Retaining access to email when traveling

Question

We are traveling with our own laptop, and will be using wifi to connect to the internet.

Last year, we found that on arriving at our destination, we were locked out of our email accounts for some time. When logging in it told us that we logged in from an unexpected location, and the email provider simply refused to let us view our mails. We were able to access our mail after a day or so, but the situation was troublesome, because we needed email access to confirm some things.

What could we do while still at home to guarantee access to our personal email accounts later when arriving at our destination this year? In particular, how to retain access to the following two accounts:

• 1 hotmail/live account without 2fa
• 1 gmail account with 2fa

Answer 1

Understandably, this is extremely frustrating. Most email providers have some form of detection and additional security steps when logging in from a location which differs significantly from the last one.

This happened to me several times and usually got around it by setting up back up addresses and security questions. If you have neither, the provider will have a hard time offering you some way of proving it is in fact you. Still, sometimes the hoops are difficult to jump around as each service may ask you to confirm your identity using the other but having 2 email services can help. If they support automatic forwarding, then you can make sure that both accounts have all your emails. I have done this and it works at least quite well with GMail.

The better and more reliable way is to use a VPN. There are many service providers to choose from, most of them for a monthly fee, say $5 to 25 per month, depending on features and restrictions. The point is that you configure your machine or email client to communicate through the VPN which then accesses your email from a fixed location. That way, the provider always sees access from the same IP or location at least.

While I have not tried this from many locations, I am not sure if this will work or not (it might depend on the service) in locations where Internet access is highly-restricted such as Cuba, parts of China, etc.

Answer 2

Presumably, adding 2-factor authentication on gmail will allow someone to log in, regardless of the location they accessed the email account from.

Gmail provides an option to enter a code sent by text (which could be a problem), enter a code generated with an offline application (e.g. Authy for mobile devices, WinAuth for Windows computers), or simply a (limited) list of printed codes.

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According to this post, one can gain access to their hotmail account again with the following information:

Codes can be the date of birth, or receiving a code sent to your SMS number or alternate email if configured.

Since any alternate (hotmail) email will be locked too, this is not a viable option. You might not be able to use mobile data while abroad, making SMS not a viable option either. Using date of birth is scary, because this information is more or less public knowledge for most people.