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I'm confused about Socks5. Some pages claim that Socks5 is protected between you and the server, but not encrypted.
How can that be safe?
..and some pages say you need an SSH tunnel for Socks5.
Another page said Socks5 is just plain text?
What's right?
SOCKS Protocol Version 5 described here, does not online or specify anything to do with encryption or encrypted traffic.
However, SOCKS5 itself is clear text. It provides no "protection" encryption or otherwise ... it is simply a protocol for encapsulating traffic.
ssh -Dis indeed encrypted by the SSH connection, but it is not encrypted beyond that. Another user on the SSH host could theoretically see your traffic without the SSH encryption, though you may be protected by HTTPS.