Selective Java applet filtering on internet

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a proxy-based solution to selectively filter out Java applets from the retrieved Web pages. Selective Java applet filtering is desired for mainly two reasons: (i) to low bandwidth users, background audio, animation and 3-D Java applets for Web page decoration usually results in very long Web access delay; and (ii) for personal privacy reason, Web surfers would like to filter Java applets that are used for server monitoring and tracking. By sampling and analyzing the usage patterns of these applets in current Web page design, a set of good heuristic rules for their identification can be obtained. For example, tracking applets usually do not have any visual effect and they are retrieved from third party Web tracking or monitoring centres through external hyperlinks. Some might even need to refer to the image logo of the tracking centre. Based on these heuristics, selective filtering of unwanted applets can be done through the proxy server automatically. To handle the situation when a wrong filtering decision is made, a simple effective recovery mechanism is supported in the proxy server. The Web surfer just needs to click the reload button of the browser. If the difference between the time of receiving the reload signal and the previous access time of a 'filtered' Web page is within some threshold value, the proxy will load back the filtered applet(s) to the Web surfer. A sample implementation of this filtering proxy solution based on SQUID will also be described here to help understand the system design and tradeoff issues. Such system is important because it gives Web surfers an easy way to enjoy the Java technology and to protect their privacy and bandwidth usage at the same time.