There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth...not going all the way, and not starting.
--Prince Gautama Siddharta
#ubuntuforums web interface
What is privoxy..?Is it a proxy..?
It's great, no more "Get a free car and enter your social security number here" ads!
He peers into your SOUL
Sorry if I multipost in any help threads I make, I'm an impatient human.
Either "AdblockPlus" or "Privoxy" can block specific elements of a web-page: They are both avialble as Firefox add-ons, though you would be better getting privoxy from the Ubuntu repos.How to block the banner alone.?
There operation is not the same though they are equivalent and complementary. "AdBlockPlus" acts as a http filter much like using the host file, except it filters the address of individual elements rather than the entire address. Privoxy is a local host anonymizing proxy that among other things filters the same sort of things. Of the two, Privoxy is more powerful, but "AdBlockPlus" is probably easier to use.
Privoxy works well with the "TOR" Onion network: an anonymous encrypted network that sits on top of the Internet. The entry and exit nodes are constantly changing and because of the multiple layers of encryption, it is for all practical purposes, completely anonymous when used in conjunction with Privoxy. [There are theoretical ways of feeling the shape of the Onion network, but this is of theoretical interest only.]
Designed by DARPA, the "TOR" networks intended users were political dissidents. Although this is still the case, criminals and people of dubious morality are now also using it. There is no Google, but you can explore the network and find sites that do not exist in the wider Internet, though be prepared to be shocked since there is no "censorship"
Other Firefox add-ons that are useful with respect to filtering junk and privacy are "RequestPolicy" to control referral requests, "BetterPrivacy" for flash cookies and "NoScript" for java script, there also any number of cookie editors and scripts to control the referrer headers.
To give an example of how vulnerable your on-line privacy is, I recently set-up a small Ubuntu/Xp network so that I can legally play with various networking tools. I was shocked when I discovered the amount of personal information I could pull off my Xp box just by probing for open ports. (I always consider my Xp box to be very heavy on security!)
I have not, as yet, tried some of the more exotic tools but I am studying hard and what I have learned so far is eye-opening.
PS:
Be warned that patience is required when learning to use some of these privacy tools: Basically you are blocking content and though this guards privacy and dramatically speeds up download speeds, it requires a certain judgment to decide on what to block. For example, I find "BetterPrivacy" to be indispensable, but the problem is that when just randomly browsing referrals have to be allowed individually. This is not usually a problem, but some sites use seperate domains for each element. eg in order to see the images when you read a NYT article, you have to allow referals from NYT.com to NYT.images.com. Another example is getting a blank page after clicking a link because the page hs no content other than referrals to other domains, (a surprisingly common occurrence.)
Last edited by Irvine_himself; October 31st, 2010 at 12:19 PM. Reason: added PS
Seven indispensable search utilities for Firefox:--
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...2-418982aecd88
Nice post.
+1 to this last part, it takes a while to learn privoxy. Once it clicks it is quite easy.
Probably the biggest mistake is to change the default settings to block too much (when you look at the configuration it sounds good, but unless you understand what and why you are changing a setting you will almost certainly cause breakage).
White lists for trusted sites can help a bunch.
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth...not going all the way, and not starting.
--Prince Gautama Siddharta
#ubuntuforums web interface
sudo gedit don't work AND Nano won't allow a paste into the hosts file...
a little trick for pasting into a terminal is press 'Ctrl + Shift + V' instead of just 'Ctrl + V'... works with nano.
other than that what happens when you type 'sudo gedit' ?
|| Kubuntu x86_64 (15.10 Dev.) || KDE 4.9.00 ||
|| Dell Inspiron 570 || 8GB PC3-10600 DDR3 RAM || AMD Phenom II X4 820 @ 2.8Ghz ||
|| Logitech M570 Trackball || Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard ||
Conky: ... no such configuration: 'normal'
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