1

I've an email account which I never visited outside Tor/Tails. Recently, I got a warning from the email provider about suspicious activity. While I'm inspecting the email's activity logs, I found out that someone trying to login with invalid password from local IP (not from Tor exit node) a week ago.

I recently move to another country and share a public internet. Will this affect my security. What should I do to prevent this in the future?

Improve this question
3
  • Use https when connecting to an web-based mail client. And try to not use public not-protected-whatsoever networks.
    – qwerup
    Commented Jul 16, 2015 at 11:32
  • Why just continuing using tails?
    – Jens Kubieziel
    Commented Jul 16, 2015 at 21:45
  • When I opened my mail, even when it is in https, sometimes it appears as secure https (green lock), but sometimes it is just a gray lock.
    – DarkVenture
    Commented Jul 20, 2015 at 2:06

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Using public internet will effect your security. This is because all traffic that is traveling on the network unencrypted can be sniffed by anyone else who has access to the network.

So long as you log in to any online accounts through a secure https connection your passwords will at least not be visible to an attacker in plain text.

Using Tor/Tails is also an effective way to encrypt all of your traffic on the LAN because traffic is encrypted as it travels through the tor network from your PC to the tor exit node as shown in "how tor works 2" in the tor overview https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en however it is still best if the websites you visit are https as this way you have point to point encryption.

To give some alternatives you could use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) which is another way to encrypt your traffic on the LAN but usually costs money and doesn't provide the same anonymity as tor. Or someone with access to a remote server could tunnel through ssh to create their own proxy server. There are videos explaining how to do this on youtube, like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__VASPeU82Q

The other thing you need to watch out for if you are in a public place when you connect to the public internet is visual collection of your passwords. If someone or a camera can see your keyboard as you're typing in your login details then they can remember or write down your passwords, or re-watch the camera feeds at their leisure to gain everything they need to access your accounts.

Improve this answer
1
  • DarkVenture, what you need to check with regard to the padlock is whether or not it it the same certificate. click on the padlock, click more information, click view certificate, now compare the cryptographic fingerprints (the long colon separated line of numbers and letters) starting sha1/sha256/md5. Take note of at least one of these fingerprints and compare the one on the green padlock to the one on the gray padlock if they are identical then it is very likely the same certificate. it could be non malicious, there are many possibilities support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1024234
    – Joey
    Commented Jul 20, 2015 at 23:43

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .