Unless you are verifying DNSSEC, they could intercept any outgoing DNS queries and replace the response with whatever they want, if you are using DNSSEC they won’t be able to modify the responses since they can’t create the signatures, but they could still send queries to their own server instead of your chosen server. With either of these options they can still see what you query. DNS over TLS or HTTPS is a way to prevent all of these things, since with those you know the endpoint of your HTTPS connection is the actual server with the signed certificate and the connection is encrypted.
Edit to add: it shouldn’t matter what DNS you use to look up the IP of the DoH/DoT server, because only the real servers should have the correct private key.
Yes, exactly. I haven’t really had any issues with any website taking the email, some people do actually have subdomains in an email for work, I know some of my teachers in school had an email like person@k12.county.state.gov.
It also has the advantage of letting you have multiple users on your server, a couple of my family members also have their own subdomain catch-all that redirects to their own base domain address.
Part of the reason I prefer having a catch-all on my own domain is that I can change providers without changing any email addresses. For example at the moment I run my own server, but in the future if that becomes too time consuming I can easily start paying for a service.
ETA: also I’ve never gotten any spam to a email I haven’t given out, people don’t really send emails to random names at a domain as far as I can tell
A DNS based blocker wouldn’t block this, because the subscribe prompt is almost definitely being done by a script from the main NYT domain. The DNS blocker only blocks things that come from domains only used for things that should be blocked, and can’t differentiate between what type of content is being loaded (script vs image vs raw HTML) and definitely not between different things in the same class (paywall script vs the script that makes the buttons work).