Subject: checking receipt of messages

From: "E. Hickey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 12:22:58 -0700 (PDT)

Is there any way to check to see if someone has accessed a message that
you sent to them?  or even just to see if they have been logged onto their
email?  Thanks.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 For information about this mailing list, and its archives, see: 
 http://www.washington.edu/pine/pine-info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: "Robin S. Socha" <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Aug 1999 21:40:56 +0200

* E Hickey <[email-masked]> writes:

> you sent to them?  

No.

> or even just to see if they have been logged onto their email?

If your admin sucks, finger will tell you that:
[rsocha@kens rsocha] finger root
Mail last read Mon Aug 16 15:29 1994 (EDT)
-- 
Robin S. Socha  <http://socha.net/>

---

From: Jessica Rasku <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 14:26:52 -0700 (PDT)

> Mail last read Mon Aug 16 15:29 1994 (EDT)

	Um, ``if your admin sucks''??  I'm sorry I don't understand why
providing information is a ``bad thing'', maybe I'm totaly
misunderstanding...  What can be really annoying is if your admin has not
configured finger so it does not produce output like:

[ArmispianSystems.Rossland.bc.ca]

Welcome to Linux version 2.0.29 at ArmispianSystems.Rossland.bc.ca !

  2:24pm  up 2 days, 18:49,  1 user,  load average: 0.02, 0.05, 0.05

Login    Name                 Tty  Idle  Login Time   Office     Office Phone
jrasku   Jessica Rasku         1         Aug 16 14:03 Box 270    (604) 362-9668

	when you finge @domain...  Ah, but that's NOT what you seem to be
talking about...

							Jesica
-- 
Jessica Rasku, Box 270, Rossland, B.C., V0G 1Y0, (250) 362-5701, 
LinuxBox: (250) 362-9668.

List manager: [email-masked] 
     send command help ---- To get help with majordomo
               or lists ---- To get a list of all lists on server.

WWW: <http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Andes/8749>

---

From: Ken Woods <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 18:08:39 -0400 (EDT)

On Mon, 16 Aug 1999, Jessica Rasku wrote:

> What can be really annoying is if your admin has not configured finger
> so it does not produce output like:

man finger

try finger -l user@host.

-- 
Ken Woods
[email-masked]
[email-masked] is an idiot.

---

From: Mike Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 00:27:51 -0500 (CDT)

> > Is there any way to check to see if someone has accessed a message that

It depends.  In some systems you can check if mail was received by others
within the system.  There is nothing that works in general.

> Mail last read Mon Aug 16 15:29 1994 (EDT)

True.  It is a security issue.  In answer to Jessica's statements:
Disseminating more information is good for the *receiver* but can be very
bad for the sender.  I use tcp_wrappers to block finger requests from
outside our cluster of machines.

Mike

-- 
Michael B. Miller
University of Missouri--Columbia
http://taxa.psyc.missouri.edu/~mbmiller/

---

From: Jessica Rasku <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 21:33:26 -0700 (PDT)

> outside our cluster of machines.

	This is intresting.  Yes, it can be a ``security issue'' but what
about people like myself who may be perfectly willing to have my
information avalable?  Would it make any sence what so ever to have a
fingerrc file?  I guess that could become a pain on a large system if you
may have to check if individual users have a .fingerrc file.  I'm really
asking because the IDEA of it being configurable, is something that I
think would be good, but the practicalities may not allow it to work
``nicely''.

							Jessica

---

From: Mark Peletier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 09:16:39 +0200

> may have to check if individual users have a .fingerrc file.  

In fact, current implementations of finger/fingerd already
check whether users have a .project or .plan file in their
home directory. Additionally checking for a .fingerrc
should therefore not be too much of an additional burden
on system resources.

Mark Peletier

---

From: Jessica Rasku <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 02:10:50 -0700 (PDT)

> should therefore not be too much of an additional burden

	Yes it theory it wouldn't be.  But the only time it checks for
those is if it is producing the long listing.  If you do an @hostname
look, by default the long listing is not displayed.  The idea that I am
sort of thinking about is that there would be a global rc file which may
say something like:

no-show-in-short-listing
no-show-in-long-listing
no-match-in-real-name
no-plan-checking
no-project-checking
no-mail-checking

Those are the options that I'd see as most ``appropriate'', but then, if
someone did a finger @hostname, the user could over-ride, some or all of
these options.  Unless the system admin put it in something like a .fixed
file.  Anyways, what it would mean is that for each logged in user, there
would have to be a check for the .fingerrc file on a @hostname finger.  It
COULD make for a fairly high system load...

							Jessica

---

From: "Robin S. Socha" <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Aug 1999 08:45:53 +0200

* Jessica Rasku <[email-masked]> writes:
>> I use tcp_wrappers to block finger requests from outside our cluster of
>> machines.
> This is intresting.  Yes, it can be a ``security issue'' but what about
> people like myself who may be perfectly willing to have my information
> avalable?  

Pick your poison: vanity or security.

> Would it make any sence what so ever to have a fingerrc file?  

I have a .plan. It's linked to /dev/kmem.

> I guess that could become a pain on a large system if you may have to check
> if individual users have a .fingerrc file.  I'm really asking because the
> IDEA of it being configurable, is something that I think would be good, but
> the practicalities may not allow it to work ``nicely''.

Get MySQL and Roxen or Apache with PHP (4 is out, Zend kicks ass) and put
up a luser database. This is OT - let's finish this thread.
-- 
Robin S. Socha  <http://socha.net/>