Concerned about Gmail Accounts

[tinak415]

Hi

Not sure if this is the correct forum. My apologies if this is improper.

I currently have a Gmail account for all of my Tina correspondence. Don't love Gmail, but like the fact that the emails are not stored on my computer.

I have an Android phone, so I also have a Gmail account for my boy mode. I do not use this account for any of my personal or business email. All of that is on a completely separate, non-Google, mail server provider.

But a number of people I know are starting to use Google+ and I'm starting to get real concerned that the Google empire is going to put 2+2 together and figure out Tina and "Boy mode T" are the same person, which could lead me to be unintentionally outed.

Thinking it may be time to move Tina off of Gmail. Any suggestions on where to move my email too? A number of years ago I used email provided by a CD/TG website similar to Crossdressers.com. Well they had a server meltdown, were not backing up, everything was lost forever, and they did not handle the whole thing well. I do not want to experience that again.

Any thoughts? Are my concerns real? Recommendations?

Thanks!
Tina

[~Joanne~]

I think all of the email providers are the same these days or moving into the direction that your talking about here where everything eventually will be linked together. Google is surly the nosiest, and worst, of all the sites out there and sell your info to the highest bidder the same as facebook.

I suggest you move your drab account to a completely different email provider like I have. I use hotmail/msn/outlook for all of my private emails, real drab mode, real name and such. I only have 1 email account for my girl self and that's at Gmail so if they want to link Google+ to it or any other google related sites it will all be for my femme self. That way the two don't collide hopefully.

[Karren H]

I have a gmail account for my wife and I and. Karren's email is through Yahoo..... so there can be no mix up or cross contamination of accounts...

[DonnaT]

I have AOL accounts for me and the family. I have a yahoo account for Donna, and a gmail account for my male self on the smart phone.

[sometimes_miss]

Simply don't reference ANYTHING in your CD mail account to anything other account or phone number (I know, the email providers are currently hounding all of us to give them our phone numbers, all in the name of 'security'. That doesn't mean you have to do it!).

Oh and something very important that you should all know;
DO NOT PUT YOUR CONTACTS OTHER PERSONAL INFORMATION INTO YOUR ONLINE EMAIL ACCOUNTS!!!!!!!
This is the easiest way for them to access more information on you and your family and friends. You think that it's convenient to have all of their contact information in one place, but forget that greedy uncle yahoo, uncle google, and uncle hotmail are all collecting all that information, and cross referencing it in order to sell that information to marketers. And if marketers can get it, so can everyone else!

[IngeInCO]

Hi

Not sure if this is the correct forum. My apologies if this is improper.

I currently have a Gmail account for all of my Tina correspondence. Don't love Gmail, but like the fact that the emails are not stored on my computer.

I have an Android phone, so I also have a Gmail account for my boy mode. I do not use this account for any of my personal or business email. All of that is on a completely separate, non-Google, mail server provider.

But a number of people I know are starting to use Google+ and I'm starting to get real concerned that the Google empire is going to put 2+2 together and figure out Tina and "Boy mode T" are the same person, which could lead me to be unintentionally outed.

Thinking it may be time to move Tina off of Gmail. Any suggestions on where to move my email too? A number of years ago I used email provided by a CD/TG website similar to Crossdressers.com. Well they had a server meltdown, were not backing up, everything was lost forever, and they did not handle the whole thing well. I do not want to experience that again.

Any thoughts? Are my concerns real? Recommendations?

Thanks!
Tina

Don't worry unless you give your accounts and passwords in your profile(s). And don't share a picture. End of the day no way to connect anything unless you do.

[Tiffbear]

Simple.

Remove Tina from your boy mode gmail. Don't put up a profile picture for Tina's account. Don't use your real last name.

Use Tina's account in incognito mode on your computer when you check the email, that way the cookies stored won't be read, and g+ think you two are friends.

And most importantly, don't fill in any g+ info for Tina.

No one will know.

It just takes a little bit of thinking to keep the two separate. Not hard at all.

[I Am Paula]

Without sounding like a tin foil helmet wearing conspiracy theorist, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING. During the cold war , big brother was looking for pinkos. In the 21 st. century, big brother wants your consumer information. If you're trying to stay on the downlow, the only real option is stay off the internet. Hard to do huh? Well, just count on big brother putting 2&2 together eventually, and decide if it will matter when they do. If big brother knows that Dick and Jane are the same person, will anybody else? Put passwords on your accts.and get the wife and kids their own computers.-Celeste

[lingerieLiz]

Well Google does scan emails to see what your interest are for ad display. HUH! They don't care about rating you out they just want you click on what is displayed. If you want free email go out and search for "free email accounts". There are about 20. Reagan.com promises never to scan your emails. If you are willing to pay then there are a multitude of sites that will host your email from Rackspace to Bobby Jo's hobby hosting service. Any of the business email hosting services are pretty safe. They don't care who or what you are. Just send 3 to 5 per month. I personally like Google, but that is just a personal choice. Be sure that if you get an account that you can use an online email browser with. There are several.

For those that want to know hosting services can read the network card ID/serial number. This site can. It identifies the card not the computer. They have your IP address. Works about like the sim card in your cell phone. Tells the network where to send the info. Online accounts are nice because you don't have any old emails around for people to find so long as you don't tell it to remember you.

[Alice Torn]

Dr. Katheryn Albrecht, is a privacy watchdog, at spychips.com, or katherinealbrecht.com She also has a national weekday radio broadcast. This gal is smart, and wise, and a cancer battler, and very interesting on these type issues.

