I would add that once you start using catch-all, you are forever limited to self-hosting or using an email provider that supports it, unless and until you want

I would add that once you start using catch-all, you are forever limited to self-hosting or using an email provider that supports it, unless and until you want to leave behind all the individual addresses or go around updating your info everywhere. I did catch-all for decades. I honestly wasn’t getting any benefit from it that I couldn’t get in some other way, better. It doesn’t solve spam, so I still need anti-spam tools. Spam still comes to my main address anyway, so it doesn’t keep spam out of that account. Smart mailboxes give me more powerful tools for organizing things according to more refined criteria than just “to.” Knowing when sites leak my address isn’t especially valuable to me personally. In the end, the address I give out is sort of irrelevant. I may as well just be using my main address for everything. Which is what I’ve started doing. Yet I’m still saddled with all these catch-all-dependent email addresses. I have a huge Swiss-cheese email perimeter, more or less forever. It won’t be easy or fun to unwind all that, and I’m not sure I’d ever be able to do so completely. It’s the worst of both worlds. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself the only way to win is not to play.