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Be sure to check out the first article!

Ok the first ques­tion is, what is SOCKS?

SOCKS is a net­work­ing proxy pro­to­col that enables hosts on one side of a SOCKS server to gain full access to hosts on the other side of the SOCKS server with­out requir­ing direct IP-reach abil­ity. SOCKS is often used as a net­work fire­wall, redi­rect­ing con­nec­tion requests from hosts on oppo­site sides of a SOCKS server. The SOCKS server authen­ti­cates and autho­rizes requests, estab­lishes a proxy con­nec­tion, and relays data between hosts.

There are two major ver­sions of SOCKS: SOCKSv4 and SOCKSv5
The SOCKSv4 pro­to­col per­forms three func­tions:
1.) makes con­nec­tion requests
2.) Sets up proxy cir­cuits
3.) Relays appli­ca­tion data
The SOCKSv5 pro­to­col adds authen­ti­ca­tion to the above functions.

Ok this means, if your Appli­ca­tion sup­ports SOCKS Server (which does the most, Fire­Fox, IE, Gaim, ICQ…) you are free ;)
So fire up Putty and go to the “Tun­nels” sec­tion enter “1100” as source port (as an exam­ple) and click on “Dynamic”. Now add it:

Another good idea is, to send dummy data to our SSH Server, to keep the tun­nel ses­sion active:

For exam­ple enter 30.

So if you con­nect to your SSH server (of course enter a SSH server in the Ses­sion cat­e­gory!), your local port 1100 is you gate­way to a free world…

Here is a exam­ple, how to con­fig­ure IE with your socks proxy server:

This means, the traf­fic you gen­er­ate will be encrypted trans­ferred to your SSH server and then the con­nec­tion will be made via the SSH server…

Hope this helps!