Bounce Junk Mail

Update: A few MacTips readers have noted that this might not be a good solution for spam mail. Reason being is that any reasonably intelligent spammer would fake their e-mail address. Instead, perhaps this would be better suited for unwanted mail (mailing lists, etc..), but not necessarily spam.

A good way to help combat spam is to use Mail.app’s bounce feature. This returns the spam to the sender as if they sent it to an incorrect address. To bounce junk mail, Control+Click the message and click bounce.

When this popup appears, click OK.

You’ve now returned the message to the spammer.

This isn’t the only solution you should be using to combat spam, but it will help.

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Written by Brad Jasper on August 24, 2005 at 3:38 pm - Bounce Junk Mail has 5 comments - Categorized in Easy Tips, Mail Tips

5 Responses to “Bounce Junk Mail”

Scott Gardner

Not sure that's a great idea, as it does validate your email back to the spammer (if their Reply-to address is even valid).

Per Apple Support, "Returning unwanted email

To discourage someone from sending you email, you can reject, or "bounce" their message, as long as their return address is valid. When you bounce a message, it appears to the sender that your address is invalid. This is useful for rejecting mass mailings from companies whose mailing lists you've been added to after buying products from them.

If you use the bounce feature for unsolicited email ("spam"), the mail will come back to you as undeliverable, because the return address on spam is usually not valid." August 24th, 2005 at 4:48 pm
Jeremy Kemp

More often than not, the spammer will have faked the return address. If this is the case, all you are doing is spamming the person the spammer is pretending to be. That's not very nice at all, especially if lots of people bounce the message back "to the spammer."

While it's a neat concept, bouncing mail isn't a good idea in practice, because it's a rare (and not so bright) spammer who includes their real return address in their mail. August 24th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
Brad

Thanks for clearing this up guys.

I'll fix the post accordingly. August 24th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
Concetta

since this appeared in the "random popular tips" in the right column, I'm going to add something here, even though the post is years old ..
The key here is to bounce an email BEFORE you select it or open it. You do this by opening up your Mail viewer window all the way: double-click the bar at the bottom of the viewer - this will close the preview window (if yours is open).
Now you can click on any mail message WITHOUT opening it (the "unread" blue dot remains in front of the message).
When you bounce the message THIS way (unopened), you get this message from Apple: "It will appear that the message was sent to an incorrect address. This might help reduce unwanted email, provided that the sender’s return address is correct." In other words, the message behaves as if it were never received by you. April 13th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Les

Bouncing does absolutely nothing to reduce spam, and actually worsens the problem. Virtually all spam these days is sent using some innocent victim's real email address in the "reply-to" header. This means the spam server never gets your bounce, but some random person out there will. You're actually forwarding your spam on to another frustrated e-mailer. That's called "backscatter", and if you've ever gotten 800 "bounce" emails in 5 minutes for spam you never sent, you know how annoying it is.

Just delete your spam, please. July 20th, 2008 at 4:18 pm