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Network Working GroupP. Saint-Andre
Internet-DraftJSF
Expires: August 20, 2006February 16, 2006

The Jabber-ID Email Header

draft-saintandre-jabberid-00

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Copyright Notice

Copyright © The Internet Society (2006).

Abstract

This document defines an electronic mail header that enables a sender to include a Jabber Identifier in the header block of an email message for the purpose of associating the email message or sender with a particular address on an Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) network.



Table of Contents

1.  Introduction
2.  Jabber-ID Syntax
3.  Examples
4.  Security Considerations
5.  Normative References
§  Author's Address
§  Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements




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1. Introduction

The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), documented in [RFC3920] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Core,” October 2004.), is a streaming XML technology that enables any two entities on a network to exchange well-defined but extensible XML elements (called "XML stanzas") in close to real time. Given XMPP's heritage in the Jabber open-source community, one of the primary uses for XMPP is instant messaging and presence as documented in [RFC3921] (Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” October 2004.), and XMPP addresses are still referred to as Jabber Identifiers.

Because almost all users of Jabber instant messaging and presence systems are users of email systems, it would be helpful for such users to specify their Jabber Identifiers in the email messages they send. The Jabber-ID header defined in this document provides a standard location for that information.

The capitalized key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119] (Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels,” March 1997.).



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2. Jabber-ID Syntax

The syntax of the Jabber-ID header is defined below using Augmented Backus-Naur Form (as specified by [RFC4234] (Crocker, D. and P. Overell, “Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF,” October 2005.)), where the "pathxmpp" rule is defined in [XMPP-URI] (Saint-Andre, P., “Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP),” December 2005.) and CRLF is defined in [RFC2822] (Resnick, P., “Internet Message Format,” April 2001.):

"Jabber-ID: " pathxmpp CRLF

Although a native XMPP address may contain virtually any [UNICODE] (The Unicode Consortium, “The Unicode Standard, Version 3.2.0,” 2000.) character, an electronic mail header may contain only printable [US-ASCII] (American National Standards Institute, “Coded Character Set - 7-bit American Standard Code for Information Interchange,” 1986.) characters (see Section 2 of [RFC2822] (Resnick, P., “Internet Message Format,” April 2001.)). Therefore, any non-US-ASCII characters in an XMPP address MUST be converted to US-ASCII before inclusion in a Jabber-ID header, in accordance with the rules specified in [XMPP-URI] (Saint-Andre, P., “Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP),” December 2005.).



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3. Examples

For a user whose XMPP address is "juliet@example.com", the corresponding Jabber-ID header would be:

Jabber-ID: juliet@example.com

As noted, non-US-ASCII characters in XMPP addresses must be converted into US-ASCII before inclusion in a Jabber-ID header. Consider the following XMPP address:

jiři@čechy.example

(Note: The string "ř" stands for the Unicode character LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH CARON and the string "č" stands for the Unicode character LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CARON, following the "XML Notation" used in [RFC3987] (Duerst, M. and M. Suignard, “Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs),” January 2005.) to represent characters that cannot be rendered in ASCII-only documents (note also that these characters are represented in their stringprep canonical form). For those who do not read Czech, this example could be Anglicized as "george@czech-lands.example".)

Following the rules in [XMPP-URI] (Saint-Andre, P., “Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP),” December 2005.) and the Jabber-ID header syntax, the resulting header would be:

Jabber-id: ji%C5%99i@%C4%8Dechy.example


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4. Security Considerations

Message headers are an existing standard and are designed to easily accommodate new types. Although the Jabber-ID header may be forged, this problem is inherent in Internet email. A forged Jabber-ID header may break automated processing; therefore the Jabber-ID header SHOULD NOT be depended upon to indicate the authenticity of the message or the identity of the sender.

Advertising XMPP addresses in email headers may make it easier for malicious users to harvest XMPP addresses and therefore to send unsolicited bulk communications to the users or applications represented by those addresses. Care should be taken in balancing the benefits of open information exchange against the potential costs of unwanted communications.



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5. Normative References

[RFC2119] Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels,” BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2822] Resnick, P., “Internet Message Format,” RFC 2822, April 2001.
[RFC3920] Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Core,” RFC 3920, October 2004.
[RFC3921] Saint-Andre, P., “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence,” RFC 3921, October 2004.
[RFC3987] Duerst, M. and M. Suignard, “Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs),” RFC 3987, January 2005.
[RFC4234] Crocker, D. and P. Overell, “Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF,” RFC 4234, October 2005.
[UNICODE] The Unicode Consortium, “The Unicode Standard, Version 3.2.0,” 2000.

The Unicode Standard, Version 3.2.0 is defined by The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0 (Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley, 2000. ISBN 0-201-61633-5), as amended by the Unicode Standard Annex #27: Unicode 3.1 (http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr27/) and by the Unicode Standard Annex #28: Unicode 3.2 (http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr28/).

[US-ASCII] American National Standards Institute, “Coded Character Set - 7-bit American Standard Code for Information Interchange,” ANSI X3.4, 1986.
[XMPP-URI] Saint-Andre, P., “Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP),” draft-saintandre-xmpp-iri-03 (work in progress), December 2005.


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Author's Address

  Peter Saint-Andre
  Jabber Software Foundation
Email:  stpeter@jabber.org
URI:  xmpp:stpeter@jabber.org


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Intellectual Property Statement

Disclaimer of Validity

Copyright Statement

Acknowledgment