So you’re on the road. Being the road warrior you are, you can appreciate the finer things in live. For example some privacy while surfing the web (never heard of that anyway, but lets continue). Be it in a boring hotel room, a local coffee bar, or some other place connected through the Internet by means of WiFi. Using an WiFi encryption will probably make your browsing session a private one from “strangers” who are trying to eavesdrop on you, but if the know the pre-shared-key (WEP/WPA) the can still with a little bit of trouble read your data/information! And none the less, the proprietor of the gateway/router is often still in the position to eavesdrop on all the websites (and content) of websites you’re visiting.
Even if you’re visiting an SSL website they still can see “which” website you’re visiting. From there on everything is encrypted (including the URL’s, payload, etc).
There’s this magnificent little 444KB program called putty.exe . Mostly you use it to connect from a Windows PC to a (distanced) server running an SSH daemon to manage the hosts. Nobody can eavesdrop on you because it’s completely encrypted. Butt this program has some really nice/crazy features. It can act as you local (HTTP) socks proxyserver when you’re on the road.
It’s pretty simple. You open-up putty, go to the “cool” section which can be found under “Connection -> SSH -> Tunnels:” In the box “Source Port” you fill in some port above 1024 (unless you’re running it-as admin, below 1024 is privileged). I use the port 6680 here. Tick the box “Dynamic”
And connect to some host you have SSH access to, for example a server you have running at home.
You configure your browser to use an “socks” proxy. Use localhost and port 6680 . And you’re done. Off course you check if this trick worded by visiting some site like: www.whatismyip.com .
Happy (and safe) browsing!
*NOTE: Keep in mind, only the SSH part is encrypted and thus private. From the SSH daemon to the website your visiting is plaintext http traffic!