First, you should own your domain, to own your email identity. With a domain, Gandi (my employer) includes two mail addresses: imap, roundcube, sogo, sieve filters, aliases,...
...or host your own server using your own domain. This is what I do, also using Gandi by the way (their API makes it easy to keep all the required DNS details up to date without manual intervention). As long as you make sure outgoing mail is handled by a smart host (question: does Gandi offer this service for those whose IAP does not offer smart host services?) and all the required DNS records are present and correct your mail should find its destination without more problems than when using one of the commercial providers. With Spamassassin and greylistd spam is no longer a problem as long as you take care not to drop your private mail address everywhere. Using your own mail server you can give every commercial/government organisation you communicate with a special address, e.g. firstname-companyname@example.org or companyname.your_initials@example.org:
That way you can block any address which is being abused while knowing who leaked it. Just make sure not to use your private address - which you use with friends and family - to untrusted entities.
Source: I've been doing this for about 26 years without major problems
the_third_wave|3 years ago
Source: I've been doing this for about 26 years without major problems
katla|3 years ago