Internet DRAFT - draft-hansen-mdn-3798bis
draft-hansen-mdn-3798bis
Network Working Group T. Hansen, Ed.
Internet-Draft AT&T Laboratories
Obsoletes: 3798 (if approved) A. Melnikov, Ed.
Intended status: Standards Track Isode Ltd
Expires: January 4, 2015 July 3, 2014
Message Disposition Notification
draft-hansen-mdn-3798bis-02.txt
Abstract
This memo defines a MIME content-type that may be used by a mail user
agent (MUA) or electronic mail gateway to report the disposition of a
message after it has been successfully delivered to a recipient.
This content-type is intended to be machine-processable. Additional
message header fields are also defined to permit Message Disposition
Notifications (MDNs) to be requested by the sender of a message. The
purpose is to extend Internet Mail to support functionality often
found in other messaging systems, such as X.400 and the proprietary
"LAN-based" systems, and often referred to as "read receipts,"
"acknowledgements", or "receipt notifications." The intention is to
do this while respecting privacy concerns, which have often been
expressed when such functions have been discussed in the past.
Because many messages are sent between the Internet and other
messaging systems (such as X.400 or the proprietary "LAN-based"
systems), the MDN protocol is designed to be useful in a multi-
protocol messaging environment. To this end, the protocol described
in this memo provides for the carriage of "foreign" addresses, in
addition to those normally used in Internet Mail. Additional
attributes may also be defined to support "tunneling" of foreign
notifications through Internet Mail.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
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This Internet-Draft will expire on January 4, 2015.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Purposes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2. Requesting Message Disposition Notifications . . . . . . . . 5
2.1. The Disposition-Notification-To Header . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2. The Disposition-Notification-Options Header . . . . . . . 7
2.3. The Original-Recipient Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.4. Use with the Message/Partial Content Type . . . . . . . . 9
3. Format of a Message Disposition Notification . . . . . . . . 9
3.1. The message/disposition-notification content-type . . . . 11
3.2. Message/disposition-notification Fields . . . . . . . . . 13
3.3. Extension-fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4. Timeline of events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5. Conformance and Usage Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.1. Forgery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
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6.2. Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.3. Non-Repudiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.4. Mail Bombing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
7. Collected Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
8. Guidelines for Gatewaying MDNs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
8.1. Gatewaying from other mail systems to MDNs . . . . . . . 24
8.2. Gatewaying from MDNs to other mail systems . . . . . . . 25
8.3. Gatewaying of MDN-requests to other mail systems . . . . 25
9. Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
10. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
10.1. Disposition-Notification-Options header field
disposition-notification-parameter names . . . . . . . . 27
10.2. Disposition modifier names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
10.3. MDN extension field names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
11. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
12.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
12.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Appendix A. Changes from RFC 3798 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1. Introduction
This memo defines a RFC-MIME-MEDIA [4] content-type for message
disposition notifications (MDNs). An MDN can be used to notify the
sender of a message of any of several conditions that may occur after
successful delivery, such as display of the message contents,
printing of the message, deletion (without display) of the message,
or the recipient's refusal to provide MDNs. The "message/
disposition-notification" content-type defined herein is intended for
use within the framework of the "multipart/report" content type
defined in RFC-REPORT [6].
This memo defines the format of the notifications and the RFC-MSGFMT
[2] header fields used to request them.
This memo is an update to RFC 3798 and is intended to be published at
Internet Standard Level.
This memo is currently marked with the 'pre5378Trust200902' IPR
statements until a release has been obtained from all previous
authors and editors of this text.
1.1. Purposes
The MDNs defined in this memo are expected to serve several purposes:
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a. Inform human beings of the disposition of messages after
successful delivery, in a manner that is largely independent of
human language;
b. Allow mail user agents to keep track of the disposition of
messages sent, by associating returned MDNs with earlier message
transmissions;
c. Convey disposition notification requests and disposition
notifications between Internet Mail and "foreign" mail systems
via a gateway;
d. Allow "foreign" notifications to be tunneled through a MIME-
capable message system and back into the original messaging
system that issued the original notification, or even to a third
messaging system;
e. Allow language-independent, yet reasonably precise, indications
of the disposition of a message to be delivered.
1.2. Requirements
These purposes place the following constraints on the notification
protocol:
a. It must be readable by humans, and must be machine-parsable.
b. It must provide enough information to allow message senders (or
their user agents) to unambiguously associate an MDN with the
message that was sent and the original recipient address for
which the MDN was issued (if such information is available), even
if the message was forwarded to another recipient address.
c. It must also be able to describe the disposition of a message
independent of any particular human language or of the
terminology of any particular mail system.
d. The specification must be extensible in order to accommodate
future requirements.
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1.3. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC-KEYWORDS [9].
All syntax descriptions use the ABNF specified by RFC-MSGFMT [2], in
which the lexical tokens (used below) are defined: "atom", "CRLF",
"FWS", "CFWS", "field-name", "mailbox", "msg-id", and "text". The
following lexical tokens are defined in the definition of the
Content-Type header field in RFC-MIME-BODY [3]: "attribute" and
"value".
2. Requesting Message Disposition Notifications
Message disposition notifications are requested by including a
Disposition-Notification-To header field in the message. Further
information to be used by the recipient's MUA in generating the MDN
may be provided by also including Original-Recipient and/or
Disposition-Notification-Options header fields in the message.
2.1. The Disposition-Notification-To Header
A request for the receiving user agent to issue message disposition
notifications is made by placing a Disposition-Notification-To header
field into the message. The syntax of the header field is
mdn-request-header = "Disposition-Notification-To" ":" [FWS]
mailbox *("," [FWS] mailbox)
The presence of a Disposition-Notification-To header field in a
message is merely a request for an MDN. The recipients' user agents
are always free to silently ignore such a request.
An MDN MUST NOT itself have a Disposition-Notification-To header
field. An MDN MUST NOT be generated in response to an MDN.
A user agent MUST NOT issue more than one MDN on behalf of each
particular recipient. That is, once an MDN has been issued on behalf
of a recipient, no further MDNs may be issued on behalf of that
recipient, even if another disposition is performed on the message.
However, if a message is forwarded, an MDN may have been issued for
the recipient doing the forwarding and the recipient of the forwarded
message may also cause an MDN to be generated.
