Web Proxy: jaguarundi.math.arizona.edu

Eliminate many ads from the web!

The machine jaguarundi runs a web proxy called privoxy that eliminates many advertisements and some popup windows from web pages, among other annoyances. It also increases privacy slightly by imposing some limitations on usage of cookies and blocking some types of tricks used by web sites to track your usage. It does all of this by using a large pattern file to match URLs that should be blocked or whose content should be filtered/modified in some fashion. The pattern file is periodically updated by the authors of privoxy, and we maintain our own customizations of those patterns based on local usage.

Advantages:

• Improves web surfing rate because less stuff is sent to your browser. (This is especially beneficial for dial-up users.)
• Eliminates many annoyances from web pages.
• Easy to turn off temporarily when you have an urge for ads.
• Gives home broadband users access to MathSciNet and our intranet. (Another way to access these resources is to use the proxy coatimundi, which will periodically ask you for your username/password. You can also compare features of our proxy servers.)

Disadvantages:

• Might let some ads slip through.
• Might block some things that you didn't want blocked.
• Sites that rely on precise browser behavior may be unusual (please let us know, so we can try to fix the problem).
• Your computer must either be located within the math department, or be dialed-in via prairiedog, or have its IP address registered with us. (The latter applies if you have broadband at home. See the note at the bottom of this page.)

We need your help
Please let us know whether this proxy is useful to you. In particular, if you find that it is slowing your connections down, let us know. (We may have a misconfiguration.) If you find that websites important to you no longer work properly, let us know the details. (We may have to adjust how cookies are handled on those sites.)

For home users not dialing-in via prairiedog:

If you are a home broadband user (DSL, CableModem, etc.), or you use a dial-up ISP other than our own prairiedog, then you must provide us with your computer's DNS name or static IP address. (We do not run an open proxy, so we have to punch a hole in the firewall specifically for your machine.) If your broadband provider does not give you a static IP address, you might look into a dynamic DNS service (search for "dynamic dns" in Google!) for associating a permanent name of your choice to your changing address. (Look around, because often the service is free of charge.) Once you have a stable name and/or stable IP address, contact us, indicating that you desire access to jaguarundi.