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 This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress". The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. 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. Pale & Cerovski Expires - September 2004 [Page 1] Internet Draft Forming Intuitive Email Addresses March 2004 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 Pale & Cerovski Expires - September 2004 [Page 2] Internet Draft Forming Intuitive Email Addresses March 2004 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. Pale & Cerovski Expires - September 2004 [Page 3] Internet Draft Forming Intuitive Email Addresses March 2004 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 Pale & Cerovski Expires - September 2004 [Page 4] Internet Draft Forming Intuitive Email Addresses March 2004 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. Pale & Cerovski Expires - September 2004 [Page 5] Internet Draft Forming Intuitive Email Addresses March 2004 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 Pale & Cerovski Expires - September 2004 [Page 6]