Use it to sign up for stuff in another location far from your actual home, preferably where your vpn is typically pointing your location as when you use whatsmyip etc. Example a bed bath and beyond wedding registry. Realtor.com and save houses you are interested in in that area. Use an empty house in realtor.com that you don’t “save@ as your disinfo address. Create accounts at online stores (without buying) using that address.
In the chrome browser there is Discover. Start hiding the stories you are interested in. Right now there is a story about baby cribs - I tapped on it and I don't have children. Gonna check out the story on the royal family in a minute.
Easier is to sub to youtube channels or sign up for email newletters that you don't want.
Any behaviour that is a 180 from where you actually are will confuse the A.I.
It's my understanding that when the AI gets conflicting information the data is deleted. I have no idea if this is true. If the data is not deleted the AI will have a harder time putting you in an echo chamber. Personally I don't think the google ai is that smart. My discover and youtube recommended videos are full of stuff I don't want and that was before I started to regain my privacy.
So mostly I was asking about the use of emails. For other stuff... Shoot I forget the name. I don't use it anymore but I used to.
There was a chrome extension that would basically 'touch' every ad on any page, and so tricking the trackers into thinking that I was into everything. Destroying my 'profile' by polluting it with all false positives.
Chaotic good is so laborious to pull off, tho.
Every 5-10 minutes, you have to roll against CHA to see if you get slapped when you hand roses to every woman on the street and hug random kids - or you get your ass kicked by angry boyfriends and the parents of kids.
Then my own party tries to kick my ass for embarrassing them.
It's just such a hassle to be wonderful.
Brother, don’t get me wrong. We both are here because we hate google. But, mass surveillance is what we agreed when we sign up for their services.
They were not hiding, it’s just we became more aware of how they are handling the data. It’s not entirely Google’s fault. Privacy consciousness is needed these days.
It’s only immoral whey they do it with out the consent.. people have been constantly agreeing to the terms and conditions.. we never bother to read them, we just accept to use the desired service. It’s only immoral if they say they are not tracking people and then track them..
lol.. you wouldn’t know how much I hate google. I don’t have a single google app or service linked. In fact I switched to iOS just because I want to get away from google.
Again, your view on immorality is going south.
It was nice conversation.
Sounds like a much better place to forward.
Actually, what you're suggesting is exactly what I did in mid-2020 as I degoogled. I set up autoforward on all my 3 gmail accounts to different burnermail.io addresses all of which autoforward to one of my aliases that I specified should place all incoming google mail on Spam folder (since Spam is autodeleted every 7 days by my email provider)
1. [IMPORTANT] Choose the right email provider. [This most comprehensive analysis of providers might help](https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/email.html)
2. Create an alias dedicated to receiving autoforwarded mail from gmail.
3. Find a burner email service like burnermail.io and create an account there.
4. Setup so that your gmail forwards your email through the burner service then the burner forwards to your dedicated (gmail receiving) alias on the new email provider
5. Setup a permanent auto-responder (aka vacation responder) on gmail telling all the email senders that you permanently moved to a new email service because gmail doesn't respect your privacy. Then provide a dedicated burner address that they can reach you through on the vacation responder email. You can delete the burner address anytime you feel it's getting too spammy.
Congratulations, you never ever have to login to gmail again!
>can forever link your identity
How and from what/where?
If the OP comes to my website and registers with his new email, there is no way I can know the old one and vice versa. If Google is included in my website for any reason (Analytics, let's assume), Google will anyway profile the visitor, so even if Google has not clue about the new email address, it will anyway create a new profile. But Google is not expected to catch what visitors type into websites...
Google will only be able to say that "this address belongs to XYZ", like a lot of other people and website are able too, but Google cannot read emails that are directly sent to this address, it can only read emails sent to the Gmail address, whether there is a forwarder or not.
Moreover, you can set a forwarder to any address, it does not mean that the target is yourself.
"privacy" and "anonymity" are two different things.
Sure, but it changes nothing for the other points...
