Only mail servers should send bounce email. They know the information needed to send the bounce message. For example, the From address should not receive bounce messages; the SMTP return address should get these. For most email, the from address and the return address. But think about mailing lists where the email is resent to all the members and the return address is changed to mailing list manager.

More importantly, most of the email you are receiving for unused addresses is spam. Spammers will generate mailboxes for domains even when they haven't harvested the address. The bounce messages won't do any good because spammmers forge return and from addresses. The bounces will be going to someone innocent or invalid address. Even if they went to the spammers, the spammers will likely ignore them and not remove the bad addresses from their lists.

The only case where bounces might be useful is if you acquired an old domain, or there used to be separate mailboxes. Then people might be legitimately using old addresses. I would suggest seeing if your ISP can do mail delivery for just the addresses that you use and bounce all the others at their server.

In reply to Re: Bouncing Email w/ Perl by iburrell
in thread RESLOVED: Bouncing Email w/ Perl by soffen

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