So, despite having logged into my blog just now without doing this – I’m going to share with you the easy way that probably 90% of you can protect your passwords while using the public wifi:
Step 1:
ssh -D 9999 -C somebox.youcan.sshto
Step 2
Go get something like FoxyProxy for Firefox and MM3 for Thunderbird (especially if you are using any version of Thunderbird 3 – nothing else is compatible).
For Firefox, set up a SOCKS5 proxy (Prefs > Advanced > Network > Settings) on localhost port 9999. Start using the proxy. Stop using the proxy when you kill your ssh connection and make sure you open the connection if you are using the proxy.
For thunderbird it’s basically the same if you are using FoxyProxy – but if you are using MM3 like me, you need to create (click edit, oh btw you will probably have to add the button to the toolbar first) a proxy with this config:
[Arbitrary_name
socks=127.0.0.1:9999
]
That’s it. Now I can’t steal your passwordsss! If you want to encrypt DNS requests you can set network.proxy.socks_remote_dns to true in about:config
