Xref: utzoo news.sysadmin:1883 comp.mail.misc:1467 news.misc:2344 comp.mail.uucp:2486 news.admin:4233
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!mcdchg!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin,comp.mail.misc,news.misc,comp.mail.uucp,news.admin
Subject: Re: bigoted racist misuse of email and computer accounts must be dealt with
Message-ID: <7112@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 8 Dec 88 18:56:26 GMT
References: <10676@ihlpa.ATT.COM> <11242@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <5917@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <558@whizz.uucp>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 15

In article <558@whizz.uucp> bbh@whizz.uucp (Bud Hovell) writes:

>A second complaint would almost certainly cause me to take more severe action.
>Would I cut off the site from which it is originating? You are bloody right, I
>would!

Don't forget that it is trivial to fake the user name on mail messages
(SysV /bin/mail uses LOGNAME from the environment), and it only requires
knowledge of the uucp login and password to fake the machine name (if
you have root access to a different machine, or a PC running uupc). And,
of course, anyone with root access on any machine in the path could
intercept and modify the message (no one would actually do that...).
Anyway, it would be wise to treat net email like an unsigned paper document.

Les Mikesell