Subject: Protocol Action: DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Author Domain Signing Practices (ADSP) to Historic

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 09:57:47 -0800

The IESG has approved changing the status of the following document:
- DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Author Domain Signing Practices
(ADSP)
  (rfc5617) to Historic

This protocol action is documented at:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/status-change-adsp-rfc5617-to-historic/

A URL of the affected document is:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc5617/

Status Change Details:

ADSP has garnered almost no deployment and use in the 4 years since its
advancement to IETF Proposed Standard.  While there are implementations
in code, there is very little deployment and no evidence of the benefits
that were expected when the standard was written.

There is, however, evidence of harm caused by incorrect configuration and
by inappropriate use.  There have, for example, been real cases where a
high-value domain published an ADSP record of "discardable", but allowed
users on their domain to subscribe to mailing lists.  When posts from
those users were sent to other domains that checked ADSP, those
subscriber domains rejected the messages, resulting in forced
unsubscribes from mailman (due to bounces) for the unsuspecting
subscribers.

Assurances that are provided by ADSP are generally obtained out of band
in the real Internet, and not through ADSP.  Current deployment of ADSP
is not recommended.

Personnel 

   Barry Leiba is the responsible Area Director.