The 3 jobs an address does
An address identifies you, it links this account to every other place you used the same address, and it lets somebody write to you. People weigh the third and ignore the first 2, which is why the same address ends up on 200 services.
Handing over an address feels like giving a way to be contacted. Contact is the least of what it does, and the other 2 jobs are the jobs that accumulate.
On this page
It is a name that follows you
The same string identifies you at your bank, your employer and a chat you tried once. Anybody holding 2 databases can join them on that string without any clever technique. This is the quiet cost of using 1 address everywhere, and it is paid slowly rather than at the moment of signing up.
It is a key into breach data
Breached databases circulate, and they are indexed by address. An address given to a small service today can appear in a list tomorrow, joined to whatever else that service held. The risk is not that the service is careless; it is that the address makes joining trivial when anybody is.
Contact is the visible part
The mail you receive is what people evaluate, and it is the part with an unsubscribe link. The 2 jobs above have no unsubscribe. Judging an address request by how much mail follows measures the least consequential of the 3.
Reducing the cost
A separate address per service, or an alias, keeps the joins from happening. Where a service needs no address at all, nothing needs managing later: there is no record to appear in a list and nothing to unsubscribe from.
Questions before you start
Are aliases as good as separate addresses?
For joining across services, yes, provided the alias is unique per service. For a breach, the alias still reveals the underlying account to whoever holds it.
Does a service need an address to work?
For recovering an account, yes, and only if there is an account to recover. A service holding no account has nothing to recover and needs nothing.
Is a work address worse than a personal address?
Usually yes for linkage, because it names your employer as well as you, and it stops being yours when the job ends.
Try a chat that asks for no address at all.
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