2

Increasingly I'm finding it's very difficult to separate anything on my computers and devices. Everything syncs everywhere, I need to do work from my home computer, I need to do personal things from my work computer, and finally, I need to write down private thoughts on all my devices (phone etc.)

The only solutions I've been able to come up with is running complete virtual machines and different browsers for different things. This is quickly becoming difficult to manage and presents opportunities again to intermingle things for convenience (oops, I just signed into the wrong gmail account on my work VM).

This is also getting very confusing; I use firefox on my work mac for personal searches, and I use a linux VM on my Windows PC for "work stuff". Just mapping out the doos and donts related to my setup in my head is getting to be a chore. And then there's coming up with username conventions for various websites such that people cannot easily join up my "alias" accounts and "real name accounts".

I'm not at all a privacy nutjob but it always feels like I'm 3 clicks away from uploading my entire photo collection to my work servers or creating permament links between work and personal accounts. I'm a fairly technical person, but I even if make good choices 96% of the time, that 4% really adds up over time and none of my digital things feel independent anymore.

Can anyone provide insight on:

1) General guidelines to keep work and home stuff separate and keep my sanity doing so. 2) some sort of VM I can use to write personal notes that people won't accidentally stumble upon because, for example, I forget to sign out of evernote

2
  • 1
    You're describing the hazards of the digital age. There is no foolproof system. There is always a tradeoff between convenience, separation, and security. It could be that the best solution is more sleep, more coffee, and developing habits of paying closer attention to what you're doing to reduce the inevitable mistakes.
    – fixer1234
    Sep 24, 2014 at 6:10
  • Consider using separate accounts for your computer and separate profiles for the browser. Firefox and Chrome let you create multiple profiles, not sure about IE -support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/…
    – mvark
    Sep 24, 2014 at 7:19

0

Browse other questions tagged .