With reports of companies like AT&T in cahoots with the CIA, it's obvious one should stop doing business with them. However, many may have no other choice than to continue using their services.
There is no telling what exactly they are turning over to any part of the government, so it is best if they don't even know what you are doing at all when browsing.
This particular method requires the use of a remote server running OpenSSH, or any other SSH server.
There is one caveat about this method, it only seems to work with Mozilla* based browsers. If someone does know a way to get other browsers working then please let us know.
Now on to the process.
PuTTy Setup
Open the PuTTy client and go into the Connection -> SSH -> Tunnels section:
In the "Add new forwarded port;" area, select the Source Port box and type in any port you want to use. Then in the radio button section below, select the "Dynamic" button.
The result should be something like this:
Be sure to save these settings in your profile of choice you selected, or create a new one.
Mozilla Browser Setup
Click on settings then the Advanced tab at the bottom, then the Network tab:
Next you will click on the settings to the right of "Configure how Firefox connects to the Internet."
You will see the following screen:
Fill out the settings like I have, being sure to change 1080 to the port you chose in Putty.
Log in to your remote server as normal then visit a site with the Mozilla Browser, such as IP Chicken to verify the IP address matches your remote server.
Now you may be wondering, yes these settings do not change. If don't want to use this setup all the time, you can either launch the browser in profile mode, in which you can select a different setup each time it, starts, or use Portable Firefox browser from PortableApps.com, or from any other similar website.
Some of you may be wondering, or thinking about just not hassle with the trouble of all this and use the TOR Browser. The method I describe here is not meant to anonymize your browsing, just keep your ISP from snooping on your browsing.
In addition, the TOR Browser uses methods to keep changing your IP address from which you appear to be located at. Many which will not be in your own country, affecting your visits to sites which require your IP address to be in the same county as the site you are visiting. Pandora.com (music streaming site), for example, located in the USA, requires your IP address to be in the USA in order to use its service.
In the future I will cover setting up OpenVPN on a similar type of server to encrypt other types of service connection.
One last item. By default, all SSH connections are set to disconnect you with a period of inactivity.
You can prevent this by going into the "Connection" settings. In the main window you will see "Second between keepalives." Set this to sound around 30 - 60 seconds and your SSH connection will not disconnect.
* - Term Mozilla is used because of the open source nature, which means there are other browsers base on Mozilla than just Firefox. Such as Waterfox, a 64 bit build of Mozilla.
