We desperately need a revised CAN-SPAM[1], with two additional fangs: additional prohibitions on these sorts of dark patterns (designed to exhaust users into submission), and the opening of individual standing against companies that spam (so that individuals can directly sue these misbehaving companies rather than waiting for the FTC to un-capture itself).
We desperately need to overhaul how the average mail provider works. We need unique email addresses every time we sign up for an account that can then be disabled. I do this with fastmail though it's a little annoying to spend 20 seconds to create a new alias every time. At last count I had something like 470 aliases. Probably at least 40 disabled ones after receiving emails I didn't opt in for, or I disabled immediately after the first use because I had no need for further communication with that organization.
Do you prefer not to use a catchall alias[1] to prevent someone from just sending mail to garbage12345@yourdomain or for some other reason? I also use unique addresses for every website account I have but with the catchall, I don’t need to spend the 20 seconds to create the alias. It’s just automatically there. I can’t think of any issues I’ve had by using the wildcard alias.
i guess im very pedantic - i don't want to make a rule to delete a email. i want it to bounce and never see my inbox and have the sender see that it bounced.
Fastmail has first-class support for exactly what you want. Settings > Users & Aliases > + New Alias > "Show advanced preferences". There's a checkbox that says "Disable - Reject (bounce) all mail sent to this address (disable the alias) Disable a specific address when you have a wildcard (catch-all) alias."
Automated unique email addresses are a great idea, and I've been happy to see Apple make some positive moves in that direction.
That being said: it's a technological step, another countermotion in a never ending arms race. I would like to see policy steps that erase this ridiculous battle entirely. I shouldn't need a giant pile of code to automate email addresses for me, because this kind of corporate behavior should be completely illegal and extremely risky (from a liability perspective) to begin with.
If you have your own domain, Fastmail will let you set a wildcard rule and anyrandomthing@yourdomain.com will hit the mailbox, no further config necessary.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003