Then start setting up unique email addresses for each service, e.g. [email protected] . The "abcd" part should be random for each service so it's impossible to guess your other email addresses.
I also use yearly throwaway addresses, e.g. [email protected], for when I need an email address without having the means to create a new alias first. (I then change that later.)
Should spam starting to appear, you'll know exactly which service "got hacked" (i.e. sold your email address) and can just disable that alias and create one with different random letters. Also when deleting an account somewhere, just also delete the alias and you won't get any mails about signing up again.
It takes a bit of discipline but it gives you lots of control over your inbox.
[0]: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000278142
Fastmail works great for me. I do not miss any emails as junk nor do i get any junk in my inbox because of using the methods explained in the link above.
Controlling your own email address is the way to go. It takes consistent effort to migrate but worth it when it is done.
I've had my same email for about as long as you (maybe 1-2 years more), never hiding it at all including Usenet.
> I really really want to do this but am stuck on Gmail because of their spam filtering.
gmail spam filtering isn't very good. Lots of false positives which is far worse than the occasional false negative. I have a gmail-hosted account for work and it's very annoying.
I host my own email infrastructure and spam isn't a problem. With a bayesian filter trained on my content, I rarely see any spam. Maybe like 1-2 per month? I don't keep track, it's very rare. And no false positives ever.
After that it was getting about 5% false-positive (so 1 in 20 real emails went to spam) and about 3% false-negative. For me, 3% false negative means 25 spams to inbox a day.
Gmail gives me about 0.5% false positive (1 in 200) and 0.01% false negatives.
Is there ANY other provider that does spam filtering that actually works? I tried Fastmail, but I receive so much spam (>600 per day vs. ~20 non-spam per day) that only Gmail's spam filtering is good enough. I've tried others (like Fastmail) and typically ~50/day get through their spam filters, vs. at Gmail where on a typical day 1-2 get through.
(Why do I get so much spam? Because I've been using the same email address, never hiding it at all even on Usenet, for 25 years.)
I would pay a lot of money - like I'd be willing to pay 4x what Fastmail charges - to get off Gmail, but apparently nobody else can do spam filtering.