Bounce back that spam !

[Guest]

I wonder..why not just BOUNCE back that spam.

Besides giving us a real good feeling for giving them a taste of their own medicine wouldn't bouncing their spam eventually clue their auto responder that I probably pulled my address off the internet or changed it trying to get away from the spam ? Loretta Rock

[Christian]

While that sounds like a good idea, it generally is not, for the following reasons:

1. Many spammers send out millions of messages each day, often with randomly generated recipient email addresses, and with no regard for whether or not each email address is valid.

2. Many spammers use innocent people's email addresses as their FROM address. If you were one of those innocent people, you could receive hundreds or even thousands of bounced spam messages each day.

3. Spam messages already cause lots of Internet traffic. Adding bounced spam messages to the scenario would make things even worse.

[Guest]

Not only that! If you bounce back the spam email, you are "really" stating that the spammer has encountered a valid email address. They can then take that into consideration and "flood" your email with even more spam emails.

[r2baruch]

Bouncing back spam mail merely allows you to bounce unwanted mail right back to the spammer who sent it to you. This means that a fake, address not found message is sent back to the address the unwanted email originated from. Because the spammer thinks your address is not a valid email address, the bounce function reduces the possibility of receiving more unwanted email from this address. Bouncing is particularly effective for newsletters and companies that take no notice of your unsubscribe requests.
Therefore bouncing back the spam email does not provide any indication that the spammer has encountered a valid email address, but to the contrary that the address does not exist. As to flooding a legitimate mailbox with bounced messages, the bouncing is not automatic but selected by the user (you) and you would not bounce a message to a legitimate address.