I wanted to investigate the option of having a cheap and easy VPN solution so that I could secure my data when I am on public WiFi. Obviously the real die-hard techies can set up their own VPNs with industry grade tools, or setup a VPN using SSH tunneling, but I didn’t want to spend too much time figuring out all the details. So, I did a quick Google search and found ShareTool.

ShareTool is a very simple application that lets you connect to your home network and enjoy the Bonjour services there (like printing, network file sharing, etc). What they add as an extra is something called “secure browsing” which makes a secure tunnel to your home network and lets you then browse the internet encrypted over this connection. They use a special Firefox profile that they preload for you, and honestly this is really handy for people that just want to browse securely without releasing all their details in plaintext on the public WiFi.

I wanted to do more though than just browsing so I decided to look at how they did this tunneling. I discovered they set up a SOCKS proxy which I decided could be used to divert all traffic through, not just web traffic. So, I set it up and it works. I don’t want to write out all the details so why don’t I just show you (watch on Vimeo for High Definition quality video).

I hope this helped some people use open WiFi a bit more wisely.