Re: [Last-Call] [standcore.com-standards] Re: Last Call: <draft-billon-expires-06.txt> (Updated Use of the Expires Message Header Field) to Proposed Standard

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 11/29/22 16:53, John R. Levine wrote:

>
> I note in passing that if this is a real problem, which I do not 
> believe it is, an MDA or MUA can easily look at the date on a message 
> and if it's before 2022, the Expires header is not one of ours. 

Oh please.  We all know that the date of the message does not imply the 
date of the version of the specification that it conforms to.

I don't actually have a big problem with reusing "Expires" as long as 
the header is never used to automatically delete messages without the 
recipient's explicit consent.  But I think that there's a good chance 
that exactly that will happen even if the specification specifically 
says to not do that.

And if memory serves, this idea has been discussed several times in the 
past, and what's always kept it from being adopted in the past is the 
same set of issues we're talking about here - basically, it's a 
dangerous feature, especially in the absence of reliable and verifiable 
authentication.   That, and the sender should not get to dictate when a 
message is deleted by the recipient.

Keith