I am facing some issues with one of my email account which has been blocked by my service provider because it could have been potentially compromised. Apparently accessed from an IP address generated by TOR according to the provider.
They ask me to check if I am using a VPN. I was wondering is the setting “Hide IP address” in e/OS/ is using a VPN. I am not familiar with these technical issues and some clarification would be welcome.
Extra question not related to e/OS/: I don’t understand the relationship between an IP address generated by TOR and using VPN ?
A VPN is a connection to an end point (usually another server). You use the server as “starting” point for surfing.
Hiding the IP in /e/os uses TOR.
TOR is a network of such servers like in the VPN example. You connect to the first server this one to the second one and so one until the (a more correct ‘a’) last one is reached. This is used to ensure that only the entry point knows your IP but the underlying do not. And your target page only knows the IP of the exit node of the TOR network.
The problem is, you share the IP of the exit node with others (there are multiple exit nodes but they are limitied). So there is a huge amount of requests to a server like your mail provider from the same IP. It therefore detects this as a problem like spam or DOS. And they also notice that one IP (the exit nodes IP) uses several accounts at the same time, so it thinks, these accounts could be compromised.
It is therefore recommended to not use Hide IP (which is nothing else than TOR) with mail connections.
Thanks Undertaker for the clear and interesting explanations.
So the most probable scenario is that checking my emails using this Hide IP setting has caused this alert for potentially compromised account, which is finally a good news.
In addition to @Undertaker 's explanation: … In order to make that connection via TOR the Hide my IP-feature utilizes the VPN-interface of android/eOS and therefore appears as VPN in system settings (therein shown as Advanced Privacy)
Actually when we change the Hide IP settings I just realize it clearly states that it should not be used with emails, I dont why I did not see this before…
I have now excluded the Mail app from the Hide IP list. Maybe this should be the default setting.
