Configure mIRC IRC client with SOCKS firewall connection

This document is intended for help with configuring the widely used IRC Client mIRC (www.mirc.com) to connect through SurfoNym's SOCKS proxy server.
Prerequisites:
  • a basic knowledge of IRC and mIRC
  • a SurfoNym customer account (obviously). If you don't have one, buy one!
  • your SurfoNym customer access data (username and password). You got those in the activation email we sent you after your payment.

    Note: you don't need any external application installed to run mIRC through SOCKS! You don't need to socksify application which we described in our SOCKS HOWTO document. mIRC has SOCKS proxy firewall support built-in.

    First, start up your mIRC. Below the menu, you should see something like this:

    mIRC connect option

    Click on the icon marked by arrow 2 to open the mIRC options box. Now you should see this screen:

    mIRC connect options

    Fill in the values you always used to IRC with. No need to change anything here!
    You will also use normal IRC servers provided by the IRC network you want to connect to. Don't use proxy.surfonym.com as IRC server!
    Then, click on Firewall.

    mIRC firewall options

    For Firewall Support, chose "Both", so that IRC through SOCKS is activated, as well as DCC through SOCKS.
    For Protocol chose "Socks5" - don't use other protocols! SOCKSv5 is the only secure protocol for mIRC proxy.
    For Hostname use "proxy.surfonym.com"
    For User ID and Password use the SurfoNym customer account data which we sent you by email after the activation of your account. Be careful, username and password are case-sensitive!
    Chose Port 1080. If your network administrator blocked outgoing connections to port 1080, please send us a mail, we can setup other ports for you.

    Now test the configuration and click on connect! If you do a /whois on your nick, you should see yourself as something like:

    HSJ3S927@proxy.surfonym.com

    You will IRC with a different IP now, which is SurfoNym's SOCKS proxy server's IP, obviously. Maybe you cannot use your normal IRC servers. In this case, use a server which allows SurfoNym's IP range or ask your IRC server administrator to include a I-line for SurfoNym's IP into his IRC server.
    Here is a list of server which are known to work best with SurfoNym.

    Anonymity hint: all IRC connections through the SOCKS proxy will show up on IRC with an ident (that's the HSJ3S927 part before the @). This is necessary because some IRC servers require users to have a working ident! Our ident, however, is randomly chosen on each connect and has no connection to you or your real ip!

    For IRCnet, you can use the following servers:
    vienna.irc.at

    For EfNet, use:
    irc.efnet.org

    For Undernet, use:
    irc.undernet.org