After receiving a message from the gateway at (no that's not a typo) [log in to unmask] (the name was "System PRIVILEGED account") with subject "Warning: Failed VMS mail", a long blurb explaining that some DECNET link was down and a copy of the beginning of the body of a message with the header removed, I am seriously considering the concept of a "hate list" for gateways. I guess it would be a file with patterns and control words that I would update periodically. Mail from any user matching one of the patterns in the file would be subjected to a special treatment, depending on the control word following the pattern. It could be discarded and forgotten about, or transferred to the postmaster without being replied to, or result in a nastygram back saying that we are very sorry but your gateway is causing us problems so you will not be able to send commands until you get the gatemaster to fix his code. Typically, the 2 first cases would apply to specific entries (like the one I mentioned above - gateways which should be ignored or postmasterized), while the last case would be used with generic patterns like '*@*.broken.gateway' when the postmaster is fed up with users repeatedly attempting to use the server through a gateway that keeps bouncing the resulting mail back to his reader. Actually, both a local and a global "hate list" are needed, with the possibility to override the global one with an entry in the local one. Does this sound like the right solution to the problem? Eric