On the other hand, I was getting Allstate billing notices for someone else and I was surprised how well they handled it. When I called, they understood that I was a third party and apologized. They were able to look at a record of all the email sent and verify I had not received any sensitive information (only last 4 digits of account number, first name, and bill total). They removed my email address and said they would contact their customer immediately.
The only way they could have handled it better would have been following best practices and sending a verification link as their first email. :)
Turns out people don't know their actual physical addresses either any more.
Just move countries and cities often enough, and throw some business travel in for good measure, and it's pretty easy for that to happen. I've e.g. had similar sounding zip codes in a variety of cities and countries, and nearly the same street name within a city. After a while you start to very easily make mistakes.
Whereas "[email protected]" (or more likely gmail.com) can be arrived at by multiple people named "Firstname Lastname", you don't have to worry about it if your email address is generated via:
echo "$(< /dev/urandom tr -dc a-z0-9 | head -c 12)@example.com"You'd be better off taking an "xkcd" or "gfycat" approach and making your e-mail "[email protected]" or "[email protected]".
I'm not getting rid of my gmail address... mine ... though I do have another address I use, and may start using that one more once I move the email hosting (on my todo list for over a year).