About two hours prior to writing this, I've recently checked my email, to find a message from Google in my personal inbox, asking me to confirm that I want mail from a business email address someone set up forwarded to it, without them bothering to ask me if I was OK with that. It was like finding that my old pooch had unexpectedly taken a dump in my bed, recieving a drunken phone call from an ex with whom I didn't part amicably or an old nemesis parked in the driveway; I got that same disappointed/sinking feeling. Having taken pains to get away from Big Tech's mass surveillance, tracking and bulk data collection (possibly "one of the dirtiest phrases in the English language", according to Edward Snowden) as best as I can, I was rudely reminded that it's actually almost impossible to do so. I don't want Google even knowing that address exists (and, therefore, that I still exist), let alone handling mail going to/from it (even if encrypted with PGP or some other means beforehand). I am very far from happy about having my consent/privacy violated by an inconsiderate/thoughtless schmuck for whom I hadn't even done a day's work yet. Talk about being disrespected by multi-national corporations! They don't understand the meaning of the word. To them, people are just assets to be used and abused as they see fit.

I don't even know if there's a way to request all record of an address (or other personal data) be expunged from Google's DB/records (or, if there is, they'll actually honour it), let alone set up something that reports the address non-existent to certain mailer daemons.

At least Proton Mail allows me to block individual addresses so that mail from them doesn't even get as far as my inbox/spam directories/filters, but it would be great if I could blacklist entire domains: No more GMail, Hotmail or Yahoo! Extending that functionality is a requested feature. (I'm not sure if the mail actually bounces, such as when sent to a non-existent address, or if it's just deleted off Proton Mail's server when it arrives. I hope it's the former option, if that's even possible.)

Off the back of that, I've set up filters to sort all mail from addresses containing @*google*, @*hotmail* and @*yahoo* directly into "Trash" and auto-respond with the following:

Thank you for your mail. Unfortunately, the owner of this account refuses to accept email from Big Tech companies known to disrespect their users' privacy and security by engaging in Surveillance Capitalism (bulk-collecting, mining and selling users' personal data to third parties, for profit). Please switch to a secure email provider (from the list below) if you wish to reach the intended recipient. You might not respect people's boundaries, consent, privacy or security (or even understand why this is a red flag), but I do. Thank you for your compliance and understanding.

Secure Email provider options: Proton Mail, Doge-Mail.net, FlowCrypt, Hushmail, Kolab, Mailbox.org, Mailfence, Mailo, paranoid.email, Posteo, PrivateMail, RMail, Runbox, SafeSwiss, SkiffMail, StartMail, TheXYZ, Tutanota, VFEmail or Vivaldi Webmail

I'm tired of being lenient in the hope that people will get the message at the bottom of my responses. They haven't, so it's time to take a hard-line stance. I refuse to further compromise my principles and privacy for the convenience of others, especially since Capitalists tell me that I should if I want to be successful. (I encourage others who are at least equally concerned to do the same. Only strong and radical action has a chance of effecting change.) Play by my rules, or don't bother. Just don't shit the bed; don't allow shadowy companies and organisations to exploit you and over-rule your rights. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. If you don't actively oppose them, abusers and bullies mistake your complacency and silence for consent.

The irony is that I can't log into the help & support site for Proton Mail (or create an account thereon) because it uses Magic, but the magic doesn't work.

“And that's what I don't like about magic, Captain. Because it's magic. You can't ask questions; it's magic. It doesn't explain anything; it's magic. You don't know where it comes from; it's magic! That's what I don't like about magic, it does everything by magic!”
― His Grace, the Hon. Duke of Ankh-Morpork, Sir Samuel "Stoneface" Vimes (Terry Pratchett)

 Say goodbye to everyone you have ever known. You are not gonna see them ever again.

Yes, I am aware of the irony/undermining of my point by including a YouTube video here. Since the SEC has pretty much nuked LBRY/Odysee, I'm not aware of a decent alternative. (DailyMotion, Metacafe and Vimeo use YouTube behind the scenes/under the hood, as far as I'm aware.)

Although Snowden and Rogan are discussing government surveillance gone out of control in the transcript I've linked, a lot of it parallels what goes on in the tech industry (particularly around the 01:30:00 mark onward). It's hardly surprising, since the two are so fucking in bed with each other that they've learned each other's bad habits.