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Michel Py wrote: In other words: if you're already to the point where you are using a text-mode mail client or disabling HTML and/or other stuff in a GUI client, you are no loss to the spammer if your email does not confirm as valid (because you would not even read it nor buy any of their crud in the first place).

Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote: So what you're saying is that these validation schemes are a good thing?

I was not thinking in terms of being good or not, as these schemes exist and will likely continue whether we like it or not. Trying to answer the question anyway: It is clear that there is room for improvement in making these address validation schemes less efficient. I will let the reader make their own opinion whether this would be a good thing or not. It would be a good thing in the sense that it would reduce the spammer's ability to focus spam on known existing email addresses. It would be a bad thing in the sense that in order to reach the same number of valid targets the spammer would then send a lot more email, knowing that large numbers are invalid. The lesser of two evils: let's say that potentially we could force spammers to send 100 times more emails for the same result. Some will. Are we ready to bounce 99% of email traffic? Michel.