection of such site-specific cures which should only be applied
7274 to the sites they were intended for, which is what the supplied
7275 <filename>default.action</filename> file does. Users shouldn't need to change
7276 anything regarding this filter.
7282 <term><emphasis>google</emphasis></term>
7285 A CSS based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation
7286 and the toolbar advertisement.
7292 <term><emphasis>yahoo</emphasis></term>
7295 Another CSS based block, this time for Yahoo text ads. And removes
7296 a width limitation as well.
7302 <term><emphasis>msn</emphasis></term>
7305 Another CSS based block, this time for MSN text ads. And removes
7306 tracking URLs, as well as a width limitation.
7312 <term><emphasis>blogspot</emphasis></term>
7315 Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this one!
7318 This filter also intentionally removes some navigation stuff and sets the
7319 page width to 100%. As a result, some rounded <quote>corners</quote> would
7320 appear to early or not at all and as fixing this would require a browser
7321 that understands background-size (CSS3), they are removed instead.
7327 <term><emphasis>xml-to-html</emphasis></term>
7330 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from xml to html.
7336 <term><emphasis>html-to-xml</emphasis></term>
7339 Server-header filter to change the Content-Type from html to xml.
7345 <term><emphasis>no-ping</emphasis></term>
7348 Removes the non-standard <literal>ping</literal> attribute from
7349 anchor and area HTML tags.
7355 <term><emphasis>hide-tor-exit-notation</emphasis></term>
7358 Client-header filter to remove the <command>Tor</command> exit node notation
7359 found in Host and Referer headers.
7362 If &my-app; and <command>Tor</command> are chained and &my-app;
7363 is configured to use socks4a, one can use <quote>http://www.example.org.foobar.exit/</quote>
7364 to access the host <quote>www.example.org</quote> through the
7365 <command>Tor</command> exit node <quote>foobar</quote>.
7368 As the HTTP client isn't aware of this notation, it treats the
7369 whole string <quote>www.example.org.foobar.exit</quote> as host and uses it
7370 for the <quote>Host</quote> and <quote>Referer</quote> headers. From the
7371 server's point of view the resulting headers are invalid and can cause problems.
7374 An invalid <quote>Referer</quote> header can trigger <quote>hot-linking</quote>
7375 protections, an invalid <quote>Host</quote> header will make it impossible for
7376 the server to find the right vhost (several domains hosted on the same IP address).
7379 This client-header filter removes the <quote>foo.exit</quote> part in those headers
7380 to prevent the mentioned problems. Note that it only modifies
7381 the HTTP headers, it doesn't make it impossible for the server
7382 to detect your <command>Tor</command> exit node based on the IP address
7383 the request is coming from.
7390 <term><emphasis> </emphasis></term>
7404 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7408 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7410 <sect1 id="templates">
7411 <title>Privoxy's Template Files</title>
7413 All <application>Privoxy</application> built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the
7414 <ulink url="http://show-the-404-error.page"><quote>404 - No Such Domain</quote>
7415 error page</ulink>, the <ulink
7416 url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
7418 and all pages of its <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
7419 user interface</ulink>, are generated from <emphasis>templates</emphasis>.
7420 (<application>Privoxy</application> must be running for the above links to work as
7425 These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the <link linkend="confdir">configuration
7426 directory</link> called <filename>templates</filename>. On Unixish platforms,
7428 <ulink url="file:///etc/privoxy/templates/"><filename>/etc/privoxy/templates/</filename></ulink>.
7432 The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called symbols
7433 or exports), which <application>Privoxy</application> fills at run time. It
7434 is possible to edit the templates with a normal text editor, should you want
7435 to customize them. (<emphasis>Not recommended for the casual
7436 user</emphasis>). Should you create your own custom templates, you should use
7437 the <filename>config</filename> setting <link linkend="templdir">templdir</link>
7438 to specify an alternate location, so your templates do not get overwritten
7442 Note that just like in configuration files, lines starting
7443 with <literal>#</literal> are ignored when the templates are filled in.
7447 The place-holders are of the form <literal>@name@</literal>, and you will
7448 find a list of available symbols, which vary from template to template,
7449 in the comments at the start of each file. Note that these comments are not
7450 always accurate, and that it's probably best to look at the existing HTML
7451 code to find out which symbols are supported and what they are filled in with.
7455 A special application of this substitution mechanism is to make whole
7456 blocks of HTML code disappear when a specific symbol is set. We use this
7457 for many purposes, one of them being to include the beta warning in all
7458 our user interface (CGI) pages when <application>Privoxy</application>
7459 is in an alpha or beta development stage:
7464 <!-- @if-unstable-start -->
7466 ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
7468 <!-- if-unstable-end@ --></screen>
7472 If the "unstable" symbol is set, everything in between and including
7473 <literal>@if-unstable-start</literal> and <literal>if-unstable-end@</literal>
7474 will disappear, leaving nothing but an empty comment:
7478 <screen><!-- --></screen>
7482 There's also an if-then-else construct and an <literal>#include</literal>
7483 mechanism, but you'll sure find out if you are inclined to edit the
7488 All templates refer to a style located at
7489 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet"><literal>http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet</literal></ulink>.
7490 This is, of course, locally served by <application>Privoxy</application>
7491 and the source for it can be found and edited in the
7492 <filename>cgi-style.css</filename> template.
7497 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7501 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7503 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
7506 <!-- Include contacting.sgml boilerplate: -->
7508 <!-- end boilerplate -->
7512 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7515 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7516 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Privoxy Copyright, License and History</title>
7518 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
7520 <!-- end copyright -->
7522 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7523 <sect2><title>License</title>
7524 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
7526 <!-- end copyright -->
7528 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7531 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7533 <sect2 id="history"><title>History</title>
7534 <!-- Include history.sgml: -->
7536 <!-- end history -->
7539 <sect2 id="authors"><title>Authors</title>
7540 <!-- Include p-authors.sgml: -->
7542 <!-- end authors -->
7547 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7550 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7551 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See Also</title>
7552 <!-- Include seealso.sgml: -->
7554 <!-- end seealso -->
7559 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7560 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
7563 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7565 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
7567 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl-style <quote>regular
7568 expressions</quote> in its <link linkend="actions-file">actions
7569 files</link> and <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>,
7570 through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> and
7573 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/">PCRS</ulink> libraries.
7575 <application>PCRS</application> libraries.
