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IETF RFC 6430
Last modified on Friday, November 11th, 2011
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) K. Li
Request for Comments: 6430 B. Leiba
Category: Standards Track Huawei Technologies
ISSN: 2070-1721 November 2011
Email Feedback Report Type Value: not-spam
 Abstract
This document defines a new Abuse Reporting Format (ARF) feedback
report type value: "not-spam". It can be used to report an email
message that was mistakenly marked as spam.
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 5741.
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/RFC 6430.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 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.
Li & Leiba Standards Track PAGE 1 
RFC 6430 Email Feedback Type: not-spam November 2011
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................2
1.1. Discussion .................................................2
2. Feedback Report Type: not-spam ..................................3
3. Example .........................................................3
4. Security Considerations .........................................5
5. IANA Considerations .............................................6
6. Acknowledgements ................................................6
7. References ......................................................6
7.1. Normative References .......................................6
7.2. Informative References .....................................6
1. Introduction
In RFC 5965 [RFC 5965], an Abuse Reporting Format (ARF) is defined for
reporting email abuse. Currently, two feedback report types are
defined that are related to the spam problem and that can be used to
report abusive or fraudulent email messages:
o abuse: indicates unsolicited email or some other kind of email
abuse.
o fraud: indicates some kind of fraud or phishing activity.
This specification defines a new feedback report type: "not-spam".
It can be used to report a message that was mistakenly marked as
spam.
1.1. Discussion
In some cases, the email client receives an email message that was
incorrectly tagged as spam, perhaps by the email system, or
accidentally by the user. The email client accepts the end user's
"not-spam" report instruction, retrieves information related to the
message, and reports this email as not-spam to the email operator.
When the email operator receives the report, it can determine what
action is appropriate for the particular message and user. (The
requirement for a not-spam report type is from the Open Mobile
Alliance (OMA) Spam Report Requirement Document [OMA-SpamRep-RD].)
For example, in response to a "not-spam" report, the email system can
remove the spam tag or otherwise reclassify the message, possibly
preventing similar email for this user from being marked as spam in
the future. The report can be used to adjust the training of an
automated classifier. After processing the report, the email
Li & Leiba Standards Track PAGE 2
RFC 6430 Email Feedback Type: not-spam November 2011
operator might send a notification to the email client about the
processing result (for example, by moving the message from one
mailbox to another, such as from "Junk" to "Inbox").
In most cases, "not-spam" reports will probably not be taken on their
own, but will be considered along with other information, analysis of
the message, etc. Because different users have different needs and
different views of what constitutes spam, reports from one user might
or might not be applicable to others. And because users might
sometimes press a "report not spam" button accidentally, immediate
strong action, such as marking all similar messages as "good" based
on a single report, is probably not the right approach. Recipients
of "not-spam" reports need to consider what's right in their
environments.
There are anti-spam systems that use (non-standard) "not spam"
feedback today. All of them take the reports and mix them with other
spam reports and other data, using their own algorithms, to determine
appropriate action. In no case do the existing systems use a "not
spam" report as an immediate, automatic override.
The feedback types "abuse" and "not-spam" can be taken as opposites.
A mistaken "not-spam" report could be countermanded by a subsequent
"abuse" report from the same user, and an operator could consider
collected reports of "abuse" and "not-spam" in making future
assessments.
2. Feedback Report Type: not-spam
This document defines a new feedback report type, "not-spam", which
extends the Email Feedback Reports specification [RFC 5965].
In the first MIME part of the feedback report message, the end user
or the email client can add information to indicate why the message
is not considered as spam -- for example, because the originator or
its domain is well known.
3. Example
In the example, Joe, a pharmaceuticals sales representative, has
received a message about discount pharmaceuticals. Because that is a
frequent subject of spam email, the message has been marked as spam
-- incorrectly, in this case. Joe has reported it as "not-spam", and
this is an example of the report, shortened (the "[...etc...]" part)
for presentation here.
Li & Leiba Standards Track PAGE 3
RFC 6430 Email Feedback Type: not-spam November 2011
Note that the message has been signed using DomainKeys Identified
Mail (DKIM) [RFC 6376] -- a good security practice as suggested in
Section 8.2 of RFC 5965 [RFC 5965].