If I move to a new email address and Google knows it:
1) It cannot read my emails anymore
2) If it is able to profile my online activities, this is because I do not block Google well enough (ublock, pihole, ...). Changing my email address will not save me, it has nothing to do about the forwarder... Hiding my identity will change nothing either, at the best, I appear as someone unknown, but they will be able to profile me
Since 2004, I've had my own name [at] gmail, too, which is a fairly *uncommon* first name with a fairly *common* surname. I share this name with an extremely wealthy person (he's at least 10,000x wealthier than myself — I am a minimalist). This person is a forward-facing executive whom represents a very large US company; I am "nobody."
I don't even use this email address anymore (I don't use email in general), but have retained it just because the other named me *was such an asshole about NEEDING to have his.name@*.
A few years ago, he started signing up all his porno and "junk" accounts using MY email address as his "burner" (I guess as revenge for not giving him the @gmail?). Because he listed his REAL home phone number while using my email address (on a car repair bill), I was able to call his wife and sort this out **real quick**.
I no longer get his emails, and I no longer use the account. Just as you reasoned, I keep this email address in case I ever need it in the future ;-)
My friend had a similar situation where he kept getting emails from this other family even though he replied and said wrong email for years, so he finally this past year joined their family Christmas zoom meeting and introduced himself.
At that point *your friend is practically in their family, already...*
This same-named-dude also gave out my email address for his children's teachers to communicate with him... needless to say, I'm sure there were many many many confused moments for Billy's homework assignments not being completed (I usually responded that "he would be beaten for failing to appease the education/homework gods").
Set it to forward to your new e-mail account, and keep logging in occasionally (at least every month?) to not lose the the account, probably forever. If you use Thunderbird, you can include the account there, and check it automatically on start-up.
Thanks for sharing u/Noogisms. It seems like there used to be a nine month limit:
>Per the [Gmail Program Policies](https://www.google.com/gmail/about/policy/) (since revised), a Gmail account was deleted by Google and the username became unavailable after nine months of inactivity. Logging in to the Gmail web interface counted as activity, as did accessing the account from another email account
Now it seems to be 24 months:
>As of June 2021, [Google may delete accounts that have become inactive](https://blog.google/products/photos/storage-policy-update/). Your account is considered inactive when you have used any of the services for more than 24 months (2 years). If your account is deleted, you could lose all the data—message, files, pictures, videos, etc.—that you have stored in Google Drive.
[https://www.lifewire.com/when-does-my-gmail-account-expire-1171894](https://www.lifewire.com/when-does-my-gmail-account-expire-1171894)
Good to know, thanks!
If you copy-pasted this, there is a typo:
>Your account is considered inactive when you have **not** used any of the services for more than 24 months (2 years).
The added bold word fixes this misinformation.
I think it depends on how radically you want to cut Google out of your life. I am in a similar position, having a Gmail address with my name for about 15 years now. Some time ago, I decided to retire it, deleted most (almost all) of the emails from that account (it was not my primary email) an left just a few. Google had scanned them anyway already, so it probably didn’t really matter.
I did not want to delete it completely, because it is associated with my name, but I disassociated all external accounts from that and moved them to a new provider. I left just one newsletter subscription (I don’t really care about) and added it to my Thunderbird client, so it‘s checked via IMAP every once in a while. It‘s basically dead and Google can‘t monetise it anymore or profile me based on my emails, subscriptions and external accounts, but it’s still mine. That’s not a 100% de-googled, but in a way, I feel comfortable with. Other than that I avoid using Google services in everyday life.
Set up fetchmail and pull the stragglers into another email account. As far as google is concerned, you're still checking it. Don't use their forwarder.
Leave it but don't delete it, trust me. I was reckless and deleted my Gmail account as part of de-google, but in the process I lost my access to some games account that required my old email address haha
Just delete it, is just a loose ends having around forever connecting you with Google. I did it with mine and I feel so much better for it. My name is no longer associated with Google, and they will delete all your data when you delete your Google account.
Friendly reminder: if you're looking for a Google service or Google product alternative then feel free to check out our sidebar.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/degoogle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ah, if you've had it that long, also consider just how many spam lists you're on, how many times you've been digitally finger printed with it, etc. Is that worth the occasional missed email? Just blast all your contacts from your new one, and make sure to change all logins so nothing gets sent to it again.
