Hey everyone, can you please help me what to do- I don’t have and don’t use anything from Google. Now for school I am asked to provide Gmail. Is there way out ? What else, maybe some other email provider is compatible with school emailing system, because now teacher must use her personal email to email me and she is not happy at all…
When I was in school they provided me an outlook email. I used it only for school and made sure not to put in too much personal detail. If I had to use a personal email I’d use an alias. When I had to access it at home I’d login via a website. No systems schools use are in any way good for privacy so just keep it isolated as well as possible
Just make a Gmail account and set it up to forward to your real one. Only things that live in it will be the stuff for this class, and only temporarily.
What do you actually lose privacy wise from that? They get to know you’re in the class you’re in and see a very small subset of your communications related to it.
Ultimately, you’re the only one who can decide how much extra friction you’re willing to put up with for your principles, but in my experience it’s better to just make whatever bare minimum skeleton account you can to meet the needs and get on with life. Would you rather spend time fighting to make your special case setup work while giving the teacher reasons to evaluate your work more harshly, or learning the material?
Plus, there are benefits to blending in.
Those are some important principles. Recently, I’ve been thinking about following this method in a completely different context.
Using a privacy-respecting phone is entirely doable as long as you don’t need to interact with certain parts of the modern world. In 2010, such problems didn’t exist, but mobile Linux wasn’t available for this kind of use. Nowadays it is, but the world around it has moved on, and what’s required for a daily driver of a normie has changed radically.
So here’s how to adapt: Get some basic Android phone and use it for doing the few necessities that don’t work on a FOSS-based phone. That Android is just a skeleton. There’s nothing too personal, and you don’t use it for anything unless absolutely necessary. Same as that Gmail idea, but adapted.
Someone else said
nobody should be expected to drop their principles on a whim.
But this is exactly what school is about, training you that you’re nothing but a cog in the machine, teaching you to accept getting beaten down over nothing just because someone higher up the chain from you made a decision and why would he ever consult you in that decision you’re just a lowly student/worker.
I found this article. I will try to create Gmail account in library, because through my Tor browser with VPN is asking phone nr. https://itsourcecode.com/blogs/how-to-create-a-gmail-account-without-a-phone-number/
You cannot create a gmail without a phone number these days. There used to be work aroubda where you sign up for a gmail via youtube or on a smart TV (don’t advise the smart TV one), but I’m sure that doesn’t work anymore.
I think if you don’t want the gmail associated with your phone number you just have to buy a prepaid phone. If you live in a country where you can’t pay for prepaids with cash and without an I’D, then I don’t know. Welcome to the ponopticon I guess.
I can’t vouch for those paid SMS services, they seem like a scam to me.
I’ve created gmail without a phone number. It seems to still be possible.
How recently, what country are you on, and what method.
It was around last year.
Fresh firefox profile, US. Worked fine.
Maybe it doesn’t work if I try it again.
Yeah its been a good year or two that you pretty much need a phone number.
If its a fresh residential IP that’s not already been flagged, or you havent made too many gmail accounts already then it might still work. You might have to buy a new device completely and then it works. But I am doubtful, I don’t have the resources to test all of that but from what it seems they’re locking out all the methods.
Can you create one for me? I dgaf if you have access to it 🤣
You could use SMSPool.
google is very picky about this, but you can still create a google acc if using a “trusted” environment.
i had success on a relative’s android phone (with preexisting google acc and valid usim) and school computer (windows chrome). they probably internally log ties to that machine being used to create acc, but at least it doesn’t ask for phone number to auth and stuff. so, try using your school computer/tablet/etc for registration
Ask your teacher to check with the IT department why there’s such a restriction in the first place. Maybe they just falsely assume that Gmail == email? If they actually can’t use any other provider, both you and your teacher should confront the IT department or whoever made that decision.
It’s probably for auth. Make all the kids get a Gmail and then use it as your identity provider. Way cheaper and easier than running your own IDP.
This is not as simple as you make it out to be.
Teachers are not IT experts, nor are they privacy aware in many cases. School IT people are at best tech-savvy teachers who know where the esc key is. So entering a discussion with them will end up in a monologue from their end explaining their hands are tied. Schools (or groups of schools) make decisions on what infrastructure to use, and they hardly stray from that, just like companies do.
Best bet is to setup a burner account which you solely use on school assignments. Set up your browser (or dedicate a separate browser to school) to use different profile directories (!!) so you don’t mix private with school.
Maybe the teacher’s just using the software wrong? The “restriction” might as well be a user error. That’s worth considering before giving up and making a Google account, don’t you think?
That sounds super weird.
Does the school provide a Google account and email?
Even if they wanted it for authentication purposes, they’d have their own setup through Google. They wouldn’t insist on you having your own.Is it just one teacher?
Ask another, see what they say.
If they confirm that’s how it works, then just make a gmail account for school.
