Technical Summary
This memo makes recommendations for software that automatically responds
to incoming electronic mail messages, including "out of the office" or
"vacation" response generators, mail filtering software, email-based
information services, and other automatic responders. The purpose of
these recommendations is to discourage undesirable behavior which is
caused or aggravated by such software, to encourage uniform behavior
(where appropriate) among automatic mail responders, and to clear up
some sources of confusion among implementors of automatic email
responders.
This document also defines the auto-submitted header field, whose purpose
is to indicate that the message was originated by an automatic process,
or an automatic responder, rather than by a human; and to facilitate
automatic filtering of messages from signal paths for which automatically
generated messages and automatic responses are not desirable.
Working Group Summary
This document was discussed on the ietf-822 mailing list but is not the
product of an IETF working group. The document has been revised in resonse
to several comments received during last call.
Protocol Quality
Ned Freed reviewed the document for the IESG.