Privoxy Privoblems
It’s sleeting.
This week, in a fit of geekiness, I installed Privoxy for OSX. Privoxy was formerly known by the more descriptive name “Internet Junkbuster.” It’s a local proxy that provides privacy by blocking ads, cookies, referrer information, popups and other Javascript pestware.
My main interest in privoxy was blocking cookies, because I’m just ornery that way. Cookies annoy me. I don’t mind sending a referrer, because that’s not really information about me, it’s information about the structure of the world wide web. The referrer is the previous page, if you clicked a link to get here, or empty if you just typed in the URL or used a bookmark to get here. Your referrer is:
I track referrers myself, since I’m curious who’s linking me. I don’t set tracking cookies, so I never know whether it’s your first visit to the site or if you stop by all the time. I don’t think that’s any of my business. I do set untracking cookies, so I won’t be tracked when I hit my own pages. If you really want to opt out of my tracker, tell me and I’ll give you the untracking URL. My blog will set a cookie when you choose a stylesheet, but otherwise, Jemima’s Trek is cookie and evil-javascript free.
So I have this one don’t-track-me cookie that I wanted to let through privoxy, and I also had this little problem where the default privoxy setup killed Camino. My Camino is oversensitive - this was the second or third time I’ve had to reinstall it after it ate a bad webpage for dinner. In this case, privoxy was sending it corrupt javascript. I didn’t want privoxy “fixing” the javascript that way - I just wanted it to block ad images and cookies. Camino already blocks popups on its own, and the other javascript annoyances, like links that open in new windows, aren’t worth another Camino reinstall to avoid.
When all else fails, RTFM. I found a PDF version of the privoxy manual and printed it out to read on the T. By the time I got home, I was ready for another evening of tweaking config files. I turned off all the filtering options - the bits that rewrite a web page to turn off gif animation or remove popping-up code - and my new Camino was much happier. I turned on the cookie cruncher, but added an exception for jemimap.freeshell.org. I left in all the ad blocking and turned on the checkerboard pattern that privoxy uses to replace ads. (The other choices are to use a transparent gif or an image of your own choosing.)
It’s a great little program, though it doesn’t seem to be quite as smart about multitasking as the browser itself. That’s a typical problem with proxies, though. I admit, I’ve been so busy with last-minute ASC voting that I haven’t had much chance to admire the checkerboard of nuked ads on ad-heavy web pages. Because I have all the filters off, cookies set with javascript can still get through, but those are rarer than HTTP cookies and Camino is still set up to ask me if I want them.
Obviously, the answer is no.