Proxomitron and Bad Behavior

If you’re one of the few people still using the Proxomitron proxy server, you’ve probably already noticed that you can’t access a large — and growing — number of sites on the Web.

Proxomitron was an HTTP proxy, primarily for Internet Explorer, which filtered out pop-up windows, malicious JavaScript and the like. Its author stopped supporting it two years ago, and one year ago its author died and took the source code with him, thus making future updates to the product impossible.

Unfortunately, Proxomitron contains a bug which causes it to be blocked by Bad Behavior, even when accessing a site placed on the program’s “bypass” whitelist. Under normal circumstances, I would contact the author and advise him of the problem, and a fix would be out shortly thereafter, but this isn’t possible for Proxomitron.

Unfortunately, Bad Behavior cannot detect the use of Proxomitron, and thus there is nothing I can do; Proxomitron users will, if they continue using it, continue being blocked by Bad Behavior, and continue to find themselves locked out of a growing number of sites.

Since the final release of the product two and a half years ago, a product has appeared on the Internet which makes Proxomitron obsolete. That product is called Firefox.

All users of Proxomitron should immediately stop using it — and Internet Explorer, which was the only reason to have Proxomitron in the first place — and install Firefox. Then look through its incredible list of extensions to find just the ones you need, like the JavaScript blocker, Adblock, Session Saver, and many more.

And if you still need an HTTP proxy, consider using Privoxy, which is open source, well-supported, and (when not deliberately misconfigured) passes Bad Behavior just fine.