BL> where someone has written "AREA: " at the beginning of their
BL> message. I don't know what the odds against this are. It is not
BL> the sort of thing you do accidentally

PE> If I can quote a message from someone who has done it
PE> accidentally, will you give me your house?

BL>   No, but I'll give you a framed photograph of Daffy Duck.

Ok, better than nothing, see below.

PE> Remember, I only have access to messages from a very limited
PE> subset of the members of Fidonet, so there is not a hope in
PE> hell of me getting such a message.

BL>   I'll remember that. I'll write it in blood on my picture of Daffy
BL> Duck.

Ok.

BL> dickhead wanted to use this method to post mail without an
BL> origin, he could do it better by editing a hex-dump of the
BL> packet itself, and remove his address from the header at the
BL> same time.

PE> Normal users can do no such thing. They CAN write ASCII text
PE> though.

BL>   ROFL! Haven't you ever heard of Norton Diskedit?

Norton Diskedit to your heart's content, then post the message on
Sydney PCUG, and see how far your control characters get.

PE> Try to get your one remaining neuron to recognize the
PE> difference.

BL>   I need my neuron to use such a compicated thing as a hex editor.
BL> It's really hard!

It's also useless.  The BBS software will prevent a normal user
from putting control information in messages.  BFN.  Paul.

Date:   1995-11-22 13:09:08
From:   tom schlangen
To:     Paul Edwards
Subj:   sot/eot rationale
Attr:   recvd 
Area:   NET_DEV                       

Hi Paul,

* Paul Edwards -> HECTOR SANTOS:

 > So you hope and pray that the user hasn't entered some
 > text that starts off with "AREA".  Someone in NET_DEV reported
 > that that's exactly what happened on his system.

    happened to me, too:

i used a tick/announcing prog to generate _netmails_ to notify some downlinks 
about new files, and not thinking about the implications i made an announcing 
template which began with:

Area:  * Origin: X (3:711/934.9)