OT: spamming tech question

[Benjamin Scott]

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005, Michael ODonnell wrote:
> Since the spammer only "knows" me by my email address and is unlikely to ba 
> able to correlate the Host: values reported by a browser with my email addr, 
> I'm thinking that Host: value isn't of much interest. Further, if my browser 
> is behind a firewall that hostname is likely even more useless to them.

   I suspect you misunderstand what the "Host" HTTP header does.

   The "Host" header tells a web server the host name the User Agent was given 
to make the HTTP request.  This allows one to host multiple logical websites 
on a single IP address.

   For example, when you tell your web browser to request

 	http://www.google.com/

the HTTP command and headers that get sent to Google's web server include the 
following:

 	GET / HTTP/1.1
 	Host: www.google.com

   Firewalls do not impact the "Host" HTTP header.

   If I am incorrect in my suspicion, or my point is still unclear, reply and 
I'll write a more in-depth explanation.

-- 
Ben <dragonhawk at iname.com>