While Internet standards normally do not specify the behavior of user
interfaces, it is strongly recommended that the user agent obtain the
user's consent before sending an MDN. This consent could be obtained
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for each message through some sort of prompt or dialog box, or
globally through the user's setting of a preference.
MDNs SHOULD NOT be sent automatically if the address in the
Disposition-Notification-To header field differs from the address in
the Return-Path header field (see RFC-MSGFMT [2]). In this case,
confirmation from the user SHOULD be obtained, if possible. If
obtaining consent is not possible (e.g., because the user is not
online at the time), then an MDN SHOULD NOT be sent.
Confirmation from the user SHOULD be obtained (or no MDN sent) if
there is no Return-Path header field in the message, or if there is
more than one distinct address in the Disposition-Notification-To
header field.
The comparison of the addresses should be done using only the addr-
spec (local-part "@" domain) portion, excluding any angle brackets,
phrase and route. The comparison MUST be case-sensitive for the
local-part and case-insensitive for the domain part. [[ more work
needed here ]]
[[CREF1: (From Bruce) the domains might differ, yet refer to the same
place (equivalent MX mail exchangers, A vs. CNAME DNS records, DNS
names vs. domain literals, etc.) These are not addressed in 3798.
]]
[[CREF2: (From Bruce) local-parts and domains might differ as literal
text, but be equivalent when put in canonical form. The issues are
discussed in RFC 3696 -- but beware -- 3696 has a number of errors;
refer to RFC 5322 for the actual quoting and escaping rules. ]]
[[CREF3: (From Bruce) internationalization issues might further
compound comparison issues between local-parts and domains
(specifying that the on-the-wire forms must be compared might
suffice) ]]
[[CREF4: (From Bruce) there exist some conventions (not standardized
as far as I know) regarding subaddressing applied to local parts,
e.g. as in tony+rfc3798@maillennium.att.com (that example also
illustrates an issue regarding subdomains) ]]
[[CREF5: (From Bruce) Of those, the angle bracket issue ought to be
understood, but clarification could benefit implementors, especially
as RFC 5322 defined the Return-Path syntax somewhat peculiarly.
Canonicalization of local-parts and domains should probably be
required prior to comparison, and use of on-the-wire forms should
probably also be specified. DNS equivalence issues might be tricky
for some implementations (e.g. offline reading); perhaps the
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specification could use RFC 2119 "MAY" to give implementations leeway
to consider A vs. CNAME and DNS vs domain literal equivalence for
situations where DNS is available to the implementation (I'm not sure
about MX). About the only thing that can be said w.r.t.
subaddressing and subdomains is a caution to sending MUA and address-
rewriting MTA authors that a mismatch might result in no MDN being
produced. ]]
If the message contains more than one Return-Path header field, the
implementation may pick one to use for the comparison, or treat the
situation as a failure of the comparison.
The reason for not automatically sending an MDN if the comparison
fails or more than one address is specified is to reduce the
possibility of mail loops and of MDNs being used for mail bombing.
A message that contains a Disposition-Notification-To header field
SHOULD also contain a Message-ID header field as specified in RFC-
MSGFMT [2]. This will permit automatic correlation of MDNs with
their original messages by user agents.
If the request for message disposition notifications for some
recipients and not others is desired, two copies of the message
should be sent, one with a Disposition-Notification-To header field
and one without. Many of the other header fields of the message
(e.g., To, Cc) will be the same in both copies. The recipients in
the respective message envelopes determine for whom message
disposition notifications are requested and for whom they are not.
If desired, the Message-ID header field may be the same in both
copies of the message. Note that there are other situations (e.g.,
Bcc) in which it is necessary to send multiple copies of a message
with slightly different header fields. The combination of such
situations and the need to request MDNs for a subset of all
recipients may result in more than two copies of a message being
sent, some with a Disposition-Notification-To header field and some
without.
Messages posted to newsgroups SHOULD NOT have a Disposition-
Notification-To header field.
2.2. The Disposition-Notification-Options Header
Future extensions to this specification may require that information
be supplied to the recipient's MUA for additional control over how
and what MDNs are generated. The Disposition-Notification-Options
header field provides an extensible mechanism for such information.
The syntax of this header field is as follows:
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Disposition-Notification-Options =
"Disposition-Notification-Options" ":" [FWS]
disposition-notification-parameter-list
disposition-notification-parameter-list =
disposition-notification-parameter
*(";" [FWS] disposition-notification-parameter)
disposition-notification-parameter = attribute [FWS] "="
[FWS] importance "," [FWS] value *("," [FWS] value)
importance = "required" / "optional"
An importance of "required" indicates that interpretation of the
disposition-notification-parameter is necessary for proper generation
of an MDN in response to this request. An importance of "optional"
indicates that an MUA that does not understand the meaning of this
disposition-notification-parameter MAY generate an MDN in response
anyway, ignoring the value of the disposition-notification-parameter.
No disposition-notification-parameter attribute names are defined in
this specification. Attribute names may be defined in the future by
later revisions or extensions to this specification. Disposition-
notification-parameter attribute names beginning with "X-" will never
be defined as standard names; such names are reserved for
experimental use. disposition-notification-parameter attribute names
not beginning with "X-" MUST be registered with the Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority (IANA) and described in a standards-track RFC or an
experimental RFC approved by the IESG. [[ more work needed here ]]
(See Section 10 for a registration form.)
2.3. The Original-Recipient Header
Since electronic mail addresses may be rewritten while the message is
in transit, it is useful for the original recipient address to be
made available by the delivering MTA. The delivering MTA may be able
to obtain this information from the ORCPT parameter of the SMTP RCPT
TO command, as defined in RFC-SMTP [1] and RFC-DSN-SMTP [7].
RFC-DSN-SMTP [7] is amended as follows: If the ORCPT information is
available, the delivering MTA SHOULD insert an Original-Recipient
header field at the beginning of the message (along with the Return-
Path header field). The delivering MTA MAY delete any other
Original-Recipient header fields that occur in the message. The
syntax of this header field is as follows:
original-recipient-header =
"Original-Recipient" ":" address-type ";" generic-address
The address-type and generic-address token are as specified in the
description of the Original-Recipient field in Section 3.2.3.
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The purpose of carrying the original recipient information and
returning it in the MDN is to permit automatic correlation of MDNs
with the original message on a per-recipient basis.
