Advice for Safe Handling of Malformed Messages
RFC 7103, “Advice for Safe Handling of Malformed Messages”, is an Informational document published in January 2014 by M. Kucherawy, G. Shapiro, N. Freed. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
Although Internet message formats have been precisely defined since the 1970s, authoring and handling software often shows only mild conformance to the specifications. The malformed messages that result are non-standard. Nonetheless, decades of experience have shown that using some tolerance in the handling of the malformations that result is often an acceptable approach and is better than rejecting the messages outright as nonconformant. This document includes a collection of the best advice available regarding a variety of common malformed mail situations; it is to be used as implementation guidance.
What “Informational” means
Published for the general information of the community. It does not define an IETF standard and carries no standards-track status.
The canonical text of RFC 7103 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
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