7579 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
7580 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
7581 introduction only. A full explanation would require a <ulink
7582 url="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/">book</ulink> ;-)
7586 Regular expressions provide a language to describe patterns that can be
7587 run against strings of characters (letter, numbers, etc), to see if they
7588 match the string or not. The patterns are themselves (sometimes complex)
7589 strings of literal characters, combined with wild-cards, and other special
7590 characters, called meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have
7591 special meanings and are used to build complex patterns to be matched against.
7592 Perl Compatible Regular Expressions are an especially convenient
7593 <quote>dialect</quote> of the regular expression language.
7597 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
7598 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
7599 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
7600 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
7601 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
7602 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
7603 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
7604 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
7608 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
7609 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
7610 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
7611 and then some examples:
7616 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
7617 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
7619 </simplelist></para>
7623 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
7626 </simplelist></para>
7630 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
7633 </simplelist></para>
7637 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
7640 </simplelist></para>
7644 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
7645 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
7646 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
7647 not as a special meta-character. Example: <quote>example\.com</quote>, makes
7648 sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded to its
7649 meta-character meaning of any single character).
7651 </simplelist></para>
7655 <emphasis>[ ]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
7656 any of the enclosed characters are encountered. For instance, <quote>[0-9]</quote>
7657 matches any numeric digit (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine
7658 this with <quote>+</quote> to match any digit one of more times: <quote>[0-9]+</quote>.
7660 </simplelist></para>
7664 <emphasis>( )</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
7665 or multiple sub-expressions.
7667 </simplelist></para>
7671 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
7672 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
7673 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches. As an example:
7674 <quote>/(this|that) example/</quote> uses grouping and the bar character
7675 and would match either <quote>this example</quote> or <quote>that
7676 example</quote>, and nothing else.
7678 </simplelist></para>
7681 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
7682 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
7683 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
7684 be more illuminating:
7688 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
7689 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
7690 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
7691 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
7692 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
7693 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
7694 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
7695 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
7696 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
7697 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
7698 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
7699 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
7700 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
7701 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
7706 And now something a little more complex:
7710 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
7711 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
7712 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
7713 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
7714 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
7715 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
7716 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
7721 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
7722 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
7723 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
7724 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
7725 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
7726 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
7727 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
7728 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
7729 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
7730 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
7731 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
7732 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
7733 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
7734 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
7735 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
7736 changing our regular expression to:
7737 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
7742 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
7743 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
7744 <quote>[ ]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
7745 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
7746 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
7747 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
7748 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
7749 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
7750 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
7751 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
7752 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
7753 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
7754 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
7755 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
7756 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
7757 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
7758 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
7759 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
7760 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
7761 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
7762 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
7763 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
7764 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
7765 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
7766 in the expression anywhere).
7770 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
7771 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
7772 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
7773 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
7774 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
7779 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
7780 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html</ulink>
7784 For information on regular expression based substitutions and their applications
7785 in filters, please see the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file tutorial</link>
7790 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7793 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7795 <title>Privoxy's Internal Pages</title>
7798 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
7799 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
7800 trap certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
7801 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
7802 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
7803 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
7804 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
7810 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
7811 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
7812 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
7813 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
7826 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
7830 There is a shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (But it
7831 doesn't provide a fall-back to a real page, in case the request is not
7832 sent through <application>Privoxy</application>)
7838 Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
7839 editing of actions files:
7843 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
7850 Show the source code version numbers:
7854 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">http://config.privoxy.org/show-version</ulink>
7861 Show the browser's request headers:
7865 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">http://config.privoxy.org/show-request</ulink>
7872 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
7876 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
7883 Toggle Privoxy on or off. This feature can be turned off/on in the main
7884 <filename>config</filename> file. When toggled <quote>off</quote>, <quote>Privoxy</quote>
7885 continues to run, but only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking
7890 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
7894 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
7898 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
7903 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
7912 These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
7916 <sect3 id="bookmarklets">
7917 <title>Bookmarklets</title>
7919 Below are some <quote>bookmarklets</quote> to allow you to easily access a
7920 <quote>mini</quote> version of some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
7921 special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer, but should work
7922 equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which support
7923 JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not by
7924 clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
7927 To save them, right-click the link and choose <quote>Add to Favorites</quote>
7928 (IE) or <quote>Add Bookmark</quote> (Netscape). You will get a warning that
7929 the bookmark <quote>may not be safe</quote> - just click OK. Then you can run the
7930 Bookmarklet directly from your favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access,
7931 you can put them on the <quote>Links</quote> bar (IE) or the <quote>Personal
7932 Toolbar</quote> (Netscape), and run them with a single click.
7941 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>
7948 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>
7955 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)
7962 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>
7968 <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>
7974 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info?url='+escape(location.href),'Why').focus());">Privoxy - Why?</ulink>
7981 Credit: The site which gave us the general idea for these bookmarklets is
7982 <ulink url="http://www.bookmarklets.com/">www.bookmarklets.com</ulink>. They
7983 have more information about bookmarklets.
7992 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7994 <title>Chain of Events</title>
7996 Let's take a quick look at how some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
7997 core features are triggered, and the ensuing sequence of events when a web
7998 page is requested by your browser:
8005 First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send
8006 the request to <application>Privoxy</application>, which will in turn,
8007 relay the request to the remote web server after passing the following
8013 <application>Privoxy</application> traps any request for its own internal CGI
8014 pages (e.g <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>) and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
8019 Next, <application>Privoxy</application> checks to see if the URL
8021 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link> patterns. If
8022 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be contacted.
8023 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>
8025 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-EMPTY-DOCUMENT"><quote>+handle-as-empty-document</quote></link>
8026 are then checked, and if there is no match, an
8027 HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page is sent back to the browser. Otherwise, if
8028 it does match, an image is returned for the former, and an empty text
8029 document for the latter. The type of image would depend on the setting of
8030 <link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><quote>+set-image-blocker</quote></link>
8031 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
8036 Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the
8037 <filename>trust</filename> file, then that is done.
8042 If the URL pattern matches the <link
8043 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link> action,
8044 it is then processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
8049 Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
8050 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. <link
8051 linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT"><quote>+hide-user-agent</quote></link>,
8052 etc.), headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and
8058 Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web
8064 First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
8065 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
8066 filtered as determined by the
8067 <link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES"><quote>+crunch-incoming-cookies</quote></link>,
8068 <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>,
8069 and <link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION"><quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote></link>
8075 If any <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
8077 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
8078 action applies (and the document type fits the action), the rest of the page is
8079 read into memory (up to a configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from
8080 <filename>default.filter</filename> and any other filter files) are
8081 processed against the buffered content. Filters are applied in the order
8082 they are specified in one of the filter files. Animated GIFs, if present,
8083 are reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
8084 setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by
8085 <application>Privoxy</application> back to your browser.
