[digging]

Honestly, using a username generator in Bitwarden, it's so easy to do this that it basically "pays" for itself the first time you get a "true" spam email and it's effortless to identify who sold you out. I originally tried doing this manually but that was too much effort; now it's as simple and natural as generating a password for a new login. I see no reason to ever stop.

Of course, the vast majority of spam I get is marketing emails from companies I've actually done business with. Few if any even have an opt-in checkbox on their checkout form and those that do hardly ever honor it. There's simply nothing to be done about that except unsubscribe after the first time they spam you - and this is where having unique emails also helps, because those "unsubscribe" links are obviously riddled with tracking as well.