Subject: Protocol Action: 'Recommendations for Automatic Responses to Electronic Mail' to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 13:33:21 -0500

The IESG has approved the following document:

- 'Recommendations for Automatic Responses to Electronic Mail '
   <draft-moore-auto-email-response-05.txt> as a Proposed Standard

This document has been reviewed in the IETF but is not the product of an
IETF Working Group. 

The IESG contact person is Ned Freed.

Technical Summary
 
  This memo makes recommendations for software that automatically responds
  to incoming electronic mail messages, including "out of the office" or
  "vacation" response generators, mail filtering software, email-based
  information services, and other automatic responders.  The purpose of
  these recommendations is to discourage undesirable behavior which is
  caused or aggravated by such software, to encourage uniform behavior
  (where appropriate) among automatic mail responders, and to clear up
  some sources of confusion among implementors of automatic email
  responders.

  This document also defines the auto-submitted header field, whose purpose
  is to indicate that the message was originated by an automatic process,
  or an automatic responder, rather than by a human; and to facilitate
  automatic filtering of messages from signal paths for which automatically 
   generated messages and automatic responses are not desirable.

Working Group Summary
 
  This document was discussed on the ietf-822 mailing list but is not the
  product of an IETF working group. The document has been revised in resonse
  to several comments received during last call.
 
Protocol Quality
 
  Ned Freed reviewed the document for the IESG.