8088 If neither a <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action
8090 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
8091 matches, then <application>Privoxy</application> passes the raw data through
8092 to the client browser as it becomes available.
8097 As the browser receives the now (possibly filtered) page content, it
8098 reads and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page
8099 source, e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
8100 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a
8101 separate request (this is easily viewable in <application>Privoxy's</application>
8102 logs). And each such request is in turn processed just as above. Note that a
8103 complex web page will have many, many such embedded URLs. If these
8104 secondary requests are to a different server, then quite possibly a very
8105 differing set of actions is triggered.
8112 NOTE: This is somewhat of a simplistic overview of what happens with each URL
8113 request. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, we have focused on
8114 <application>Privoxy's</application> core features only.
8120 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
8121 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
8122 <title>Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</title>
8125 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies
8126 <link linkend="ACTIONS">actions</link> and <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>
8127 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so
8128 easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to
8129 <emphasis>see</emphasis> just what <application>Privoxy</application> is
8130 doing. Especially, if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing
8131 is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to look at
8132 the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
8133 <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> whose consequences are not
8138 One quick test to see if <application>Privoxy</application> is causing a problem
8139 or not, is to disable it temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting
8140 step. See <link linkend="bookmarklets">the Bookmarklets</link> section on a quick
8141 and easy way to do this (be sure to flush caches afterward!). Looking at the
8142 logs is a good idea too. (Note that both the toggle feature and logging are
8143 enabled via <filename>config</filename> file settings, and may need to be
8144 turned <quote>on</quote>.)
8147 Another easy troubleshooting step to try is if you have done any
8148 customization of your installation, revert back to the installed
8149 defaults and see if that helps. There are times the developers get complaints
8150 about one thing or another, and the problem is more related to a customized
8151 configuration issue.
8155 <application>Privoxy</application> also provides the
8156 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
8157 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
8158 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
8162 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
8163 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
8164 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
8165 help with filtering effects (i.e. the <link
8166 linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action) from
8167 one of the filter files since this is handled very
8168 differently and not so easy to trap! It also will not tell you about any other
8169 URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are testing. For instance, images
8170 such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw page source of HTML pages. So
8171 you will only get info for the actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area
8172 -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you
8173 will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View
8174 Page Source</quote> option for this. Or right click on the ad, and grab the
8179 Let's try an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
8180 and look at it one section at a time in a sample configuration (your real
8181 configuration may vary):
8186 Matches for http://www.google.com:
8188 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8190 {+deanimate-gifs {last}
8191 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8192 +filter {refresh-tags}
8193 +filter {img-reorder}
8194 +filter {banners-by-size}
8196 +filter {jumping-windows}
8197 +filter {ie-exploits}
8198 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
8199 +hide-from-header {block}
8200 +hide-referrer {forge}
8201 +session-cookies-only
8202 +set-image-blocker {pattern}
8205 { -session-cookies-only }
8211 In file: user.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8212 (no matches in this file)
8217 This is telling us how we have defined our
8218 <link linkend="ACTIONS"><quote>actions</quote></link>, and
8219 which ones match for our test case, <quote>google.com</quote>.
8220 Displayed is all the actions that are available to us. Remember,
8221 the <literal>+</literal> sign denotes <quote>on</quote>. <literal>-</literal>
8222 denotes <quote>off</quote>. So some are <quote>on</quote> here, but many
8223 are <quote>off</quote>. Each example we try may provide a slightly different
8224 end result, depending on our configuration directives.
8228 is for our <filename>default.action</filename> file. The large, multi-line
8229 listing, is how the actions are set to match for all URLs, i.e. our default
8230 settings. If you look at your <quote>actions</quote> file, this would be the
8231 section just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section near the top. This
8232 will apply to all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end
8233 of the listing -- <quote> / </quote>.
8237 But we have defined additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
8238 rules, and then we list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions
8239 would apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit
8240 matches for <quote>.google.com</quote>. The first is negating our previous
8241 cookie setting, which was for <link
8242 linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>
8243 (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent cookies for google, at
8244 least that is how it is in this example. The second turns
8245 <emphasis>off</emphasis> any <link
8246 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link>
8247 action, allowing this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading
8248 dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will match any hosts and
8249 sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
8250 <quote>www.google.com</quote> or <quote>mail.google.com</quote>. But it would not
8251 match <quote>www.google.de</quote>! So, apparently, we have these two actions
8252 defined as exceptions to the general rules at the top somewhere in the lower
8253 part of our <filename>default.action</filename> file, and
8254 <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced somewhere in these latter sections.
8258 Then, for our <filename>user.action</filename> file, we again have no hits.
8259 So there is nothing google-specific that we might have added to our own, local
8260 configuration. If there was, those actions would over-rule any actions from
8261 previously processed files, such as <filename>default.action</filename>.
8262 <filename>user.action</filename> typically has the last word. This is the
8263 best place to put hard and fast exceptions,
8267 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
8268 <application>Privoxy</application> is applying all its <quote>actions</quote>
8269 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
8280 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
8281 -content-type-overwrite
8282 -crunch-client-header
8283 -crunch-if-none-match
8284 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8285 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8286 -crunch-server-header
8287 +deanimate-gifs {last}
8288 -downgrade-http-version
8291 -filter {content-cookies}
8292 -filter {all-popups}
8293 -filter {banners-by-link}
8294 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8295 -filter {frameset-borders}
8296 -filter {demoronizer}
8297 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8298 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8300 -filter {crude-parental}
8301 -filter {site-specifics}
8302 -filter {js-annoyances}
8303 -filter {html-annoyances}
8304 +filter {refresh-tags}
8305 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8306 +filter {img-reorder}
8307 +filter {banners-by-size}
8309 +filter {jumping-windows}
8310 +filter {ie-exploits}
8317 -handle-as-empty-document
8319 -hide-accept-language
8320 -hide-content-disposition
8321 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
8322 +hide-from-header {block}
8323 -hide-if-modified-since
8324 +hide-referrer {forge}
8327 -overwrite-last-modified
8328 -prevent-compression
8330 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
8331 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
8332 -session-cookies-only
8333 +set-image-blocker {pattern} </screen>
8337 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
8338 <quote>fast-redirects</quote> and <quote>session-cookies-only</quote>,
8339 which are activated specifically for this site in our configuration,
8340 and thus show in the <quote>Final Results</quote>.