2.4. Use with the Message/Partial Content Type
The use of the header fields Disposition-Notification-To,
Disposition-Notification-Options, and Original-Recipient with the
MIME message/partial content type (RFC-MIME-MEDIA [4]]) requires
further definition.
When a message is segmented into two or more message/partial
fragments, the three header fields mentioned in the above paragraph
SHOULD be placed in the "inner" or "enclosed" message (using the
terms of RFC-MIME-MEDIA [4]). These header fields SHOULD NOT be used
in the header fields of any of the fragments themselves.
When the multiple message/partial fragments are reassembled, the
following applies. If these header fields occur along with the other
header fields of a message/partial fragment message, they pertain to
an MDN that will be generated for the fragment. If these header
fields occur in the header fields of the "inner" or "enclosed"
message (using the terms of RFC-MIME-MEDIA [4]), they pertain to an
MDN that will be generated for the reassembled message.
Section 5.2.2.1 of RFC-MIME-MEDIA [4]) is amended to specify that, in
addition to the header fields specified there, the three header
fields described in this specification are to be appended, in order,
to the header fields of the reassembled message. Any occurrences of
the three header fields defined here in the header fields of the
initial enclosing message must not be copied to the reassembled
message.
3. Format of a Message Disposition Notification
A message disposition notification is a MIME message with a top-level
content-type of multipart/report (defined in RFC-REPORT [6]). When
multipart/report content is used to transmit an MDN:
a. The report-type parameter of the multipart/report content is
"disposition-notification".
b. The first component of the multipart/report contains a human-
readable explanation of the MDN, as described in RFC-REPORT [6].
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c. The second component of the multipart/report is of content-type
message/disposition-notification, described in Section 3.1 of
this document.
d. If the original message or a portion of the message is to be
returned to the sender, it appears as the third component of the
multipart/report. The decision of whether or not to return the
message or part of the message is up to the MUA generating the
MDN. However, in the case of encrypted messages requesting MDNs,
encrypted message text MUST be returned, if it is returned at
all, only in its original encrypted form.
NOTE: For message disposition notifications gatewayed from foreign
systems, the header fields of the original message may not be
available. In this case, the third component of the MDN may be
omitted, or it may contain "simulated" RFC-MSGFMT [2] header fields
that contain equivalent information. In particular, it is very
desirable to preserve the subject and date fields from the original
message.
The MDN MUST be addressed (in both the message header field and the
transport envelope) to the address(es) from the Disposition-
Notification-To header field from the original message for which the
MDN is being generated.
The From field of the message header field of the MDN MUST contain
the address of the person for whom the message disposition
notification is being issued.
The envelope sender address (i.e., SMTP MAIL FROM) of the MDN MUST be
null (<>), specifying that no Delivery Status Notification messages
or other messages indicating successful or unsuccessful delivery are
to be sent in response to an MDN.
A message disposition notification MUST NOT itself request an MDN.
That is, it MUST NOT contain a Disposition-Notification-To header
field.
The Message-ID header field (if present) for an MDN MUST be different
from the Message-ID of the message for which the MDN is being issued.
A particular MDN describes the disposition of exactly one message for
exactly one recipient. Multiple MDNs may be generated as a result of
one message submission, one per recipient. However, due to the
circumstances described in Section 2.1, MDNs may not be generated for
some recipients for which MDNs were requested.
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3.1. The message/disposition-notification content-type
The message/disposition-notification content-type is defined as
follows:
MIME type name: message
MIME subtype name: disposition-notification
Optional parameters: none
Encoding considerations: "7bit" encoding is sufficient and MUST be
used to maintain readability when viewed by non-
MIME mail readers.
Security considerations: discussed in Section 6 of this memo.
(While the 7bit restriction applies to the message/disposition-
notification portion of the multipart/report content, it does not
apply to the optional third portion of the multipart/report content.)
The message/disposition-notification report type for use in the
multipart/report is "disposition-notification".
The body of a message/disposition-notification consists of one or
more "fields" formatted according to the ABNF of RFC-MSGFMT [2]
header "fields". The syntax of the message/disposition-notification
content is as follows:
disposition-notification-content = [ reporting-ua-field CRLF ]
[ mdn-gateway-field CRLF ]
[ original-recipient-field CRLF ]
final-recipient-field CRLF
[ original-message-id-field CRLF ]
disposition-field CRLF
*( failure-field CRLF )
*( error-field CRLF )
*( extension-field CRLF )
extension-field = extension-field-name ":" *(CFWS / text)
extension-field-name = field-name
[[ more work needed here ]]
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[[CREF6: Is this wording okay ? ]] Note that the order of the above
fields is fixed.
3.1.1. General conventions for fields
Since these fields are defined according to the rules of RFC-MSGFMT
[2], the same conventions for continuation lines and comments apply.
Notification fields may be continued onto multiple lines by beginning
each additional line with a SPACE or HTAB. Text that appears in
parentheses is considered a comment and not part of the contents of
that notification field. Field names are case-insensitive, so the
names of notification fields may be spelled in any combination of
upper and lower case letters. Comments in notification fields may
use the "encoded-word" construct defined in RFC-MIME-HEADER [5].
3.1.2. "*-type" subfields
Several fields consist of a "-type" subfield, followed by a semi-
colon, followed by "*text". [[ more work needed here ]]
[[CREF7: ( Shouldn't this allow FWS somehow? Alexey: yes!) ]]
[[CREF8: ( I see that address-type and mta-name-type uses atom
instead of *text, which not only permits FWS, but goes further to
allow CFWS. ) ]] For these fields, the keyword used in the address-
type or MTA-type subfield indicates the expected format of the
address or MTA-name that follows.
The "-type" subfields are defined as follows:
a. An "address-type" specifies the format of a mailbox address. For
example, Internet Mail addresses use the "rfc822" address-type.
address-type = atom
[[ more work needed here ]]
[[CREF9: This is not *text ]]
b. An "MTA-name-type" specifies the format of a mail transfer agent
name. For example, for an SMTP server on an Internet host, the
MTA name is the domain name of that host, and the "dns" MTA-name-
type is used.
mta-name-type = atom
[[ more work needed here ]]
[[CREF10: This is not *text ]]
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Values for address-type and mta-name-type are case-insensitive.
