On Friday, November 24, 2017 at 9:01:24 AM UTC, Bernhard wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> one of the most useful features of tor-browser is Ctl-Shift-L to change
> the tor-path (and so, with high proba, the exit node IP) : this way,
> websites that block a specific exit node for a certain time can be still
> loaded (of course some fascist websites block all tor-exits and so that
> this measure does not help) .
> 
> I feel that the same feature would be useful in other applications (in
> particular in thunderbird). How can this be done? Maybe a "forced
> reconnect" of IMAP connections suffices, but apart totally restarting
> thunderbird I don't see how this can be done. Any hints? Or is there
> good reason not to torify mail-fetching? Or never via IMAP?
> 
> thank you, Bernhard

This might seem slightly off-topic at first, but bare with me, it gets 
increasingly on-topic.

What kind of e-mail are you trying to download over Tor though? Like in 
general, Tor hides who you are, but not necessarily what is send/received at 
exit/enter nodes. If any encryption, like SSL/https is poorly handled, i.e. by 
the server/website you visit, then it's not enough security through Tor 
exit/enter nodes. So for example, if your e-mail has at any point, whatsoever, 
in any way, been leaked with information linking it to you, or giving any clues 
that a detective can use to identify you, then it's game-over for that e-mail 
address, and you need to make a new address. 

Though it depends on your needs of course, for example if you don't care about 
governments, large corporations, or resourceful hacker groups, but only want to 
hide from the regular typical everyday hacker and businesses, mass 
surveillance, etc. then the e-mail is not compromised and can still be used on 
Tor.

Aight, so the point, what exactly do you want to hide your e-mail from? In my 
experience, there are different approaches to different scenarios, which 
includes e-mails too. 

More specially towards the question at hand, I think it's tricky to do 
something like that in Thunderbird, but I'm not a programmer, so I wouldn't 
know for sure. However, if you think about how it works in Qubes/Whonix/Tor, 
then the Tor browser appears to be tunneling Tor-Browser within 
Tor(Sys-whonix), basically doubling the onion layers compared to a regular Tor 
browser. I'm not entirely sure if this is the case, it's just something I 
figured must be the case. 

In other words, when you do this exit node change in your Tor browser, this 
does change your exit from your Browser, but not the exit node from your 
sys-whonix Tor network. Basically, the middle link between the two onion Tor 
layers, remains the same until it changes on its own automatically like usual. 

In other words, the Tor Browser can do this, because it itself is tied directly 
tor the Tor network. But for applications, like Thunderbird, it has no means to 
communicate with the Tor network, and it seems unlikely something the whonix 
developers, or the Tor developers, would want to implement given the extra 
overhead or potential issues introduced through further complexity (but I 
wouldn't know, I'm guessing towards that). 

Also this is probably a better question asked on either the Whonix or Tor 
forums, probably most fitting for the whonix forums. The people over there know 
waaaaaay more, unless if lucky and one of them happens to drop by here.

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