The hotel I’m staying in has a rather annoying filter on their net connection. Basically it won’t allow me to connect to any URL with the string “xxx” in it. It’s probably blocking other “content” as well, but since I’m a registrar trying to sell .xxx domain names I noticed the “xxx” filter pretty quickly!
Circumventing the stupid filter didn’t take much.
Using SSH and a server I have in Dublin I was able to bypass it in less than 30 seconds (thanks to Paul)
Open a terminal and run this command (change the IP / hostname to a machine you have access to)
ssh root@$ip -D1080
Then tell Firefox (or your preferred browser) to use a SOCKS proxy to connect to the web:
configuring SOCKS proxy in Firefox
And now your web connection will run via your SSH tunnel 
No more stupid filters!
From Stephen:
You know there are people in the middle east and china that might be very interested in bypassing national filters and buying a solution as you have described it here…
From Michele:
Stephen
Possibly, but anyone offering a solution of that type is going to be a target for DDOS etc., so I’m not sure if the pain would be worth the gain
Michele
From calvin:
@michele – you mean like offering a virtual host with a ssh server facility?
From Paul Watson:
Tor and similar proxy networks have been used extensively from the Middle East, North Africa and China to circumvent censorship etc. Tor and similar projects also let you “donate” your servers to be rotated in as a proxy.
I suspect ssh proxies though are too simple a solution, no doubt one of the first attempted.
From Michele:
@Calvin
There’s a difference between someone using a service we offer for a purpose and us marketing it for that purpose
M