I have been slowly degoogling my life by reducing my use of Google apps and switching to FOSS alternatives. I recently created a Proton account and tried to keep it completely isolated from my default Google account so as to not let it know what my Proton mail identity is. I have finished my transition in my desktop to the best of my ability and am planning to start the same with my mobile. The only thing I have done in my Android phone related to Proton is having downloaded ProtonVPN and signed into my account within the app. However I fear by downloading ProtonMail and signing into it, my Android phone would identify the email account, which could make this entire transition useless. Is there a way to avoid this situation or has the damage already been done. What does Google know about my Proton account, if at all?
I would think a big reason to use proton is to keep google (or another provider) from reading the contents of your email.
Why is keeping your ProtonMail email “hidden” important to you? Answering that will hopefully let us come to a better way of achieving the goal.
Also, anyone can figure out if you’re using Proton by the email address or DNS on the domain name.
It’s not important at all why they want to do it.
Do they wanna prevent spam? Use SimpleLogin/addy and never give out their actual email. Google knowing it is probably not mean more spam, but you could still filter out emails to the base email address.
Wanna prevent hacking attempts? Enable 2FA, and again, Google knowing probably doesn’t increase the attack surface area too much.
There are a bunch of reasons why you’d want to hide an email account, but the remediations are all very different depending on that reason. At the end of the scale you’d probably never wanna use the app at all, and just login via browser (not chrome), but even then is Google key logging Android? Who knows.
So you’re right, it’s not important why they want to do it, it’s crucial if they actually want to be helped properly.
I am just a casual person who takes privacy a bit more seriously than the general public. To be frank, I don’t even use Google services that much. I just wished to end my reliance on Google due to what I learned about their practices. However I can only go so far. I have a busy life and I do all these privacy related work during my free time. I don’t have a GrapheneOS compatible android phone, I don’t have the liberty to switch to a new phone, and I don’t have the knowledge to set up a custom ROM. I just want to take as many measures to increase my privacy without going to extreme measures like rooting my phone or setting up pihole.
I’ve tried to use alternatives from f-droid. switched to firefox (specifically mull), disabled unnecessary permissions and telemetry from Google apps etc. However, seeing all of the comments here suggesting actions that I am simply unable to take feels like all the other things I’ve done so far have been in vain and I should just succumb to Google’s spying, which I am feeling to do indeed especially after learning how much data Google has collected about me, making privacy in my phone virtually nonexistent.
Look people have a very “all or nothing” approach that I myself disagree with. They want true privacy? Buy a dumb phone, never go online, and disconnect the landline.
I hear you, I also started out with just proton, but I’ve gone deeper slowly — I do have Pihole, I don’t use Google services, but these are not things you need to do to get more privacy.
I think from your comments it seems like you’re just worried Google will know your email address, and that’s… not a big deal?.You probably will give out that email address anyway, so they’ll find it eventually.
The contents of the emails, which is where important data really is, are encrypted in proton. Google shouldn’t be able to read your screen contents, but who knows for sure. So you should be fine for now, don’t worry about logging in the phone.
I sincerely thank you for understanding my situation and giving me actually useful advice.