Spam flow decay to nonexistent email account?

[gakhular]

Suppose I get so disgusted with a spammed email account that I dump it. Email to it subsequently encounters a delivery refusal at the receiving server with a corresponding message to the sender.

Does the flow of spam to that address decay? If so, what is the time constant?

Or is a spammed address forever?

gakhular

[dra007]

Forever, but it could get you listed for bounces... Unless spammers list-wash ...even when they do, your e-mail has already ended up on other lists..

[gakhular]

By "listed for bounces" do you mean listed for refusing to accept email to a nonexistent account? Could you give an example for such a list? I'd like to read up on their policies.

For the most part these refusals would be to the open proxies while they try to deliver spam. Does spammers' open proxy software pay attention to these refusals?

So the spammers that list-wash would stop. But one would think that they all would eventually list-wash in some way. Otherwise they get an ever increasing list using up more of their bandwidth, and reducing their efficiency (e.g. their servers being blocked more often because of a higher percentage of failed deliveries).

gakhular

Forever, but it could get you listed for bounces... Unless spammers list-wash ...even when they do, your e-mail has already ended up on other lists..

28879[/snapback]

[Jeff G.]

it could get you listed for bounces

28879[/snapback]

That is, if your server issues delayed bounces rather than 500-series SMTP errors, it could get listed by the SpamCop Blocking List (SCBL). Please see Misdirected bounces for details.