rfc-3598

Sieve Email Filtering -- Subaddress Extension

K. Murchison
date2003-09 streamIETF wgnon working group statusPROPOSED STANDARD pages6 canonicalhttps://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3598 doi10.17487/RFC3598
On email systems that allow for "subaddressing" or "detailed addressing" (e.g., "ken+[email protected]"), it is sometimes desirable to make comparisons against these sub-parts of addresses. This document defines an extension to the Sieve mail filtering language that allows users to compare against the user and detail parts of an address. [STANDARDS-TRACK]

obsoleted by

Extracted elements (10)

design-rationale §3

The mechanisms used to define and/or query the separator character used by the mail system are explicitly out of scope for this document, acknowledging that different mail systems use different separator conventions (e.g., '+', '#').

email

interoperability-note §3

The envelope 'to' address is the preferred address to examine for subaddress information when sorting messages by recipient, especially when mailing lists, aliases, and virtual domains are involved, since the envelope may be the only source of detail information for the specific recipient.

email

normative-requirement §3 MUST

Implementations MUST ensure that the separator character matches that used and/or allowed by the encompassing mail system to avoid unexpected results.

email

normative-requirement §3 SHOULD

Implementations SHOULD allow the separator character to be configurable so that the extension may be used with a variety of mail systems.

email

protocol-element §3

The ADDRESS-PART syntax element from [SIEVE] is augmented to include ':user' and ':detail': ADDRESS-PART =/ ':user' / ':detail'.

email

protocol-element §3

The ':detail' argument specifies the sub-part of the local-part to the right of the separator character (e.g., 'sieve' in 'ken+[email protected]'). If no separator exists the test evaluates to false; if nothing lies to the right of the separator, ':detail' ':is' the null key ('').

email

protocol-element §3

The 'subaddress' extension adds optional tagged arguments ':user' and ':detail' to Sieve address-handling commands, allowing comparison against sub-parts of the local-part of an email address separated by a special separator character (typically '+').

email

protocol-element §3

The ':user' argument specifies the sub-part of the local-part to the left of the separator character (e.g., 'ken' in 'ken+[email protected]'). If no separator exists, ':user' specifies the entire local-part, equivalent to ':localpart'.

email

registry §5

This document registers the Sieve extension capability named 'subaddress' (keyword: subaddress, arguments: N/A) in the IANA list of Sieve extensions at http://www.iana.org/assignments/sieve-extensions.

email, registry

security-consideration §4

Security considerations are inherited from [SIEVE] (RFC 3028). The subaddress extension is believed not to introduce any additional security concerns beyond those already present in the base Sieve specification.

email, security