Protocol Action: 'The Require-Recipient-Valid-Since Header Field and SMTP Service Extension' to Proposed Standard (draft-ietf-appsawg-rrvs-header-field-10.txt)

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'The Require-Recipient-Valid-Since Header Field and SMTP Service
   Extension'
  (draft-ietf-appsawg-rrvs-header-field-10.txt) as Proposed Standard

This document is the product of the Applications Area Working Group.

The IESG contact persons are Barry Leiba and Pete Resnick.

A URL of this Internet Draft is:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-appsawg-rrvs-header-field/





Technical Summary

This document defines an extension for the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol called
RRVS, and a header field called Require-Recipient-Valid-Since, to provide a method 
for senders to indicate to receivers the time when the sender last confirmed the 
ownership of the target mailbox.  This can be used to detect changes of mailbox 
ownership, and thus prevent mail from being delivered to the wrong party.

The intended use of these facilities is on automatically generated messages that 
might contain sensitive information, though it may also be useful in other applications.

Review and Consensus

The document has gone through 7 iterations, starting with the -00 draft published as 
an I-D on August 18, 2013, and the most recent -05 version posted on January 10, 
2014.  Each iteration represents updates to the document following discussion on the 
AppsArea WG discussion list ([e-mail]).  There have been 
approximately a dozen active contributors throughout the process, representing strong 
engagement.

By way of example of the impact of the review by the AppsArea WG, the initial draft 
focused on the addition of a header field within the message as a means to identifying 
continuous ownership of the mailbox.  Through the conversation, however, it became 
clear that the community felt it was more appropriate to perform the validation through 
the addition of an SMTP extension.  At the conclusion of the discussion, the 
document was updated and now includes an SMTP extension.

Personnel

The document shepherd is J. Trent Adams. The responsible Area Director is Barry Leiba.