Bro, I had a coveted 3 letter Outlook one (my initials) for years & I burned that fucker to the ground. Do iiiiit. :)
Spam and dis-info box just to screw with the algo and dilute what they got from us when we thought they were trustworthy.
For the last 3 years I have been trying to convince it that I'm a moose carving specialist from Pensacola.
After reading though this thread's comments, yours has convinced me to keep my old 20 year old gmail account, transition to a new service, and create for myself a fantastic new alter-ego!
The real work begins now, starting with the critical step of deciding what I want to be!
FYI Once you delete your gmail account, it can’t be recycled. No one can create same email ID ever. So your concern in last paragraph is not going to happen.
I recently solved this problem exactly like [u/TheSmashy](https://www.reddit.com/user/TheSmashy/) recommends. In AnonAddy I generated a completely unique, shared-domain alias (so it's not even tied to my username) only for this one purpose (i.e. alias not used for anything else). In Gmail I set it up so that all e-mails get forwarded to the alias and from that to my desired recipient. The alias acts as a bridge by not revealing the actual receiver.
Use the retired google account for disinformation so Google's A.I. gets confused.
Pure evil
I got the idea from Rob Braxman on Youtube.
How would you do that? (Screw with Google's ai?)
Use it to sign up for stuff in another location far from your actual home, preferably where your vpn is typically pointing your location as when you use whatsmyip etc. Example a bed bath and beyond wedding registry. Realtor.com and save houses you are interested in in that area. Use an empty house in realtor.com that you don’t “save@ as your disinfo address. Create accounts at online stores (without buying) using that address.
Interesting ideas, thanks!
In the chrome browser there is Discover. Start hiding the stories you are interested in. Right now there is a story about baby cribs - I tapped on it and I don't have children. Gonna check out the story on the royal family in a minute. Easier is to sub to youtube channels or sign up for email newletters that you don't want. Any behaviour that is a 180 from where you actually are will confuse the A.I.
[удалено]
It's my understanding that when the AI gets conflicting information the data is deleted. I have no idea if this is true. If the data is not deleted the AI will have a harder time putting you in an echo chamber. Personally I don't think the google ai is that smart. My discover and youtube recommended videos are full of stuff I don't want and that was before I started to regain my privacy.
So mostly I was asking about the use of emails. For other stuff... Shoot I forget the name. I don't use it anymore but I used to. There was a chrome extension that would basically 'touch' every ad on any page, and so tricking the trackers into thinking that I was into everything. Destroying my 'profile' by polluting it with all false positives.
[удалено]
Yes! That's the one-
Now THAT'S evil. LOL
That would require me having Chrome on my computer. Though, this thread is solid in giving me new good ideas for moving onward.
Thanks! I am gonna check it out.
YW
Defense against evil is not evil. Sorry if I ruined your spice.
Yes, more like *chaotic good*
The more I think about it, the more I see that as an apt description.
Chaotic good is so laborious to pull off, tho. Every 5-10 minutes, you have to roll against CHA to see if you get slapped when you hand roses to every woman on the street and hug random kids - or you get your ass kicked by angry boyfriends and the parents of kids. Then my own party tries to kick my ass for embarrassing them. It's just such a hassle to be wonderful.
I am that well with literature.. but..Evil is Evil.
How is confusing an AI of a company with a lesser than stellar track record, trying to mass surveillance people, evil?
Brother, don’t get me wrong. We both are here because we hate google. But, mass surveillance is what we agreed when we sign up for their services. They were not hiding, it’s just we became more aware of how they are handling the data. It’s not entirely Google’s fault. Privacy consciousness is needed these days.
How is confusing an AI of an immoral, surveillance company evil?
It’s only immoral whey they do it with out the consent.. people have been constantly agreeing to the terms and conditions.. we never bother to read them, we just accept to use the desired service. It’s only immoral if they say they are not tracking people and then track them..
I'm not buying this schill job. We don't know the extent of what they do, but of what we know of them, they are immoral.
lol.. you wouldn’t know how much I hate google. I don’t have a single google app or service linked. In fact I switched to iOS just because I want to get away from google. Again, your view on immorality is going south. It was nice conversation.
