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Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watcgl!onfcanim!dave
From: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: net.news.adm
Subject: looking at personal mail
Message-ID: <14832@onfcanim.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 26-Apr-86 16:03:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: onfcanim.14832
Posted: Sat Apr 26 16:03:35 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 27-Apr-86 07:34:57 EDT
References: <703@frog.UUCP> <12400018@uiucdcs> <2410@jhunix.UUCP> <132@fai.UUCP> <4697@ut-sally.UUCP> <735@mmm.UUCP>
Reply-To: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Organization: ONF, Montreal
Lines: 38

In article <735@mmm.UUCP> bngofor@mmm.UUCP (MKR) writes:
>
>	The sysop who originally spurred this conversation argued that he
>wanted to know what his phone bills were paying for, and used that as a
>justification for "opening" others' mail. By the same token, should he
>be able to eavesdrop on phone conversations? I think the same set of 
>arguments apply. If he wants to know what he's paying for when he pays
>his phone bills, I'll tell him - PRIVATE MESSAGES. And that's all he has
>a right to know. 

Actually, on many systems, you can tell where your mail traffic is coming
from and going to by examining various log files - sendmail can be set up
to log messages via syslog if you are running it, and any UUCP system
I've seen logs its uuxqt's.

By looking at such information, you can gather information about whose
mail you are handling and how much of it, without ever looking at the
contents of the letters.  Since this is analogous to post office workers
looking at the destination and return addresses on an envelope, I doubt
if anyone would object to the gathering of that sort of information.

Also, comments have been made to the effect that "anyone who routes mail
through me deserves to have it looked at".  In fact, a great deal of
mail routing is done by computer programs routing mail via the "shortest path"
according to information provided by system managers themselves.
If you indicated that your machine has high-quality connections to many others,
you can expect a lot of mail traffic flowing through you, much of which was
*not* explicitly routed through you - in effect, you invited it.

If you really do not want to handle mail from third-party sites, simply
don't advertise your uucp connections, and request that your uucp neighbours
also not advertize their connections to you.  You'll get very little mail
forwarded through you.

If you take such steps to avoid inviting mail, and then get something routed
through you, maybe the "they deserve what they get" attitude is appropriate.

	Dave Martindale