I'm at a public library with a firewall that blocks way to many sites and I needed to bypass it. I have an Ubuntu linux machine running at home that I would like to use as a proxy to the internet.

So here's what I did.

My Ubuntu linux computer at home has an SSH server installed so I just logged into it by running the following command on my laptop, while at the library behind their restricted firewall:

ssh -D 9999 -C MyUserName@TheIPAddressOfMyComputerAtHome

To explain the above command, 'MyUserName' was just replaced with my user name on my home computer, and TheIPAddressOfMyComputerAtHome was simply replaced by the IP address of my internet at home.

Now Configure Firefox to Surf Privately Through an SSH Tunnel

Next, to use my tunneled connection, I configured firefox as follows:

From Firefox, use the following menu path to open the proxy settings of Firefox:

Firefox > Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Network

Once you've opened up the Network tab of Firefox's Advanced preferences, click the "Settings" button, and then you can edit your connection settings as follows, so that you can let Firefox tunnel all traffic through your SSH tunnel proxy.

1. Select the "Manual proxy configuration" radio button

2. Enter "localhost" in the text box next to where it says "SOCKS Host". For the port to use, enter "9999" (also, I'm not sure if it matters which SOCKS version you use, but I selected the radio button that says "SOCKS v5")

3. In the text box next to where it says "No Proxy for:", enter "localhost, 127.0.0.1"

4.Click on "Ok" when you're done and close any remaining dialog boxes.

5. Check to see if everything worked by going to Whatismyip.com. If the IP address shown matches the IP address of your home computer, then everything worked properly