Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!onfcanim!dave
From: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: The "UUCP" machine (smail botch)
Message-ID: <16821@onfcanim.UUCP>
Date: 1 Dec 88 21:20:00 GMT
Reply-To: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Organization: National Film Board / Office national du film, Montreal
Lines: 20

Every once in a while, a mail message comes through here addressed
to someuser%UUCP, probably due to a messed-up mailer on some machine
out there in the void.

I would expect that anything addressed to a machine "UUCP" would get
bounced back to the sender as undeliverable.  But - surprise! - it
gets sent on to gatech!someuser.

The only plausible explanation I can find for this is that gatech is
the closest (lowest-cost) gateway for the ".uucp" domain listed in
the USENET maps.  What I don't understand is why smail finds the
uucp DOMAIN when mail is addressed to a SITE named uucp.

Before I try to find the code in smail that does this and remove or fix
it, does anyone see any valid reason for this transformation between
machine name and site name?

To gatech, and other machines that list themselves as gateways to the
uucp domain, this may account for a certain volume of garbage mail
that shows up on your doorstep.  Were you aware of it?