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From: clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke)
Newsgroups: net.rumor,net.news.adm
Subject: Re: reading other peoples' mail
Message-ID: <2600@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-Apr-86 11:57:07 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.2600
Posted: Mon Apr 21 11:57:07 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Apr-86 10:15:25 EST
References: <703@frog.UUCP> <12400018@uiucdcs> <2410@jhunix.UUCP>
Reply-To: clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke)
Distribution: net
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 31
Summary: 

In article <463@packard.UUCP> gjm@packard.UUCP (59455-GJ Murakami) writes:
>                 ... years ago before HDB UUCP, I used to try to read
>the dead mail in the UUCP spool in often futile attempts to return the
>failures to the sender with suggestions for retrying (silly me for
>trying to be too nice).  Needless to say, that was a long time ago. 
>Automated tools and finally HDB UUCP :-) took over this tedious task to
>provide friendly and nice service to the general public.

I myself was recently the "victim" of a (presumably overworked) system
administrator who returned to me a message I'd sent through his machine,
attaching to it the explanation that his machine didn't talk to the next
one on the route I'd used.  Actually, I knew that and had made a mistake,
but had also thought the correct route might fail too, so his action saved
me at least a couple of days in getting a mildly important message through.
Although he may very well have read only the header and not the body of
the message, and although he presumably wouldn't have read any of it if
it hadn't been trying a nonexistent routing, still this is an example of
a benefit received from administrative snooping.  (Thanks, Henry!)

People can write some very nice messages for mail-answering programs to
use automatically.  This may have happened in my case.  But as I looked
at it from various angles*, it *seemed* human.  Even if it was automatic,
one might claim that it violated my privacy.  You won't get a complaint
from me, though.

* Of course, I'd never heard of "HDB UUCP" until I read gjm's message.
-- 

Jim Clarke -- Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
              (416) 978-4058
{allegra,cornell,decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo}!utcsri!clarke