If not, then you can decide how much you want to push back and educate this one teacher.Agree. Also weird b/c G has a special Google for Education scheme for schools. Which the school would be tied into, and accounts would be made through that. G makes promises like it won’t use the student’s data for other purposes, no profiling, no ads, etc.
I still wouldn’t be happy with having to use G as a student. For lots of reasons, like normalizing it so students will keep using G after they graduate. Even so, I believe G does make a good faith effort to adhere to their promises about not using student data for other purposes. But prob only if done through the official channels to create the acct.
This is a massive problem here too. Schools create these google accounts where teachers share work, etc. Its as if only google existed. How can we teach our kids to be openminded? I praise the suposedly young person that posted. Not all young people understand the threats of lockins.
There’s a lot more to this than lock in and open mindedness. Are you going to cause friction to multiple other people in a collaborative situation? Are you going to do it for something as small as opinions about data collection companies?
Like, go ahead and question it. Go ahead and see if you can get by without it. But if it’s making things significantly more difficult, are you personally capable of compromise? No one is making you sign your whole life and soul over to Google. You can make, use for this one class, and delete the account when you’re done.
Are you going to do it for something as small as opinions about data collection companies?
That is not a small thing; that is a very large thing! Society is being destroyed in large part because of that!
Fuck compromising with people who support this shit. It is good to be as obstinate as possible in that situation!
The blame isn’t on you tbf nobody should be expected to drop their principles on a whim. Being compatible only with gmail is so bad… I hope you can work it out but it’s more a thing for school faculty to change.
Worst case scenario you make a burner acc. Are you sure there’s no “login/connect with another provider” type link?
Participants, what is I use Googlemail@proton.me ? Hahahahahha I was trying to find a solution which looks like Gmail to pass them😅 anyway, I will be talking with teacher in next days and I will ask about why they need my Gmail only. And I will say that I don’t even have one. Maybe it will be enough to tell that all necessary info I will get during physical meetings and there is no reason to email me.
While funny, your teacher and school aren’t going to give you kudos for being a smartass.
I know… trying to find a way that everyone would be happy…
Thanks, I hate it 🤣
Google Classroom is generally managed by the School’s IT. Your setup is strange if they request public gmail account and not internal account in the school tenant.
- Your teacher is correct in not being happy. Giving their personal email to a student is… problematic
- Remember that your privacy is already breached when a 3rd party in the communication is using gmail
- Simply create a burner gmail account and do not use that for anything else than inside your school’s google ecosystem
Or any teacher should be perfectly capable of setting up a throwaway account for teaching work, just like some are recommending the student do. Every piece of friction with data fascists is a positive gain for everyone else. It’s the people opting for low friction who are greasimg the rails for fascists of all stripes.
Just give them your email and tell them it is gmail.
Tell them it your own custom domain in Google Workspace.
“Yeah I own protonmail.com”
Why does your school not have their own in house email for students?
Most schools in the US use gmail as their in house email, even if you get a purdue.edu address the interface and backend is all gmail.
Guess I’m old. You could import it to gmail or outlook when I was in school, but everything was initially on our uni’s own stuff.
But this was still when gmail was new.
Isn’t outlook more common?
It could have been many moons ago. But about ten years ago, Google rolled out an irresistible deal for schools that included the workspace suite and unlimited storage. The schools took it up passionately and this is how we got students opening up a Google Docs browser tab that consumes 540 MB of RAM just to jot down a note two sentences long, and schools stuck with Google even as they aggressively whittle away at the promised ‘unlimited’ storage.
Leave [that] school.
You can learn more, faster, at your own pace, with a library card and an internet connection (if you use it like a library, not like TV).
You could also try walking your teacher through the user agreement… paying special attention to the deal with the devil clause, where they can change the agreement after you agree. And the parts about how they use all your data, and how they consider your emails their property after 90 days, and and and… So many egregious points. So against the spirit of pedagogy that any educational institute should be about.
yeah, just show your library card when asked for a degree
very nice
Just get one. If you only use it for school, and the school mandates it, Google is going to know where you’re going to school and nothing more. The school has chosen to share that information with them. There’s nothing you can do about that.
Just make sure you only use it from a non-gmail client. And zip and password protect any files you send if you can.
To get Gmail I need phone nr. If I put phone nr,it’s connected Gmail with phone nr. I don’t want G know anything about me.
I’m not sure what phone NR is.
If you get Gmail, you can install Thunderbird on your phone, and connect to it like that. All Google would know is that you’re connecting to that email from that IP. And if you’re concerned about that, maybe get a VPN.
Perhaps you could direct your teacher to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail#Criticism. This is just laziness and stupidity on the part of the school, IMNSHO.
Teacher likely doesn’t have the power to change the system and is just another user, so you’d just be tilting at a windmill. At best, preaching to the choir.
It would be like me telling you why I don’t like Gmail since you don’t seem to like it, either.
