I'm sorry to have to confess this, but I don't understand how I as a mere user receiving mail am supposed to know that the Free Willy message did not come from the President.
You just have to learn to read mail headers to get the gist of what they are saying.
Return-Path: <President@whitehouse.gov> Received: from [144.92.136.35] by toad.com id AA13485; Sun, 19 Dec 93 14:16:03 PST
This says toad.com was connected to by telgate.adp.wisc.edu[144.92.104.20]
Then charliemerritt offers another solution.
Return-path: President@whitehouse.gov Received: from delphi.com by bix.com (CoSy3.31.1.45) id <9312191740.memo.19248@BIX.com>; Sun, 19 Dec 1993 17:40:07 -0500 (EST) Received: from relay2.UU.NET by delphi.com (PMDF V4.2-11 #4520) id <01H6O7JJ9BJK94H43Q@delphi.com>; Sun, 19 Dec 1993 17:37:58 EDT Received: from toad.com by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA10179; Sun, 19 Dec 93 17:37:09 -0500 Received: by toad.com id AA13572; Sun, 19 Dec 93 14:19:04 PST Received: by toad.com id AA13552; Sun, 19 Dec 93 14:17:31 PST Received: from [144.92.136.35] by toad.com id AA13485; Sun, 19 Dec 93 14:16:03 PST From: President@whitehouse.gov Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1993 14:13:02 -0800 (PST) To: charliemerritt@bix.com Message-id: <9312192216.AA13485@toad.com> Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Envelope-to: bix.com!charliemerritt Apparently-To: Cypherpunks
Read from the bottom up, it's to charliemerrit@bix.com. It *says* from president@whitehose.gov. toad got it from good old telgate.adp.wisc.edu It looks like it tried to deliver it a couple of times before succeeding. then it went thru uunet, to delphi.com and then to bix.com... obviously bix gets it's mailfeed via delphi. (they provide commercial ip and usenet/mail feeds) It was faked basically. A big clue is when it has "Apparently-To:" in the header... Mark