Do not speak of the old magics to me...

I have five Gmail accounts. Youngest is 5 years old. Oldest is around 20. Even have the apparently desirable firstname.lastname address for myself. So I'm not familiar with the current hoops to jump through, admittedly.

That said none have been banned, so while I recognize the risk, I don't agree with that inevitability, especially if you aren't making heavy use of it.

Any email service that is not self hosted has the same risk, and self hosting isn't generally in reach for people due to all the unwritten "trust rules" the major providers have quietly implemented.