8344 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
8350 { +block{Domains starts with "ad"} }
8353 { +block{Domain contains "ad"} }
8356 { +block{Doubleclick banner server} +handle-as-image }
8357 .[a-vx-z]*.doubleclick.net
8362 We'll just show the interesting part here - the explicit matches. It is
8363 matched three different times. Two <quote>+block{}</quote> sections,
8364 and a <quote>+block{} +handle-as-image</quote>,
8365 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
8366 <quote>+block-as-image</quote>. (<link
8367 linkend="ALIASES"><quote>Aliases</quote></link> are defined in
8368 the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
8373 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
8374 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
8375 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
8376 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
8377 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
8378 is done here -- as both a <link
8379 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block{}</quote></link>
8380 <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
8381 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>.
8382 The custom alias <quote><literal>+block-as-image</literal></quote> just
8383 simplifies the process and make it more readable.
8387 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
8388 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
8394 Matches for http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
8396 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8400 -client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation}
8401 -content-type-overwrite
8402 -crunch-client-header
8403 -crunch-if-none-match
8404 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8405 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8406 -crunch-server-header
8408 -downgrade-http-version
8409 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8411 -filter {content-cookies}
8412 -filter {all-popups}
8413 -filter {banners-by-link}
8414 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8415 -filter {frameset-borders}
8416 -filter {demoronizer}
8417 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8418 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8420 -filter {crude-parental}
8421 -filter {site-specifics}
8422 -filter {js-annoyances}
8423 -filter {html-annoyances}
8424 +filter {refresh-tags}
8425 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8426 +filter {img-reorder}
8427 +filter {banners-by-size}
8429 +filter {jumping-windows}
8430 +filter {ie-exploits}
8437 -handle-as-empty-document
8439 -hide-accept-language
8440 -hide-content-disposition
8441 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
8442 +hide-from-header{block}
8443 +hide-referer{forge}
8445 -overwrite-last-modified
8446 +prevent-compression
8448 -server-header-filter{xml-to-html}
8449 -server-header-filter{html-to-xml}
8450 +session-cookies-only
8451 +set-image-blocker{blank} }
8454 { +block{Path contains "ads".} +handle-as-image }
8460 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote> in our
8461 configuration! But we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the
8462 blank page. It is actually triggering two different actions here, and
8463 the effects are aggregated so that the URL is blocked, and &my-app; is told
8464 to treat the block as if it were an image. But this is, of course, all wrong.
8465 We could now add a new action below this (or better in our own
8466 <filename>user.action</filename> file) that explicitly
8467 <emphasis>un</emphasis> blocks (
8468 <link linkend="BLOCK"><quote>{-block}</quote></link>) paths with
8469 <quote>adsl</quote> in them (remember, last match in the configuration
8470 wins). There are various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
8482 Now the page displays ;-)
8483 Remember to flush your browser's caches when making these kinds of changes to
8484 your configuration to insure that you get a freshly delivered page! Or, try
8485 using <literal>Shift+Reload</literal>.
8489 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
8496 { +block{Path starts with "ads".} +handle-as-image }
8502 That actually was very helpful and pointed us quickly to where the problem
8503 was. If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default
8504 rules in the first section of <filename>default.action</filename> is causing
8505 the problem. This would require some guesswork, and maybe a little trial and
8506 error to isolate the offending rule. One likely cause would be one of the
8507 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> actions.
8508 These tend to be harder to troubleshoot.
8509 Try adding the URL for the site to one of aliases that turn off
8510 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>:
8518 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
8526 <quote><literal>{ shop }</literal></quote> is an <quote>alias</quote> that expands to
8527 <quote><literal>{ -filter -session-cookies-only }</literal></quote>.
8528 Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
8536 # Disable ALL filter actions for sites in this section
8544 This would turn off all filtering for these sites. This is best
8545 put in <filename>user.action</filename>, for local site
8546 exceptions. Note that when a simple domain pattern is used by itself (without
8547 the subsequent path portion), all sub-pages within that domain are included
8548 automatically in the scope of the action.
8552 Images that are inexplicably being blocked, may well be hitting the
8553 <link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE"><quote>+filter{banners-by-size}</quote></link>
8555 that images of certain sizes are ad banners (works well
8556 <emphasis>most of the time</emphasis> since these tend to be standardized).
8560 <quote><literal>{ fragile }</literal></quote> is an alias that disables most
8561 actions that are the most likely to cause trouble. This can be used as a
8562 last resort for problem sites.
8568 # Handle with care: easy to break
8570 mybank.example.com</screen>
8575 <emphasis>Remember to flush caches!</emphasis> Note that the
8576 <literal>mail.google</literal> reference lacks the TLD portion (e.g.
8577 <quote>.com</quote>). This will effectively match any TLD with
8578 <literal>google</literal> in it, such as <literal>mail.google.de.</literal>,
8582 If this still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining
8583 actions one by one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
8592 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
8593 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
8594 Public License as published by the Free Software
8595 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
8596 your option) any later version.
8598 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
8599 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
8600 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
8601 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
8602 License for more details.
8604 The GNU General Public License should be included with
8605 this file. If not, you can view it at
8606 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
8607 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
8608 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301,
8611 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
8612 Revision 2.83 2008/08/16 09:32:02 fabiankeil
8613 Mention changes since 3.0.9 beta.
8615 Revision 2.82 2008/08/16 09:00:52 fabiankeil
8616 Fix example URL pattern (once more with feeling).
8618 Revision 2.81 2008/08/16 08:51:28 fabiankeil
8619 Update version-related entities.
8621 Revision 2.80 2008/07/18 16:54:30 fabiankeil
8622 Remove erroneous whitespace in documentation link.
8623 Reported by John Chronister in #2021611.
8625 Revision 2.79 2008/06/27 18:00:53 markm68k
8626 remove outdated startup information for mac os x
8628 Revision 2.78 2008/06/21 17:03:03 fabiankeil
8631 Revision 2.77 2008/06/14 13:45:22 fabiankeil
8632 Re-add a colon I unintentionally removed a few revisions ago.
8634 Revision 2.76 2008/06/14 13:21:28 fabiankeil
8635 Prepare for the upcoming 3.0.9 beta release.
8637 Revision 2.75 2008/06/13 16:06:48 fabiankeil
8638 Update the "What's New in this Release" section with
8639 the ChangeLog entries changelog2doc.pl could handle.
