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Corkscrew (Unix, Windows) : Tunnel SSH connections through an HTTP proxy.

Curl (Unix, Windows) : Utility who permits to easily download and upload files by using different protocols: FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, Telnet, LDAP, ... Also supports proxies, cookies, authentification, resumes, ...

DesProxy (Unix, Windows) : Tunnel TCP connections through an HTTP proxy, eventually by converting SOCKS requests.

FizzBounce (Unix) : TCP redirector through HTTP proxies.

HTTPort (Windows) [Closed source]: Tunnel TCP connections through the HTTP protocol, by simulating a SOCKS server, and by eventually using an intermediate server.

HTTPTunnel (Unix, Windows) : Bidirectionnal tunnel through HTTP requests, eventually through an HTTP proxy.

LibCurl (Unix, Windows) : Library who permits to easily download and upload files by using different protocols: FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, Telnet, LDAP, ... Also supports proxies, cookies, authentification, resumes, and lots of languages: C, C++, Perl, ...

MultiProxy (Windows) [Closed source]: HTTP proxies tester. MultiProxy can be used as a proxy server who use a different proxy for each request.

Numby (Unix) : Scanner for HTTP vulnerables proxies.

Proxomitron (Windows) [Closed source]: Scanner and redirector through HTTP proxies, who can also delete or modify informations contained in HTML transferred pages. For example, this permits to easily filter automatic popups, DHTML or JavaScript.

ProxyTools (Unix, Windows) : Set of Perl utilities, who permits to use, sort, test and search for HTTP proxies.

TransConnect (Unix) : Transparently tunnel TCP connections through an HTTP proxy.

Zylyx (Unix) : permits to access to files through HTTP proxy caches.

Now that's what I call a dead Proxomitron!

I'm not sure the Proxomitron scales well enough. . .

That wouldn't surprise me. I also noticed that the Proxomitron projects is listed as dead.

So use that idea with another proxy server - either off the shelf, or write your own. They are pretty simple really.

Sadly, Proxomitron is no longer being supported or developed. I wish it weren't so, I liked it a lot. But, there's always privoxy.

The developer of Proxomitron has killed it - he no longer supports it, but you can still download it at proxomitron.info.

LOL and you trust Google to filter ad's for you? Pfft. You are better off with Proxomitron and JD5000.Net Proxomitron Filters then trusting google.

The problem with most Windows users - whether they run 95/98/ME/NT/XP/2000 is that they DON'T understand how to lock down the system or that alternatives exist to Microsoft software. They don't know jack s*** about a firewall or better alternatives to Microsoft software that is often more secure, not to mention actually VIRUS scanning email attachments and downloads..

If you have to do e-mail - a very good and secure e-mail client is Pegasus Mail which does NOT blindly open up email attachments and run code like Outlook does.

Get a decent firewall like Sygate PRO or if you must even ZoneAlarm PRO and make sure it's configured properly. Again some windows users would have problems even with something so simple as this sadly.

Want to avoid the nasty crap in Internet Explorer or other browsers? Get a proxy like Proxomitron and JD5000 Filters for Proxomitron which then allows you lock down all that nasty MS crap like VB/ActiveX/Flash/Forced Download scripts/ADS and more that cause problems.

But as everyone else has mentioned here - all it takes is a moron to run a windows box - linux box or hell even a MAC OS X box and not keep up to date with patches. If he/she doesn't know what they are doing any of the three will be insecure.

Also with Microsoft a lot of users I believe are afraid to get the patches - because you keep seeing more and more supposed "horror stories" of how a patch broke Windows or a "feature". Same crap could also apply to same user running a Linux box.

First off I don't take advice from some newspaper flunky. Second it never ceases to amaze me just how freaking stupid a lot of people are when it comes to computers.

They get spyware because they don't read freaking license agreements or EULA's, or get it because they are too dumb to tighten up browser security so your browser (often Internet Explorer) WONT auto download and install it for you like a good little bitch. If people would actually use software like Proxomitron and JD5000 (Add-in for Proxomitron), then you would not have problems with drive by spyware or other HTML/Java/Javascript/Exploits/Nasties while browsing the web. It's called UNIVERSEL WEB FILTER for a reason!!!.

