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So these 'bad actors' are they just out to find a way to DoS your service or do they have some other motive for forging millions of requests. (I get that email sending is a target - that has been the case since forever - but I'm asking about 'what else'?)

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Yes, they sure do have a motive - to send spam via a 3rd party service.

Like in this case (GitLab) - create a fake "issue" with spammy links in it and then "notify" thousands of users.

In our case - we are a helpdesk ticketing app, so bad actors sign up for a trial, then add "users" to their account and then, say, create "tickets" on users' behalf (customizing the email template by inserting spammy links).

It varies: generating inconvenience(for fun or hate towards a particular service), spreading scam URLs(leveraging existing trust relationships), SEO and improving discoverability of their projects (porn, streaming of pirated content, etc) and many more.

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