I use my gmail address for everything and I don't really get spam (except from services I've subscribed to legitimately but haven't bothered to configure to not send promotional mail).
I never really get promotional mail from 3rd parties at all.
Is this just gmail filters being very good?
But might gmail junk filters be the best junk mail filters for nefarious proprietary reasons, possibly?
Even the simplest bayesian filter will score better than gmail.
I've been getting someone else's e-mail traffic for about 5 years now, on two separate Gmail accounts, and while occasionally hilarious, it is somewhat scary to see how much I can know about their lives from the type of e-mails they get. I have replied to inform some of the senders about the situation with the suggestion that they could tell the other person involved to use a new e-mail address, but it is still happening. You'd think that they would need to see some of the important work-related mail they receive yet they are apparently utterly oblivious.
I occasionally also get similar mail to my own domain through a catch-all filter.
It's quite funny how little some people understand about what an e-mail address is, or how it's supposed to be used, even today.
It certainly felt that way when someone was giving my GMail out to the cashier at the hardware store where I got no end of digital receipts which I couldn't unsubscribe from because they're providing the email address to the cashier each time. As they were receipts from a large verified brand Google treated them with the highest priority.