Your mail address is only stored in the database, to which no-one but me has access, and it shows in your Settings page when logged in. So unless there's a security flaw in Lemmy, your mail address should be safe.

Could be a coincidence IMO otherwise that would mean that there was a breach at lemmy.world where you signed up. Tagging @ruud@lemmy.world.

I signed up with an email address dedicated only to this account 8 days ago and so far it has received nothing except the 2 verification emails (the one where you're prompted to click a verification link, and the subsequent email confirming your verification).

I think it's coincidence. I used my main email address and have the same amount of junk, spam, scams, and phishing crap as usual.

I used an email address that would tell me where the spam is coming from to sign up for Lemmy. None of my spam email is coming with that email address so I don't think I'm getting spam from Lemmy sold emails.. I have noticed more phishing emails but I think it's just Gmail letting them through or being more targeted.