I am currently at college with my college network and firewalls. its quite annoying. can anyone explain to me how to set up my own proxy. i understand that it has to be outside my network (like at my home). i am just not comfortable using a public proxy that may be recording my passwords and emails and all...

On your home network, set up an old PC as a Linux proxy server.

Configure OpenVPN and squid on this machine.

Then, at school, install OpenVPN and connect to your home server. Configure your web browser to use squid at home as it's proxy, and you're all done. Make sure to protect this Linux proxy server with a firewall.

Make no mistake, it will take some late night reading and experimenting to get this working, but once it is going (like all things Linux) it will "just work" - almost indefinitely.

I suggested OpenVPN because it is reliable, cross-platform, and capable of different types of connections. Even if your college has a very restrictive firewall, you should be able to use OpenVPN to make your tunnel to home look just like normal SSL-encrypted web traffic, effectively fooling the firewall.

thanks alot for your help..

ok.. so should i have this behind my router and its internal firewall with an opened port? or should i dmz it or something and use a software firewall?

also.. will this leave my home network fairly open?

the general idea with security in situations like this is that you should only open up the necessary access to do what you need, and nothing more. Since OpenVPN only requires a single port, it would be best to put the linux server behind your router/firewall and only map that one port inbound. That would also greatly minimize your additional exposure.

Just make sure your security on OpenVPN is well managed.