I am required to use Gmail as the email client for my school email
My school has provided us some emails with a custom domain (not @gmail.com but @myschool.smth) and we as students are only able to login via gmail, however i obviously do not want that. What can i do to prevent that? I tried logging into the email via Thunderbird but i get blocked because my administrator doesn't allow that.
15 replies
You get to choose what you use in your personal life, but you won't have much choice in your workplace.
My opinion is, be prudent. Compartmentalize school and life as much as you can.
The same can be said about work. I don't use Microsoft products in my personal life, but work, work I have to use Microsoft products.
As others have said; compartmentalize it. Treat it as it's own entity. So for me, what I don't want Microsoft to know about I keep off work machines, and work emails, and work network.
We sadly don't get choice when it comes to things like School, work, etc the same as we do for our personal.
Get used to work (or school) being separate from personal. Use a different device wherever possible. If it's not, use a separate web browser at the very least and delete your device level advertising ID, don't access gmail with Chrome on an Android device since that usually logs you in at the device level, too, and don't add the login to a personal Android device to reduce some of the links between them. Just understand the risk of not using a separate device. For example, some systems will have the ability for corporate accounts like Google Workspace, Microsoft Exchange, etc., to wipe the device it's accessed from when you leave, and if that's your personal device, well too bad.
You need to suck it up; work and school choose their email providers. Use it purely for work - not your personal life and not for anything private. Use it in it's own browser container or even it's own browser if you want. Especially if your college doesn't provide POP3 or IMAP access. It is worth contacting the college IT to see if that is something you can use though - it my be something they can enable even if it's off currently or provide instructions for the correct server addresses. It'd be surprised if they didn't have either but they may want it all locked down in gmails services. More fool them.
My work (like many) uses Office 365 including Outlook for mail. So I have the crappy MS Office apps on my phone. But it is used purely for work (and I mute all notifications).
I use Firefox and have google account for my android stuff, which is in a container. And I also use the linux version of Edge (which is a flatpak) for the rare time I want to look at my work email of office online on my PC.
Talk to admin about alternatives, if they don't give you any suck it up and use gmail to access official school communication that goes to that email. It sucks, but you can't always control these things yourself.
You can set up auto forwarding of emails, to add last receive mails on another client using another inbox.
You could open gmail inside a separate firefox container. As long as you don't use the email beyond school purposes it would be fine.
I think this is typical. Microsoft/Outlook is popular too.
What's your issue with using gmail exactly?
Presumably, privacy. Google is actively weaponizing and selling all data we give them.
But if it's just for a school account then just use that account for school.
Sure. But don't forget to take steps to prevent Google from harvesting your non-school data anyway. If using an official Gmail app, you're probably screwed; they get your location, wifi, device info, why not?
If using a web browser, be sure it's a privacy-focused one, don't sign into anything but Gmail, and sign out and close the browser completely every time to clear cached data. And Google will still scan every email with automated scrapers, potentially training their AI on your carefully written essays, etc.
Change schools.
I wish lol
I mean.. they control this, not you.
The only sane approach would've been to use an email client, but you already said they block Thunderbird, so... use gmail in a vm in a private browser tab i guess...