InfinityDevil: I wouldn't worry about Skype using the ssh tunnel. Skype encrypts everything itself, so it doesn't need an encrypted tunnel.

free: 'tsocks wget' works fine. I ran 'tsocks wget http://192.168.0.5/index.html' and it returned the home page of my LAN web server's home page. I didn't try any low-level debugging on the 'tsocks browser' problem. My suspicion is that the 'browser' command isn't really the command that's running, it is simply a 'trigger' that tells the OS to run the browser. I just don't know enough about it. I guess someone could compile Lynx and we could use that one through tsocks.

Ah good so the "tsock hack" works. I'll rebuild it for OS2008 (in case it's not compatible) and put it on my repo.
Is /usr/bin/browser even an ELF executable?
Probably it's doing these funky DBUS stuffs to call another executable which should be embended in tsocks. I'm sure somebody who knows this soup can patch this easily.

InfinityDevil: I just saw your question about WHY one would use tsocks. If you run a net application like vncviewer or wget through tsocks, all of the proxying is handled transparently. The app doesn't even know that it is using a proxy, so you don't have to make any changes to the app's configuration.

Well, I found that the repository at http://mg.pov.lt/770 had a compile of Lynx (called links, here) and it worked fine with tsocks to let me browse the web via SOCKS proxy. Text rules! Who needs images anyway?!

links and lynx are two different things.
I discovered on this forum that links can support image also. I'll have to try that!!

If you figure out how to get Links to be anything more than an in-terminal text-only browser, I'd love to know.

If it's the same links version (and full image support is done), there's nothing to do:
http://links.twibright.com/features.php

It isn't the same version. The graphics version is Links version 2.x (Debian package links2), the one compiled for Maemo is Links 1.00pre12. So text only. But cool, nonetheless.

In its big brother, I have an extension that shows it clearly in the status bar - I like that. Unfortunately, the microb architecture doesn't make doing something similar easy. I guess it could do like adblock does, but adblock's method seems to slow down the scrolling speed.

I have no disagreement with that.

The real issue is I'd be perfectly happy if microb would just retain the proxy setting I give it. If I had a better idea of what's going on internally, I'd just modify the shortcut to use the tsocks call full time instead.

Editing:

/usr/share/applications/hildon/browser.desktop

Doesn't appear to have any affect on what is started when you run the browser from the web menu or the apps menu, so I'm apparently confused on what's calling what.

Using "tsocks /usr/bin/browser" does work fine. So that's good. Tested by starting/stopping the socks proxy at various times.

Calling that from the command line gives the four white blocks icon instead of the globe icon on the task bar, though, for some reason. Once the browser is properly started, the bookmark links will open in that sockified browser. Again, good.

So the question is - how do I change the command line used to start the browser? I think you're right that it's a dbus command somewhere.

My ideal situation next would be to have a status-bar icon that allows you to start/stop the proxy (maybe one of many). This is something I'd code up at some point, but I am pretty sure someone will get tired of waiting before I get around to it.

Just to be clear, I am OS2008 and N810, but it seems similar enough.