Hi, my wife decided to create a new email for our newborn daughter which my wife would use to send updates to our relatives about what is going on in our daughter life. My wife is using gmail, I do use proton. She has created a new gmail account but I have asked her to reconsider and to create a new account on proton privacy wise. What arguments would you use for my case? Thanks.
You’re broadcasting to family who will likely be using gmail, so what difference does it make? Google will get all the emails either way. Anyway, logical argumentation is completely useless in a personal situation like that.
If you want the address to be stable in the long term, you should probably use your own domain name instead of gmail or proton, if you’re not already doing that. After that, it’s possible to switch the hosting without changing the email address.
The only sane answer in this whole thread.
i see that years or decades of frustration in the face of “i have nothing to hide” comes off as insanity to you :/
This is just called actually understanding your threat model and fully evaluating the controls available to you. Basic information security.
The most secure password policy in the world doesn’t matter if your users just write them down on sticky notes on their desks. Security on your end doesn’t matter if you’re sending the data to an insecure destination.
Same concepts apply to privacy.
m’kay
A newborn doesn’t need an email address
yeah but we think it’s nice to send the updates to family from her email, not from ours.
is it legal at all to have an email address at that age?
The baby didn’t create the account?
you are totally right, it was created for the baby, in the name of her
fortunately we dont live in the usa
does the USA have such a law? Honestly I would be surprised.
I’m talking with the EU in mind. Probably GDPR, but there may be other laws affecting it
OP didn’t state their wife’s age but it is a safe assumption they are old enough to sign up for an email address.
Obviously I didn’t talk about the wife’s age, but of the newborn for whom the wife has made a google account
This is no different to me having a email dedicated to searching for a house to give to real estate agents and someone saying “I don’t think it’s legal that a house has an email”. It was frustrating reading up until your comment that people just didn’t get it.
The problem isnt gmail, the problem is using an email for this purpose. Switching to protonmail wont make a difference. If you want privacy, use a different communications protocol. For example, use signal, and if anyone wants baby updates, they better install it too, cause thats the only way you’ll send them.
Wait until she’s old enough to decide for herself. I would be really jacked off to find my parents had put my life online from the minute I was born.
And Google of all the ones she could have chosen? Your wife needs to have a good talk with herself.
Your daughter’s Google account can be closed without appeal. All the memories gone. This less likely to happen using Proton or Tuta.
Have you considered putting letters written on paper in the post?
Seems unwise to give your child’s early life story to any of these companies, especially when mapped to a network of her relatives and likely including photographs which people may not be as diligent to keep private as you.
Your daughter cannot consent to this, and it is your duty as parents to protect her privacy until she is old enough to decide for herself what to share and where.
Why not use the emails you guys already have? I don’t think I or even you guys would want to use an email created by parents, since the username might not even be something they would have chosen for themselves.
Let them have an email when they are old enough to create their own. Use something like simplelogin maybe instead for an alias email instead that still comes to your email but looks separate for relatives it is sent to? I wouldn’t want a premaid email account of my own before I was old enough.
Google looks. Google reports. Even if you did nothing wrong you’re guilty until you prove innocent and even then you’ll never get your account back.
Well, unless you convert everyone else to proton or similar services, you’re kinda screwed on the privacy end of things already. I mean, it’s better than nothing, I guess, but it’s you’re sending to addresses that aren’t privacy friendly, it’s still exposed on the recipient’s end.
Not worth arguing about on that level.
Now, if the account is actually going to be the kid’s some day, that’s different. You can make the point of making sure that their first account with an “all in one” provider be with a service that’s a better “business neighbor” for all the associated services. Keep the Google account for the very few things that can’t be avoided, but shift primary usage of email, password management, etc to the less obnoxious service provider because they’re a better service rather than arguing about practically non existent privacy in email.
“arguments” alone don’t suffice.
a demonstration of how easy it is to use proton drive (to share videos and millions of photos she’s going to dump on relatives who are barely interested in seeing another baby photo) and protonMail would be more convincing.
Privacy interfaces have evolved to be attractive to lambda users.
when it comes to your wife uploading your daughters photographs to google servers, she can’t decide alone: you share the authority (but would this argument matter in a marriage? No?
would having a protonMail matter if the photographs are attachments and recipients have gmail? No.
good luck. Not an easy task
I don’t get the whole email thing, people are already doing that stuff on Facebook and your relatives are probably there too.
And someone in your family at some point will take a picture of your kid and put it up on whatever the social media of choice is.
