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You could also (theoretically, haven't tested it all):

- watch Hulu, when you're not in the US

- use Spotify when you are in the US (and you use a UK box for example)

- bypass your university firewall

- in general secure your connection in case you are using an open network

Actually I'm pretty sure the Adobe Flash plugin will ignore your proxy settings, so it will only work with actual web sites.

This isn't true - I use a proxy tunnel frequently, and Flash works fine.

Flash works but it uses the default system connection and not your browsers proxy connection. So in cases of site that have IP based restriction, flash based sites will still see your original IP

and how do you know about this ? I use the very same trick with youtube and many other flash based sites. And flash ALWAYS use the browser's settings (at least in opera and firefox) both in Windows and Ubuntu

Launch your browser using tsocks.

ssh tunnels work great for hulu and netflix when travelling abroad. Or so I've heard :)

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