The backfire is location dependent, for example in the European Union a company can not have you in their databases more than 6 months without you explicitly sending an email to agree in it. So backfire could only happen during 6 months or if a recruiter/manager remember you. This is not very plausible since recruiters talk with hundreds people during a year and manager usually only interview for their groups. It is unlikely that you will apply to the same company in the same group.

As a anecdote, a recruiter of one company contacted me 3 times for the same job position because his database was erased every 6 months, all the times I told to him, please don't contact me, I am not interested in moving to that city in this moment of my life. But their are not allowed to keep information about you more than 6 months, for good or for bad

The backfire is location dependent, for example in the European Union a company can not have you in their databases more than 6 months without you explicitly sending an email to agree on it. So backfire could only happen during 6 months or if a recruiter/manager remembers you. This is not very plausible since recruiters talk with hundreds of people during a year and managers usually only interview for their groups. It is unlikely that you will apply to the same company in the same group.

As a anecdote, a recruiter of one company contacted me 3 times for the same job position because his database was erased every 6 months, all the times I told to him, please don't contact me, I am not interested in moving to that city in this moment of my life. But they are not allowed to keep information about you more than 6 months, for good or for bad.