My school can track my browsing when I'm at home and using the Google account they gave me, the laptop is my personal one. Is there a way that they could track what I do, even though I'm on my other Google account? My school email has been on my laptop for a year or 2 and I'm just concerned that they could track things such as my bank information and business information.
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3 Answers
No. They would have access to the stuff you do on your school account. They can't access everything just through their access to your school account.
There are other ways for them to see what you do on the computer if they have things installed on it.
answered Oct 9, 2020 at 16:51
Google is quite capable of correlating multiple accounts from the same machine. I don't believe they make this cross-account information available to individual account holders but have not specifically checked for it.
The main point I wanted to make was:
"... Is there a way that they could track what I do, even though I'm on my other Google account. ..."
Don't log into Google except when necessary, such as to check email.
Google already has extensive tracking capabilities through a myriad of agreements with other web sites. Don't make things easier for them!
answered Oct 10, 2020 at 15:08
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The question is about the school tracking the activities. Not Google ...– schroeder ♦Oct 10, 2020 at 17:09
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@schroeder - Google is instrinsic to the question and appears in both the title and body, as I'm sure you know perfectly well. Oct 10, 2020 at 20:06
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... yes, I see that, but that's besides the point that the subject of the question is about the school tracking the student, not Google ...– schroeder ♦Oct 10, 2020 at 22:07
Probably not, unless you agreed to install some additional software. Elaborating on @schroeder's answer, additional software that somehow reports back to the school could in theory check your web cache or other artifacts on disk or see what is currently running on your device. Web browser extensions or plug-ins would have the easiest time seeing what you are doing in your browser outside of your school account.
To be cautious, you can use a separate account for your school stuff. However, if you installed something that has administrative privileges or was installed with administrative privileges, that could possibly have visibility into other accounts. So, to be the most paranoid, you could have a whole separate device.
Of course, that is likely overkill. Assess your risk (think about what could happen if they did see what you are doing and the chance that they actually could/would). If you are doing something illegal or that could expose you to large financial consequences (e.g., lawsuits or loss of a hard-to-replace job) or damaged valued personal relationships, then you may want to act paranoid, if you in fact installed additional software.
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Student monitoring software acts like a proxy. All traffic goes through it, before encryption, to inspect the traffic. They tend to be bundled with root certificates for this purpose. So, it doesn't "check your web cache or other artifacts". This also means that a "separate device user account" might not work. We already have multiple questions about how this software works and I didn't get into it because we don't even know if monitoring agents were installed.– schroeder ♦Oct 10, 2020 at 11:23
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It's unfair to associate the OP's legitimate concern about his privacy with paranoia and illegality. In fact, in many jurisdictions, it is illegal to eavesdrop on somebody's personal accounts or internet activity, whether it's a school or anybody else. Besides the fact that it is questionable from an ethical point of view.– lab9Oct 20, 2020 at 9:25