Internet Draft P. Pale
K. Cerovski
Document: draft-pale-email-01.txt FER-UNIZG
Expires: September 2004 March 2004
Forming Intuitive Email Addresses
Status of this Memo
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Abstract
This memo presents a proposal for an efficient and simple way of
forming email addresses. The goal is to achieve easier, more
productive communication between email users, in particular by making
addresses intuitive and thus easy to remember, or guess-enabled on
material-world data about the correspondent, as well as independent
from technical or organizational specifics of email services.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction...................................................3
2. Method for Address Forming, General Issue......................3
3. Method for Address Forming, Resolving Duplicate Names..........4
4. The Issue of Organization's Subdomains in Email Addresses......5
5. Security Considerations........................................5
6. References.....................................................6
7. Acknowledgments................................................6
8. Author's Addresses.............................................6
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1. Introduction
There are many ways to form an email address. For example, a person
called NIKOLA TESLA, working at INNOVATION company registered in
CROATIA, might have any or all of the following email addresses:
ntesla@server10.innovation.hr
nikolat@server1.lab.innovation.hr
ntes@lab.innovation.hr
It is a problem to remember any of the addresses in the given
example. Further, these addresses are dependent on computer names
and organization of the company's network, and are thus subject to
change even if the user's status and position in company have not
changed at all. Finally, it is not possible to guess a person's
email address even if her name and affiliation are known.
2. Method for Address Forming, General Issue
A more efficient and intuitive way, by itself, is to form the
addresses containing person's name and affiliation only, without
other, technical designators.
In specific, a simple rule is proposed:
"first-name"."family-name"@"domain-of-the-organization"
According to this rule, NIKOLA TESLA affiliated with the company
INNOVATION registered in CROATIA would now have the following email
address:
nikola.tesla@innovation.hr
This form of email address is easy to remember. It is even possible
to guess a person's address based on that person's name and
affiliation.
Finally, the proposed form is fully independent of the internal
company structure, technical solutions etc. All changes are
accommodated in the configuration of the technical infrastructure,
and are thereby not reflected in the email address itself.
The only case when the address needs to be changed is when email user
changes the organization she works for.
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When publishing email addresses, capital letters are recommended at
the beginning of the "name" and "family-name", but are not mandatory.
In the same manner, capital letters in the company's name should be
used in the way they appear on business cards: with the first capital
letter, all capital letters or any combination. This, again, is not
mandatory.
Thus, easier to read and remember form of email address would be:
Nikola.Tesla@Innovation.hr
The dot "." as a separator between "name" and "family-name" is
optional, but highly recommended. Although it could, for instance,
be replaced by dash "-", underscore "_", or completely omitted, it is
strongly recommended to use the separator and to use the dot ".".
In case of announcing an email address over the audio channel only (a
telephone or radio broadcast), in some languages it is hard to
distinguish between dash and underscore. Further, dash is sometimes
part of a person's name or family name, which adds to confusion.
Finally, dots being used as separators on both sides of at "@" symbol
add to the intuitiveness of the email address and make it even easier
to remember.
3. Method for Address Forming, Resolving Duplicate Names
If there is more than one person with the same name working at the
same company, then a third identifier can be introduced, along with
"first-name" and "family-name". It could be the "middle-name" or a
"nickname". For example, if NIKOLA TESLA'S middle name is MARKO, and
his nickname GENIUS, he might have the following email addresses:
Nikola.Marko.Tesla@Innovation.hr
Nikola.Tesla.Genius@Innovation.hr
Should the guessability of the email address be an issue, the
organization or company could install an automated software which
would accept incoming messages and if the address is not precise
enough, e.g. Nikola.Tesla@Innovation.hr, return the message to the
sender with an explanation and a list of possible matches, such as:
"There is more than one user with the same first name and family
name. Your request needs to be more specific. Currently, listed
users are:
Nikola.Marko.Tesla@Innovation.hr
Nikola.Ivan.Tesla@Innovation.hr
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This is an automated response. Please do not reply to it."
4. The Issue of Organization's Subdomains in Email Addresses
Large organizations tend to use functional or geographical subdomains
for a variety of services, including email. Thus, it is common to
see email addresses of the form (incorporating previously described
method)
Nikola.Tesla@Marketing.Innovation.hr
Nikola.Tesla@Asia.Innovation.hr
Nikola.Tesla@us.Innovation.hr
Nikola.Tesla@Gospic.Innovation.hr
While all of the above forms do keep the user's email address free of
technological and infrastructural changes within an organization,
they are dependent of that person's position within the same.
Further, the guessability of the address is significantly reduced.
For those reasons it is advisable to refrain from using subdomains in
email addresses, whenever possible.
5. Security Considerations
The form of email address described in this memo raises no new
security issues itself, but the proposed method, due to the
guessability of email addresses (e.g., its transparency), could
indirectly increase spam problems.
However, such spams would be dealt with the same manner as for any
other form of email address.
The proposed method of forming email addresses has been used in
Croatia for the past ten years. During that time there were no
problems spotted, associated with it.
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6. References
1 Postel, J., "SIMPLE MAIL TRANSFER PROTOCOL", STD 10, RFC 821,
August 1982.
2 Klensin, J., Freed, N., Moore, K., "SMTP Service Extension for
Message Size Declaration", STD 10, RFC 1870, November 1995.
7. Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Croatian Academic and Research
Network – CARNet for accepting the proposed method and actively
promoting and supporting it for over a decade. Over this time, no
drawbacks or problems have been detected.
8. Author's Addresses
Predrag Pale
Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing
University of Zagreb
Unska 3, 10000 Zagreb
Croatia
Email: Predrag.Pale@FER.hr
Kristijan Cerovski
Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing
University of Zagreb
Unska 3, 10000 Zagreb
Croatia
Email: Kristijan.Cerovski@FER.hr
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