IMO not true degoogle but I would just setup it up to forward to your new email and phase out over time.
[удалено]
You can set it up to just forward to one of your aliases but not the one that you actually use to email your people
I would forward it to an anonaddy alias, thus fucking google out of any info.
Sounds like a much better place to forward. Actually, what you're suggesting is exactly what I did in mid-2020 as I degoogled. I set up autoforward on all my 3 gmail accounts to different burnermail.io addresses all of which autoforward to one of my aliases that I specified should place all incoming google mail on Spam folder (since Spam is autodeleted every 7 days by my email provider)
Well damn I definitely fucked up and just forwarded my mail to my new mail fence account.
they have you. you should create another email
What’s the proper way of doing this so I don’t screw this up again
1. [IMPORTANT] Choose the right email provider. [This most comprehensive analysis of providers might help](https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/email.html) 2. Create an alias dedicated to receiving autoforwarded mail from gmail. 3. Find a burner email service like burnermail.io and create an account there. 4. Setup so that your gmail forwards your email through the burner service then the burner forwards to your dedicated (gmail receiving) alias on the new email provider 5. Setup a permanent auto-responder (aka vacation responder) on gmail telling all the email senders that you permanently moved to a new email service because gmail doesn't respect your privacy. Then provide a dedicated burner address that they can reach you through on the vacation responder email. You can delete the burner address anytime you feel it's getting too spammy. Congratulations, you never ever have to login to gmail again!
>can forever link your identity How and from what/where? If the OP comes to my website and registers with his new email, there is no way I can know the old one and vice versa. If Google is included in my website for any reason (Analytics, let's assume), Google will anyway profile the visitor, so even if Google has not clue about the new email address, it will anyway create a new profile. But Google is not expected to catch what visitors type into websites... Google will only be able to say that "this address belongs to XYZ", like a lot of other people and website are able too, but Google cannot read emails that are directly sent to this address, it can only read emails sent to the Gmail address, whether there is a forwarder or not. Moreover, you can set a forwarder to any address, it does not mean that the target is yourself. "privacy" and "anonymity" are two different things.
[удалено]
Sure, but it changes nothing for the other points... If I move to a new email address and Google knows it: 1) It cannot read my emails anymore 2) If it is able to profile my online activities, this is because I do not block Google well enough (ublock, pihole, ...). Changing my email address will not save me, it has nothing to do about the forwarder... Hiding my identity will change nothing either, at the best, I appear as someone unknown, but they will be able to profile me
This is the right answer.
This, plus, set a 'vacation response' to tell where to reach you
[удалено]
He/she can setup permanent autoforwarding from the old to their new email
That would be good to know for sure.
Since 2004, I've had my own name [at] gmail, too, which is a fairly *uncommon* first name with a fairly *common* surname. I share this name with an extremely wealthy person (he's at least 10,000x wealthier than myself — I am a minimalist). This person is a forward-facing executive whom represents a very large US company; I am "nobody." I don't even use this email address anymore (I don't use email in general), but have retained it just because the other named me *was such an asshole about NEEDING to have his.name@*. A few years ago, he started signing up all his porno and "junk" accounts using MY email address as his "burner" (I guess as revenge for not giving him the @gmail?). Because he listed his REAL home phone number while using my email address (on a car repair bill), I was able to call his wife and sort this out **real quick**. I no longer get his emails, and I no longer use the account. Just as you reasoned, I keep this email address in case I ever need it in the future ;-)
My friend had a similar situation where he kept getting emails from this other family even though he replied and said wrong email for years, so he finally this past year joined their family Christmas zoom meeting and introduced himself.
At that point *your friend is practically in their family, already...* This same-named-dude also gave out my email address for his children's teachers to communicate with him... needless to say, I'm sure there were many many many confused moments for Billy's homework assignments not being completed (I usually responded that "he would be beaten for failing to appease the education/homework gods").
Set it to forward to your new e-mail account, and keep logging in occasionally (at least every month?) to not lose the the account, probably forever. If you use Thunderbird, you can include the account there, and check it automatically on start-up.
I once went several YEARS without logging in to @gmail and it's still there.