8641 Revision 2.74 2008/05/26 15:55:46 fabiankeil
8642 - Update "default profiles" table.
8643 - Add some more pcrs redirect examples and note that
8644 enabling debug 128 helps to get redirects working.
8646 Revision 2.73 2008/05/23 14:43:18 fabiankeil
8647 Remove previously out-commented block that caused syntax problems.
8649 Revision 2.72 2008/05/12 10:26:14 fabiankeil
8650 Synchronize content filter descriptions with the ones in default.filter.
8652 Revision 2.71 2008/04/10 17:37:16 fabiankeil
8653 Actually we use "modern" POSIX 1003.2 regular
8654 expressions in path patterns, not PCRE.
8656 Revision 2.70 2008/04/10 15:59:12 fabiankeil
8657 Add another section to the client-header-tagger example that shows
8658 how to actually change the action settings once the tag is created.
8660 Revision 2.69 2008/03/29 12:14:25 fabiankeil
8661 Remove send-wafer and send-vanilla-wafer actions.
8663 Revision 2.68 2008/03/28 15:13:43 fabiankeil
8664 Remove inspect-jpegs action.
8666 Revision 2.67 2008/03/27 18:31:21 fabiankeil
8667 Remove kill-popups action.
8669 Revision 2.66 2008/03/06 16:33:47 fabiankeil
8670 If limit-connect isn't used, don't limit CONNECT requests to port 443.
8672 Revision 2.65 2008/03/04 18:30:40 fabiankeil
8673 Remove the treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks action. We now
8674 use the "blocked" page for forbidden CONNECT requests by default.
8676 Revision 2.64 2008/03/01 14:10:28 fabiankeil
8677 Use new block syntax. Still needs some polishing.
8679 Revision 2.63 2008/02/22 05:50:37 markm68k
8682 Revision 2.62 2008/02/11 11:52:23 hal9
8683 Fix entity ... s/&/&
8685 Revision 2.61 2008/02/11 03:41:47 markm68k
8686 more updates for mac os x
8688 Revision 2.60 2008/02/11 03:40:25 markm68k
8689 more updates for mac os x
8691 Revision 2.59 2008/02/11 00:52:34 markm68k
8692 reflect new changes for mac os x
8694 Revision 2.58 2008/02/03 21:37:40 hal9
8695 Apply patch from Mark: s/OSX/OS X/
8697 Revision 2.57 2008/02/03 19:10:14 fabiankeil
8698 Mention forward-socks5.
8700 Revision 2.56 2008/01/31 19:11:35 fabiankeil
8701 Let the +client-header-filter{hide-tor-exit-notation} example apply
8702 to all requests as "tainted" Referers aren't limited to exit TLDs.
8704 Revision 2.55 2008/01/19 21:26:37 hal9
8705 Add IE7 to configuration section per Gerry.
8707 Revision 2.54 2008/01/19 17:52:39 hal9
8708 Re-commit to fix various minor issues for new release.
8710 Revision 2.53 2008/01/19 15:03:05 hal9
8711 Doc sources tagged for 3.0.8 release.
8713 Revision 2.52 2008/01/17 01:49:51 hal9
8714 Change copyright notice for docs s/2007/2008/. All these will be rebuilt soon
8717 Revision 2.51 2007/12/23 16:48:24 fabiankeil
8718 Use more precise example descriptions for the mysterious domain patterns.
8720 Revision 2.50 2007/12/08 12:44:36 fabiankeil
8721 - Remove already commented out pre-3.0.7 changes.
8722 - Update the "new log defaults" paragraph.
8724 Revision 2.49 2007/12/06 18:21:55 fabiankeil
8725 Update hide-forwarded-for-headers description.
8727 Revision 2.48 2007/11/24 19:07:17 fabiankeil
8728 - Mention request rewriting.
8729 - Enable the conditional-forge paragraph.
8732 Revision 2.47 2007/11/18 14:59:47 fabiankeil
8733 A few "Note to Upgraders" updates.
8735 Revision 2.46 2007/11/17 17:24:44 fabiankeil
8736 - Use new action defaults.
8737 - Minor fixes and rewordings.
8739 Revision 2.45 2007/11/16 11:48:46 hal9
8740 Fix one typo, and add a couple of small refinements.
8742 Revision 2.44 2007/11/15 03:30:20 hal9
8743 Results of spell check.
8745 Revision 2.43 2007/11/14 18:45:39 fabiankeil
8746 - Mention some more contributors in the "New in this Release" list.
8749 Revision 2.42 2007/11/12 03:32:40 hal9
8750 Updates for "What's New" and "Notes to Upgraders". Various other changes in
8751 preparation for new release. User Manual is almost ready.
8753 Revision 2.41 2007/11/11 16:32:11 hal9
8754 This is primarily syncing What's New and Note to Upgraders sections with the many
8755 new features and changes (gleaned from memory but mostly from ChangeLog).
8757 Revision 2.40 2007/11/10 17:10:59 fabiankeil
8758 In the first third of the file, mention several times that
8759 the action editor is disabled by default in 3.0.7 beta and later.
8761 Revision 2.39 2007/11/05 02:34:49 hal9
8762 Various changes in preparation for the upcoming release. Much yet to be done.
8764 Revision 2.38 2007/09/22 16:01:42 fabiankeil
8765 Update embedded show-url-info output.
8767 Revision 2.37 2007/08/27 16:09:55 fabiankeil
8768 Fix pre-chroot-nslookup description which I failed to
8769 copy and paste properly. Reported by Stephen Gildea.
8771 Revision 2.36 2007/08/26 16:47:14 fabiankeil
8772 Add Stephen Gildea's pre-chroot-nslookup patch [#1276666],
8773 extensive comments moved to user manual.
8775 Revision 2.35 2007/08/26 14:59:49 fabiankeil
8776 Minor rewordings and fixes.
8778 Revision 2.34 2007/08/05 15:19:50 fabiankeil
8779 - Don't claim HTTP/1.1 compliance.
8780 - Use $ in some of the path pattern examples.
8781 - Use a hide-user-agent example argument without
8782 leading and trailing space.
8783 - Make it clear that the cookie actions work with
8785 - Rephrase the inspect-jpegs text to underline
8786 that it's only meant to protect against a single
8789 Revision 2.33 2007/07/27 10:57:35 hal9
8790 Add references for user-agent strings for hide-user-agenet
8792 Revision 2.32 2007/06/07 12:36:22 fabiankeil
8793 Apply Roland's 29_usermanual.dpatch to fix a bunch
8794 of syntax errors I collected over the last months.
