Recipients are told that they have subscribed to a child pornography mail order service and that a set of CDs containing pornographic images of children is already being mailed out to them.
The e-mail states that if they believe they have received the message in error then they should contact the administrators and cancel their order. Scared that they may be about to receive illegal pornography and having been warned that they will be charged $100 per month for the service, many may instantly fire off an angry e-mail, without thinking.
However, it is likely that there are no CDs in the post and no service behind this e-mail--rather it is the work of an aggrieved spammer.
The clue to this lies in the fact that the e-mail address given links to antispam organization
A particular hate figure within the organization is founder Steve Linford who this year entered the top 20 of silicon.com's Agenda Setter's poll because of his sterling work fighting spam.
The spammer is clearly hoping to overload Spamhaus's servers with e-mails from angry e-mail users aggrieved that they have been falsely accused of buying child pornography.
The e-mail also contains a link to the Spamhaus Web site where users are promised the best "selection of porn to suit every taste".
A statement on the Spamhaus website says: "The Spamhaus Project blocks and terminates spammers from the internet, therefore it's no surprise spammers hate us, just as thieves hate the police." It goes on to detail the methods some spammers will go to in order to have their revenge. "A common practice of spammers is to "joe-job" antispam organizations, by sending out spam fraudulently claiming to be sent 'by' the antispam organization. Spammers...dupe people into harassing antispam organizations such as Spamhaus by flooding us with complaints."
Users should be careful upon receiving spam which annoys them that they do not turn their ire on the very organizations fighting their corner.
On the bright side--if there is one--Spamhaus may take some delight in knowing its efforts have the spammers so concerned that it is being singled out for this treatment.
