I Have tried two things in three places to see if it works please do help me out. Two methords: 1) replacing @ with %40 2) replacing @ with \@ Three places: 1) export with the .bashrc file 2) editing /etc/apt/apt.conf and setting acquires there 3) using gconf editor and setting the values in /system/http_proxy and setting authentication name and password and checking the use_authentication checkbox. still there is no success and i still get 407 error when trying wget or apt-get update. please do help me, been stuck with this for three hours now. also, i read somewhere that creating a file in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d and then creating a 01proxy file with acquire might work. I tried that also, but it doesnt work. Please help.