Accessing Proton Mail and Proton Calendar

Hello guys,
I’m starting my privacy journey and I’m slowly transitioning my email from gmail to protonmail and the calendar is next. However, a question arose:
Is me accessing all these things and importing my google calendar to proton calendar on my normal android phone, in any way allowing Google to basically lock onto my new email and whatnot?

Sorry, this might seem silly and basic, but I’m just trying to slowly start “from new” - soon I’ll be getting a pixel as well and installing graphene onto it immediately.

Thank you for any insight you might provide!

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This is a really good question!

Proton have some great guides for migrating from Gmail to Proton Mail and from Google Calendar to Proton Calendar. You could also manually export your Google Calendar and import the ICS file.

In-a-nutshell, both Proton Mail and Proton Calendar are encrypted at rest, so even if Google was interested in keeping tabs on your emails and events after you move them, it would be pretty tricky.

I hope this helps!

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Hopefully you have made a threat model, if not it is very important you do. (counter measurement should come last).

I’m pretty sure emails send to a Gmail address(not uncommon) google can read them. But if you’re using emails as read-only thing, you should be fine. (:

Regarding the threat model, I agree with you. I haven’t really thought it fully through. I currently am just trying to regain back my privacy and have control over my data (as much as one can on the internet).

I have a custom domain and I’ve connected it to proton mail, my next step is having a secure phone with graphene. In the mean time, I avoid google on my browser (sometimes it has to be used) and I’m slowly migrating services that I had attached to my gmail, to my new email - although I’m being much more selective of which websites I redirect to my personal email.

VPN wise, I have the proton one, but I don’t make much use of it - since it’s less about hiding from google/facebook etc but more from my ISP, which really isn’t much of a bother to me.

My main concern was google knowing my new address, due to changing the email on accounts and having confirmation emails sometimes still go to my gmail account.

The transition will be lengthy as I’m trying to juggle QoL with privacy, but it seems feasible.

Thanks!

It is important that you know what to protect and know how to protect it. Without knowing this, you are going to beat yourself up over what are unrealistic threat models for most people

If you are unsure about threat model, my personal advice would be to learn some opsec, follow academics not cultists.

You shouldn’t worry about it. Because none of the data tracks back to you. It just helps the businesses run ads(this concern can vary for different threat models)
Important to note that the more you attempt to secure something, the more attention it can bring, potentially increasing threats. Often, hiding in plain sight is more effective.

I appreciate your response.

As you mentioned, I definitely don’t want to fall into the trap of having an unrealistic threat model. I want a little more privacy, but I don’t expect to have everything under wraps.
About hiding in plain sight, I agree fully. Maybe I’ll just do things naturally and that should be enough.

I’ll be reading up on opsec and seeing what makes the most sense for me.

Thanks for your time.

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