[Fnoord]

..but then they still have your home address in their archive of PII. Which is bad enough (wasn't Dominos or New York Pizza hacked the other day with PII getting leaked?).

I barely ever read spam (and receive it mainly on one of my older e-mail addresses but it does end up in the spam filter). I barely ever receive spam on my phone number. I won't say never, cause it has happened, but probably like twice a year or so. And I use my real phone number and real e-mail address everywhere. Which, in case of using an alias, isn't clever. But in your case, they still got the address.

[sneak]

Every street address is public. All houses order food. Nothing private is disclosed.

[Fnoord]

> Every street address is public.

Not quite, but I'll give it a pass.

> All houses order food.

Nope, not everyone orders food. Perhaps in your bubble.

> Nothing private is disclosed.

Incorrect, it is PII. It is a real name connected to a street address first of all (one could use an alias; I do). And, possibly (potentially) also containing metadata such as what is being ordered, at which time, and how much.

Moreover, it denotes activity. If you want to lay low, your street address might be officially public (mine is) yet not receive spam on it.

For some reason, it isn't possible to only give a business your address (and other PII) when they need it and force them to discard it completely afterwards. Why not? Because when leaks happen, they're not hold accountable. See the essay Data Is a Toxic Asset, So Why Not Throw It Out? by Bruce Schneier [1]

[1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_t...