Problem
Backscatter “bounce” emails are landing in the inbox—legitimate Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs) from Google’s Mailer-Daemon with “Address not found.” The attached/original shows spam that spoofed your address and tried sending to a non-existent recipient (e.g., [email protected]). Because the spammer forged your envelope sender, the receiving server rejected the message and sent the failure notice back to you.
Solution
These DSNs are real system reports, not the spam itself—and the likely cause is not that your email is compromised, but that someone spoofed your address.
Don’t mark these DSNs as spam; doing so can pollute spam training and may hide bounce reports you actually need. Instead, auto-handle only the unwanted DSNs tied to that bogus recipient with a precise Gmail filter:
from:[email protected] ("X-Failed-Recipients: <BOGUS-ADDRESS>" OR "Your message wasn't delivered to <BOGUS-ADDRESS>")
Replace <BOGUS-ADDRESS> with the invalid recipient you’re seeing, then create the filter and choose Skip the Inbox (Archive) or Delete. This keeps your inbox clean, preserves accurate spam training, and ensures legitimate bounce messages still surface—while recognizing that spoofing (not account compromise) is the root cause.