Status of this Memo

This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions of Section 3 of RFC 3667. By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she become aware will be disclosed, in accordance with RFC 3668.

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This Internet-Draft will expire on September 2, 2005.

Copyright Notice

Copyright © The Internet Society (2005).

Abstract

This document defines an extensible format and MIME type that may be used by network operators to report feedback about received email to other parties. This format is intended as a machine readable replacement for various existing report formats currently used in Internet email.

Table of Contents

1.  Introduction
2.  Intent
3.  Requirements
4.  Format of Email Feedback Reports
5.  Format of 'message/feedback-report' Content Type
6.  MIME Type Registration of message/feedback-report
7.  IANA Considerations
8.  Security Considerations
9.  Acknowledgments
10.  References
    10.1  Normative References
    10.2  Informative References
§  Author's Address
A.  Appendix A - An Sample Abuse Report
B.  Status of This Document [To Be Removed Upon Publication]
    B.1  Discussion Venue
    B.2  Document Repository
    B.3  Document History
§  Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements

1. Introduction

As the spam problem has grown in the past few years, network operators have begun to exchange abuse reports among themselves and other parties to combat this problem. However, different operators define their own formats and the receivers are forced to write custom software to interpret the many types of them. In addition, many operators use various other report formats to provide non-abuse feedback about processed email. This memo seeks to define a standard extensible format and the "message/feedback-report" MIME type for these reports in accordance with RFC 2048 (Freed, N., Klensin, J., and J. Postel, “Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures,” November 1996.)[4]. This format and content type is intended to be used within the scope of the framework of the "multipart/report" content type defined in RFC 3462 (Vaudreuil, G., “The Multipart/Report Content Type for the Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages,” January 2003.)[1].

This document only defines the format and content type to be used for these reports. Determination of where these reports should be sent is outside the scope of this document.

NOTE: This document may be incomplete and is intented to evolve based on public discussion and feedback

2. Intent

The reports defined in this document are intended for several purposes:

a

To inform ISPs about email abuse originating from their networks

b

To provide feedback to email service providers about abuse complaints

c

To inform the author of the message that the receiver wants to opt out.

Note that the reports defined in this document are limited to providing feedback about email only.

3. Requirements

The following requirements are necessary for feedback reports :

a

They must be both human and machine readable

b

Copy of the original email message or email headers must be enclosed in order to allow the receiver to properly handle the report.

4. Format of Email Feedback Reports

An email feedback report is a MIME message with a top level MIME content type of "multipart/report" (as defined in RFC 3462 (Vaudreuil, G., “The Multipart/Report Content Type for the Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages,” January 2003.)[1]). The following apply:

a

The "report-type" parameter of "multipart/report" type is set to "feedback-report".

b

The first MIME part of the message contains a human readable description of the report

c

The second MIME part of the message contains a machine readable abuse report with the content type of "message/feedback-report" (defined later on in this document).

d

The third MIME part of the message contains either a full copy of the original message with a MIME content type of "message/rfc822" (as defined in RFC 2046 (Vaudreuil, G., “The Multipart/Report Content Type for the Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages,” January 2003.)[1]) OR a copy of the headers from the original message with MIME content type of "text/rfc822-headers" (as defined in RFC 3462 (Vaudreuil, G., “The Multipart/Report Content Type for the Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages,” January 2003.)[1]).

e

Each abuse report should related to a single originating message.

f

The subject line of the abuse report should read as "Email Feedback Report for IP X.X.X.X" where "X.X.X.X" is the source IP of the MTA from which the original message was received. If email authentication is used, the sender may substitute the text "for domain YYYYY.ZZZZ" where "YYYYY.ZZZZ" is the authenticated domain.

g

It is preferable that all original email headers are included even though they are defined as optional in RFC 3462 (Vaudreuil, G., “The Multipart/Report Content Type for the Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages,” January 2003.)[1].

5. Format of 'message/feedback-report' Content Type

The message/feedback-report content type consists of several header fields as follows:

a

"Source-IP:" - contains an IPv4 or IPv6 address of the MTA from which the original message was received.

b

"Received-Date:" - date the original message was received. This field is formatted in according to the definition in section 3.3 of RFC 2822 (Resnick, P., “Internet Message Format,” April 2001.)[2]

c

"Original-Message-ID:" - contains the RFC 2822 (Resnick, P., “Internet Message Format,” April 2001.)[2] Message-ID of the original message

d

"Feedback-Type:" - contains the type of feedback as defined in the corresponding IANA registry.

e

"Authenticated-Domain:" and "Authenticated-Domain-Method:" - defines the authenticated domain and method used for perform that authentication. The list of method tokens is contained in the corresponding IANA registry. Note that the actual type of authentication used is outside the scope of this document.

