In article , Jane Ransom
writes
Nope . . . . you are WRONG.
After bouncing the mails that came to us after my husband's little
lapse, WE DO NOT RECEIVE ANY SPAM on that mailbox.

Most spam that I've seen has forged return addresses, i.e. the bounce
message will not reach the perpetrator.

However, I've seen it said that a lot of spam nowadays has web bugs in
it. (The archetypal web bug is a one pixel GIF image.) Given this, it is
plausible that if spam to an address is not read (bounced or deleted
unread) or read in such a fashion that embedded, remote, images are not
accessed, that the address will be recognised as not active and removed
from the spammer's list.

However, an email address that I used for one mailing list escaped into
the wild towards the beginning of this year (I think a virus infection
caused a participant to spew his address book across the net - it
occurred at the same time as a virus storm). I'm still getting spam to
that address, even tho' it's been bounced for months.

Bouncing the mails appears to have worked for you in this instance, but
it would seem to be an unwarranted assumption to conclude that it works
as a general rule.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley