Tutorial: SSH Socks Proxy – Being Secure Online

Occasionally, some services like us to be in the presence of America to use their service, or our internet service is down maybe. Maybe your on a unknown wifi channel and want to give yourself a bit more security.

Eh? A proxy in otherwords?

Yes, that’s essentially really what we are doing – for those are confused by a proxy – it’s the middleman between you and the location that you are trying to reach.

Today, i’m going to show you how to use SOCKS, or a SSH Proxy. Now, you will need a web host for this, and it needs to have SSH support for this. I know MediaTemple & Dreamhost do – check with your host just to make sure.

We’ll be doing on this a mac and using Firefox as our browser

So first we need to open the terminal – for those who don’t know where that is:

Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal

Now we need your username and address of your server.

ssh -ND 9999 you@example.com

Now, of course you replace this with your credentials which you should. It will then ask you for your password, you should also know this too. For dreamhost – this is the same as your default FTP details.

After you have entered your password, it will not print anything else – it’s job is done and ready.

Setting up FireFox to work with your SSH Proxy.

If everything looks like that, then were good to go! Hit ok, and so if you can load the start of FireFox.

I hope you find this helpful, it’s works for me and I find it useful at WiFi hotspots where sometimes you don’t feel secure. If you have another medthod, please leave a comment or send me an email.