Thus, address-type values of "RFC822" and "rfc822" are equivalent.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) maintains a registry
of address-type and mta-name-type values, along with descriptions of
the meanings of each, or a reference to one or more specifications
that provide such descriptions. (The "rfc822" address-type is
defined in RFC-DSN-SMTP [7].) Registration forms for address-type
and mta-name-type appear in RFC-DSN-FORMAT [8].
3.2. Message/disposition-notification Fields
3.2.1. The Reporting-UA field
reporting-ua-field = "Reporting-UA" ":" ua-name [ ";" ua-product ]
ua-name = *text-no-semi
ua-product = *text-no-semi
text-no-semi = %d1-9 / ; text characters excluding NUL, CR,
%d11 / %d12 / %d14-58 / %d60-127 ; LF, or semi-colon
The Reporting-UA field is defined as follows:
An MDN describes the disposition of a message after it has been
delivered to a recipient. In all cases, the Reporting-UA is the MUA
that performed the disposition described in the MDN. This field is
optional, but recommended. For Internet Mail user agents, it is
recommended that this field contain both: the DNS name of the
particular instance of the MUA that generated the MDN, and the name
of the product. For example,
Reporting-UA: pc.example.com; Foomail 97.1
If the reporting MUA consists of more than one component (e.g., a
base program and plug-ins), this may be indicated by including a list
of product names.
3.2.2. The MDN-Gateway field
The MDN-Gateway field indicates the name of the gateway or MTA that
translated a foreign (non-Internet) message disposition notification
into this MDN. This field MUST appear in any MDN that was translated
by a gateway from a foreign system into MDN format, and MUST NOT
appear otherwise.
mdn-gateway-field = "MDN-Gateway" ":" mta-name-type ";" mta-name
mta-name = *text
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For gateways into Internet Mail, the MTA-name-type will normally be
"smtp", and the mta-name will be the Internet domain name of the
gateway.
3.2.3. Original-Recipient field
The Original-Recipient field indicates the original recipient address
as specified by the sender of the message for which the MDN is being
issued. For Internet Mail messages, the value of the Original-
Recipient field is obtained from the Original-Recipient header field
from the message for which the MDN is being generated. If there is
no Original-Recipient header field in the message, then the Original-
Recipient field MUST be omitted, unless the same information is
reliably available some other way. If there is an Original-Recipient
header field in the original message (or original recipient
information is reliably available some other way), then the Original-
Recipient field must be supplied. If there is more than one
Original-Recipient header field in the message, the MUA may choose
the one to use, or act as if no Original-Recipient header field is
present.
original-recipient-field =
"Original-Recipient" ":" address-type ";" generic-address
generic-address = *text
The address-type field indicates the type of the original recipient
address. If the message originated within the Internet, the address-
type field will normally be "rfc822", and the address will be
according to the syntax specified in RFC-MSGFMT [2]. The value
"unknown" should be used if the Reporting MUA cannot determine the
type of the original recipient address from the message envelope.
This address is the same as that provided by the sender and can be
used to automatically correlate MDN reports with original messages on
a per recipient basis.
3.2.4. Final-Recipient field
The Final-Recipient field indicates the recipient for which the MDN
is being issued. This field MUST be present.
The syntax of the field is as follows:
final-recipient-field =
"Final-Recipient" ":" address-type ";" generic-address
The generic-address subfield of the Final-Recipient field MUST
contain the mailbox address of the recipient (from the From header
field of the MDN) as it was when the MDN was generated by the MUA.
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The Final-Recipient address may differ from the address originally
provided by the sender, because it may have been transformed during
forwarding and gatewaying into a totally unrecognizable mess.
However, in the absence of the optional Original-Recipient field, the
Final-Recipient field and any returned content may be the only
information available with which to correlate the MDN with a
particular message recipient.
The address-type subfield indicates the type of address expected by
the reporting MTA in that context. Recipient addresses obtained via
SMTP will normally be of address-type "rfc822".
Since mailbox addresses (including those used in the Internet) may be
case sensitive, the case of alphabetic characters in the address MUST
be preserved.
3.2.5. Original-Message-ID field
The Original-Message-ID field indicates the message-ID of the message
for which the MDN is being issued. It is obtained from the Message-
ID header field of the message for which the MDN is issued. This
field MUST be present if the original message contained a Message-ID
header field. The syntax of the field is as follows:
original-message-id-field =
"Original-Message-ID" ":" msg-id
The msg-id token is as specified in RFC-MSGFMT [2].
3.2.6. Disposition field
The Disposition field indicates the action performed by the
Reporting-MUA on behalf of the user. This field MUST be present.
The syntax for the Disposition field is:
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disposition-field =
"Disposition" ":" [FWS] disposition-mode ";"
[FWS] disposition-type
[ "/" disposition-modifier
*( "," disposition-modifier ) ]
disposition-mode = action-mode "/" [FWS] sending-mode
action-mode = "manual-action" / "automatic-action"
sending-mode = "MDN-sent-manually" / "MDN-sent-automatically"
disposition-type = "displayed" / "deleted" / "dispatched" /
"processed"
disposition-modifier = [FWS]
("error" / disposition-modifier-extension)
disposition-modifier-extension = atom
The disposition-mode, disposition-type, and disposition-modifier may
be spelled in any combination of upper and lower case characters.
3.2.6.1. Disposition modes
The following disposition modes are defined:
"manual-action" The disposition described by the disposition type
was a result of an explicit instruction by the
user rather than some sort of automatically
performed action.
"automatic-action" The disposition described by the disposition type
was a result of an automatic action, rather than
an explicit instruction by the user for this
message.
"Manual-action" and "automatic-action" are mutually exclusive. One
or the other MUST be specified.
"MDN-sent-manually" The user explicitly gave permission for this
particular MDN to be sent.
"MDN-sent-automatically" The MDN was sent because the MUA had
previously been configured to do so
automatically.
"MDN-sent-manually" and "MDN-sent-automatically" are mutually
exclusive. One or the other MUST be specified.
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3.2.6.2. Disposition types
The following disposition-types are defined:
"displayed" The message has been displayed by the MUA to
someone reading the recipient's mailbox. There
is no guarantee that the content has been read or
understood.
"dispatched" The message has been sent somewhere in some
manner (e.g., printed, faxed, forwarded) without
necessarily having been previously displayed to
the user. The user may or may not see the
message later.
