Mailing Lists and Non-ASCII Addresses
RFC 6783
| Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(November 2012; No errata)
Obsoletes RFC 5983
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2015-10-14 | ||
| Stream | IETF | ||
| Formats | plain text pdf html bibtex | ||
| Reviews | |||
| Stream | WG state | WG Document | |
| Document shepherd | Joseph Yee | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 6783 (Informational) | |
| Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Telechat date | |||
| Responsible AD | Pete Resnick | ||
| Send notices to | (None) | ||
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) J. Levine
Request for Comments: 6783 Taughannock Networks
Obsoletes: 5983 R. Gellens
Category: Informational Qualcomm Incorporated
ISSN: 2070-1721 November 2012
Mailing Lists and Non-ASCII Addresses
Abstract
This document describes considerations for mailing lists with the
introduction of non-ASCII UTF-8 email addresses. It outlines some
possible scenarios for handling lists with mixtures of non-ASCII and
traditional addresses but does not specify protocol changes or offer
implementation or deployment advice.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6783.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Levine & Gellens Informational [Page 1]
RFC 6783 Mailing Lists and Non-ASCII Addresses November 2012
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Mailing List Header Additions and Modifications . . . . . . 3
1.2. Non-ASCII Email Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Scenarios Involving Mailing Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Fully SMTPUTF8 Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Mixed SMTPUTF8 and ASCII Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3. SMTP Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. List Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.1. SMTPUTF8 List Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2. Downgrading List Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3. Subscribers' Addresses in Downgraded Headers . . . . . . . 8
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1. Introduction
This document describes considerations for mailing lists with the
introduction of non-ASCII UTF-8 email addresses. The usage of such
addresses is described in [RFC6530].
Mailing lists are an important part of email usage and collaborative
communications. The introduction of internationalized email
addresses affects mailing lists in three main areas: (1) transport
(receiving and sending messages); (2) message headers of received and
retransmitted messages; and (3) mailing list operational policies.
A mailing list is a mechanism that distributes a message to multiple
recipients when the originator sends it to a single address. An
agent, usually software rather than a person, at that single address
receives the message and then causes the message to be redistributed
to a list of recipients. This agent usually sets the envelope return
address (henceforth called the "bounce address") of the redistributed
message to a different address from that of the original message.
Using a different bounce address directs error and other
automatically generated messages to an error-handling address
associated with the mailing list. This sends error and other
automatic messages to the list agent, which can often do something
useful with them, rather than to the original sender, who typically
doesn't control the list and hence can't do anything about them.
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