Living abroad or traveling: keeping a French connection

You live abroad, or you are spending a few months there. Your accounts, however, stayed in France: bank, insurance, online shopping, utilities. And some of them get worried when they see you arrive from another country.

First, a VPN

A VPN with servers in France is the first tool to try:

it costs a few euros a month;
it does not meter your data;
it also protects your connection on public Wi-Fi.

For most expats, it is enough. Do not pay for a mobile line if your VPN gets through everywhere you need it.

When the VPN does not get through

VPN addresses are well known: they are hosting ranges, shared by thousands of customers. Some banks, some payment services and some online shops treat them with suspicion: extra verification at every login, payment refused, access blocked.

A French mobile line goes out through a national carrier, like any subscriber. Your bank sees a mobile connection in France, not a server.

And it is yours. The same address day after day, rather than a different VPN server at every connection. For a service that watches for "unusual sign-ins", that is the difference between one alert a week and none.

What not to use it for

Making a government body believe you are in France. Some benefits depend on your residence or your presence in the country. A French IP address changes nothing about those obligations, and using it to get around them is fraud.

Watching programs restricted to France. Broadcasting rights are granted country by country, and the terms of those services say so. We do not present this use. Video would also eat through a data quota quickly.

How to set it up

Only for French sites. With FoxyProxy, a per-domain rule sends your bank and your French sites through the proxy, and everything else through your local connection. This is the solution that uses the least data.

For a whole device. The WireGuard tunnel sends the entire device out through the French line. Handy for banking apps on a phone, which have no proxy setting.

On a phone, more simply: see Android and iPhone.

Your traffic makes the round trip to France before reaching the site: a few tens to a few hundred milliseconds more depending on your country. It makes no difference for online banking, but it is a nuisance for gaming.

Which plan

A fixed address is what you are after: the Essential plan gives a dedicated French mobile IPv4, without rotation, with a metered data volume. For banking and paperwork, a few gigabytes a month is plenty. See The data quota.

FAQ

Can my bank block a mobile line?

It can block anything, but a French mobile carrier's range is that of its own customers: it has good reasons not to. Letting your bank know about your stay abroad remains the first thing to do, and it is free.

Can the proxy's number receive my bank's codes?

Do not do it. Your bank must send its codes to your number, or to its app. The proxy's number follows the SIM card, not you: see Receiving SMS.

See also: Why a French IP · WebRTC and DNS leaks