"processed" The message has been processed in some manner
(i.e., by some sort of rules or server) without
being displayed to the user. The user may or may
not see the message later, or there may not even
be a human user associated with the mailbox.
"deleted" The message has been deleted. The recipient may
or may not have seen the message. The recipient
might "undelete" the message at a later time and
read the message.
3.2.6.3. Disposition modifiers
Only the extension disposition modifiers is defined:
disposition-modifier-extension
Disposition modifiers may be defined in the
future by later revisions or extensions to this
specification. Disposition value names beginning
with "X-" will never be defined as standard
values; such names are reserved for experimental
use. MDN disposition value names NOT beginning
with "X-" MUST be registered with the Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and described
in a standards-track RFC or an experimental RFC
approved by the IESG. (See Section 10 for a
registration form.) MDNs with disposition
modifier names not understood by the receiving
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MUA MAY be silently ignored or placed in the
user's mailbox without special interpretation.
They MUST not cause any error message to be sent
to the sender of the MDN.
If an MUA developer does not wish to register the meanings of such
disposition modifier extensions, "X-" modifiers may be used for this
purpose. To avoid name collisions, the name of the MUA
implementation should follow the "X-", (e.g., "X-Foomail-").
It is not required that an MUA be able to generate all of the
possible values of the Disposition field.
A user agent MUST NOT issue more than one MDN on behalf of each
particular recipient. That is, once an MDN has been issued on behalf
of a recipient, no further MDNs may be issued on behalf of that
recipient, even if another disposition is performed on the message.
However, if a message is forwarded, a "dispatched" MDN MAY be issued
for the recipient doing the forwarding and the recipient of the
forwarded message may also cause an MDN to be generated.
3.2.7. Failure and Error Fields
The Failure and Error fields are used to supply additional
information in the form of text messages when the "failure"
disposition type or "error" disposition modifier appear. The syntax
is as follows:
failure-field = "Failure" ":" *text
error-field = "Error" ":" *text
3.3. Extension-fields
Additional MDN fields may be defined in the future by later revisions
or extensions to this specification. Extension-field names beginning
with "X-" will never be defined as standard fields; such names are
reserved for experimental use. MDN field names NOT beginning with
"X-" MUST be registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
(IANA) and described in a standards-track RFC or an experimental RFC
approved by the IESG. (See Section 10 for a registration form.) MDN
Extension-fields may be defined for the following reasons:
a. To allow additional information from foreign disposition reports
to be tunneled through Internet MDNs. The names of such MDN
fields should begin with an indication of the foreign environment
name (e.g., X400-Physical-Forwarding-Address).
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b. To allow transmission of diagnostic information that is specific
to a particular mail user agent (MUA). The names of such MDN
fields should begin with an indication of the MUA implementation
that produced the MDN (e.g., Foomail-information).
If an application developer does not wish to register the meanings of
such extension fields, "X-" fields may be used for this purpose. To
avoid name collisions, the name of the application implementation
should follow the "X-", (e.g., "X-Foomail-Log-ID" or "X-Foomail-EDI-
info").
4. Timeline of events
The following timeline shows when various events in the processing of
a message and generation of MDNs take place:
-- User composes message
-- User tells MUA to send message
-- MUA passes message to MTA (original recipient information passed
along)
-- MTA sends message to next MTA
-- Final MTA receives message
-- Final MTA delivers message to MUA (possibly generating a DSN)
-- MUA performs automatic processing and generates corresponding MDNs
("dispatched", "processed" or "deleted" disposition type with
"automatic-action" and "MDN-sent-automatically" disposition modes)
-- MUA displays list of messages to user
-- User selects a message and requests that some action be performed
on it.
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-- MUA performs requested action and, with user's permission, sends
an appropriate MDN ("displayed", "dispatched", "processed", or
"deleted" disposition type, with "manual-action" and "MDN-sent-
manually" or "MDN-sent-automatically" disposition mode).
-- User possibly performs other actions on message, but no further
MDNs are generated.
5. Conformance and Usage Requirements
An MUA or gateway conforms to this specification if it generates MDNs
according to the protocol defined in this memo. It is not necessary
to be able to generate all of the possible values of the Disposition
field.
MUAs and gateways MUST NOT generate the Original-Recipient field of
an MDN unless the mail protocols provide the address originally
specified by the sender at the time of submission. Ordinary SMTP
does not make that guarantee, but the SMTP extension defined in RFC-
DSN-SMTP [7] permits such information to be carried in the envelope
if it is available. The Original-Recipient header field defined in
this document provides a way for the MTA to pass the original
recipient address to the MUA.
Each sender-specified recipient address may result in more than one
MDN. If an MDN is requested for a recipient that is forwarded to
multiple recipients of an "alias" (as defined in RFC-DSN-SMTP [7],
section 6.2.7.3), each of the recipients may issue an MDN.
Successful distribution of a message to a mailing list exploder
SHOULD be considered the final disposition of the message. A mailing
list exploder MAY issue an MDN with a disposition type of "processed"
and disposition modes of "automatic-action" and "MDN-sent-
automatically" indicating that the message has been forwarded to the
list. In this case, the request for MDNs is not propagated to the
members of the list.
Alternatively, the mailing list exploder MAY issue no MDN and
propagate the request for MDNs to all members of the list. The
latter behavior is not recommended for any but small, closely knit
lists, as it might cause large numbers of MDNs to be generated and
may cause confidential subscribers to the list to be revealed. The
mailing list exploder MAY also direct MDNs to itself, correlate them,
and produce a report to the original sender of the message.
This specification places no restrictions on the processing of MDNs
received by user agents or mailing lists.
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6. Security Considerations
The following security considerations apply when using MDNs:
6.1. Forgery
MDNs may be forged as easily as ordinary Internet electronic mail.
User agents and automatic mail handling facilities (such as mail
distribution list exploders) that wish to make automatic use of MDNs
should take appropriate precautions to minimize the potential damage
from denial-of-service attacks.
Security threats related to forged MDNs include the sending of:
a. A falsified disposition notification when the indicated
disposition of the message has not actually occurred,
b. Unsolicited MDNs
6.2. Privacy
Another dimension of security is privacy. There may be cases in
which a message recipient does not wish the disposition of messages
addressed to him to be known, or is concerned that the sending of
MDNs may reveal other sensitive information (e.g., when the message
was read). In this situation, it is acceptable for the MUA to
silently ignore requests for MDNs.
