Using an ssh tunnel

I recently started using a light-weight desktop on my Linode instance called LXDE.

One option to secure the connection to the remote server is to use an ssh tunnel:

host='zip.thruhere.net'
port=5901
ssh -L "$port":127.0.0.1:"$port" -N -f -l $USER $host

-L option:

Specifies that the given port on the local (client) host is to be forwarded to the given host and port on the remote side. This works by allocating a socket to listen to port on the local side, optionally bound to the specified bind_address. Whenever a connection is made to this port, the connection is forwarded over the secure channel, and a connection is made to host port hostport from the remote machine.