How to your travel and check your email when your old person?

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How to your travel and check your email when your old person with a simple cell and no laptop?

Here is my problem.I am old and finally decided to travel. My desktop computer is at home. I have a cell phone but simple one. It does not work in Europe. I tried to log into my gmail account from the hotel’s computer. It says need to authenticated. I choose my second email address with hotmail but it asked for authentication with my gmail account. It seems I am not getting into my emails. Seems this old timers is not meant to travel. Hope I post this in the right section. Otherwise, please move it.

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In your current situation it’s a bit hard unless someone can turn on your computer at home and install a remote control tool.  I think going forward I would get an android tablet, set up your email on it, install the kindle app and offline map programs and use that for travel.

Is there any other authentication process you can use?  Text to the phone?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Get a new(ish) smartphone. Bigger screen is better for us oldies.
Add a European SIM (cheap).
Install a password manager app.
Logon to your email before you travel (wifi connection at home if you don’t want to move off your old phone).
When you get to Europe you will have full connection and email will continue to work. You will also have access to maps to make navigating those lovely European cities easy.

cheers, Paul

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Unfortunately, I don’t have a good solution while you are traveling, sorry. But for your next trip, here is a suggestion to be setup in advance of the trip. No cell phone or laptop is required.

A better 2FA/MFA authentication method would be a USB security key such as a Yubico YubiKey 5 ($50-$65). GMail supports this easy kind of security. When asked during login, you plug it into the USB port, and touch it when asked. Then after logging in, you remove it from the public computer back to your pocket. (There are two common USB port sizes, so be sure to have an adapter for the other size.)

In case the security key is lost, you could have backup codes to get into your Google account. Configure and re-configure at https://myaccount.google.com/security

Windows 10 22H2 desktops & laptops on Dell, HP, ASUS; No servers, no domain.

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Travler,

You don’t need a cell connection to check your email.

What I do is as soon as I get on the plane I turn on Airplane Mode and don’t turn it off until I’m back in the USofA. Then when I get to my destination I turn on Wi-Fi.
I can now check my email. Of course this assumes that your phone has a browser so you can get to google. Your hotel should have free wi-fi so you’re set to go.

If the phone doesn’t do the trick I’d recommend an Amazon Fire 7″ tablet. Cheap, you can get your email, it has wi-fi, and you can read books and play simple games all for less that a Franklin and if you watch the sales on prime day much less!

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Traveler wrote:

I have a cell phone but simple one. It does not work in Europe.

Most probably a “Feature phone” so text to the phone, even using WiFi, isn’t an option.

FYI, it’s not unusual for most cheap “feature phones” sold in the US to not work with European cell networks nor have WiFi capability.

That’s because, unlike smart phones, they normally lack the multi-band transmitters required for world-wide cell networks and WiFi.

— just one of the many reasons why they’re so much cheaper than smart phones!

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Susan Bradley wrote:

someone can turn on your computer at home and install a remote control tool. Text to the phone?

Nope. Text is not working on my simple phone.

Paul T wrote:

Get a new(ish) smartphone.

It seems I will have to get and start to learn it. Not great at learning you things.

windbg wrote:

from the public computer back to your pocket

Ok. I will have to look into this. But it seems the public computer in hotel does not have any USB ports.

Thanks everyone. It seems I am out of luck this trip. May be when I save up for another in few years and still alive I will remember these tips for my trip.

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Traveler wrote:

the public computer in hotel does not have any USB ports.

Yes, I forgot to mention the requirement of having a free USB socket. Perhaps a computer at an Internet café would have one.

Having a cell phone not work overseas is a common problem. Your cell phone can fail overseas because of hardware and/or because your cell phone carrier lacks full international calling. This is just one of the reasons why I avoid, to the maximum extent possible, using a real cell phone number for authentication.

Windows 10 22H2 desktops & laptops on Dell, HP, ASUS; No servers, no domain.

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For what it’s worth, I have an LG Classic Flip phone that I got for 20 bucks from Tracfone. It is definitely NOT a smartphone; I don’t know if it is referred to as a feature phone. I consider it a simple cell phone. It can send and receive text messages, make and receive phone calls, and connect to the internet through either it’s wifi capability or through 4GLTE (cell tower/phone number). The wifi is slow but functional in a pinch or emergency. I can access a gmail account with it and reading emails is easy, although it has trouble with attachments. Replying to emails is tedious because there is no physical or on-screen keyboard, just a numerical keypad as you would find on any “old-fashioned” phone.

I don’t know if my phone works in any country other than the United States.

I don’t see it on the tracfone website right now but there are other flip phones that are available and probably have similar features.