If the Disposition-Notification-To header field is passed on
unmodified when a message is distributed to the subscribers of a
mailing list, the subscribers to the list may be revealed to the
sender of the original message by the generation of MDNs.
Headers of the original message returned in part 3 of the multipart/
report could reveal confidential information about host names and/or
network topology inside a firewall.
An unencrypted MDN could reveal confidential information about an
encrypted message, especially if all or part of the original message
is returned in part 3 of the multipart/report. Encrypted MDNs are
not defined in this specification.
In general, any optional MDN field may be omitted if the Reporting
MUA site or user determines that inclusion of the field would impose
too great a compromise of site confidentiality. The need for such
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confidentiality must be balanced against the utility of the omitted
information in MDNs.
In some cases, someone with access to the message stream may use the
MDN request mechanism to monitor the mail reading habits of a target.
If the target is known to generate MDN reports, they could add a
disposition-notification-to field containing the envelope from
address along with a source route. The source route is ignored in
the comparison so the addresses will always match. But if the source
route is honored when the notification is sent, it could direct the
message to some other destination. This risk can be minimized by not
sending MDN's automatically.
6.3. Non-Repudiation
MDNs do not provide non-repudiation with proof of delivery. Within
the framework of today's Internet Mail, the MDNs defined in this
document provide valuable information to the mail user; however, MDNs
cannot be relied upon as a guarantee that a message was or was not
seen by the recipient. Even if MDNs are not actively forged, they
may be lost in transit. The recipient may bypass the MDN issuing
mechanism in some manner.
One possible solution for this purpose can be found in RFC-SEC-
SERVICES [10].
6.4. Mail Bombing
The MDN request mechanism introduces an additional way of mailbombing
a mailbox. The MDN request notification provides an address to which
MDN's should be sent. It is possible for an attacking agent to send
a potentially large set of messages to otherwise unsuspecting third
party recipients with a false "disposition-notification-to:" address.
Automatic, or simplistic processing of such requests would result in
a flood of MDN notifications to the target of the attack. Such an
attack could overrun the capacity of the targeted mailbox and deny
service.
For that reason, MDN's SHOULD NOT be sent automatically where the
"disposition-notification-to:" address is different from the envelope
MAIL FROM address. See Section 2.1 for further discussion.
7. Collected Grammar
NOTE: The following lexical tokens are defined in RFC-MSGFMT [2]:
atom, CRLF, FWS, CFWS, field-name, mailbox, msg-id, text. The
definitions of attribute and value are as in the definition of the
Content-Type header field in RFC-MIME-BODY [3].
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Message header fields:
mdn-request-header =
"Disposition-Notification-To" ":" [FWS]
mailbox *("," [FWS] mailbox)
Disposition-Notification-Options =
"Disposition-Notification-Options" ":" [FWS]
disposition-notification-parameter-list
disposition-notification-parameter-list =
disposition-notification-parameter
*(";" [FWS] disposition-notification-parameter)
disposition-notification-parameter = attribute [FWS] "=" [FWS]
importance "," [FWS] value *("," [FWS] value)
importance = "required" / "optional"
original-recipient-header =
"Original-Recipient" ":" address-type ";" generic-address
Report content:
disposition-notification-content =
[ reporting-ua-field CRLF ]
[ mdn-gateway-field CRLF ]
[ original-recipient-field CRLF ]
final-recipient-field CRLF
[ original-message-id-field CRLF ]
disposition-field CRLF
*( failure-field CRLF )
*( error-field CRLF )
*( extension-field CRLF )
address-type = atom
mta-name-type = atom
reporting-ua-field = "Reporting-UA" ":" ua-name [ ";" ua-product ]
ua-name = *text-no-semi
ua-product = *text-no-semi
text-no-semi = %d1-9 / ; text characters excluding NUL, CR,
%d11 / %d12 / %d14-58 / %d60-127 ; LF, or semi-colon
mdn-gateway-field = "MDN-Gateway" ":" mta-name-type ";" mta-name
mta-name = *text
original-recipient-field =
"Original-Recipient" ":" address-type ";" generic-address
generic-address = *text
final-recipient-field =
"Final-Recipient" ":" address-type ";" generic-address
original-message-id-field = "Original-Message-ID" ":" msg-id
disposition-field =
"Disposition" ":" [FWS] disposition-mode ";"
[FWS] disposition-type
[ "/" disposition-modifier
*( "," disposition-modifier ) ]
disposition-mode = action-mode "/" [FWS] sending-mode
action-mode = "manual-action" / "automatic-action"
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sending-mode = "MDN-sent-manually" / "MDN-sent-automatically"
disposition-type = "displayed" / "deleted" / "dispatched" /
"processed"
disposition-modifier = [FWS]
("error" / disposition-modifier-extension)
disposition-modifier-extension = atom
failure-field = "Failure" ":" *text
error-field = "Error" ":" *text
extension-field = extension-field-name ":" *text
extension-field-name = field-name
8. Guidelines for Gatewaying MDNs
NOTE: This section provides non-binding recommendations for the
construction of mail gateways that wish to provide semi-transparent
disposition notifications between the Internet and another electronic
mail system. Specific MDN gateway requirements for a particular pair
of mail systems may be defined by other documents.
8.1. Gatewaying from other mail systems to MDNs
A mail gateway may issue an MDN to convey the contents of a "foreign"
disposition notification over Internet Mail. When there are
appropriate mappings from the foreign notification elements to MDN
fields, the information may be transmitted in those MDN fields.
Additional information (such as might be needed to tunnel the foreign
notification through the Internet) may be defined in extension MDN
fields. (Such fields should be given names that identify the foreign
mail protocol, e.g., X400-* for X.400 protocol elements).
The gateway must attempt to supply reasonable values for the
Reporting-UA, Final-Recipient, and Disposition fields. These will
normally be obtained by translating the values from the foreign
notification into their Internet-style equivalents. However, some
loss of information is to be expected.
The sender-specified recipient address and the original message-id,
if present in the foreign notification, should be preserved in the
Original-Recipient and Original-Message-ID fields.
