The bogus address will serve as a great alert to you that you have been hit by a mass mailer but not all virus/worm attacks will stop when they hit the first non-deliverable address. As you said, checking your system after seeing that a message has been sent to your bogus address is essential.

My solution was to export my address book to another file and then delete the address book contents. Any virus/worm has no-one to send to. Importing the address list when needed and then clearing it again when done is not really too much work.

After reading your suggestion I will now leave only the bogus address in my address book to alert me if a mailing occurred but no one else will be attacked.