6. MIME Type Registration of message/feedback-report

This section provides the media type registration application (as per RFC 2048 (Freed, N., Klensin, J., and J. Postel, “Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures,” November 1996.)[4], which will be submitted to IANA after IESG approval of this document.

To: ietf-types@iana.org

Subject: Registration of MIME media types message/feedback-report

MIME media type name: message

MIME subtype name: feedback-report

Required parameters: none

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:

See section 3 of RFC 3462 (Vaudreuil, G., “The Multipart/Report Content Type for the Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages,” January 2003.)[1]

Interoperability considerations: none

Published specification: this document

Applications which use this media type: Abuse helpdesk software for ISPs

Additional information:

Magic number(s): none

File extension(s): none

Macintosh File Type Code(s): none

Person and email address to contact for further information:

Yakov Shafranovich <ietf@shaftek.org>

Intended usage: COMMON

Author/Change controller: IESG

7. IANA Considerations

After IESG approval, IANA is expected to register MIME type "message/feedback-report" using the application provided in this document and setup two registries for "Feedback-Type" and "Authentication-Domain-Method" headers. Below are the initial values for these registries.

Initial values for the "Feedback-Type" registry:

abuse - spam or some other kind of email abuse

opt-out - a request to opt out from a mailing list.

virus - report of a virus found in the originating message

Initial values for the "Authentication-Domain-Method" registry:

domainkeys - as defined in delany-domainkeys-base (Delany, M., “Domain-based Email Authentication Using Public-Keys Advertised in the DNS (DomainKeys),” March 2005.)[5]

iim - as defined in fenton-identified-mail (Fenton, J. and M. Thomas, “Identified Internet Mail,” October 2004.)[6]

sender-id - as defined in lyon-senderid-core (Lyon, J., “Sender ID: Authenticating E-Mail,” November 2004.)[7]

spf - as defined in schlitt-spf-classic (Wong, M., “Sender Policy Framework: Authorizing Use of Domains in E-MAIL,” January 2005.)[8]

8. Security Considerations

See section 3 of RFC 3462 (Vaudreuil, G., “The Multipart/Report Content Type for the Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages,” January 2003.)[1]

9. Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank many of the members of the email community who provided helpful comments and suggestions for this document including many of the participants in ASRG, IETF and MAAWG activities.

10. References

10.1 Normative References

10.2 Informative References

Author's Address

Appendix A. Appendix A - An Sample Abuse Report

From: <abusedesk@example.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2005 17:40:36 EDT
Subject: Email Abuse Report for IP 10.67.41.167
To: <abuse@example.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/report; report-type=feedback-report; boundary="part1_13d.2e68ed54_boundary"

--part1_13d.2e68ed54_boundary
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

This is an email abuse report for an email message received from IP 10.67.41.167 on Thu, 8 Mar 2005 14:00:00 EDT.


--part1_13d.2e68ed54_boundary
Content-Type: message/feedback-report

Source-IP: 10.67.41.167
Received-Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2005 14:00:00 EDT
Original-Message-ID: 8787KJKJ3K4J3K4J3K4J3.mail@example.net
Feedback-Type: abuse


--part1_13d.2e68ed54_boundary
Content-Type: message/rfc822
Content-Disposition: inline

From: <somespammer@example.net>
Received: from mailserver.example.net (mailserver.example.net [10.67.41.167])
	  by example.com with ESMTP id M63d4137594e46; Thu, 08 Mar 2005 14:00:00 -0400
To: <Undisclosed Recipients>
Subject: Earn money
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain
Message-ID: 8787KJKJ3K4J3K4J3K4J3.mail@example.net
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 12:31:03 -0500

Spam Spam Spam
Spam Spam Spam
Spam Spam Spam
Spam Spam Spam
--part1_13d.2e68ed54_boundary--

Appendix B. Status of This Document [To Be Removed Upon Publication]

B.1 Discussion Venue

Comments about this document should be sent directly to the author at via ietf@shaftek.org.

B.2 Document Repository

Copies of this and earlier versions including multiple formats can be found at http://www.shaftek.org/publications/drafts/abuse-report/.

B.3 Document History

Changes from draft-shafranovich-abuse-report-00 to draft-shafranovich-feedback-report-00:

• Name of the format and report changed to 'feedback-report'
• Minor spelling corrections
• Added authentication headers and registry
• Added feedback-type header and registry.

Intellectual Property Statement

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Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr.

The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-ipr@ietf.org.

Disclaimer of Validity

This document and the information contained herein are provided on an “AS IS” basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Copyright Statement

Copyright © The Internet Society (2005). This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.

Acknowledgment

Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society.