The gateway should also attempt to preserve the "final" recipient
address from the foreign system. Whenever possible, foreign protocol
elements should be encoded as meaningful printable ASCII strings.
For MDNs produced from foreign disposition notifications, the name of
the gateway MUST appear in the MDN-Gateway field of the MDN.
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8.2. Gatewaying from MDNs to other mail systems
It may be possible to gateway MDNs from the Internet into a foreign
mail system. The primary purpose of such gatewaying is to convey
disposition information in a form that is usable by the destination
system. A secondary purpose is to allow "tunneling" of MDNs through
foreign mail systems in case the MDN may be gatewayed back into the
Internet.
In general, the recipient of the MDN (i.e., the sender of the
original message) will want to know, for each recipient: the closest
available approximation to the original recipient address, and the
disposition (displayed, printed, etc.).
If possible, the gateway should attempt to preserve the Original-
Recipient address and Original-Message-ID (if present) in the
resulting foreign disposition report.
If it is possible to tunnel an MDN through the destination
environment, the gateway specification may define a means of
preserving the MDN information in the disposition reports used by
that environment.
8.3. Gatewaying of MDN-requests to other mail systems
By use of the separate disposition-notification-to request header
field, this specification offers a richer functionality than most, if
not all, other email systems. In most other email systems, the
notification recipient is identical to the message sender as
indicated in the "from" address. There are two interesting cases
when gatewaying into such systems:
1. If the address in the disposition-notification-to header field is
identical to the address in the SMTP "MAIL FROM", the expected
behavior will result, even if the disposition-notification-to
information is lost. Systems should propagate the MDN request.
2. If the address in the disposition-notification-to header field is
different from the address in the SMTP "MAIL FROM", gatewaying
into a foreign system without a separate notification address
will result in unintended behavior. This is especially important
when the message arrives via a mailing list expansion software
that may specifically replace the SMTP "MAIL FROM" address with
an alternate address. In such cases, the MDN request should not
be gatewayed and should be silently dropped. This is consistent
with other forms of non-support for MDN.
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9. Example
NOTE: This example is provided as illustration only, and is not
considered part of the MDN protocol specification. If the example
conflicts with the protocol definition above, the example is wrong.
Likewise, the use of *-type subfield names or extension fields in
this example is not to be construed as a definition for those type
names or extension fields.
This is an MDN issued after a message has been displayed to the user
of an Internet Mail user agent.
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 1995 00:19:00 (EDT) -0400
From: Joe Recipient <Joe_Recipient@example.com>
Message-Id: <199509200019.12345@example.com>
Subject: Disposition notification
To: Jane Sender <Jane_Sender@example.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/report; report-type=disposition-notification;
boundary="RAA14128.773615765/example.com"
--RAA14128.773615765/example.com
The message sent on 1995 Sep 19 at 13:30:00 (EDT) -0400 to Joe
Recipient <Joe_Recipient@example.com> with subject "First draft of
report" has been displayed.
This is no guarantee that the message has been read or understood.
--RAA14128.773615765/example.com
content-type: message/disposition-notification
Reporting-UA: joes-pc.cs.example.com; Foomail 97.1
Original-Recipient: rfc822;Joe_Recipient@example.com
Final-Recipient: rfc822;Joe_Recipient@example.com
Original-Message-ID: <199509192301.23456@example.org>
Disposition: manual-action/MDN-sent-manually; displayed
--RAA14128.773615765/example.com
content-type: message/rfc822
[original message optionally goes here]
--RAA14128.773615765/example.com--
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10. IANA Considerations
This document specifies three types of parameters that must be
registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
The forms below are for use when registering a new disposition-
notification-parameter name for the Disposition-Notification-Options
header field, a new disposition modifier name, or a new MDN extension
field. Each piece of information required by a registration form may
be satisfied either by providing the information on the form itself,
or by including a reference to a published, publicly available
specification that includes the necessary information. IANA MAY
reject registrations because of incomplete registration forms or
incomplete specifications.
To register, complete the following applicable form and send it via
electronic mail to <IANA@IANA.ORG>.
10.1. Disposition-Notification-Options header field disposition-
notification-parameter names
A registration for a Disposition-Notification-Options header field
disposition-notification-parameter name MUST include the following
information:
a. The proposed disposition-notification-parameter name.
b. The syntax for disposition-notification-parameter values,
specified using BNF, ABNF, regular expressions, or other non-
ambiguous language.
c. If disposition-notification-parameter values are not composed
entirely of graphic characters from the US-ASCII repertoire, a
specification for how they are to be encoded as graphic US-ASCII
characters in a Disposition-Notification-Options header field.
d. A reference to a standards track RFC or experimental RFC approved
by the IESG that describes the semantics of the disposition-
notification-parameter values.
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10.2. Disposition modifier names
A registration for a disposition-modifier name (used in the
Disposition field of a message/disposition-notification) MUST include
the following information:
a. The proposed disposition-modifier name.
b. A reference to a standards track RFC or experimental RFC approved
by the IESG that describes the semantics of the disposition
modifier.
10.3. MDN extension field names
A registration for an MDN extension-field name MUST include the
following information:
a. The proposed extension field name.
b. The syntax for extension values, specified using BNF, ABNF,
regular expressions, or other non-ambiguous language.
c. If extension-field values are not composed entirely of graphic
characters from the US-ASCII repertoire, a specification for how
they are to be encoded as graphic US-ASCII characters in a
Disposition-Notification-Options header field.
d. A reference to a standards track RFC or experimental RFC approved
by the IESG that describes the semantics of the extension field.
11. Acknowledgements
The contributions of Bruce Lilly and Alfred Hoenes are gratefully
acknowledged for this revision.
The contributions of Roger Fajman and Greg Vaudreuil to earlier
versions of this document are also gratefully acknowledged.
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12. References
12.1. Normative References
[1] Klensin, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 2821,
April 2001.
[2] Resnick, P., Ed., "Internet Message Format", RFC 5322,
October 2008.
[3] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message
Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996.
[4] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC 2046,
November 1996.
[5] Moore, K., "MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
Part Three: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text",
RFC 2047, November 1996.
[6] Vaudreuil, G., "The Multipart/Report Content Type for the
Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages", RFC
3462, January 2003.
[7] Moore, K., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Service
Extension for Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs)", RFC
3461, January 2003.
