Hi. For some classes at my university, I am required to make different online accounts (as expected), many require of course my name, email, etc. For the e-mail address, would it be better to use the gmail provided to me by the school or use example a Simplelogin alias? I guess the only benefit is Google won’t see it?
Also, any other recommendations on maintaining privacy as a university student? I feel like this topic isn’t really touched on this forum.
I would recommend using the school provided email, as schools will often only communicate with students/staff via the official email domain.
Personally i also use a pseudo-anonymous email address for application and device management with relation to school/work.
It can be tough tbh.
Probably the best practice would be following a similar approach to the common approach of compartmentalizng work and personal. A university has a lot of characteristics in common with enterprise, and it can be hard to achieve a sufficient level of personal privacy in that context and very hard to limit exposure to both Google and Microsoft. In that case, it is sometimes best to try to segregate school and school accounts from the rest of your digital life. And accept that you may have to put up with a lower baseline privacy for school related acocunts/activities.
Also note, if its a school provided Google account, its almost certainly some form of enterprise/business oriented gsuite/google workspace, not typical consumer gmail. Which has its own, somewhat less shitty, privacy policy.
I see. By “online accounts”, I meant third-party services like Canva and Turnitin, which are separate from the university. Perhaps there is a long-term benefit in using the Simplelogin alias, such as having control over deleting the account after the class is over?
Makes sense. I’ve been using a “hardware” separation approach to this, have different laptops for different things.
I will mark this as the solution, though I admit that as things change, perhaps this is a topic that will continue to arise.
I didn’t really touch on the specifics of your question with respect to using e-mail aliases. I’m a heavy user and advocate of aliasing. I think e-mail aliasing can/should be a part of your strategy at least to some degree, regardless of what approach you end up taking (and I think your current approach of hardware separations is one solid approach).