Not to mention of course the biggest things like ACTUALLY VIRUS SCANNING everything that comes into your computer and doing system maintenance by de-fragmenting your hard drive or even getting something like Norton Utils 2002 or later to keep the system, registry, and hard drive(s) maintained properly.

Just this week I talked to two people I see online often in IRC. One was stupid enough to have 330 ITEMS OF SPYWARE detected in Ad-Aware and another is too dumb to actually tighten up his mIRC settings to avoid automatically downloading IRC viruses/worms.

I'm sorry but I have no sympathy for morons who can't keep virus scanners updated and virus scan everything that comes into the computer, cant keep up to date with software like AD-Aware 6 and Spybot: Search and Destroy, or actually uses Internet Explorer or other browsers with default settings on a windows box and wonders why the hell crap like Xupiter and viruses get through the holes in their browser(s).

And if you follow the "steps" laid out by that lame assed newspaper article, it's a big mess of crap for nothing when if you actually have a freaking clue how everything works on your computer (both software and hardware) then you will VERY RARELY if EVER need to re-install. I laugh at thee who re-installs a OS every 3 months or every year because of their stupidity. Sell your computer if you are too dumb to do the most basic of steps. *Rolls eyes*

lucky for us there's the Proxomitron to take care of these pesky annoyances! Say "NO!" to Macromedia and child molesters and terrorists - kill Flash!

One more thing I wish they would fix, however, and that is links that open in a new window.

I got tired of this too, a long time ago. As a result, I have both Proxomitron (Windows) and Privoxy (Linux) filters to fix it. Conversely, one site that I use insists on opening new pages in the current window even if you try shift-click/control-click/whatever to open them in a new one. My Proxomitron/Privoxy filters fix that too. :-) Don't leave $HOME without one or the other.

To make it do what you're asking, install and run the program, and click on "Headers" and then on "New." For HTTP Header enter "URL: Auto FeelingLucky (out)" (without the quotes) and for URL Match enter the following:

[^./]+/(^?)&\w[a-z]&$JUMP(http://www.google.com/ search?btnI=1&q=\h)

..and leave the last 2 fields blank. Click OK and check "Out" for the filter you've created and click OK again.

And that's it. you can now type any word into the location bar and if it's not a URL, your I'm Feeling Lucky search will happen, as you requested. Oh, might wanna SAVE your settings in Prox now.

Honestly, if you're that worried about popups go download a copy of Proxomitron. Proxomitron does a very good job, and its free.

are the popups that move themselves so that the top of the window (e.g., Close button) is off the top of the screen where you can't get at it. Got hit with one of these the other day when I was forced to use filterless MSIE on another machine.

Dammit, where's a kitchen timer, two bits of wire, a lightbulb, some matches and a handy metal bucket nearly filled with a half-petrol/half-diesel mix when you need one?! :-)

Seriously. they Don't Get It. People don't watch the web, they browse it. They are using it, and popups - and worse interstitials, let ALONE interstitials that try to go full-screen - get in their way when they're trying to use it. It's annoying in the same way spam is.

This is The Wrong Way to do marketing. For a good example of The Right Way (a way that helps to pay for the running costs without pissing anyone off), have a look at Google's unobtrusive (but clearly promoted) and often usefully relevant text-ads.

Thank God the Windows box runs the Proxomitron (Linux boxen can run Privoxy too, I believe, but it's not as good as Proxo). Slap the right filters in that and even Yahoo Groups becomes usable again, and AntiAdBuster has no chance against it's mad ninja anti-anti-filtering skills. See the web the way you want to.

I vote that someone visits the Unicast offices with an thirty-foot high mobile advertising hoarding... ...and parks it in front of their main entrance. I think they will start to Get It when that happens (and even if they don't, it'll piss them off, and that's poetic justice considering what they're about to unleash on the IE-using, non-Proxomitron masses who are still frigging plagued by Xupiter and Gator).

