Re: Illegal postings by unknown authors

[Cynthia Smathers <cynthia -at- MINDSPRING -dot- COM>]

On Tue, 09 Apr 1996 18:33:21 GMT, I wrote:

>Well, I haven't gotten the INFO REFCARD back from the listserver yet, but I
>know that some list software offers the ability to choose whether or not
>you want the full headers from the original sender--which would show us who
>really sent the messages, or at least where they sent them from.

Doesn't it really annoy you when someone responds to hir own post?

I got the Info Refcard and turned on Internet style headers. Now I see that
Sarah Lee Bilmayer (tecscrib -at- sirius -dot- com) really did send her message
through sirirus.coM:

>Received: from moon.sirius.com by listserv.okstate.edu (LSMTP for Windows
> NT v1.0a) with SMTP id 47AD08C0 ; Wed, 10 Apr 1996 13:26:09 -0500
>Received: from [205.134.228.104] (ppp104-sf2.sirius.com [205.134.228.104])
>by moon.sirius.com (8.6.12/8.6.9p) with SMTP id LAA02972 for
><TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU>; Wed, 10 Apr 1996 11:25:33 -0700

and have enough information that if that message were forged the
postmaster -at- sirius -dot- com would know who really sent it and be able to stop the
forger. (Please forgive me for using you as an example, Ms.
Bihlmayer--yours was simply the message I saw first when looking for an
example).

Yes, it is very simple to forge some information, like the replyto address,
in email. Without going through an anonymous remailer, though, it is much
more difficult to forge the informtion from the headers the identifies the
system from which a message was posted. I'd suggest that anyone with
concerns about forged messages set their options to Internet style headers
and then follow up on any suspicious messages.

Cyn
cynthia -at- mindspring -dot- com
http://www.mindspring.com/~cynthia
If you think you know all the answers, you haven't asked all the questions.

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