As I understand it, you cannot alert your email provider that you will be travelling abroad, and inevitably, I always get blocked by gmail and/or hotmail when I travel. I have to then log on, tell them it was me, have a code emailed to me to another email address that hopefully is not currently blocked and free my account only to have it again happen when I get to another city or country. Is there a workaround for this as it gets quite annoying.
thanks
Warren
there is a workaround. Sign up for a vpn service before you go. With a vpn service you get a choice of country where your IP address is coming from as seen by the dest you are opening, at least for paid versions of vpn. If you like listening to Pandora or using other websites that restrict access based on country this is handy. No guarantee that email providers won't filter on more specific criteria, but this has worked for me.
A better reason to use vpn is for security. At your hotel or a coffeeshop abroad when they give you access to their wifi it is not very secure. Use your vpn and everything is encrypted. I suggest signing up a few weeks before you trip so you have a chance to make sure it is all set up and working before you go on your trip.
Why are you being blocked? We have never had that happen with gmail over many trips. You must have set something to cause the blockage.
I agree with John that the VPN is useful for many purposes. I installed one on both my iPad/iPhone before going to Europe last fall and it worked perfectly. It was especially important to me since I was away from home for so long that I had to pay bills electronically while on the road.
I had that issue with both Yahoo mail and Hotmail on my last trip to Europe (2014), did not have that problem on my 2012 trip. Not sure what the difference was unless they just started doing it after 2012. It was a pain because I did not have another email to have them send it to. I wasn't carrying a phone either so I had to contact my daughter through facebook and have her set up a new email address for me and then I was able to use that one to 'unlock' the other ones. Pain in the a**.
Odd....In traveling to four continents and over 20 countries over the past 10 years, I have also never ever had my email blocked by either Hotmail or Yahoo.
If you like listening to Pandora or using other websites that restrict
access based on country this is handy.
Most smartphone/tablet apps have the ability to detect VPNs these days and prohibit using them to bypass region restrictions. Based on my experience only the ESPN app allows VPN anymore.
I've had this happen even in Canada and it was no use to have a code sent to my phone because my phone wasn't enabled to work in Canada. Here is a NYT tip for dealing with the issue, which I'm going to use on my next trip. Hopefully you can open it without any paywall.
Warren,
I use Telus Webmail as my primary account and have never had that "blocked" while traveling. Which provider are you using for your home ISP?
I was able to use my mail app + VPN without any problems or blocking in both the UK and France. I did not go through the web to access email, nor did I use free wifi at Internet cafes, so maybe that was the difference. Using the mail app + VPN on my hotel's secure wifi worked very well.
I've been blocked on my recent trips. Google sends me an email titled "someone has your password" to my backup email. I then confirm that it's me using my gmail from afar. The harder one was when my other email blocked me....this is a local provider out of Washington state...first time ever was on this trip I'm currently on. Email worked fine in France but they shut it down when I moved to Spain. I had to call them to fix it and tell them I'm traveling. Now I'm in Italy and it continues to work. Sort of a hassle but it all worked out ok....waste of an hour though.
This is an even more serious problem with Verizon email. Because Gmail isn't my primary email provider, I have never logged in there from Europe. But Verizon is even disturbed by some institutional (I mean, like museums and malls ... ) web providers in the United States. Often, the web-based HTML interface will work even when POP logins (i.e. from email programs like Thunderbird or Outlook Express) are defeated by their security.
This is news to me as well. In October I checked my Gmail on my phone in Amsterdam. Germany, and London, and on a desktop computer provided by my hotel in Amsterdam, with no problems. When I started a new job at home last June and started checking my e-mail on my work computer, Gmail notified me of a new sign-in and said if that was me, no need to do anything.
A couple of months ago, I got a notice from Gmail that said someone tried to access my account in High Ridge, MO (I had to look up where that is) via Google Chrome. I never use Google Chrome, only Firefox and very rarely Internet Explorer, so that was scary. I changed my password and went through my security settings to make sure everything was as tight as possible. In that case, Gmail didn't block my account but notified me of the attempted access.
The problem may be more evident if you're using a different device that is not your own, as was the case with me. If I don't bring my laptop and use my relative's (using a different ISP address), the email client recognizes that and doesn't want to permit entry.
The reason this may "be news" to some people is because they've never had issues logging in on their own laptop or own smartphone. But not everyone brings their gadgets with them (I leave them at home).
Do most of us here who go online while overseas use public computers instead of our own devices?
I doubt it (I'm pretty much in the minority) but the OP did not specify whether it was his own or not, so I thought I'd chime in and bring up this possible nuance. I have family who lives in Europe so I can use their devices while I'm there. I have used public computers as well in other places (Sarajevo and Vancouver comes to mind)...I don't think there is anything wrong with that, some places have really inexpensive internet cafes or libraries one can access. Maybe a bit unconventional but I don't like to drag my laptop on vacation - it has too much on it I can't afford to lose (even though it's fully backed up now thankfully). The downside is the issue brought up by the OP - a different ISP address has caused me some issues.
To those who commented that they have had no problems with Gmail, I have to clarify - my problems were with Hotmail and Yahoo mail. Gmail, when I set up an account worked fine.
Ken,
I'm using Shaw as my IP provider (only one available to me). Used to have them for my primary email, but couldn't get emails to send when I was on some other providers network, so I had to piggyback on a gmail account. Because of that, I moved EVERYTHING over to a gmail account, and use it from numerous devices. I don't have the blocking issue all the time, but enough to be a nuisance. Last time in Europe, made it thru about two weeks until I logged in an Apple Store in Munich, and got blocked. After fixing that, I think I was good for the rest of the trip. I've even been blocked going over into the states, 3 hours away and the other day, I was beta testing a VPN on my iphone, and got blocked because the VPN redirected me some thru the states. I also use a hotmail account for linking to my facebook and other "dumb" sites, and have had issues with that one too.
Given that Warren had this problem multiple times on one trip, it seems likely that he was using local computers and not his own device. I'm another person who has never had trouble accessing the Gmail app on my own iPhone or iPad. The TunnelBear VPN app has also worked well on those, but only a limited amount of service is free, so you can't stream too much TV without paying.
Laura,
It's always with my iphone.
Hmm, that's an interesting wrinkle. (I see we were posting at the same time.) What I used was the Gmail app (not the mail app pre-installed on the Apple device). With my iPad, I connected using any old Wi-Fi. With my iPhone last year, I had the T-Mobile international data plan. A brief staff review here can only remember having the problem when using a new computer terminal.
If you google this problem, it appears to be somewhat common.
As late as October, 2013, I used my Hotmail account all over southern Bavaria on hotel Wifi (WLAN) systems without a problem. I've also accessed it at Cybercafes, on their computers or from my own laptop and their Wifi. I was using a laptop with which I had previously accessed Hotmail here in Colorado. I've used any of three different laptops to access Hotmail in Germany in the past. In 2009, I even used a GSM aircard in Germany to access my email account.
The only problem I have ever had was in Innsbruck, Austria, where they had free wifi in town. I could access the OeBB website and others useful to travelers, but it never let me access Hotmail, but I think that was the town system that blocked me.
If you have to tell Hotmail you want to access your email in Europe while on a trip, how do you contact them?
Google blocked my access to my gmail account just a couple of weeks ago when I was in Sicily. I had to reinstate my account by verifying certain security info and having a special code sent to another email (my sister's msn account) address. I used the code to unlock my email and had no further problems but I was pleased she was with me and was able receive the code for me! Weird; in all my travels through Europe, it's never happened to me before.