8796 Revision 2.31 2007/06/02 14:01:37 fabiankeil
8797 Start to document forward-override{}.
8799 Revision 2.30 2007/04/25 15:10:36 fabiankeil
8800 - Describe installation for FreeBSD.
8801 - Start to document taggers and tag patterns.
8802 - Don't confuse devils and daemons.
8804 Revision 2.29 2007/04/05 11:47:51 fabiankeil
8805 Some updates regarding header filtering,
8806 handling of compressed content and redirect's
8807 support for pcrs commands.
8809 Revision 2.28 2006/12/10 23:42:48 hal9
8810 Fix various typos reported by Adam P. Thanks.
8812 Revision 2.27 2006/11/14 01:57:47 hal9
8813 Dump all docs prior to 3.0.6 release. Various minor changes to faq and user
8816 Revision 2.26 2006/10/24 11:16:44 hal9
8819 Revision 2.25 2006/10/18 10:50:33 hal9
8820 Add note that since filters are off in Cautious, compression is ON. Turn off
8821 compression to make filters work on all sites.
8823 Revision 2.24 2006/10/03 11:13:54 hal9
8824 More references to the new filters. Include html this time around.
8826 Revision 2.23 2006/10/02 22:43:53 hal9
8827 Contains new filter definitions from Fabian, and few other miscellaneous
8830 Revision 2.22 2006/09/22 01:27:55 hal9
8831 Final commit of probably various minor changes here and there. Unless
8832 something changes this should be ready for pending release.
8834 Revision 2.21 2006/09/20 03:21:36 david__schmidt
8835 Just the tiniest tweak. Wafer thin!
8837 Revision 2.20 2006/09/10 14:53:54 hal9
8838 Results of spell check. User manual has some updates to standard.actions file
8841 Revision 2.19 2006/09/08 12:19:02 fabiankeil
8842 Adjust hide-if-modified-since example values
8843 to reflect the recent changes.
8845 Revision 2.18 2006/09/08 02:38:57 hal9
8847 -Fix a number of broken links.
8848 -Migrate the new Windows service command line options, and reference as
8850 -Rebuild so that can be used with the new "user-manual" config capabilities.
8853 Revision 2.17 2006/09/05 13:25:12 david__schmidt
8854 Add Windows service invocation stuff (duplicated) in FAQ and in user manual under Windows startup. One probably ought to reference the other.
8856 Revision 2.16 2006/09/02 12:49:37 hal9
8857 Various small updates for new actions, filterfiles, etc.
8859 Revision 2.15 2006/08/30 11:15:22 hal9
8860 More work on the new actions, especially filter-*-headers, and What's New
8861 section. User Manual is close to final form for 3.0.4 release. Some tinkering
8862 and proof reading left to do.
8864 Revision 2.14 2006/08/29 10:59:36 hal9
8865 Add a "Whats New in this release" Section. Further work on multiple filter
8866 files, and assorted other minor changes.
8868 Revision 2.13 2006/08/22 11:04:59 hal9
8869 Silence warnings and errors. This should build now. New filters were only
8870 stubbed in. More to be done.
8872 Revision 2.12 2006/08/14 08:40:39 fabiankeil
8873 Documented new actions that were part of
8874 the "minor Privoxy improvements".
8876 Revision 2.11 2006/07/18 14:48:51 david__schmidt
8877 Reorganizing the repository: swapping out what was HEAD (the old 3.1 branch)
8878 with what was really the latest development (the v_3_0_branch branch)
8880 Revision 1.123.2.43 2005/05/23 09:59:10 hal9
8883 Revision 1.123.2.42 2004/12/04 14:39:57 hal9
8884 Fix two minor typos per bug SF report.
8886 Revision 1.123.2.41 2004/03/23 12:58:42 oes
8889 Revision 1.123.2.40 2004/02/27 12:48:49 hal9
8890 Add comment re: redirecting to local file system for set-image-blocker may
8891 is dependent on browser.
8893 Revision 1.123.2.39 2004/01/30 22:31:40 oes
8894 Added a hint re bookmarklets to Quickstart section
8896 Revision 1.123.2.38 2004/01/30 16:47:51 oes
8897 Some minor clarifications
8899 Revision 1.123.2.37 2004/01/29 22:36:11 hal9
8900 Updates for no longer filtering text/plain, and demoronizer default settings,
8901 and copyright notice dates.
8903 Revision 1.123.2.36 2003/12/10 02:26:26 hal9
8904 Changed the demoronizer filter description.
8906 Revision 1.123.2.35 2003/11/06 13:36:37 oes
8907 Updated link to nightly CVS tarball
8909 Revision 1.123.2.34 2003/06/26 23:50:16 hal9
8910 Add a small bit on filtering and problems re: source code being corrupted.
8912 Revision 1.123.2.33 2003/05/08 18:17:33 roro
8913 Use apt-get instead of dpkg to install Debian package, which is more
8914 solid, uses the correct and most recent Debian version automatically.
8916 Revision 1.123.2.32 2003/04/11 03:13:57 hal9
8917 Add small note about only one filterfile (as opposed to multiple actions
8920 Revision 1.123.2.31 2003/03/26 02:03:43 oes
8921 Updated hard-coded copyright dates
8923 Revision 1.123.2.30 2003/03/24 12:58:56 hal9
8924 Add new section on Predefined Filters.
8926 Revision 1.123.2.29 2003/03/20 02:45:29 hal9
8927 More problems with \-\-chroot causing markup problems :(
8929 Revision 1.123.2.28 2003/03/19 00:35:24 hal9
8930 Manual edit of revision log because 'chroot' (even inside a comment) was
8931 causing Docbook to hang here (due to double hyphen and the processor thinking
8934 Revision 1.123.2.27 2003/03/18 19:37:14 oes
8935 s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
8937 Revision 1.123.2.26 2003/03/17 16:50:53 oes
8938 Added documentation for new chroot option
8940 Revision 1.123.2.25 2003/03/15 18:36:55 oes
8941 Adapted to the new filters
8943 Revision 1.123.2.24 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
8944 Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
8947 Revision 1.123.2.23 2002/10/21 02:32:01 hal9
8948 Updates to the user.action examples section. A few new ones.
8950 Revision 1.123.2.22 2002/10/12 00:51:53 hal9
8951 Add demoronizer to filter section.
8953 Revision 1.123.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
8954 s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
8956 Revision 1.123.2.20 2002/10/10 03:49:21 hal9
8957 Add notes to session-cookies-only and Quickstart about pre-existing
8958 cookies. Also, note content-cookies work differently.
8960 Revision 1.123.2.19 2002/09/26 01:25:36 hal9
8961 More explanation on Privoxy patterns, more on content-cookies and SSL.
8963 Revision 1.123.2.18 2002/08/22 23:47:58 hal9
8964 Add 'Documentation' to Privoxy Menu shot in Configuration section to match
8967 Revision 1.123.2.17 2002/08/18 01:13:05 hal9
8968 Spell checked (only one typo this time!).
8970 Revision 1.123.2.16 2002/08/09 19:20:54 david__schmidt
8971 Update to Mac OS X startup script name
8973 Revision 1.123.2.15 2002/08/07 17:32:11 oes
8974 Converted some internal links from ulink to link for PDF creation; no content changed
8976 Revision 1.123.2.14 2002/08/06 09:16:13 oes
8977 Nits re: actions file download
8979 Revision 1.123.2.13 2002/08/02 18:23:19 g_sauthoff
8980 Just 2 small corrections to the Gentoo sections
8982 Revision 1.123.2.12 2002/08/02 18:17:21 g_sauthoff
8983 Added 2 Gentoo sections
8985 Revision 1.123.2.11 2002/07/26 15:20:31 oes
8986 - Added version info to title
8987 - Added info on new filters
8988 - Revised parts of the filter file tutorial
8989 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
8991 Revision 1.123.2.10 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
8992 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
8994 Revision 1.123.2.9 2002/07/11 03:40:28 david__schmidt
8996 Updated Mac OS X sections due to installation location change
8998 Revision 1.123.2.8 2002/06/09 16:36:32 hal9
8999 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
9001 Revision 1.123.2.7 2002/06/09 00:29:34 hal9
9002 Touch ups on filtering, in actions section and Anatomy.
9004 Revision 1.123.2.6 2002/06/06 23:11:03 hal9
9005 Fix broken link. Linkchecked all docs.
9007 Revision 1.123.2.5 2002/05/29 02:01:02 hal9
9008 This is break out of the entire config section from u-m, so it can
9009 eventually be used to generate the comments, etc in the main config file
9010 so that these are in sync with each other.
9012 Revision 1.123.2.4 2002/05/27 03:28:45 hal9
9013 Ooops missed something from David.
9015 Revision 1.123.2.3 2002/05/27 03:23:17 hal9
9016 Fix FIXMEs for OS2 and Mac OS X startup. Fix Redhat typos (should be Red Hat).
9017 That's a wrap, I think.
9019 Revision 1.123.2.2 2002/05/26 19:02:09 hal9
9020 Move Amiga stuff around to take of FIXME in start up section.
9022 Revision 1.123.2.1 2002/05/26 17:04:25 hal9
9023 -Spellcheck, very minor edits, and sync across branches
9025 Revision 1.123 2002/05/24 23:19:23 hal9
9026 Include new image (Proxy setup). More fun with guibutton.
9027 Minor corrections/clarifications here and there.
9029 Revision 1.122 2002/05/24 13:24:08 oes
9030 Added Bookmarklet for one-click pre-filled access to show-url-info
9032 Revision 1.121 2002/05/23 23:20:17 oes
9033 - Changed more (all?) references to actions to the
9034 <literal><link> style.
9035 - Small fixes in the actions chapter
9036 - Small clarifications in the quickstart to ad blocking
9037 - Removed <emphasis> from <title>s since the new doc CSS
9038 renders them red (bad in TOC).
9040 Revision 1.120 2002/05/23 19:16:43 roro
9041 Correct Debian specials (installation and startup).
9043 Revision 1.119 2002/05/22 17:17:05 oes
9046 Revision 1.118 2002/05/21 04:54:55 hal9
9047 -New Section: Quickstart to Ad Blocking
9048 -Reformat Actions Anatomy to match new CGI layout
9050 Revision 1.117 2002/05/17 13:56:16 oes
9051 - Reworked & extended Templates chapter
9052 - Small changes to Regex appendix
9053 - #included authors.sgml into (C) and hist chapter
9055 Revision 1.116 2002/05/17 03:23:46 hal9
9056 Fixing merge conflict in Quickstart section.
9058 Revision 1.115 2002/05/16 16:25:00 oes
9059 Extended the Filter File chapter & minor fixes
9061 Revision 1.114 2002/05/16 09:42:50 oes
9062 More ulink->link, added some hints to Quickstart section
9064 Revision 1.113 2002/05/15 21:07:25 oes
9065 Extended and further commented the example actions files
9067 Revision 1.112 2002/05/15 03:57:14 hal9
9068 Spell check. A few minor edits here and there for better syntax and
9071 Revision 1.111 2002/05/14 23:01:36 oes
9074 Revision 1.110 2002/05/14 19:10:45 oes
9075 Restored alphabetical order of actions
9077 Revision 1.109 2002/05/14 17:23:11 oes
9078 Renamed the prevent-*-cookies actions, extended aliases section and moved it before the example AFs
9080 Revision 1.108 2002/05/14 15:29:12 oes
9081 Completed proofreading the actions chapter
9083 Revision 1.107 2002/05/12 03:20:41 hal9
9084 Small clarifications for 127.0.0.1 vs localhost for listen-address since this
9085 apparently an important distinction for some OS's.
9087 Revision 1.106 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
9088 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
9089 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
9090 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
9092 Revision 1.105 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
9093 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
9095 Revision 1.104 2002/05/04 08:44:45 swa
9098 Revision 1.103 2002/05/04 00:40:53 hal9
9099 -Remove the TOC first page kludge. It's fixed proper now in ldp.dsl.in.
9100 -Some minor additions to Quickstart.
9102 Revision 1.102 2002/05/03 17:46:00 oes
9103 Further proofread & reactivated short build instructions
9105 Revision 1.101 2002/05/03 03:58:30 hal9
9106 Move the user-manual config directive to top of section. Add note about
9107 Privoxy needing read permissions for configs, and write for logs.
9109 Revision 1.100 2002/04/29 03:05:55 hal9
9110 Add clarification on differences of new actions files.
9112 Revision 1.99 2002/04/28 16:59:05 swa
9113 more structure in starting section
9115 Revision 1.98 2002/04/28 05:43:59 hal9
9116 This is the break up of configuration.html into multiple files. This
9117 will probably break links elsewhere :(
9119 Revision 1.97 2002/04/27 21:04:42 hal9
9120 -Rewrite of Actions File example.
