Mitigating abuse in an electronic message delivery environment

1. A method comprising:

calculating a size of a sample of a message recipient list that delivers a confidence level greater than threshold for the entire message recipient list by applying a predicted bounce percent for the list to a sample size selection algorithm;

selecting a total of recipients in the message recipient list that is consistent with the sample size;

processing messages to each of the recipients in the sample;

monitoring message life cycle events for the recipients in the sample set over a period of time; and

based on the monitoring taking an action with the message recipient list selected from a list of recipient list actions consisting of processing remaining recipients in the message recipient list and halting processing of the message recipient list.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the period of time is a number of minutes less than ten minutes.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the period of time is determined when a threshold percentage of recipients produce life cycle events that include a recipient message engagement event.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the threshold is greater than at least one of 90%, 95% and 99%.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein selecting the recipients comprises selecting recipients in an order in which they are stored in the message recipient list.