>   While I can see the utility of anonymous posts for some situations, I see
> utterly no value in forged postings. 'Nuff said.
 
Although I agree that the value of forged postings is *very* limited, I
have had a few occasions that called for use of port 25.  E.g., I forgot
about one list I was subscribed to when my userid changed and had to forge
an 'unsub' request from my old userid later.  True, I could have sent
e-mail to the listowner asking him/her to delete me, but forging a message
was quicker and easier.  I've also forged other people's addresses a few
times (AT THEIR REQUESTS!) when they were having problems communicating
with listservs (because they were confused novices).  They could, of course,
have given me their passwords and had me go into their accounts to solve
the problems, but I don't want to know other people's passwords.  Having
said all this, let me reiterate that the value of forged postings is *very*
limited.  The net would be a safer place if forgery were impossible.
   --Natalie ([log in to unmask])
 
P.S. Re anonymous postings:  I'm on one list that allows the option of
anonymous postings via the listowner (which means, of course, that they
are not 100% anonymous since the listowner knows who sent them).  People
sending anonymous postings are asked to use some kind of pseudonym for
identification purposes in followup discussions.  It works fine.