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.

Do you think its because my email is Proton, that is why teacher can't send ? If that was Tuta or similar maybe she would bot have a problem?

That's because it's the middle of the week. I save all my email minutes by emailing on the weekends and after 7PM.

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.

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.

How do you get a burner account without a phone number?

Have you ever tried to make a google account? If they somehow let you create one, they ban you from your own account within some months/years.

This is definitely not a solution. You need something that won't lock you out from your school/work at the whim of some broken automated false-positive from an evil company with no way to contact support

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.

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.

You could use SMSPool.

Thanks, I hate it 🤣

While funny, your teacher and school aren't going to give you kudos for being a smartass.

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.

Just make a Gmail account and set it up to forward to your real one.

I think this is a bad idea because now google knows your identity and knows the identity of your real email. So the NSA knows too. Forever. You basically "infect" or out your anonymous email that way.

I think having an "official" smartphone with your personal information for shit like this and never letting it interact with your anonymous ids either way is the only proper way. Not even email either account. You'd need some easy way to swap files that can't be monitored from the outside. And a VPN so the IPs never overlap. And then they probably still can associate both ids.

Have you ever tried to make a google account? If they somehow let you create one, they ban you from your own account within some months/years.

This is definitely not a solution. You need something that won't lock you out from your school/work at the whim of some broken automated false-positive from an evil company with no way to contact support

Lol that was not my experience. School taught me how to fight against oppression. It was everywhere

You went to a shit school then. Mine taught critical thinking, problem solving and working as a group to achieve a common goal. It also highly encouraged independent extracurricular activities with all sorts of clubs/teams that got school funding to finance their work. If you wanted it to be, you had a giant playground for academically inclined people experimenting and wanting to learn.

Tell them it your own custom domain in Google Workspace.

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.

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.

This is a terrible idea. You need something that's not going to delete all your data and lock you out from being able to submit your assignment just because they detected a naked dog photo that some bully sent you

Do you think library PC would be considered trusted environment?

This is terrible advice. Don't do it.

Sorry, I don't get how to do it. I have Proton email. How fo register it as Google account?

Have you ever tried to make a google account? If they somehow let you create one, they ban you from your own account within some months/years.

This is definitely not a solution. You need something that won't lock you out from your school/work at the whim of some broken automated false-positive from an evil company with no way to contact support