Requirements and reasons

You will need a ssh account on a remote server.

Reasons for doing this include:

• Network or routing issues between you and the target website. If there are no issues between the remote ssh server and the target website you can connect via the ssh server.
• Appear to browse from a different IP. This can be used for testing or to circumvent geo IP restrictions.

Steps to setup your socks proxy server

1. Run ssh from the command line with the -D option.

ssh -D 44444 user@example.com

After you login, do not close the connection.

In this example, your socks proxy server will be running on localhost port 44444.

2. Next, setup proxy settings in your browser

For Internet Explorer, navigate to Tools → Internet Options → Connections → LAN settings → Check use a proxy server

Click on Advanced, add to the Socks line only.

Proxy address: 127.0.0.1

Port: 44444