It's one of the best utilities I've ever used. And yes, it runs on Linux with Wine.

The Proxomitron a software filter, offers the ability to filter flash. Unfortunately, you either get flash or you don't.

If you are stuck with IE on windows, then check out the combination of Crazy Browser and Proxomitron. Crazy Browser provides a tabbed interface using the IE engine and while it has a built in popup blocker, popups just open on another tab, so you don't have much problem ignoring them. Proxomitron is proxy with ad busting and other features.

Why do people seem to assume that IE is incapable of blocking popups?

Ok, yeah, it can't do it by default. So what? There are innumerable popup blockers which vary from blocking all new windows unless you hold down some key (like Popup Stopper) to COM wrappers that do pretty much what Mozilla does (one of which is Crazy Browser) to proxy filters that filter out unwanted popups, ads, and more (such as Proxomitron. The last of which filters out far, far more than what Mozilla does, although it could be used with Mozilla as well if you wished.

Go ahead... whine about them being addons. The fact of the matter is that they're considerably smaller than Mozilla or even Firebird and they don't require the user to lose all their cookies or form data.

Honestly though, I switched from using IE+Proxomitron to Mozilla (at home) and Firebird (at work). And I do rather prefer it, since it gives me more flexibility on what I do and don't block (ok... Proxomitron is technically far, far more flexible... but that flexibility is painful to access - Mozilla/FB give me flexibility and ease of applying that flexibility). But that doesn't mean that they're not valid options to use.

For Windows...and it's free as in don't pay a thing. If you're a Windows user not using it then you're a sucka...

Proxomitron!

Forget popups, even worse are those Flash ads that pop up, make all kinds of horrible noise, and cover what you are trying to read. I almost stopped going to wired.com because of those. After a visit to CounterExploitation , I discovered the Proxomitron and tried it out...It has eliminated 99% of ads. It even lets the "good" popups though, such as when you are shopping online and your cart pops up. Sometimes it causes problems with legitimate sites that require certain Javascript commands to operate properly, but it's easy enough to temporarily turn off Proxomitron to see those sites.
It basically works by acting as a local proxy on your computer. As web requests comes down, it rewrites the http stream on the fly to get rid of objectionable commands (blink tags, status line scrollers, background midi music, popups, etc). All filters are 100% customizable, but the ones it comes with do a great job.

Well, how is Joe User going to install, let alone build, a regexp-based filter on his version of MSIE?

They would probably use Proxomitron, a HTTP proxy that does the same thing.

I've used both Mozilla and Opera. And while both browsers block most of the popups and popunders, I've found that the best way to rid my self of page trash is to use a Proxy Blocker.

I favor Proxomitron, a W32 "Shonenware" local proxy package. To register, you need to send them a pic of you holding a Shonen Knife CD. Proxomitron dosn't stop working or anything, even if you never "register." All of the features are still there even if you never get a Shonen Knife CD. They're hot, though. You should get one! Shonen Knife is ok.

Proxomitron is a powerful package. It does not require an installation program or diddle with the registry. No nags, no splashscreens. It's good, solid software. Many language translation are available, too.

Using Proxomitron, I can even rid stop that annoying personals box on the Boston Globe. I can block anything I want.

Proxomitron

Right here.

Where's the rating for speed and UI?

As for the other issues, not all of them are relevant. "Skinning"? Whoopee. "Sidebar support"? Hmmm, isn't that a Mozilla unique feature? Why not add a "feature": "Is named Mozilla?".

Seriously, though, through the power of Proxomitron and Cookie Cop I get more configurability than I know what to do with. Throw in POPFile and I've got the power, baby. As for security I've never had a virus, never been hacked, never had any problems. I keep my stuff patched, run a good cheap virus scanner and, oh yeah, use common sense.

Wanna party like it's 1993? Just: Use mozilla to disable pop-ups and nosy cookies. Use the proximitron or filterproxy, depending on your OS. Use a big-ass hosts file and edexter (or eDexterJavaDog for non-windows users) if you want.

