letter bomb

An explosive mailed in an envelope rigged to cause detonation upon being opened.

An e-mail or word processing document that contains active code intended to cause damage to the recipient's computer such as erasing the hard disk. See macro virus and mail bomb.

Download Computer Desktop Encyclopedia to your iPhone/iTouch

(also mail bomb) [Usenet]

1. v. To send, or urge others to send, massive amounts of email to a single system or person, esp. with intent to crash or spam the recipient's system. Sometimes done in retaliation for a perceived serious offense. Mailbombing is itself widely regarded as a serious offense — it can disrupt email traffic or other facilities for innocent users on the victim's system, and in extreme cases, even at upstream sites.

2. n. An automatic procedure with a similar effect.

3. n. The mail sent. Compare letterbomb, nastygram, BLOB (sense 2), list-bomb.

The verb has one meaning:

Meaning #1: send a letter-bomb to