I was sitting at my computer the other day, looking at my email, and I was wondering what I could do to let these spammers know my email address doesn’t exist, at least until a solution like DomainKeys is widely supported. I’ve also been getting a bunch of rejected emails from spammers who have using random_phrase@domain.com, since I have a catch all email address.
So I thought, how great would it be if Outlook or any other email client had a REJECT EMAIL function. When clicked, it would prompt the postmaster of that email server to send a error message back, similar to one of the common email errors:
- Returned mail: user unknown
- Returned mail: Insufficient permission
- Warning: could not send message for past 14 hours
- Returned mail: see transcript for details
Similar to how postal mail work, I should be able to write Return to Sender or Moved on the letter and the post office will send the letter back. I know probably most of return email addresses spam emails use these days are fake, but if I was a spammer and received such a message, I’d also probably removed the email address from the list I’m spamming.