Privoxy

Privoxy runs a local proxy server that acts as a privatizing layer that can strip traffic of certain contents.

By running all of your traffic through Privoxy, you can remove things like Javascript, unrecognized or strange HTML headers, prevent redirects, stop animated GIFs from playing, remove ads, and many, many more things.

The Privoxy User Manual: http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/

Getting Set Up

Installing Privoxy

It is pretty easy to install if you use Kali or similar OS with a good package manager:

$ apt-get install privoxy

Configuring Privoxy

You can configure privoxy by editing its configuration file, /etc/privoxy/config

While there are many options, all well-documented in the Users Manual, the key line here is:

listen-address  127.0.0.1:8118

This is how you run Privoxy if you're a single user, filtering traffic for a single computer.

(Note that you can also run a Privoxy server, and perform filtering for multiple users.)

Starting Privoxy

You can start Privoxy (assuming it is installed on your system as a service) via:

$ service privoxy start

Using Privoxy with your Browser

Now you can configure your browser to use the proxy server at 127.0.0.1, port 8118 (that's Privoxy!)

Change the proxy server for HTTP and HTTPS protocols (or, ALL protocols) to be 127.0.0.1, port 8118.

You can do this in the native browser, a la Firefox Preferences (not recommended), or you can use a browser add-on to switch between different proxies (much better).

Is Privoxy Running?

Check on the status of your privoxy instance by going to http://config.privoxy.org or http://p.p and you will see a page with some information about Privoxy (assuming it is running).

You can also view your rules and configuration files.

If you edit the configuration file, and set the flag

enable-edit-actions 1

then you can actually edit the rules in the browser. But this is vulnerable, and is disabled by default for a reason - don't leave it on!