Are you wanting to keep your web browsing your business? Are you surfing the net from an unsecured (and by unsecured I mean any network you do not personally manage) network location? Many of us use public wifi or our employer’s network when connecting to the Internet. You may have  a desire to block prying eye’s access to your web traffic.

This page will show you how to create a secure, encrypted tunnel that will protect your privacy and allow you to surf websites that may be blocked by your employer or public wifi provider.

First you need Unix Shell account or Linux Shell account which has an  SSH server and allows SSH tunneling, Second, you need SSH client such as Putty. Third you will need a secondary web browser that is NOT Internet Explorer and preferably not provided by your employer. I recommend Rising.Net for the SSH account and FireFox for the web browser.

  • If you do not have a shell account, you can order it from (click here).
  • Putty can be downloaded from (click here)
  • Firefox can be downloaded from (click here)

One of the advantage if you are using Firefox web browser for sock proxy, you are still be able to use your default ISP IP address to browser the internet via second web browser such as Internet Explorer or Google Chrome. So Firefox will using SSH Tunnel IP and Internet Explorer will use your default Internet IP address.

This tutorial is for those who are using Windows OS.

Putty Setting:

  1. Open Putty
  2. Go to “SSH” and than “Tunnel”
  3. Select Dynamic
  4. Enter: Source port: 8080 and click ADD
  5. Go to “Session” on left menu under Category
  6. Under Hostname, Type in the SSH IP that you received from your SSH account provider.
  7. Under Port, Type in the port number that you received from your SSH account provider (typically 22).
  8. Under Saves session type in: SSH tunnel and click save
  9. Click “OPEN” for connecting to SSH server
    Next time you can just click load the setting and connect

Please check out video tutorial from Rising.net if you need more help setting that up. Click here for video tutorial

After you have connected, you need to configure your web browser.

Configure Firefox Browser for SSH tunnel

  1. Open your firefox browser
  2. Go to: Tools > Options
  3. Next click on: Networks
  4. Next click on: Settings
  5. After that click on: Manual Proxy Configuration
  6. On SOCK enter the IP: 127.0.0.1
  7. On Port enter port: 8080
  8. Click OK to finish the setup.

Here is a video tutorial from Rising.net showing you how to configure your Firefox browser to use your SSH tunnel. Click here for video tutorial

I found a good post on Engadget that talks about SSH tunnels and what they can be used for. Specifically, it has some diagrams and examples of how to use to protect your email in addition to web surfing. Check out the Engadget article.