Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!sdcc6!sdcc13!pa1027
From: pa1027@sdcc13.ucsd.EDU (John C. Fowler)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Changing the From: Line
Summary: Maybe it's legit.
Message-ID: <1181@sdcc13.ucsd.EDU>
Date: 28 Sep 89 04:35:43 GMT
References: <26716@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Reply-To: pa1027@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (John C. Fowler)
Distribution: news.newusers.questions
Organization: Univ. of California, San Diego
Lines: 41

In article <26716@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> bwildasi@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (benjamin wildasin) writes:
>I recently started posting to Usenet and would like to know how I
>can go about changing the From: line in my header.

There are two legitimate reasons I can think of for changing your
From: line.

1) You want people replying to your article to send mail to a
different address than that from which you are posting.  For this,
rather than changing "From:", add or change the "Reply-To:" line
with the address to which you want mail sent.  Notice that my own
"Reply-To" line above directs replies to the account from which I am
sending this, but if, for some reason, I wanted replies to go to my
MCI Mail address, I would substitute "0003513813@mcimail.com" for
"pa1027@sdcc13.ucsd.edu".

2) You want to make your name look nicer, considering that it has
only lowercase letters in it right now.  The way to do this for all
news readers is to change your /etc/passwd entry to properly reflect
your name with capital letters.  In Berkeley UNIX, use the chfn
command.  Otherwise, ask your system manager to change it for you.
Or, check the documentation for your news reader -- you can probably
change that portion of the "From:" line using the environmental
variable NAME or by creating the file ".name" in your home
directory.

Note that neither 1 nor 2 will protect your identity.  People can
always remotely finger you or send mail to your postmaster.  If you
want to post something anonymously, send mail to one of those folks
who offer "anonymous posting services" in their .signature.  This
keeps people from abusing the privilege.  Personally, unless it's
something really terrible, I recommend just posting it in your own
name.

Oh yes, there's also a way to forge net mail, but I'm not going to
tell you how to do that.  :-)

-- 
New .signature designed to save net bandwidth:

JohnCFowler MyViewsNotUCSDs