Intended recipient

[Roland Perry]

In article <20110913145355.00006995 at surtees.fenrir.org.uk>, Brian 
Morrison <bdm at fenrir.org.uk> writes
>> Although throwing away mis-delivered items isn't perhaps
>> interception, failing to bounce these emails may have given the
>> senders a false sense of security that they'd been delivered. Or
>> perhaps they did send a bounce message too?
>
>Well the problem is the mail system doesn't care about intent, it only
>cares about the addresses it sees. So from its point of view the emails
>*had* been delivered. Why would you send a bounce either, many domains
>accept mail to all addresses @<domain.com> so they're not being bounced.

The researchers might want to arrange for their server to send a bounce 
message in case any of the senders or recipients sued them for the 
consequences of any of the emails being undelivered. Which would have 
been more obvious to the sender had they bounced (in the absence of the 
researcher's registration for the typo-domains).
-- 
Roland Perry