

Ask HN: Google accounts paranoia - redegg

My OCD with Google has gone too far. Its to the point where I am creating a Google account for each category of services offered by Google for my Android phone. I feel some accounts should be separated because of their nature.<p>Currently my individual Google accounts:<p>1 for Play Store<p>1 for community-oriented services (Google+, YouTube)<p>1 for Email (Google Apps)<p>1 for Google Voice<p>1 for Chrome Sync between desktop/mobile browser<p>Is there really any benefit to this, or do I really have paranoia of Google 'profiling' my information from multiple services on an account?
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Sami_Lehtinen
Well, I feel the very same way. I really don't know if there is any benefit
from this. Actually it's just annoying to login and log out when doing
different tasks. I'm sure they're able to link all of those accounts together
very easily.

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imtyler
I agree. I'm sure Google has at least _some_ idea of what's going on. I'll
assume you're using pseudonyms and other falsified credentials in order to
prevent Google from linking your information... but your phone's MAC address
and IP indicate that the accounts are all being utilized regularly by the same
device. The big question is whether or not Google's systems are sophisticated
enough to distinguish one device with multiple users from a single user with
multiple accounts. Because Google's algorithms are proprietary there's little
chance we'll ever definitively know whether or not they're successfully seeing
through your tactics (unless there's some sort of public privacy statement
that I don't know about).

At this point I'd say the benefits are outweighed by the fact that your
efforts could very well be pointless.

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critique
One limitation I know of is google can not change country of residence for
merchant accounts, so make sense to keep different accounts atleast where it
associated with card/bank.

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mbpp
I don't get it. What's wrong with profiling?

