Guidescope: Junkbuster

Backwards Compatibility with
the Internet Junkbuster

Internet Junkbuster Compatibility

The Guidescope service is backwards compatible with the Internet Junkbuster Proxy version 2.0 (from Junkbusters.com). All of the features of the Internet Junkbuster are present in the Guidescope service. This page describes the differences between the two. It also describes new features that appear in the optional Guidescope configuration file. Internet Junkbuster Proxy documentation is available at www.junkbuster.com.

Differences

Several default behaviors are different with the Guidescope service:

Threads
All versions of Guidescope require thread support. Most modern systems support threads. If your system doesn't support threads, then the Guidescope software won't run on your system.

This will mostly affect users running older versions of Linux without thread support. Our Linux X86 binaries are compiled on a Slackware 7.0 system using the C library "libc6" (a.k.a. "glibc"). If you are using older libraries on Linux, you will have to upgrade to more current libraries before you can run the Guidescope software.

Windows95/98/ME/ME/NT/2K users are unaffected by this change because Windows95/98/ME/ME/NT/2K supports threads.
Configuration File
All versions of Guidescope look for an optional configuration file named "guide.ini". The Guidescope configuration file is backwards compatible with the Junkbuster configuration file. We recommend that you rename your Junkbuster configuration file to "guide.ini". If "guide.ini" doesn't exist, the Guidescope software also checks for "junkbstr.ini". If neither exist, then it uses built-in, default settings. The default setting are sometimes different as described below.
Cookies
Cookies are not blocked by default unless you have a cookie.ini file. If you don't have a Junkbuster cookie file and want cookies to be blocked, then create an empty file named "cookie.ini" and place it in the directory where you installed the Guidescope software. It behaves exactly like the cookie file in the Internet Junkbuster. For simplified instructions on its use see our manual page here. For more information, see the Internet Junkbuster Cookie FAQ.
User Agent
The "user-agent" in the header is not replaced unless you specifically set the "user-agent" option in your configuration file. If you want to change or hide your user agent name (your reported browser type), set it in your configuration file.

We recommend that you not set the user agent because many Web sites now present content that is formatted differently depending on your user agent. They do this to work around browser bugs and differences in browser behavior. Of course, if you want to hide your user-agent, you can still do so.

"Referer"

The "referer" in the header is now by default set to be equal to the URL of the current request. This satisfies Web sites that refuse to serve content unless the referrer is their own site, while still effectively removing the referrer information.

You can specify how you want referrers handled in your configuration file:

Option	Behavior
referer & referrer &	The header "referer" is replaced with the URL of the current request. (This is the default behavior.)
referer ! referrer !	The header "referer" is discarded, just as with the original Internet Junkbuster.

(Either spelling of referrer works the same.)

Default File Names
There are now built-in defaults for the following configuration file options:

Option Default File Name
blockfile block.ini
cookiefile cookie.ini
trustfile trust.ini
forwardfile forward.ini
aclfile acl.ini
If one of these files is specified in your configuration file but the specified file does not exist, then the Guidescope software silently ignores the missing file.

New Features and Improvements

Several new features (in addition to Guidescope-specific features) have been added:

HTTP/1.1
All versions of Guidescope are HTTP/1.1 compatible. (Persistent connections are not maintained however.)
Non-Blocking I/O
All versions of Guidescope use non-blocking I/O.
Outgoing Address
A new configuration file option, "outgoing-address", can be used to specify the outgoing binding address for multi-homed hosts. For example, if you wanted to report your outgoing address to Web servers as "www.new_name.com" you would add a line to your configuration file:

outgoing-address www.new_name.com
Proxy Chaining
You can specify a proxy name by sending your browser to the special URL "http://set.proxy/address:port", where "address" and "port" are the address and port of the proxy that you want to connect to. You can type this URL into Netscape's "location" bar or IE's "address" bar.

To cancel the proxy chaining, enter the special URL: "http://set.proxy/none".

To disable this feature for your users, add the line to your configuration file:

disable-user-proxy-config

Debug Options
You can specify debug options by sending your browser to the special URL "http://set.debug/option[/option]", where option is one or more from:

Option	Debug Behavior
gpc	prints one line for each HTTP GET POST or CONNECT
con	provides information about the progress of each connection
io	provides information about I/O errors
hdr	displays HTTP header processing
rf	reports on the interaction with the Remote Filter server
cred	reports on the interaction with the Guidescope server that affects proxy credentials
log	displays the headers and content of all I/O between the Guidescope software, the browser, and the Web servers. This is very verbose and will likely contain a great deal of non-printable ASCII. This is usually used only in combination with the "logfile" option in the guide.ini file.

You can type this URL into Netscape's "location" bar or IE's "address" bar.

To cancel all debugging options, send your browser to the special URL "http://set.debug/none".

To disable this feature for your users, add the line to your configuration file:

disable-user-debug-config

Login Key Hashing
Guidescope uses an MD5-hashed version of each user's IP address to uniquely identify each user sharing your Guidescope proxy. To hide your internal IP addresses from Guidescope.com, add the line to your configuration file:

login-key keystring

The "keystring" that you specify is concatenated with each user's IP address before applying the MD5 hash, thereby preventing leakage of your internal IP addresses to Guidescope.com.