Appear to be located elsewhere while surfing the internet

When browsing the internet various information about you as an user is easily obtained, for instance your IP address which is often used to limit site or services availability depending on geographical location. Fortunately such restrictions are usually easy to bypass and I’m going to show you how to appear as you’re browsing from somewhere else using SSH Tunnel, SOCKS Proxy forwarding and Firefox browser. Don’t be intimidated by these “big words” because you don’t have to understand the technical aspects in order to get it to work for you.

However, before proceeding you will have to:

• have a terminal access to a linux server located elsewhere (outside restricted area; school, friend, colleague)
• realize that although using these known and legal methods and tools detailed here below, you may be doing something illegal because restrictions are usually in place for a reason.

SSH and SOCKS Proxy

Using Mac or Linux, simply;

1. open up a terminal
2. issue the command: ssh -D 8888 username@ip-address-of-server-located-elsewhere

Windows users should do the following by;

1. downloading the terminal program Putty.exe from here
2. rename it to ssh.exe
3. move it to the windows folder on drive c: (c:\windows\)
4. press the start button, select the Run dialog box
5. issue the command: ssh -D 8888 username@ip-address-of-server-located-elsewhere

Make sure you change username and ip-address-of-server-located-elsewhere to the values you need them to be. After issuing the command you should be prompted with a required password, go ahead and enter your password to establish the SSH link to the server located elsewhere.

Command description:

ssh # command

-D # establishes the SOCKS Proxy

8888 # local port to connect to using browser

username # user name on server located elsewhere

ip-address-of-server-located-elsewhere # well, it’s the servers IP address

Firefox

Now you have to change the Firefox browser settings to use the link you just created instead of your regular internet. For Mac Firefox you do the following;

1. File -> Preferences
2. Advanced Tab -> Network section
3. Connection Settings button
4. Select Manual proxy configuration
5. Enter in the SOCKS Host field: localhost
6. Enter in the port field: 8888
7. Select SOCKS v5 radio button

For Windows you do the following;

1. Tools -> Options
2. Follow the steps 2 to 7 detailed there above

Lastly, you need to edit one setting by entering Firefox about:config mode by clicking here. Change the parameter network.proxy.socks_remote_dns to true by double-clicking on it. Do not worry about the security warning you are prompted with, you can always change this value back to default by double-clicking it again.

See if it works

Now you should try to see if this is working for you, start by visiting the site whatismyipaddress.com, it should show you the geographical location and the IP address of the server you linked to instead of your real location. Furthermore, the network.proxy.socks_remote_dns = true parameter makes sure that you use the remote DNS in case the site or service is also tracing the DNS origin of the browser request.

This method works for me most of the time but it is not guaranteed to work for you. If it doesn’t redo the steps above, if it still doesn’t work then the site or service may not be so easily fooled.