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Better browsing using Privoxy

Tue, 2005-10-11 14:49 — Uwe Hermann

I've been a happy Privoxy user for quite some time now. I can really recommend it to anybody who wants to get rid of all the nasty stuff floating around on the web these days. From the Privoxy homepage:

Privoxy is a web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for protecting privacy, modifying web page content, managing cookies, controlling access, and removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet junk.

The most useful feature for me is that it automatically removes almost all of those ugly flash-based ad banners.

My todo list:

  • Fine tune the filters for my needs. I'm currently using the stock Debian package of Privoxy, without any customizations.
  • Check out Neil van Dyke's privoxy rules which filter even more nasty stuff.
  • Check out the combination of Privoxy and Tor for anonymous browsing.

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Mon, 2009-11-09 22:58 — John Zeus (not verified)

Remove borders and checkered boxes in Privoxy

Hey do you know how to remove those annoying checkered boxes in place of the ads in Privoxy? Ads Muncher does it and I think Privoxy can too, I would think tweaking the source code, but how? If so let me know, would look forward to an article on this from you as a matter of fact, if you indeed have an idea how to do this in Privoxy. Thanks! - John

Wed, 2009-12-23 15:44 — Anonymous (not verified)

Edit: /etc/privoxy/user.actio

Edit:
/etc/privoxy/user.action

To include these two lines:
{ +set-image-blocker{blank} }
/

Tue, 2005-10-11 20:26 — Anonymous (not verified)

Firefox, Adblock

Alternatively, you could use Firefox (which blocks popups and allows full control over cookies) and Adblock (which allows control over ads, banners, scripts, and other junk). Seems a lot easier to manage.

Tue, 2005-10-11 22:38 — Uwe Hermann

Adblock

Yes, I used Firefox+Adblock for a while and liked it a lot. I switched to Galeon, though, as I constantly have ca. 200-300 tabs open in my browser and Firefox is way too memory-hungry for such a setup...

One big advantage of Privoxy (especially if you customize it a lot) is that it works with any browser, i.e., I can use the same rules in Galeon, Firefox, Lynx, whatever...

Uwe.

Wed, 2005-10-12 22:05 — Anonymous (not verified)

200-300?!

200-300?! Could you perhaps post a screenshot at some point? How do you have that much open and still be able to usefully process it? I can't really deal with tabs past the point where you can read part of the label on each one, so I max out at 15-20 at most.

Fri, 2005-10-14 11:03 — Uwe Hermann

200-300 tabs

Yes, I'll post a screenshot (and some more writeup) in my blog soonish. Stay tuned ;)

Uwe.