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; s=abuse; d=example.com;
c=simple/simple; q=dns/txt; i=abusedesk@example.com;
h=From:Date:Subject:To:Message-ID:MIME-Version:Content-Type;
bh=iF4dMNYs/KepE0HuwfukJCDyjkduUzZFiaHqO9DMIPU=;
b=e+BF8DCHFGqCp7/pExleNz7pVaLEoT+uWj/8H9DoZpxFI1vNnCTDu14w5v
ze4mqJkldudVI0JspsYHTYeomhPklCV4F95GfwpM5W+ziUOv7AySTfygPW
EerczqZwAK88//oaYCFXq3XV9T/z+zlLp3rrirKGmCMCPPcbdSGv/Eg=
From: <abusedesk@example.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2005 17:40:36 EDT
Subject: FW: Discount on pharmaceuticals
To: <abuse@example.net>
Message-ID: <20030712040037.46341.5F8J@example.com>
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 192.0.2.1 on Thu, 8 Mar 2005 14:00:00 EDT.
For more information about this format please see
http://tools.ietf.org/html/RFC 5965
Comment: I sell pharmaceuticals, so this is not spam for me.
--part1_13d.2e68ed54_boundary
Content-Type: message/feedback-report
Feedback-Type: not-spam
User-Agent: SomeGenerator/1.0
Version: 1
--part1_13d.2e68ed54_boundary
Content-Type: message/RFC 822
Content-Disposition: inline
Li & Leiba Standards Track PAGE 4
RFC 6430 Email Feedback Type: not-spam November 2011
Received: from mailserver.example.net
(mailserver.example.net [192.0.2.1])
by example.com with ESMTP id M63d4137594e46;
Thu, 08 Mar 2005 14:00:00 -0400
From: <someone@example.net>
To: <Undisclosed Recipients>
Subject: Discount on pharmaceuticals
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain
Message-ID: 8787KJKJ3K4J3K4J3K4J3.mail@example.net
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 12:31:03 -0500
Hi, Joe. I got a lead on a source for discounts on
pharmaceuticals, and I thought you might be interested.
[...etc...]
--part1_13d.2e68ed54_boundary--
Example 1: not-spam Report
4. Security Considerations
All of the security considerations from the Email Feedback Reports
specification [RFC 5965] are inherited here. In addition, the Email
Feedback Reports Applicability Statement [MARF-AS] contains important
information about trust relationships and other security- and
integrity-related aspects of accepting abuse feedback.
In particular, not-spam reports will likely be used in an attack on a
filtering system, reporting true spam as "not-spam". Even in absence
of malice, some not-spam reports might be made in error, or will only
apply to the user sending the report. Operators need to be careful
in trusting such reports, beyond their applicability to the specific
user in question.
Li & Leiba Standards Track PAGE 5
RFC 6430 Email Feedback Type: not-spam November 2011
5. IANA Considerations
IANA has registered the newly defined feedback type name: "not-spam",
according to the instructions in Section 7.3 of the base
specification [RFC 5965].
The following has been added to the "Feedback Report Type Values"
registry:
Feedback Type Name: not-spam
Description: Indicates that the entity providing the report does not
consider the message to be spam. This may be used to correct a
message that was incorrectly tagged or categorized as spam.
Published in: this document
Status: current
6. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Murray S. Kucherawy and Bert
Greevenbosch for their discussion and review, and J.D. Falk for
suggesting some explanatory text.
7. References
7.1. Normative References
[RFC 5965] Shafranovich, Y., Levine, J., and M. Kucherawy, "An
Extensible Format for Email Feedback Reports", RFC 5965,
August 2010.
7.2. Informative References
[MARF-AS] Falk, J., "Creation and Use of Email Feedback Reports: An
Applicability Statement for the Abuse Reporting Format
(ARF)", Work in Progress, September 2011.
[OMA-SpamRep-RD]
Open Mobile Alliance, "Mobile Spam Reporting
Requirements", Candidate Version 1.0 OMA-RD-SpamRep-V1_0-
20101123-C, November 2010, <http://
www.openmobilealliance.org/Technical/release_program/docs/
SpamRep/V1_0-20101123-C/
OMA-RD-SpamRep-V1_0-20101123-C.pdf>.
Li & Leiba Standards Track PAGE 6
RFC 6430 Email Feedback Type: not-spam November 2011
[RFC 6376] Crocker, D., Ed., Hansen, T., Ed., and M. Kucherawy, Ed.,
"DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Signatures", RFC 6376,
September 2011.
Authors' Addresses
Kepeng Li
Huawei Technologies
Huawei Base, Bantian, Longgang District
Shenzhen, Guangdong 518129
P.R. China
Phone: +86-755-28974289
EMail: likepeng@huawei.com
Barry Leiba
Huawei Technologies
Phone: +1 646 827 0648
EMail: barryleiba@computer.org
URI: http://internetmessagingtechnology.org/
Li & Leiba Standards Track PAGE 7
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 12678 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Friday, November 11th, 2011
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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