I realize that this is not the place to submit my issue but I cannot figure your site out or contact anyone.
I HATE your software. I cannot do anything on my ASUS Netbook with Windows XP. It came preinstalled with Privoxy and it blocks almost everything I try to access on the internet. I cannot configure it and when I uninstalled your program, because I was so fed up, it killed my internet access with Explorer. Yep. I cannot get on the internet anymore. I had to spend $90 to buy an external drive to back up my files and then had to reimage my computer. It is only 6 months old. When I was finally able to access the internet again, guess what, your little Privoxy warning pops up or blocks almost every site I access. I now have to spend more money to pay someone to "fix" your problems (remove your software) so I can use my computer. I never want your program on my computer again. This has been beyond a nightmare and exhausting.
elizard75@yahoo.com
I assure you, no one has ever pre-installed Privoxy on any machine. You may have mistaken Privoxy for a different piece of software. Sorry you're having such trouble, though!
There have been several independent reports (some of them in private) so far, that ASUS does indeed ship Privoxy on some of their Netbooks and enables it by default.
I haven't verified it myself, but I see no reason not to belief the reports. I have no idea what version and configuration they use, or if there are custom patches.
I think forcing Privoxy on unsuspecting users isn't a particular good idea, but obviously there's little we can do about it. We probably should mention it in the FAQ, though.
Oh, man - that's news to me. No one from ASUS ever contacted us to ask if they could/should ship it. It's particularly alarming that they enable it by default, too.
Another user who contacted me in private spoke with ASUS support who confirmed that ASUS ships Privoxy as part of a "Parental Control" suite.
It's still not clear to me if Privoxy is modified and if they comply with the GPL.
I also found http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=71975. My favorite excerpts:
Geran:
"Uninstalled the parental control and after the the fourth or fifth reboot it works suddenly."
Deepmerville:
"I found the unistall program for parental controls, but it wouldn't work as it said that it was running at the time. The task manager did not show it as running. [...] I tried the uninstall program a number of times, then one time it caused the parental controls to crash. I then could uninstall it."
Thanks Fabiankeil. I also lost internet contact through both IE and FireFox on my Asus 1005HA netbook after uninstalling Privoxy. I tried reinstalling Privoxy and changing settings in my browsers. I even tried deleting and reinstalling Firefox. The only thing that worked for me was also unistalling Parental Control. When I first tried to uninstall Parental Control it wouldn't let me, because it said the program was in use. I found it in the task bar tray on the bottom right of the screen. I right clicked on it and exited the program. I was then able to uninstall the Parental Control. My browsers immediately began working once again. My netbook is now free of both Privoxy and Parental Control.