How did you choose your junk email address?

vaguelight@mailinator.com

I like to use the scientific names of common things, like vegetables.
- Love it

Simplelogin. I have like 500 email addresses, all single use

It's my cringe weeb account from when I was, like 10. I'm talking "NekoOniBakaChan_xx@wtf.com" levels of cringe.

i own a domain, and have a catchall account which forwards to a single address.
any time i sign up for a service, i use their business name as the prefix.
for example : i decide to go shop at a store called Mold Gravy, and the clerk tells me i can save 15% on today’s purchase by giving them my email address. i tell them it’s moldgravy@mydomain.com.
this keeps my actual main email account from getting polluted, and also if i notice an increase in spam, i can see which company either sold my fake email address, or were compromised, and the i can simply block it.
it costs $10/yr for a domain name, and another $5/month for hosting. well worth it.
ETA : there’s a lot of really great suggestions here, not only in response to me, but also in this whole thread!
- I've done this as well for a number of years (probably close to 5 at this point) and have only noticed one service that got hacked and my domain got leaked. No spam at all really, but I've stayed on top of unsubscribing to all marketing emails
- Would you recommend this for a non technical person?
  
  I have a similar setup, and no. Once it’s configured, it’s easy peasy, but it would probably be a difficult and confusing process for a non-technical person to get through without help. Addy.io is a great service that a non-technical user shouldn’t have any issue using
- I do the exact same thing, except instead of paying monthly for hosting, I pay $12/year for addy.io. Super reliable service and I can easily manage my email aliases with their phone app.
  
  ooh! the cheapskate part of me likes this option!
- I do this. It's excellent, no regrets. You can use sublevel domains for more organization
  Email@shopping.domain
  email@banking.domain
  Etc, so it's easier to set alert and category filters. For instance I disable new mail notifications for shopping.domain addresses
  If I know a email will truly be temporary, then I just one of those 10 minute email services.
  
  gonna have to see about perhaps implementing this…
- I do the same but also have a few trap addresses nobody sane should see or email to, but is easy for scrapers to grab. Easy way to train the spam filter.
  
  Got any examples?
- Genius!
- Did this forever first with Google, at least them I'd know instantly who sold my info.
  Now I do the same with my mailbox.com account, and delete the aliases occasionally.
- Yooo this is actually genius.
- https://www.notcheckmark.com/2022/06/catch-all-domain/
  (currently not reachable, archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20240804081128/https://www.notcheckmark.com/2022/06/catch-all-domain/)
  
  some interesting points in this article, but none that are dealbreakers for me continuing the way i currently handle my email. the one example of : “your email is Hilton? do you work here?” typically no employee actually cares enough to ask that question. i have been running my email this way for 20 years (ish), so my sample size is large enough to suggest my results are reliable.
  still great food for thought, though!

I use my main account for that. I just unsubscribe from all news letters immediately so I don't generally get any spam.

It's my final yahoo email. Used it as a kid so obviously it's already full of spam, now I just use it for even more spam

10 minute mail for anything I don't want to sign in to ever again.
Otherwise I have a gmail I made for the purpose, the address is some generic words and numbers that don't look like a complete spam (in case I need to send an email and hope to get a response).

My what now?

Its my old gmail account.

Proton. They have a mail aliases feature where you can create temporary email addresses which forward to your account. Then, if you start getting junk you didn't ask for, or have trouble unsubscribing, you just delete the alias.

If I need a burner email I can generate a temporary one on Tempmail
Other than that - my account for "less important stuff" is just one of my old ones. ;)

It's the main email that I have been using for almost 20 years. Now it is my junk email.

It’s my Hotmail account
- That's hot
- Same. The sweep feature is great for things from online shops I haven’t unsubscribed from yet.

My email comes with masked email options, so if I need an email I just hit create and it generates one that forwards to/from my account. Just as easy to block or delete them.
- Sounds good. Which provider do you use?
  
  I don't know who OP uses, but I know that Fastmail has that feature and its pretty handy.

My junk mail address is the name people hear when I say my actual name. So I guess it's the more common, phonetically similar name to mine.

Duck duck go has generative email addresses. Seem to work pretty well.

It was the coolest name from the random generator

I often use proton for junk mails as it does not require phone or something and a lot of services accept it compared to the normal trash mail services.
Another thing i do is searching for the sender of annoying mails, mark like 10 of them and mark them as spam, then the next ones get dumped too

Anything that needs an unconfirmed signup, I've always used Don B. Sonozi - godfather@mafia.org
I figure that one day a spammer will learn regret.

Buy a cheap xyz domain. Use catchall address.

I use Port87, so my junk email is just part of my real email, which is my name.
- ELI5?
  
  It uses mandatory subaddressing, so my email hperrin@port87.com, doesn’t get through. Whatever I sign up for, I add a dash to organize it. So, if I sign up for Netflix, I use hperrin-netflix@port87.com, then that goes to my Netflix folder. If they start spamming, I block that address. And for real people, I have an address that screens email, hperrin-friends@port87.com.

A couple words from a dream I'd had that burrowed deep into my brain for a short time. I figured it was unique enough, I could get the original and not have to add number at the end.
- Cook idea! Weird how some dreams stick with you for years.. or even a lifetime.
  
  I remember a couple of first dreams from before I was a toddler. (I have memories from a loooong time ago, actually.) My dreams at the time kinda blended with reality and I couldn't tell the difference.

It's one word off from an Alice in Wonderland quote

Just made up a fake name