backscatter
n.— «Backscatter occurs when a spammer spoofs a legitimate e-mail address to send an unsolicited message to large distribution lists, causing the e-mail server to flood an unsuspecting e-mail address owner’s mailbox with hundreds or thousands of failed delivery messages or bounce backs.» —“Webroot tackles email ‘backscatters’” Netimperative Aug. 4, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Welcome to another A Way with Words newsletter! With any luck, our A Way with Words email messages don’t end up in your spam folder. But did you ever wonder why junk mail is called spam in the first place? There’s a funny story behind this term, and...