I am a system admin, here is some info…
While in theory your idea is good, it more or less is being done. What you are talking about is called a bounce. Email is a transport agent, and with that, comes a expectation of delivery, to ensure that, certain codes have been developed to mark emails with certain properties. For example, “fatal” bounces are coded with a numeric identifier that tells the server how to deal with it. There are many others, some tell the server to retry agian later, some tell it the mailbox was full.
Usually, the general public does not have control over this. However, there are many scripts for email applications that will generate exactly the response you are speaking of. You select a group of messages, select a script to run, and they are all bounced back to the sender with the appropriate error code.
In regards to “spoofed” return addresses, generally, this is not a issue. There are usually two addresses in the email header, the sender, and teh reply-to. it is the reply-to that is easily spoofed, the sender is harder to spoof and most spammers do not do this. This means the bounce messages do in fact get to the correct person.
I filter at the server level, so the spam never gets to my users, and I send the bounce back to the sender, not the reply-to. However, as mentioned, spammers no longer care, they spam untill the account is closed, they only send, they dont even bother to ever pop in and check email. Look at the spam you get, you will see that they are not looking to get you to reply, they are looking to get you to click on a link and go to a website.
There are a few things you can do to help fight the war on spam. First, find a small ISP to do your email, one that does agressive spam blocking. Next, sign up for a free account on spamcop.net and post your spam there, then system admins like me, who run the spamcop filtering tools on our email servers will automatciallu block spam based on the spam you reported. Forward full source copies of your emails to abuse@sender.com where sender.com is the hosting company that the spam originated through. This can take some learning, best to use spamcop.net since it figures this all out for you and also reports the spam to the ISP as well. Finally, report the spam to the FTC or other appropriate agency depending on the content. If it is a nigerian money scam, send it to the FTC.
Oh, one last thing, I bet you have HTML email turned on, almost everyone I know does. When you have this on, graphics are loaded in your email application. This is bad, the spammers will add in links in the email that test whether or not you loaded a graphic, if you did, they know you got the email, they know you exist, and they save your email and resell it. I have heard a good email address is worth a buck. Turn off network access to HTML email.
