An idea (fwd)`

[ah6bw@uhm.ampr.org]

> It looks like your having mailbox names like jon@kj9u is causing Hal some
> frustration. A simple fix would be to set up BM.RC so that the smtp username
> is call-letter based, and then adding alias entries to re-map into whatever
> you want for the real local mailbox name would solve the problem. We do
> need to try to integrate IP with the BBS/AX25 world and avoid points of
> friction.

This certainly works.  However, not all hams on Internet use BM to
send/read mail.  Most probably use the most convenient mailer
available.  In the case of UNIX systems around here, the most popular
mailers are MM and ELM.  MM has the ability to modify the FROM header
to whatever the user wishes (I'm doing that for this note now - logged
into mpg.phys.hawaii.edu as 'tony' but the FROM header that MM
generates will have 'ah6bw@uhm.ampr.org').  But I'm not sure how many
other different mailers allow you to 'fake' the FROM header like MM.
Faking a FROM address is generally frowned down upon as it can be
considered fraud if abused.  However, to keep Hal happy, I'll do it
whenever I send a note that will end up on his PBBS.  Promoting the
use of 'fake' FROM headers may not be such a good idea in the long
term and, as I said earlier, not everyone will have this capability.

The long term solution I think is to improve NOSs filtering of
outgoing mail.  Something like a rewrite-from file which rewrites the
FROM header at the same time that it checks if the mail is coming from
an allowed user would be useful.  I'm pretty sure this idea has been
discussed before but I don't think anything has come of it.  Will CC
this to tcp-group to see...

Tony
AH6BW