> Yup. I've complained to the main Spamcop guy about that. Spammers 
> harvest "honeypot" addresses (among others), forge those addresses as 
> the purported sender of the spam email. If the mail bounces, (...)
> then you get listed by Spamcop. 
>
> His response can be summarized as "too bad, you shouldn't respond to 
> spam".

This is an untenable position that requires you to violate Internet
standards and, in passing, would make it impossible to remove bad addresses
from e-mail lists (which, ironically, will get innocent people listed as
spammers).

When an innocent site receives mail to an address that does not exist, it is
required by Internet standards to bounce it. Strike one.

To suppress that bounce in the specific case where the message comes from a
Spamcop honeypot, which would be a huge hassle, you would have to know that
the message comes from a honeypot. But, by definition, these addresses are
secret, so you simply can't do that. Strike two.

To suppress the bounce in the specific case where the message is spam, you
would need a 100% accurate spam filter, since a single hit will get you
blacklisted. There are no 100% accurate spam filters. Strike three.

If you were to comply with Spamcop's requirement by summarily suppressing
any and all bounces, people would never know when they sent to a bad
address, so they would have no way to stop doing that. They would be unable
to clean up their lists, which is one of the top three ways to get
blacklisted today.

  Eric