#1679 Privoxy Not Blocking “bug.gif”

[Korda]

Dear Support,
I'm trying to block the following path:
issues.igniterealtime.org/images/icons/bug.gif

In order to do this, I have put the following rule in one of my action file:
.igniterealtime.org/images/icons/bug\.gif

Equally, the generic version I'd prefer to use does not work either:
/(.*/)?.*bug\.(gif|jpe?g|js|png)

Could you please advise me on how to block successfully this annoying GIF pixel bug?

Thanks for your support,

Faxotherapy

[Korda]

It seems that the file extension is the problem. If, for example, the target filename extension is renamed to htm, the problem no longer arises; the rule /(.*/)?bug\.html? would work. So, how can one force Privoxy to reject the gif extension as well?

[Fabian Keil]

Please provide a log excerpt created with the debug settings suggested at:
http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/contact.html

Checking the http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info output
for the URL might help as well.

[Korda]

Dear Fabian, thanks for your help. Here's the related log:
2015-03-11 13:25:37.226 000000d0 Crunch: Blocked: http://issues.igniterealtime.org/images/icons/bug.gif 127.0.0.1 - - [11/Mar/2015:13:25:37 +0000] "GET http://issues.igniterealtime.org/images/icons/bug.gif HTTP/1.1" 403 43 2015-03-11 13:25:37.514 000000d0 Redirect: Checking "/favicon.ico" for unencoded redirects. 2015-03-11 13:25:37.514 000000d0 Request: issues.igniterealtime.org/favicon.ico

In fact, the picture “bug.gif” (about 100-pixel wide) becomes a one-pixel box when blocked. I don't know whether Privoxy did its job and this is the way how it proceeds or not when encountering such image.

Thank you again for sharing a fraction of your valuable time in answering me. Good day!

I could no longer browse the Web without Privoxy. Thanks to its filtering and my tweaks through several filter and action files, 5000+ request attempts are blocked every day. When removing duplicates, there are about 100-150 unique URLs sharing those requests.

[Fabian Keil]

Thanks for the kind words and the log excerpt.

The log suggests that Privoxy is working as expected.

In case of image requests that were recognised as such the
default configuration lets Privoxy deliver a replacement
image (because most browsers do not accept a HTML response
for requested images).

This can be controlled with:
http://config.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html#HANDLE-AS-IMAGE

You could also write a filter to let Privoxy remove the image
tag so the client does not request the image in the first place.

[Korda]

Dear Fabian,

thanks for your help and your suggestion. Deeply appreciated. I will happily follow your suggestion. I guess the case can be closed down. Good week!