My school has provided us some emails with a custom domain (not @gmail.com but @myschool.smth) and we as students are only able to login via gmail, however i obviously do not want that. What can i do to prevent that? I tried logging into the email via Thunderbird but i get blocked because my administrator doesn’t allow that.
I would recommend in this situation:
Use Firefox or similar browser that has the ability to create container tabs
And open your school email in a dedicated school gmail container tab.
Then limit the container to just the dedicated sites. At least you won’t leak your browsing to google any more than you have to.
This add-on is needed to do some extra features with containers on firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/
Similar discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/i7vaq8/how_can_i_degoogle_at_school/
Anyway, if you want maximal compartmentalisation between your school identity & the rest of your life:
- Treat school Gmail as read-only, as far as possible: write & send only if absolutely necessary & be concise.
- Use browser compartmentalisation as others have recommended, or if you have time on your hands then go a step further & use Qubes.
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I tried, i am not allowed to do so
As much as I dislike Google, any self respecting workplace or especially a school is paying Google for enterprise/education accounts, for which Google does not collect data to sell or train their Ai, and further has specificalized written contracts clarifying SLAs of how the company/school info can be handled.
American data laws as a whole are not great, but this context is as good a scenario as you can get. It’s also not a battle you can win. You will use what you are provided in a work/school context.
For work and school you have to deal with the tech stack that is given. It is just life.
You get to choose what you use in your personal life, but you won’t have much choice in your workplace.
My opinion is, be prudent. Compartmentalize school and life as much as you can.
How do i compartmentalize tho? only thing that comes to mind is to have containers, maybe flatpak or distrobox could help?
Just use gmail through the browser instead of installing stuff like the gmail app on your phone, and you can have it forward it to your email so you don’t need to open gmail to get school mail. You’ll probably just need to login for replies.
And when it comes to work in the future hopefully you’ll be a provided with a work device. I wouldn’t use a work device for personal use even if it were running Linux, and wouldn’t install work related programs on personal devices. I just consider work devices and programs to be spying on me as default.
You need to suck it up; work and school choose their email providers. Use it purely for work - not your personal life and not for anything private. Use it in it’s own browser container or even it’s own browser if you want. Especially if your college doesn’t provide POP3 or IMAP access. It is worth contacting the college IT to see if that is something you can use though - it my be something they can enable even if it’s off currently or provide instructions for the correct server addresses. It’d be surprised if they didn’t have either but they may want it all locked down in gmails services. More fool them.
My work (like many) uses Office 365 including Outlook for mail. So I have the crappy MS Office apps on my phone. But it is used purely for work (and I mute all notifications).
I use Firefox and have google account for my android stuff, which is in a container. And I also use the linux version of Edge (which is a flatpak) for the rare time I want to look at my work email of office online on my PC.
Why are you using edge for email? I use Firefox in Linux. In a container, of course 🤣
The same can be said about work. I don’t use Microsoft products in my personal life, but work, work I have to use Microsoft products.
As others have said; compartmentalize it. Treat it as it’s own entity. So for me, what I don’t want Microsoft to know about I keep off work machines, and work emails, and work network.
We sadly don’t get choice when it comes to things like School, work, etc the same as we do for our personal.
You could open gmail inside a separate firefox container. As long as you don’t use the email beyond school purposes it would be fine.
Talk to admin about alternatives, if they don’t give you any suck it up and use gmail to access official school communication that goes to that email. It sucks, but you can’t always control these things yourself.
You can set up auto forwarding of emails, to add last receive mails on another client using another inbox.
If their admin is blocking the use of external email clients I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re blocking forwarding to external email addresses to as that’s a very common action taken by attackers on compromised accounts.
Get used to work (or school) being separate from personal. Use a different device wherever possible. If it’s not, use a separate web browser at the very least and delete your device level advertising ID, don’t access gmail with Chrome on an Android device since that usually logs you in at the device level, too, and don’t add the login to a personal Android device to reduce some of the links between them. Just understand the risk of not using a separate device. For example, some systems will have the ability for corporate accounts like Google Workspace, Microsoft Exchange, etc., to wipe the device it’s accessed from when you leave, and if that’s your personal device, well too bad.
What’s your issue with using gmail exactly?
Presumably, privacy. Google is actively weaponizing and selling all data we give them.
But if it’s just for a school account then just use that account for school.
Sure. But don’t forget to take steps to prevent Google from harvesting your non-school data anyway. If using an official Gmail app, you’re probably screwed; they get your location, wifi, device info, why not?
If using a web browser, be sure it’s a privacy-focused one, don’t sign into anything but Gmail, and sign out and close the browser completely every time to clear cached data. And Google will still scan every email with automated scrapers, potentially training their AI on your carefully written essays, etc.
I think this is typical. Microsoft/Outlook is popular too.
Change schools.
I wish lol
I mean… they control this, not you.
The only sane approach would’ve been to use an email client, but you already said they block Thunderbird, so… use gmail in a vm in a private browser tab i guess…
