> You literally don't need any user information to run an email service.

I know that and you know that the average user does NOT know that and is too good-natured to enter fake information.

There are plenty of email services out there, among them many of largest and most established ones, where the real name is a required field during registration.

Sure you can always argue "Well just enter fake details" but that's missing the point. The point being that once personal information becomes a liability, instead of something you can just haphazardly hoard as an asset, companies would be much more careful about what kind of information they are asking from the users in the very first place.

Companies abuse the goodwill of the average users by asking for more information than they should because it comes at no cost to them while at the same time being a very big asset. Even if they fail to secure these assets and a breach happens, most of the costs of that are externalized onto the users whose data actually got leaked, the consequences for the company are often only cosmetical, some bad PR/stock prices take a little downturn. But the brunt of that will be over after a couple of weeks and after that, it's back to business as usual.

That needs to change, companies need to be held liable for:

A) Needlessly asking for and hoarding personal information B) Sloppy treatment of information resulting in a leak

Yes, this could very well be opening Pandora's box, but something about the current state of things really needs to change.