From: Barry Shein <bzs(_at_)world(_dot_)std(_dot_)com>
I think we first need to deal with this (I'll assert) fantasy that
spammers see a 550 or removed an address from their lists because of
one with any significant frequency.
...
I tried to dump on the idea that spammers "typically" respond to
a 550 by removing a target address, but it's just as dreamy to
claim that they "typically" don't.
At least some spammers do seem to remove in response to 550's. Perhaps
some spammers think that's just good housekeeping, but I suspect others
are responding to anti-spam pressure. Some major spam targets reportedly
including AOL react to "too many" invalid target addresses with an
automatic blacklisting of the sending IP address.
A major problem among people worried about spam not just here but
everywhere is a habit of ignoring the difference between what they
think or hope might be true and what they actually know is true. As
someone I used to work for was fond of say, "what you don't know can
hurt, but what you know that aint so can kill."
It would be really swell if people proposing or criticising mechanisms
would pay attention to what they know (e.g. there's a lot of spam),
what they strongly suspect (*some* spammers do or do not remove in
response 550's), and what they wish (*most* spammers do or do not
respond to 550's).
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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