[8] Moore, K. and G. Vaudreuil, "An Extensible Message Format
for Delivery Status Notifications", RFC 3464, January
2003.
[9] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
12.2. Informative References
[10] Hoffman, P., "Enhanced Security Services for S/MIME", RFC
2634, June 1999.
Appendix A. Changes from RFC 3798
The values of "dispatched" and "processed" were lost from the ABNF
for "disposition-type".
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Because the warning disposition modifier was previously removed,
warning-field has also been removed.
The ABNF for ua-name and ua-product included semi-colon, which could
not be distinguished from *text in the production. The ua-name and
ua-product definitions were restricted to not include semi-colon.
The ABNF did not indicate all places that whitespace was allowable,
in particular folding whitespace, although all implementations allow
whitespace and folding in the header fields just like any other
RFC5322 [2]-formatted header field. There were also a number of
places in the ABNF that inconsistently permitted comments and
whitespace in one leg of the production and not another. The ABNF
now specifies FWS and CFWS in several places that should have already
been specified by the grammar.
Extension-field was defined in the collected grammar but not in the
main text.
[[CREF11: Shouldn't the places we use *text and *text-no-semi allow
FWS? ]]
The comparison of mailboxes in Disposition-Notification-To to the
Return-Path addr-spec was clarified.
The use of the grammar production "parameter" was confusing with the
RFC2045 [3] production of the same name, as well as other uses of the
same term. These have been clarified.
[[CREF12: Not sure what to do with this one: (From Bruce) In the case
of the message header fields, RFC 2822 also specifies minimum and
maximum counts for each header field, and similar guidance would
clarify 3798 (e.g. are multiple Disposition-Notification-Options
fields permitted in a single message header, and if so, what
semantics apply?). ]]
[[CREF13: Not sure what to do with this one: (From Bruce) Note also
that RFC 2045 is itself based on RFC 822 rather than 2822, so the
issue of where CFWS is permitted or prohibited should probably be
clearly specified where "attribute" and "value" are used. Note
further that the RFC 2045 definitions are clarified by errata and
modified by RFC 2231, and by RFC 2231 errata. Finally, note that RFC
2231 has provisions for continuation of long parameter values (where
there would otherwise be problems with the maximum line length
specifications of RFCs 822 and 2822), specification of language and
charset, and provision for compatible handling of non-ASCII text,
none of which are provided for in the RFC 3798 disposition-
notification parameters. It might be a good idea to think about that
now, as a future change would almost certainly reset the document
status to "Proposed". ]]
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A clarification was added on the extent of the 7bit nature of MDNs.
Uses of the terms "may" and "might" were clarified.
A clarification was added on the order of the fields in the message/
disposition-notification content.
[[CREF14: Not sure what to do with this one: (From Bruce) 3.1.1
explicitly mentions use of RFC 2047 encoded-words in comments
(however, as noted above there is no explicit provision for
comments), but fails to mention the other contexts in which encoded-
words may be used, viz. in an RFC [2]822 "phrase" (e.g. in the
display name of a name-addr mailbox in Disposition-Notification-To
(therefore, the discussion of encoded-words should probably be moved
earlier in the document, prior to the specification of Disposition-
Notification-To]), and in unstructured text (i.e. every instance of
*text in the ABNF). In particular, use of encoded-words might be
highly desirable in the following places: *) the ua-product portion
of the Reporting-UA field; *) the generic-address part of the
Original-Recipient and Final-Recipient fields; *) the (unstructured)
field bodies of Error, Failure, and Warning fields; in structured
extension fields where the context (per RFC 2047) is appropriate in
unstructured extension fields; *) in X- extension fields (see RFC
2047 for related X- message header fields). In cases where the field
syntax is shared with DSN fields, some coordination with the RFC 346x
authors might be desirable. ]]
[[CREF15: I think a couple of clarifications are in order: 1) This
restriction is within a given mail user agent. If the user uses
multiple MUAs, it is possible that multiple MDNs MAY be generated.
2) A mail user agent SHOULD use underlying protocol support when
possible to prevent multiple MDNs from being generated. If
underlying protocol support is not available, the mail user agent
MUST use local knowledge to prevent multiple MDNs. I don't think we
need to worry about the case of an MUA error; accidents and bad
implementations DO happen. (From Bruce) 3.2.6.3 prohibition against
multiple MDNs being issued on behalf of each recipient poses some
implementation difficulties: *) While IMAP servers maintain state
that could possibly be used to prevent issuance of multiple MDNs, the
POP protocol has no such provision. Even in the case of IMAP, there
is some ambiguity in the case of shared mailboxes. *) Some MUAs are
known to have extreme difficulty keeping track of which messages have
been seen, let alone responded to. Software version updates, minor
configuration changes (e.g. domain name or IP address change of POP
or IMAP server) are known to "confuse" some MUAs. *) there is no
standardized mechanism for communicating status between multiple MUAs
accessing the same mailbox (except in the case of IMAP, as noted
above). Therefore, if an MDN is sent when a message is viewed (etc.)
using one MUA, a different MUA subsequently being used to view the
same message in the same user's mailbox (either via POP, or from a
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flat file mailbox) might have no way to determine that an MDN had
already been sent. This is a fundamental difficulty with the
specified protocol (relaxing "MUST NOT" to "SHOULD NOT" is one
possible way around that difficulty -- otherwise the document
contains a "known technical omission" viz. no defined means of
establishing whether or not an MDN has already been sent for a
particular message. I believe that "known technical omissions" are a
barrier to further Standards Track progress). *) Due to aliases,
forwarding, etc. an original message sent to multiple addresses might
end up as multiple copies in a single recipient's mailbox. It is
unclear whether or not multiple MDNs are permitted in that case (the
Message-ID, if present in the original, will be the same in the
copies, and the "particular recipient" could be interpreted as being
the same, even though the addresses specified in the original message
transport envelope might have appeared to have been distinct to the
originator who requested MDNs. ]]
Authors' Addresses
Tony Hansen (editor)
AT&T Laboratories
200 Laurel Ave. South
Middletown, NJ 07748
USA
Email: tony+rfc3798@maillennium.att.com
Alexey Melnikov (editor)
Isode Ltd
14 Castle Mews
Hampton, Middlesex TW12 2NP
UK
Email: Alexey.Melnikov@isode.com
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