>in the performance release of C-news both /bin & /usr/bin precede >/usr/ucb in the default path - so /bin/mail should be called rather than >ucbMail (at least on SunOs 4 ) - so where is the problem ? > The problem was originally discovered for INN. INN insists on using /usr/ucb/mail (BSDish systems) or /usr/bin/mailx (System V). Apart from the name, Mailx is identical to ucbmail. Apart from installing the INN sec patch (it consists of adding sed -e 's/^~/~~/' to the mail command in the 7 affected scripts). Disabling control altogether isn't necessary. Only control message that generate mail to the news user are harmful. Another quick fix for INN is redefining the mailer program to a script that does: #!/bin/sh sed -e 's/^~/~~/' | /usr/bin/mailx "$@" (Mailx should be replaced by /usr/ucb/mail if you have that) The only tilde escapes I've seen so far have been signatures with ~ boxes. One of these caused ``Unknown tilde escape'' in my logfiles, with made me suspicious. Casper