I use nt at work, linux at home, and I don't do ads. Bottom line, WE control what happens on our computers. Let's not forget that we have this power, or that we're going to have to fight to keep it.

That's funny, I'm using the Proxomitron and I haven't experienced any problems with the site.. all popups blocked with extreme prejudice but I sure as hell don't feel any pain. Without evidence of Anti-Leech, I'll have to just take your word for it; however, based on my experience, I'd say the guy's not a hypocrite..

On the other hand, do you really care about one measly popup (or two, or whatever you unproxomitronic people get) that much? I mean, how many times do you even visit the site? Regular Kazaa, on the other hand, installs a whole lotta spyware that gives you perpetual popups and ads whenever you use a browser. If I didn't block the popups, I think I'd consider it a worthy trade.

Funny, I never see them. Oh, maybe that's because I use the free Proxomitron. It's the ultimate in configurability. Windows only, sorry...

Actually, everything you mentioned and more is available through proxomitron. I'm actually glad to see a quality piece of software that hasn't been sucked into IE.

I use Proxomitron to change my browser ident string. The only other method that gests me is java-script. I can re-write javascript code to trick sites, but java applets always detect which browser im using.

BTW, I read on the opera forum, people are hex-editing and removing Opera from the ident, to get around msn.

My solution to that would be: use Proxomitron!. It acts as a proxy, and it can rewrite outgoing/incoming headers and HTTP content (to remove ad banners, mostly). One hack allows you to change your browser ID to what you want. Unfortunately it only runs on Windows, but I'm sure it runs fine under Wine. So all that needs to be done is get it running on your NAT firewall box, and let it modify all HTTP-browser-id headers, and while you're there, make it remove the ads, as well!

Not a psychologist ... but you could read up on the Stroop Effect.

You can use a filtering web proxy (one of many) to mod pages and navigation for your cognitive taste. I'm writing a couple of OSS, cross-browser JS widgets for user-oriented mods. An early, IE-only prototype of no-click navigation (works, but ugly JS) is here.

"If you read the article you would see that Opera is perfectly capable of rendering the page that MSN sends to IE. If you change Opera to identify itself as IE, no problem.

The problem here is that if you've set Opera to the report the true user-agent, MSN sends a page with a broken CSS file that tells the browser to render the content so that the page becomes unreadable."

I agree that this is most likely a deliberate attempt to discredit Opera. However, you appear not to have read the report that carefully yourself: "MSN looks for 'Opera' in the User-Agent string and on purpose send Opera 7 a style sheet which distort pages. [...] Opera 7 handles the HTML pages sent to it similar to other browser, including Microsoft's own MSIE. That is, when you feed the page meant for Opera 7 to MSIE 6 it shows the same distortions as Opera 7 [and] Opera 6 handles the pages sent to MSIE 6 just fine."

And this is Opera's default UA-string:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.0 [en]

This is actually how it looks when you "identify as MSIE6" in Opera! As you can see the UA-string looks nothing like the one found in MSIE6. "Opera" is in fact always present in the UA-string -- no matter what you choose to identify as. This is what Microsoft has exploited. Some Opera users work around this by using Proxomitron, to make the UA-string look exactly like the one in IE.

Just look at that stupid website linked in the story.. If people want screaming webpages and shoshkeles, they can have them; however, Flash is just too damned intrusive and annoying to be worth the hassle for me. There might be a place for it, but I haven't seen one yet.

Anybody else have problems with Flash? Try the the Proxomitron. It's free!

If you are running windows, then run Proxomitron. It is a local proxy server. I run it all the time and never see popups. It also kills most other adverts as well.

I was invited to metamoderate the "-1 offtopic" moderation on this post. It's hard to know if I should click this unknown link or not, but I can't be fair if I don't. Luckily it's just flash, which I have filtered. The page title says "idiot", so that's all I need to know.

YOU LOOSE you chicken shit AC!