Every flip phone I’ve owned going back 15 years or so has had the capability to send and receive texts (messages). If yours can’t it may be the carrier has disabled that capability. Whoever sold the phone to you should be able to tell you if you can get texts and if you can, tell/show you how to use texting.

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My flip open cell phone does phone and text in the continental United States only.  If I was going to Europe or any other part of the world, I’d tell my family how long I’d be gone (probably not more than a week) get a trusted neighbor to watch over my home, and take the cell phone only to take photos.  I personally don’t like having to worry about any type of computer or tablet that might get stolen.  When I go on vacation I’m there to enjoy myself, not be sending or answering emails.

In my case, I have a stepson who lives in Munich Germany, and would probably be with us at least some of the time. He would provide any email connectivity if I should need it.

Being 20 something in the 70's was far more fun than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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From the Tracfone FAQs section:

Can I make international calls on my TRACFONE cell phone when I am outside of the United States?

No. TRACFONE cell phones don’t work outside of the United States, Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands.

CDMA cellphones (i.e. no SIM card/smart SIM) won’t work outside the US.

Most, but not all, GSM phones “can” work outside the US but you’ll normally have to add a special “International Roaming” plan from your carrier before leaving the US so it’ll work overseas.

1 user thanked author for this post.

DrBonzo

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Wifi Calling, at least with AT&T, allows you to call back to the US from overseas.  You dial + 1 (area code) (phone number).  Note: you must dial the + symbol first.   You should do this from airplane mode with wifi ON. Overseas country to a country not the US will not work.

iPhone 13, 2019 iMac(SSD)

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You can get your emails forwarded to your phone in the form of text messages.

* First: you need to find out the text message email address of your phone. For example, if you have T-Mobile, and your phone number is 123-456-7890, your phone’s text message email address would be 1234567890@tmomail.net. Any emails which come to that address would be received by your phone as text messages. If you get a lot of email, your phone will fill up fast, so you’ll need to delete these incoming emails after you read them. (If you don’t get a lot of email, this shouldn’t be a problem.)

* Next: you need to log onto your email’s webmail service and create a rule which forwards all incoming email to 1234567890@tmomail.net. (The reason you will set up a rule in webmail is so that it will always be on. If you set it up on your computer, and your computer goes off, the rule will be off.)

* You can reply to these emails simply by typing in a text message and sending it to whoever sent it to you. They will get your message in their email inbox.

Obviously this will have limitations. You can’t send or receive big emails using this method. But you can do short emails. Best of all, it is very easy to use this method.

While I don’t forward all email to my phone in this way, I forward some of my email to my phone; I forward the ones I need to know about immediately, such as emails from my boss.

By the way, one of T-Mobile’s selling points is that they work internationally, in a very long list of countries. You might get a T-Mobile pre-paid phone with international service, or you might want to switch to T-Mobile. I recently switched to T-Mobile, because their customer service is second to none.

Good luck!

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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windbg wrote:

This is just one of the reasons why I avoid, to the maximum extent possible, using a real cell phone number for authentication.

I never like phone number for authentication but gmail kept asking for it that I finally gave in.  Before in 2005, I could check my email international without any issues and had no need for authentication since had my password. This is why I thought I could now in 2023. It seems I was wrong.

windbg wrote:

Perhaps a computer at an Internet café would have one.

In 2005, there were internet cafe on every corner here. But now in 2023, it seems most have close down. It seems my old age is final getting that I should not be traveling since tech is not old age friendly. Wish I had more money to travel but luck has never been on my side. It takes years before I save up to travel.

MrJimPhelps wrote:

one of T-Mobile’s selling points is that they work internationally, in a very long list of countries.

Thanks. I will have to look it this.

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There is withauth to use as well, but it needs a USB port on your computer.

Another option is the tel comm port hack but it sounds you are not tech savvy to be able to do that. It is used by users and hackers to get around 2FA currently. If you are desperate, you can look it up online and see if you can follow the steps to get into your account. The steps are easy and you just need internet connection and email address and phone number you want to get into and it will get you the code to be forward to the website rather than your cell phone. It is much easier than cloning or sim swapping phone numbers now a days.

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User wrote:

There is withauth to use as well.But it needs USB port on computer. Another option is the tel comm port hack but it sounds you are not tech savvy to be able to do that.

What is withauth? I can not find info about it.

I did find info about that comm port hack but it is beyond my little tech savvy skills how to follow it for this old person. I will have to pass on it.

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Try setting up your Gmail for access from a less secure app. Go to your Google Account settings, find “Security,” and enable “Less secure app access.” This might help you log in from the hotel’s computer. Safe travels!

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