Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
<i>Is the fear of "people selling your email to spammers" a modern myth, or are spam filters that good?</i><p>Email databases for sale are not always for spam or malware.  They are often used for tracking and cross marketing calculations.  Placing a companies name in the address will signal a canary and they may likely filter your contact out of their database or at least flag it and treat it differently.<p>I've been using email canaries for decades but recently had to adjust my canaries to be less obvious.  A few vendors got upset that I had their name in the address and one even accused me of fraud and canceled my $500 gift card.  That was the Tractor Supply Company.<p>Either way I will continue using canaries and multiple domains as it is a good way to be filtered out of some cross marketing databases and to avoid some behavioral tracking and some machine learning.  It is also useful to find companies that get upset.  This is an indicator to me they lack integrity and should be avoided.  Canaries are also a good indicator to detect if a company has been compromised.