mail bomb

A mail bomb is the sending of a massive amount of e-mail to a specific person or system. A huge amount of mail may simply fill up the recipient's disk space on the server or, in some cases, may be too much for a server to handle and may cause the server to stop functioning. In the past, mail bombs have been used to "punish" Internet users who have been egregious violators of netiquette (for example, people using e-mail for undesired advertising, or spam).

Mail bombs not only inconvenience the intended target but they are also likely to inconvenience everybody using the server. Senders of mail bombs should be wary of exposing themselves to reciprocal mail bombs or to legal actions.