Tor & Email?

[Roger Dingledine]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 08:57:24PM -0500, Alek wrote:
> I'm curious- in what way can Tor be used for emailing?  When someone is
> connected to the Tor network is there email routed along the Tor network
> too?  Or, does it go through their the normal connection with their ISP?

The only recommended way to use email with Tor is to use web mail,
e.g. https connections to gmail.

Periodically people ask about using Thunderbird or the like. The problem
is that client-side applications that compose and deliver email could
leave identifying features in the mail headers they generate, or in the
application-level data while interacting with remote mail servers. Nobody
has investigated what would be needed to write a Torbutton equivalent
for Thunderbird.

To answer what might be your more immediate question, you may be
confused about Tor when you say "when someone is connected to the Tor
network". Only applications that have been specifically configured
to use Tor will send their traffic over Tor. See point 'a' at
https://www.torproject.org/download/download.html.en#warning

--Roger

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