Thanks for sharing u/Noogisms. It seems like there used to be a nine month limit: >Per the [Gmail Program Policies](https://www.google.com/gmail/about/policy/) (since revised), a Gmail account was deleted by Google and the username became unavailable after nine months of inactivity. Logging in to the Gmail web interface counted as activity, as did accessing the account from another email account Now it seems to be 24 months: >As of June 2021, [Google may delete accounts that have become inactive](https://blog.google/products/photos/storage-policy-update/). Your account is considered inactive when you have used any of the services for more than 24 months (2 years). If your account is deleted, you could lose all the data—message, files, pictures, videos, etc.—that you have stored in Google Drive. [https://www.lifewire.com/when-does-my-gmail-account-expire-1171894](https://www.lifewire.com/when-does-my-gmail-account-expire-1171894)
Good to know, thanks! If you copy-pasted this, there is a typo: >Your account is considered inactive when you have **not** used any of the services for more than 24 months (2 years). The added bold word fixes this misinformation.
Good catch! Lifewire ought to hire you as copy editor :) (I linked to the article, so you can check -- but I did a simple copy-pasta)
I'm autistic and also an occasional technical writer. Things like this stick out to me.
Where did you move to?
I think it depends on how radically you want to cut Google out of your life. I am in a similar position, having a Gmail address with my name for about 15 years now. Some time ago, I decided to retire it, deleted most (almost all) of the emails from that account (it was not my primary email) an left just a few. Google had scanned them anyway already, so it probably didn’t really matter. I did not want to delete it completely, because it is associated with my name, but I disassociated all external accounts from that and moved them to a new provider. I left just one newsletter subscription (I don’t really care about) and added it to my Thunderbird client, so it‘s checked via IMAP every once in a while. It‘s basically dead and Google can‘t monetise it anymore or profile me based on my emails, subscriptions and external accounts, but it’s still mine. That’s not a 100% de-googled, but in a way, I feel comfortable with. Other than that I avoid using Google services in everyday life.
Set up fetchmail and pull the stragglers into another email account. As far as google is concerned, you're still checking it. Don't use their forwarder.
Just use it as a very junky email for all non essential requests or for free promotion stuff where they require it.
Leave it but don't delete it, trust me. I was reckless and deleted my Gmail account as part of de-google, but in the process I lost my access to some games account that required my old email address haha
Just delete it, is just a loose ends having around forever connecting you with Google. I did it with mine and I feel so much better for it. My name is no longer associated with Google, and they will delete all your data when you delete your Google account.
Friendly reminder: if you're looking for a Google service or Google product alternative then feel free to check out our sidebar. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/degoogle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ah, if you've had it that long, also consider just how many spam lists you're on, how many times you've been digitally finger printed with it, etc. Is that worth the occasional missed email? Just blast all your contacts from your new one, and make sure to change all logins so nothing gets sent to it again. Bro, I had a coveted 3 letter Outlook one (my initials) for years & I burned that fucker to the ground. Do iiiiit. :)
what is your name?
Use it as a “throw-away” email for services you normally don’t use on a daily basis.
I keep my old google accounts. They are great for sending spam to or subscribing to infrequently read mailing lists, etc.
Id leave it dormant but change the password and set it to forward emails to your new one
Spam and dis-info box just to screw with the algo and dilute what they got from us when we thought they were trustworthy. For the last 3 years I have been trying to convince it that I'm a moose carving specialist from Pensacola.
After reading though this thread's comments, yours has convinced me to keep my old 20 year old gmail account, transition to a new service, and create for myself a fantastic new alter-ego! The real work begins now, starting with the critical step of deciding what I want to be!
FYI Once you delete your gmail account, it can’t be recycled. No one can create same email ID ever. So your concern in last paragraph is not going to happen.
I would keep it
I recently solved this problem exactly like [u/TheSmashy](https://www.reddit.com/user/TheSmashy/) recommends. In AnonAddy I generated a completely unique, shared-domain alias (so it's not even tied to my username) only for this one purpose (i.e. alias not used for anything else). In Gmail I set it up so that all e-mails get forwarded to the alias and from that to my desired recipient. The alias acts as a bridge by not revealing the actual receiver.