It sounds like you may have a spyware that monitors keywords in IE (Microsoft made it easy to do, programs can attach themselves to IE windows and see what the browser is doing).

Try AdAware, and switch to Opera, it's even faster than IE with less security exploits. As for ad-filtering proxy-server (assuming you're in Windows, try Proxomitron. :)

Ahem,
4. Because the page may render akwardly. My point here was that CSS fixed pt makes infinitely more sense that using font tags.
9. I have never understood this one. If the website is dynamic, tell the person how to get there. As much as the W3C says URIs shouldn't change, they do, and this is the most reliable way to get to a desired location. People need to learn to NAVIGATE not just be monkeys that type in URIs.
10. That one is easy, it's not true. Most websites DO NOT change the status bar. If they do Proxomitron it.

As for the ALL CAPS comment. I agree, and I had that on there as a joke but decided to remove it.

If you're a Windows user, try Proxomitron. It's a free filter that can block banner ads, Flash ads, sounds, pop-ups and many other really annoying things.

I'm shocked these days when I use a terminal that doesn't have Proxomitron filtering because then I realize just how crappy a place the web has become. I pity anyone who consumes the web raw.

Yeah, it's called The Proxomitron. Works wonders with a little bit of configuration.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, boys and girls!

Hallelujah!

Gather 'round all ye users of Windows and hear the word of the Proxo.

Hallelujah!

I say hallelujah and praise the filter. Feel the Proxomitron's power as you surf.

Hallelujah!

I ask ye brothers and sisters to go forth unto this land and spread the link.

Hallelujah!

I think this type of filtering is going to become for popular as advertisers become more agressive.

I don't mind some ads which is why I let them through but I filter the more annoying ones. It has been months since I've been subjected to a floating add, pop-up, flash ad, or been prevented from right clicking. These kick-throughs will get filtered along with the rest of them if I ever encounter one.

Proximitron is about the best I've found (for windows). Very very configurable. You can even allow other machines to proxy through it from elsewhere. And free, to boot.

Probably a good time to remind all the people forced to use Windows here of this little brilliant utility, which functions as a local proxy server and thus works with any browser, and can filter popups, the kind of mouseover events mentioned in this article, sounds, ads, everything. A must-have for Win32 people, in my opinion.

Who knows, maybe it's going to be a federal crime soon. Well luckily doubleclick doesn't have the kind of RIAA money to bribe^W donate to political candidates. That would be something.. "Buy the X10 camera, or go to jail!" and "Have you seen this man? He is wanted for not viewing banner ads."

And this site will be a violation of the DMCA, SSSCA, CBPTDA, Patriot and Homeland Security Act.

Proxomitron and
Guidescope

Personally, I prefer the Proxomitron because it allows you to do other things, like turn off Flash and certain Javascript annoyances (like sites that stuff moving text in the status bar).

It doesn't block popups. Which is why i use the proxomitron software with ie6. Mozilla is simply slower on WinXP than ie, which is why i use it. Also, I hate the way mozilla doesn't take the themes i apply to windows.

the Popup Manager is not included in this release, I'll stick with Proxomitron, a very nice local proxy for blocking various kinds of http/html-garbage. Too bad it's Windows-only, is there anything similar powerful and easy to setup for Linux?

WebWasher works like a search and replace engine on incoming HTML code, and probably already had a filter for that piece of code in place. I run Proxomitron, a similar freeware program which allows you to write your own filters, and after a few minutes of fiddling I wrote a filter that removed the offending code.

That is why ad blockers like Proxomitron will still work. They can be used to filter out the offending javascript along with the pop up and ad code so you won't even see the space where the banner ads should be (let alone no popups anymore).

I use it to read /. ad-free for free. I wonder what the /. team thinks about that? Seriously, do they consider that stealing?

The latest version of Proxomitron, 4.4, successfully bypasses the anti-leech code. (4.2 didn't) Get it here

Yes, I'm trying to be helpful, so obviously I'm a karma whore. Feel free to mod me down. =)

Alari