On Thu, 23 Jul 1992 13:47:00 EDT you said: >At my computing center, when a user leaves the organization their old >account is usually re-assigned to a new employee. If the departing >user failed to unsubscribe from all lists, then the new user might >get list mail that he/she didn't subscribe to, and so might complain >about it to the list or the listowner. My first reaction was why doesn't the postmaster simply do an unsub * (netwide for any account whose holder is leaving (along with changing the password, of course). Then on reading other messages along this thread, I realized that the postmaster (indeed no one at the computer center) may be aware of the change in ownership. We've got lots of administrative accounts assigned to offices (sometimes with exciting userid's like OFFICE1 and OFFICE2--really :) Those accounts tend to get handed from person to person and are routinely renewed by the department annually. Our marketing department has had the same administrative account ideas through four department heads and three administrative assistants. I can well see the *potential* security issues. On the other hand, this is a university, not a business or government agency. What have we got to steal? I don't think there's a file accessible by either of those accounts that wouldn't be considered as dull as library paste by anyone other than the files owner (or whoever the administrative staff created it for). We're not dealing with student records or payrolls with these accounts. A couple of years ago, our Computer Center became concerned enough about "security" to put in one of those excessively paranoid programs requiring layers of crypto code to access files on one account by another account owned by the same person (even though our most serious breach ever was in the nature of one student letting their account be used by their significant other and then complaining when it ran out of its over modest allotment of "funny money"). The previous simple password system for accounts and disk volumes was entirely sufficient for every academic user I know. The current system is a giant pain in the **s that simply delays getting anything useful done (thank heavens for desktop workstations--I no longer use the mainframe for much more than mail and will be happy when I can by-pass it even for that). Security is a problem for system staff users and those who do handle student, personnel, and payroll records. The rest of us would be happy if they would keep their esoteric precautions to themselves and leave us with something substantially less user hostile. On John's original comment: I generally ignore unsub messages posted to the list unless there's some indication that the person did try to send a command to the LISTSERV and got a "you're not subscribed" message. Sometimes I send them a mildly grumpy "perhaps you hit the wrong key when you sent that message to the list instead of to the server" message (some people do appear to have problems using anything other than the 'reply' function :) I had one user tell me she was too busy to learn how to unsub (and therefore I should do it for her, I guess)--I have a thermite flame thrower for that sort of mail ;-) The problem really is that folks with only limited exposure to lists haven't comprehended how tiresome the doofus mail (including the ever popular "this is a test") gets after awhile. I try and head the problem off (it works to some extent) by sending out an "it's near the end of the semester" message congratulating the survivors and telling them about unsub * (netwide -- and have a nice vacation... [for those of you who didn't take the chemistry course: thermite is a combustible mix of aluminum and ferrous oxide <aka rust> that when ignited by a magnesium wick burns hot enough to cut through six inches of carbon steel in seconds; the military uses it to take out whole file cabinets full of classified documents in an emergency; hot stuff indeed] /s Murph Sewall <[log in to unmask]>