Ask HN: How do you partition your private and public digital lives?
Completely separate accounts. I have one master account, which I almost never use but which can be used to reset the others; I'm thinking of using Google's extended verification process for it. I have a personal account for family & friends; I have a 'public personal' account which I give to companies and acquaintances as my personal account; I have a work account for each job I do.
I never, ever access a personal account from a work machine; I never, ever access a work account from a personal account.
If I ever get back into blogging, I'll keep all my political thoughts in a login-required section for my family & friends and keep the publicly-available articles technical & professional. There's no point needlessly antagonising a potential client or colleague.
You comment is very interesting to me, because I'm totally the opposite. Mind if I ask you a couple of things? I don't mean to critique, I'm just very curious because... well, it's literally the opposite of what I'm doing.
> I have one master account, which I almost never use but which can be used to reset the others
Do you get security notifications? I personally made sure to use my primary account as a reset for everything exactly because I don't want to miss important notifications.
> I never, ever access a personal account from a work machine; I never, ever access a work account from a personal account.
Do you travel relatively often and what do you do in those cases? Like can you completely turn off working?
> Do you get security notifications?
Yes, to my daily-use accounts. I don't forward mail from my master account so that my daily-use accounts have little to no mail from it (to keep it obscure).
> Do you travel relatively often and what do you do in those cases? Like can you completely turn off working?
Yup, I travel a lot, and I certainly do turn off work. When I'm at work, I don't work on my personal projects, and when I'm off work I don't work for an employer.
When I do travel and need to work remotely, I take two laptops: one for myself & one for my work.
Can you elaborate on what's private vs public for you, and what kind of separation are you trying/thinking to achieve?