Sometimes it can come in handy to create a socksproxy using ssh. Socks proxies are usefull from browsers and other programs you either want to shield or the only way to connect is through a socks proxy. from a linux shell run the following:

$ ssh -D 1080 user@example.com

You have now created a socks proxy on ip 127.0.0.1 and port 1080.

To test that the proxy is working from firefox, configure the proxy settings and try to browse http://www.google.com