I was in Moab this weekend with my family and our motel had free wireless Internet. I used SSH and a SOCKS proxy to create a secure tunnel to my iMac at work. This allowed me to browse Gmail and Facebook securely.
Here’s a screencast on how to create an SSH tunnel and browse securely in Safari and Firefox:
Here’s a full-size video:
How to browse securely with SSH and a SOCKS proxy (full size video)
These are the basic steps on a Mac:
1. Open Terminal. (In your Applications/Utilities folder.)
2. Type “ssh -D 9999 [email protected]”, replacing “username” and “example.com” with the actual username and address of your remote machine. The remote machine will need the SSH service, or Remote Login service, turned on.
3. Open System Preferences -> Network -> Advanced tab -> Proxies.
4. Turn on the “SOCKS Proxy” and enter “127.0.0.1” and “9999” in the fields. Click OK and Apply.
Now your Internet connection will be tunneled through a secure connection to your remote machine — a poor man’s VPN.