This is definitely a downside but is why long-term accounts get an alias on my alias domain and garbage accounts get a random passmail or other address provided by SimpleLogin. Stability/portability vs anonymity. I’m not sure if it’s possible to have everything.

Obviously there are different approaches. OP responded they skipped forwarding; I did exactly what you said which was forward my Gmail to Proton so I didn’t have to sign in to Gmail anymore, and then slowly unsubscribe or delete accounts, or migrate the email to an alias for things I wanted to keep.

A second phone number is next for me. Apparently that’s the real key lots of data brokers use because it’s pretty rare to have more than one.

• My Proton address doesn’t get given out to anyone since it’s simply the backend I abstracted away with other domains.
• I use my primary domain for my personal email and all the important services (banks, healthcare, etc.), and things like GitHub that are tied to me. I also use it for all the services I self-host.
• The alias domain is for everything else. Newsletters, services, other long-term retail accounts like Costco. One-off random signups either get an alias on my domain or a random one from SimpleLogin if I don’t care about maintaining access to the account.

I just started doing this a few weeks ago so I might change my strategy if it becomes annoying to maintain, but I like it right now.

The nice thing about owning domains is you’re not committed to any provider. I just switched to Proton but if I feel like leaving I can do that in an afternoon.

I recently switched from Gmail to Proton which was a pain in the ass. I’m still migrating or deleting a couple accounts per week.

Fortunately I purchased two domains (one primary and one for aliases) so future migrations will be easy. I was looking at mailbox.org + addy.io, on top of hosting my own Vaultwarden. Does that seem reasonable?

Wow, happy I got my domain registered in August. I wonder when this started.