How to keep public and private accounts and activity separate?

Questions
1

I’m trying to be more private, secure, and anonymous online. There’s some things I’m okay with being public, knowing I’ll be observed or have data harvested, but I want to separate these public profiles from profiles and activity that I want private. I want some things to be kept private and difficult to associate with my IRL identity or public online presence. I made a quick list of the things I want public and private.

I’m mainly seeking to keep these things private:

  1. Instant Messaging
  2. Internet Browsing
  3. A private email

Here are the tools I plan to use:

  1. Signal
  2. Tor + Mullvad VPN
  3. Proton Mail

My main question is in regards to my devices. Can I engage in the private activity and public activity on the same machine and assume they will not be able to be linked? This is my intent with using the VPN - I would turn it on when I want to go into “incognito mode” and do my private browsing then. For instant messaging and email, I plan to do this off the VPN.

I am not considering the problem of losing any physical devices - I am not worried about them falling into hands other than mine at this time.

Will this be an effective strategy for remaining private / anonymous online? Are there ways I could be tracked or linked to my public identity?

I understand a highly technically sophisticated and motivated party could make the link, but the point is more to make it difficult than impossible.

2

You can simply leave the VPN on all the time (there should be a setting) because trying to remember to turn it on/off when switching back and forth is unnecessarily complicated and will likely result in the occasional failure. Many privacy conscious individuals follow this approach and for your threat model it is fine to do so.

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3

What is the device exactly? if Phone, use profile feature in GrapheneOS to isolate identities. If computer device, use VMs or install and run QubesOS which makes it much more easier but requires a bit of learning curve.

3 Likes
4

^^^Probably the best solution here

Besides additional security, compartmentalization would allow you to better manage your online identities

5

Thanks for all the help! Makes sense and I’ll just keep the VPN on. The only wrinkle here is I like online gaming on my PC, and my understanding is that I’ll probably need to turn it off for that.

Noticing Mullvad VPN allows 5 devices otherwise makes it easy enough to do on all my devices, so issue is resolved there.

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