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New tech life questions, what should I do?

  • I’m reinstalling windows on my PC and already reset my phone.
  • I deleted my old Gmail account and profiles on my most used apps, which I want to recreate anew.
  • I switched to Proton but obviously need a google account to use those apps again on my phone (movies and books trackers mostly).

1st QUESTION: if I create a google account with my proton mail, is it worth switching to it at all? Would it still be better than using Gmail?

  • I had created two Microsoft accounts on my computer: personal and school. Worried about privacy I decided to reinstall windows.
  • for the same reason I was gonna use a 2nd mail (probably Gmail) for the laptop but have doubts…

2nd QUESTION: if I don’t add a school account this time but only use my university email to access the apps and that’s It, can I be sure enough and use my personal mail on the laptop as well, for other stuff? My idea was to completely avoid using the proton mail on the laptop. Or can I use it safely? It would be easier with things like Tweek (calendar and to-do) which I would use on both devices… With 2 mails I can’t

Hope I didn’t make any confusion and thank you if you’ll be patient enough to help!

ANY advice or suggestion is welcome!

corroded , (edited )

You may need to elaborate a bit more on what your are trying to achieve; it looks like your post is missing a bit of backstory. It sounds like your concern is keeping your personal business and school activities separate, though.

  • Switching away from Google is overall a good thing for privacy, but if your goal is privacy from your school, not from Google itself, it makes no difference who you want to use for email.
  • Creating an additional account on your PC is not detrimental to privacy; in fact, some might argue that having a separate account for separate tasks is actually a good thing. I have multiple accounts on my servers, depending on what/who needs to log in. It doesn’t hurt to do the same on a desktop PC or laptop.
  • Simply accessing school resources on your PC isn’t going to send the school your personal information, browser history, pirated movies, whatever. Clear your browser cookies between sessions if you’re concerned. Better yet, just set your browser to automatically clear cookies when you close the window, and make sure you exit the browser when you’re done with school work.
  • Do you really need to use your school e-mail for anything other than school? I have a work email, but I only use it for things that are directly related to my job.

What you’re saying doesn’t really make a lot of sense. A lot of people here are probably happy to help you out, but you’ll need to be a bit more clear on what your goal is. I get the impression that you’re concerned about your school having some kind of privileged access to your computer because you check your school email and work on school assignments using personal computing resources. That’s not something you need to worry about; it’s really not how technology works. Logging into your school’s online portal doesn’t give them access to your files any more than buying something on Amazon.com lets Jeff Bezos browse your system.

If you’re really, REALLY concerned about privacy, just set up a VM using VirtualBox (it’s free and easy) for school stuff and continue to use your computer as you would normally. If you’re already comfortable re-installing Windows, then you absolutely will be able to set up a simple Windows VM. To be clear, I wouldn’t consider this necessary, but if you want to do it for peace of mind, then you have nothing to lose.

This situation becomes vastly different if you have a company or school-issued computer. In that case, then I wouldn’t use it for anything other than strictly business (or school)-related activities. Given the fact that you’re able to reformat and add/remove accounts, though, it doesn’t sound like you’re using a computer managed by an IT department.

On a side note, if your school did some how manage to gain access to your personal computer without your permission, find information that was detrimental to you, and somehow use it against you, I would ask you two things:

  • What the hell kind of school are you going to?
  • Do you like money? Because you and your lawyer are going to get a lot of it.
Brkdncr ,

What are you worried about?

Create a VM on your machine and use it for things you don’t trust, such as a windows work/school account.

dingus ,

This is hardly related to anything at all, but be careful about using your university email as a login for too many things. At least at my university, we only have access to the email for the duration we were in school (and a bit of a grace period afterwards). So afterwards it can be a real pain to switch over a bunch of accounts. And if you forget to switch them over in time you can lose access to them.

ColorfulHippp OP ,

No that’s not my case, I only talked about the university mail to say that I’m gonna use them for the university apps (of course). I’m asking something else

LastoftheDinosaurs ,
@LastoftheDinosaurs@reddthat.com avatar

To answer your first question, I think switching to Proton is still worth it, even if you use Gmail for some things. I use Firefox Relay between my Gmail and Proton accounts. Generating a new email mask for every site/app has been no problem, except for a few sites like GitHub, Twitch, and Discord.

ColorfulHippp OP ,

I wouldn’t be using Gmail at all, I was thinking about creating a google account using my proton mail

LastoftheDinosaurs ,
@LastoftheDinosaurs@reddthat.com avatar

Not every site will accept your Proton address. You could generate a unique email mask for most sites and apps instead of giving them your real email address, wherever your inbox may be. Firefox Relay just forwards the emails it receives to whatever address you give it.

If your goal is to avoid reverse email searches, this is how’d I’d avoid giving my real email address out during signups.

Edit: I think Google won’t accept a proton address, but I may be wrong

AnarchistArtificer ,

I really like Firefox Relay. I think they have a paid version, but the free version allows 5 different emails masks, and you can set masks to either forward emails, or to just block them. I find this latter function useful for things that make you put in your email address to get past a wall (which doesn’t necessarily involve signing up).

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