Likewise, with the added problem for me that most of my spam is in a foreign language. I own a firstname@gmail.com account where firstname is reasonably popular

Likewise, with the added problem for me that most of my spam is in a foreign language. I own a firstname@gmail.com account where firstname is reasonably popular in a certain country. I get so much spam, but generally it's personal and tied to a real human being trying to do something useful with the address. People have bought holidays, theatre tickets, food, books and more in the last year or so. I try and cancel everything in a polite and sane way, but some large companies with the address in their systems don't care. I get cellphone bills for one guy like clockwork every month. So frustrating.