Signaling One-Click Functionality for List Email Headers
RFC 8058
Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(January 2017; Errata)
Was draft-levine-herkula-oneclick (individual in art area)
|
|
---|---|---|---|
Authors | John Levine , Tobias Herkula | ||
Last updated | 2020-01-21 | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized with errata bibtex | ||
Reviews | |||
Stream | WG state | (None) | |
Document shepherd | Paul Kincaid-Smith | ||
Shepherd write-up | Show (last changed 2016-09-12) | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 8058 (Proposed Standard) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Yes | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Alexey Melnikov | ||
Send notices to | "Paul Kincaid-Smith" <paulkincaidsmith@gmail.com> | ||
IANA | IANA review state | Version Changed - Review Needed | |
IANA action state | RFC-Ed-Ack |
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) J. Levine Request for Comments: 8058 Taughannock Networks Category: Standards Track T. Herkula ISSN: 2070-1721 optivo GmbH January 2017 Signaling One-Click Functionality for List Email Headers Abstract This document describes a method for signaling a one-click function for the List-Unsubscribe email header field. The need for this arises out of the actuality that mail software sometimes fetches URLs in mail header fields, and thereby accidentally triggers unsubscriptions in the case of the List-Unsubscribe header field. Status of This Memo This is an Internet Standards Track document. 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). Further information on Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841. 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/rfc8058. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2017 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 & Herkula Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 8058 One-Click Unsubscribe January 2017 Table of Contents 1. Introduction and Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.1. Mail Senders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.2. Mail Receivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4. Additional Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 5. Header Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 8. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 8.1. Simple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 8.2. Complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 8.3. Complex with 'multipart/form-data' . . . . . . . . . . . 7 9. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1. Introduction and Motivation A List-Unsubscribe email header field [RFC2369] can contain HTTPS [RFC7230] URIs. In that header field, the HTTPS URI is intended to unsubscribe the recipient of the message from the list. But anti- spam software often fetches all resources in mail header fields automatically, without any action by the user, and there is no mechanical way for a sender to tell whether a request was made automatically by anti-spam software or manually requested by a user. To prevent accidental unsubscriptions, senders return landing pages with a confirmation step to finish the unsubscribe request. A live user would recognize and act on this confirmation step, but an automated system would not. That makes the unsubscription process more complex than a single click. Operators of broadcast marketing lists tend to be primarily concerned about deliverability of their mail: whether the mail is delivered to the recipients and how the messages are presented, e.g., whether in the primary inbox or in a junk folder. Many mail systems allow recipients to report mail as spam or junk, and mail streams from senders whose mail is often reported as junk tend to have poor deliverability. Hence, the mailers want to make it as easy as possible for recipients to unsubscribe; if an unsubscription process is too difficult, the recipient's alternative is to report mail from the sender as junk until the mail no longer appears in the recipient's inbox. Operators of recipient mail systems are aware that their users do not make a clear distinction between unsubscription and junk. In someShow full document text