I sent more than one message from God by telnet to <mail server> 25. Good times!
Around the same time, someone at my school made a much, much worse semi-accidental prank. Semi-accidental because he didn't think it would work. See, the campus list serve was setup to only allow certain senders to send messages. Makes sense, only a few top administrators should be able to do that. This person theorized that a simple <smtp: from> hack, using an authorized person's email, might circumvent the restriction. He was right! Unfortunately, rather than "test 1 2 3" or something, he sent a message, from the president, that all classes had been cancelled. Had he stopped there, maybe it would have been chalked up to a prank. But he went further: The president would be using this free time to, um, entertain amorous visitors at their leisure. So, yeah, expelled. His excuse, when interviewed by the student newspaper, was "I didn't think it would work."
I send unauthenticated email on port 25, every semester, in front of my students, as part of a discussion on internet application protocols. I can't use "God", because the addresses are validated, but I do send "from" the school's IT director. I even give them the commands to do it themselves (along with a strict talking to about how it's not truly anonymous because their network access is authenticated).
I've been able to do it at every university I've studied or worked at.
Around the same time, someone at my school made a much, much worse semi-accidental prank. Semi-accidental because he didn't think it would work. See, the campus list serve was setup to only allow certain senders to send messages. Makes sense, only a few top administrators should be able to do that. This person theorized that a simple <smtp: from> hack, using an authorized person's email, might circumvent the restriction. He was right! Unfortunately, rather than "test 1 2 3" or something, he sent a message, from the president, that all classes had been cancelled. Had he stopped there, maybe it would have been chalked up to a prank. But he went further: The president would be using this free time to, um, entertain amorous visitors at their leisure. So, yeah, expelled. His excuse, when interviewed by the student newspaper, was "I didn't think it would work."