9121 -Add section for user-manual directive in config.
9123 Revision 1.96 2002/04/27 05:32:00 hal9
9124 -Add short section to Filter Files to tie in with +filter action.
9125 -Start rewrite of examples in Actions Examples (not finished).
9127 Revision 1.95 2002/04/26 17:23:29 swa
9128 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
9130 Revision 1.94 2002/04/26 05:24:36 hal9
9131 -Add most of Andreas suggestions to Chain of Events section.
9132 -A few other minor corrections and touch up.
9134 Revision 1.92 2002/04/25 18:55:13 hal9
9135 More catchups on new actions files, and new actions names.
9136 Other assorted cleanups, and minor modifications.
9138 Revision 1.91 2002/04/24 02:39:31 hal9
9139 Add 'Chain of Events' section.
9141 Revision 1.90 2002/04/23 21:41:25 hal9
9142 Linuxconf is deprecated on RH, substitute chkconfig.
9144 Revision 1.89 2002/04/23 21:05:28 oes
9145 Added hint for startup on Red Hat
9147 Revision 1.88 2002/04/23 05:37:54 hal9
9148 Add AmigaOS install stuff.
9150 Revision 1.87 2002/04/23 02:53:15 david__schmidt
9151 Updated Mac OS X installation section
9152 Added a few English tweaks here an there
9154 Revision 1.86 2002/04/21 01:46:32 hal9
9155 Re-write actions section.
9157 Revision 1.85 2002/04/18 21:23:23 hal9
9158 Fix ugly typo (mine).
9160 Revision 1.84 2002/04/18 21:17:13 hal9
9161 Spell Redhat correctly (ie Red Hat). A few minor grammar corrections.
9163 Revision 1.83 2002/04/18 18:21:12 oes
9164 Added RPM install detail
9166 Revision 1.82 2002/04/18 12:04:50 oes
9169 Revision 1.81 2002/04/18 11:50:24 oes
9170 Extended Install section - needs fixing by packagers
9172 Revision 1.80 2002/04/18 10:45:19 oes
9173 Moved text to buildsource.sgml, renamed some filters, details
9175 Revision 1.79 2002/04/18 03:18:06 hal9
9176 Spellcheck, and minor touchups.
9178 Revision 1.78 2002/04/17 18:04:16 oes
9181 Revision 1.77 2002/04/17 13:51:23 oes
9182 Proofreading, part one
9184 Revision 1.76 2002/04/16 04:25:51 hal9
9185 -Added 'Note to Upgraders' and re-ordered the 'Quickstart' section.
9186 -Note about proxy may need requests to re-read config files.
9188 Revision 1.75 2002/04/12 02:08:48 david__schmidt
9189 Remove OS/2 building info... it is already in the developer-manual
9191 Revision 1.74 2002/04/11 00:54:38 hal9
9192 Add small section on submitting actions.
9194 Revision 1.73 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
9197 Revision 1.72 2002/04/10 04:06:19 hal9
9198 Added actions feedback to Bookmarklets section
9200 Revision 1.71 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
9201 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
9203 Revision 1.70 2002/04/08 20:53:56 swa
9206 Revision 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9
9207 -Add privoxy-man-page.sgml, for man page.
9208 -Add authors.sgml for AUTHORS (and p-authors.sgml)
9209 -Reworked various aspects of various docs.
9210 -Added additional comments to sub-docs.
9212 Revision 1.68 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
9213 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
9215 Revision 1.67 2002/04/04 17:27:57 swa
9216 more single file to be included at multiple points. make maintaining easier
9218 Revision 1.66 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
9219 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
9220 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
9221 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
9222 eventually be set by Makefile.
9223 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
9225 Revision 1.65 2002/04/03 19:52:07 swa
9226 enhance squid section due to user suggestion
9228 Revision 1.64 2002/04/03 03:53:43 hal9
9229 A few minor bug fixes, and touch ups. Ready for review.
9231 Revision 1.63 2002/04/01 16:24:49 hal9
9232 Define entities to include boilerplate text. See doc/source/*.
9234 Revision 1.62 2002/03/30 04:15:53 hal9
9235 - Fix privoxy.org/config links.
9236 - Paste in Bookmarklets from Toggle page.
9237 - Move Quickstart nearer top, and minor rework.
9239 Revision 1.61 2002/03/29 01:31:08 hal9
9242 Revision 1.60 2002/03/27 01:57:34 hal9
9243 Added more to Anatomy section.
9245 Revision 1.59 2002/03/27 00:54:33 hal9
9246 Touch up intro for new name.
9248 Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
9249 we have a new homepage!
9251 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
9252 A few minor catch ups with name change.
9254 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
9255 configure needs to be generated.
9257 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
9258 we are too lazy to make a block-built
9259 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
9261 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
9262 name change related issue.
9264 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
9265 name change. changed filenames.
9267 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
9270 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
9271 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
9272 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
9273 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
9274 comments and remarks to history untouched.
9276 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
9279 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
9280 New section in Appendix.
9282 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
9283 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
9285 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
9286 correct feedback channels
9288 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
9289 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
9291 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
9294 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
9295 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
9297 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
9298 Added imageblock{pattern}.
9300 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
9303 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
9304 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
9306 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
9307 provide correct feedback channels
9309 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
9310 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
9312 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
9313 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
9315 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
9316 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
9318 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
9319 Add new - - user option.
9321 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
9322 Added section on command line options.
9324 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
9325 Changed default port to 8118
9327 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
9328 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
9330 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
9331 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
9332 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
9335 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
9338 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
9339 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
9341 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
9342 Update OS/2 build section
9344 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
9345 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
9346 will work - no other changes are needed.
9348 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
9349 Added a very short section on Templates
9351 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
9352 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
9354 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
9355 Touch ups for *.action files.
9357 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
9360 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
9361 Updates for recent changes.
9363 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
9364 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
9366 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
9367 Correct 2 minor errors
9369 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
9370 *** empty log message ***
9372 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
9373 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
9375 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
9376 wrong url in documentation
9378 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
9379 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
9381 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
9384 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
9387 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
9390 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
9391 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
9393 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
9394 Some additions, and re-arranging.
9396 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
9399 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
9400 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
9402 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
9405 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
9406 source files for junkbuster documentation
9408 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
9409 first proposal of a structure.
9411 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
9412 docs should have an author.
9414 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
9415 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.