Ask HN: What is the point of this? Email form sending.

2 points by seto28 14 years ago | 1 comment

I have a feedback form which emails me a message. Today I have been getting dozens of messages along the lines of, "Im so glad that the internet allwos free info like this!"

Since this is not posted publicly anywhere, why is this being done? I can think of these possibilities, but I still don't get it:

1. Spam - they think it's posted somewhere publicly, even though it's not.

2. Security vulnerability - they are probing for a way to send emails elsewhere even though the email is hardcoded.

Any ideas why this is being done? The ip address is changing every few messages.

terrellm 14 years ago |

Perhaps they are hoping you will reply to the email message so they can grab your email and add it to their spam lists?

I have it happen a lot on some of my e-commerce sites.