[Jennifer Kelly]

I'm not too worried because I don't have Google+. I have my own domain with a plethora of different email addresses that I use for guy mode. Jennifer has a Gmail account, but it doesn't have a picture or any identifying information except her name. I even put a fake birthdate. Also most of my web surfing is done in Firefox, but I downloaded Chrome just for Jennifer to use, so that none of the cookies, history, etc get intermingled. I also only sign into Jennifer's email when I am actually going to read it. I don't stay signed in otherwise.

It also helps that no one but me uses this computer.

[Eryn]

I think that the best way to prevent your male and female selves being connected is to put them on competing services. Even if they harvest data they certainly won't share it with each other. Of course, you never want to send anything between the accounts.

That being said, I think that Yahoo mail is not the place to go simply because their security is lousy. An exploit was discovered in January to allow spammers to get access to people's accounts by the simple act of the people accessing a tainted website. Yahoo claimed to have fixed the problem immediately, but here we are in March and accounts are still being hijacked. Have you ever received mail from a friend's Yahoo account containing only a web link? That account has been hijacked.

If you use Yahoo mail remember never to click on links within mail messages even if they come from someone you know. When an account is hijacked the first thing it does is mail a tainted link to every address in the account. When you are done reading your own mail remember to explicitly log off of the service. If you simply navigate away Yahoo will keep you logged on, the better to entice you to use their other services. Unfortunately, it also leaves you vulnerable to any sites infected with phishing code even if you aren't actively using a Yahoo page! It seems that Yahoo is more concerned about maintaining easy access to their services via persistent logins than they are about member security.

[Jenni Yumiko]

The other way two gmail accounts wil become associated is if you got the gmail accounts when gmail was still beta and used an invite. All my invitee's are on my google +.

For the person who stated they used their own domain. Make sure it's not registered to you a simple whois from terminal will reveal the owner, technical and administrative contact. also if you use a crap domain registar like Go Daddy with privacy, that still can be circumvented using another registar.

for those really paranoid, use a throw away email like yahoo or something, only use it for registration and make all your connections regarding that via proxy. tor is pretty simple for anonymizing, or check alt.2600 for updated proxies. Since the only use for the email address is registration, nothing can be really identifiable.

[susan54]

I have a gmail account for myself and for Susan, but I use different laptops. Neither laptop has ever accessed the other account, and my non-Susan one is never used for anything girly. All they have in common is the router.

[AndreaCD1963]

I use gmail, and so does "he" - 2 different accounts. We're very careful to not cross contaminate the two - no common contacts, etc.
I use Firefox, he use IE.
I use an IPad, he uses an IPhone.
Neither of us use ICloud.
Neither of us will add our mobile phone number "for security purposes".
We both use Facebook - again we're very careful to not cross contaminate the two accounts (this one is sometimes a challenge when we want to share something with both worlds).

Sooner or late I'm sure something will go wrong, and the two worlds will collide - when that does eventually happen ... oh well, it won't be the end of the world. We'll both still be looking down at the grass and not up at it :)

[Maria S]

I just have a sub-email account from my main account from Sky my internet provider.

Maria

[Beverley Sims]

Just keep them separate and never the twain shall meet.
I hope that is how mine works.

[Eryn]

...All they have in common is the router.

In the eyes of the people whose business it is to advertise "connections" for other customers this pretty much links the accounts together!

[Emma Leigh]

I opened a Google+ account in Emma,s name and posted pics and stuff on it..then I started to worry it might be linked...at first I tried to delete the pictures but could,nt figure out how to do it..after a couple of days of trying I closed the Google+..but the pictures are still coming up on my profile...I never even set up a profile..is it possible to delete these pictures at all other than closing the gmail account completely???

[Leah Lynn]

I'm not sure if I trust any of them anymore. My guy facebook is connected through one provider, Leah's page was through another. Still, it passed on Leah's profile to my sister. Not supposed to happen, but it did. I shut down Leah's page. Now, Google+ suggests I friend the daughter of friends. Again, no connection between either account. Before long, I fear, they will all connect.

Leah

[Tiffbear]

I'm not sure if I trust any of them anymore. My guy facebook is connected through one provider, Leah's page was through another. Still, it passed on Leah's profile to my sister. Not supposed to happen, but it did. I shut down Leah's page. Now, Google+ suggests I friend the daughter of friends. Again, no connection between either account. Before long, I fear, they will all connect.

Leah
Quit adding other people as friends.

Quit connecting your accounts to other services.

Quit "like"ing things.

Use incognito mode for browsing. Or, use totally different web browsers.

This is all very simple stuff.

[Jennifer B]

Stepping away from Gmail for a second. I think a good tip, as others have said here, is to use a different browser for Boy and Girl mode. Lots of websites track you with cookies and doing so build up a map of browsing behaviour and analytical data.

It's also easy to sign into an online service and have websites that use cookies to track activity after the account appears to have logged you out. You Tube and Google are prime examples of this. The amount of "recent activity" that they track is phenomenal! Last year I closed a Google account after I saw the extent of the browsing data that they had on me over a 6 year period, it was shocking! The sort of stuff that can link Jane Doe to Jon Doe if you are not aware of what's going on.

Keep one browser in Drab and another En Femme.

[Lisa Gerrie]

> a different browser for Boy and Girl mode

And not just different sessions of the same browser; I use IE for Boy and Chrome for Girl. Keeping them separate like that helps avoid embarrassing mistakes like clicking a link for Spanx that causes a Like to appear on your male-mode Facebook wall.