I have a Proton mailbox I specifically keep around to serve as a honeypot, for tracking when one of the many annoying little services will inevitably mishandle the contact address I hand them.
Over the years, the only spam I ever received there was from Proton. Quite the way to recalibrate my expectations, eh?
i think i have a proton email address, but i never used it. i wonder.
but i pay fastmail a whopping $15/yr to give me mailboxes on my domain, which i have always heard is a good way to track who's selling your data.
So far, nothing has made it past the spam filter, and i don't check spam (how many valid emails have you found in spam in the last 5 years?); that being said apparently no one is selling my email address anymore. or, and this is a significant possibility: when i tell them [email protected] they just ignore the domain and put in gmail? For instance i gave Take5 "take5@" as my email and i never received anything from them. The guy even said "No; your email address" with a weird half smile; then i explained it's my own website and email, i can use any email address i want; that it will alert me if someone sells my email address.
I doubt there's a flag on the auto oil shop's CRM or POS or whatever for "customer states they're proactive about email spam and their privacy"