That is true, however for "personal use" one of the popular uses of a socks proxy is to create a local socks server using ssh. Works on all big desktop platform

That is true, however for "personal use" one of the popular uses of a socks proxy is to create a local socks server using ssh. Works on all big desktop platforms (on windows puttys plink.exe works fine, not sure if the inbuilt client has it but I'd guess it does too) and often with already installed tools and only need a server with SSH, and is encrypted. And that is far more common than having a VPN, and again, might not even need to install anything on the client. So you could quickly configure a friends laptop to ssh+socks inside your own network to stream from a local jellyfin server, or whatever. Or bypass language restrictions on regional services when you are abroad on vacation etc. (all are trivial to do with a VPN of course, but this is quite handy when you normally don't have a need for a VPN and/or just want something quick with tools and accounts you know at the back of your mind). https://bash-prompt.net/guides/ssh-firefox-tunnel/ https://bash-prompt.net/guides/ssh-firefox-tunnel/