Safe to use Thunderbird?

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 05 Jan 2012 Posts: 15

Is it safe for me to use a gmail account through thunderbird for baiting? My thunderbird hosts my real email addresses as well.

Respond only if you know why thunderbird would be unsafe.
(like if a scammer can somehow strip information about your other accounts from a sent thunderbird message)

To clarify, I'm not worried about 'the possibility'... I want to know if its safe or if it is proven to be unsafe.

THANKS!

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 12:00 am

I do not believe Thunderbird will not strip your IP from the header in a gmail account. The IP is only stripped in gmail if you sign on to your account from the web interface.

Send yourself emails and then check the headers and see what it shows about you. Only you can decide if the possibility of a lad knowing your IP is comfortable to you or not.

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 11:20 am

I agree, it should show your own IP - which does not matter too much IMO if you live around a big city. Smile

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 2:10 pm

Gmail does show the IP address of one who connects with SMTP. It is possible, with Thunderbird, to connect through Tor (or any other SOCKS proxy); I've seen a post on one of the Tor mailing lists by someone who did this, and it showed the IP address of a Tor exit node.

There is no way Gmail can know about other email accounts you access with the same mail client.

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2010 Posts: 3877

I would recommend using a different email client program than the one, you use for your real address(es).

for example, if you like thunderbird, then seamonkey could be an option (seamonkey is the netscape navigator like version of firefox/thunderbird for those, who want one single program for browsing and emailing).

tor is safe, as long, as you do not send rl-information through the proxy. if you do so, the exit node could monitor your data transfers and connect it to a name... for the paranoid people here.
the main advantage with tor: google doesn't know you, yahoo doesn't either, the exit node doesn't know you and might only see the ssl-connection (which it can't read).

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 2:35 pm

Pivan wrote:

(like if a scammer can somehow strip information about your other accounts from a sent thunderbird message)

No, scammers do not have access to the other accounts you use on Thunderbird. They cannot "strip" anything away to see what other addys you are using Thunderbird for.

Why would they care, to begin with.

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 2:46 pm

Since you're using Gmail - have you considered Gmail Manager for Firefox?

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 2:53 pm

If you are using gmail in order to hide your IP address, you should be aware that Thunderbird will reveal it. However, in most cases, fear of IP addresses has been overblown. For the vast majority of internet users, all an IP address will show is the location of their ISP's main office in their city. Click HERE to see what yours shows about you.

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 7:11 pm

^^^ Yep, I like that. It shows me still out in the woods near a big garbage dump. Laughing

TD suggest Gmail Manager for use with Firefox. I have had a couple problems with Gmail Manager (they may have recently worked out a couple glitches). So I use WebMail Notifier.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 05 Jan 2012 Posts: 15

Thanks everyone, you have verified what I was assuming.