Norbert Bollow wrote:
Yes -- in order to achieve the widest possible support among email client vendors, the specification needs to be a standards-track RFC.
Definitely.
Of course then the header shouldn't be an X- header, i.e. it should be "ReportSpam:" or "ReportUnwanted:" without the "X-".
Yep, agree.
I like "ReportUnwanted:" better than "ReportSpam:" because even if the button in the email client is labelled "report spam", people will click it for any kind of mail that they want to stop receiving, they'll not stop to think whether the message fits any specific definition of spam.
Initially I thought the contents of this header should be a URL for accessing the filtering-providers website and report the email, but I think it would be better to have an email-address. Such that when the user clicks "Unwanted", the entire email is sent as an attachment to the address listed in "ReportUnwanted". That way the filtering provider will have all the necessary information to investigate the email, and the end user doesn't need HTTP access. Of course, we would need some sort of mechanism/authentication for preventing spammers from flooding (DoS) such a reporting address. Presumably a filtering provider would restrict the address to only receive reports from known customers' email-servers, but this will need some more thought.
/Per