I’d say this move seems too dumb even for fiction, if that wasn’t the SOP for the entire country I live in.

Given the context though, I’m curious if one of you privacy experts can change my mind on how I approach email.

I don’t use email for any meaningful communication where I expect privacy. It is essentially the way for companies and a few other organizations to send me low priority information and/or confirm my identity to reset a password or whatever. Because of that, the only attributes of an email service I really care about are reliability and availability, including not having emails silently blocked for not coming from a “trusted” provider.

So what is the practical risk of just using a Gmail address for that stuff, equivalent to hiding in plain sight? Yeah it helps Google fine tune their advertising model for me, while I’m running Linux on all my machines and blocking ads on any device I touch. My social media is Lemmy and my streaming service is Jellyfin.

Am I risking too much if I use it as the corporate contact point that it is? Am I just letting my white/straight/cis/male privilege show through?