RFC 3834 (rfc3834) - Page 2 of 22

Recommendations for Automatic Responses to Electronic Mail

RFC 3834               Automatic E-Mail Responses            August 2004


   This document is limited in scope to Internet electronic mail
   messages and many of its recommendations are specifically tailored
   for the protocol elements and data models used in Internet electronic
   mail messages and SMTP transport envelopes.  Use of these
   recommendations in other messaging contexts such as instant
   messaging, SMS, or Usenet has not been considered, and is outside of
   the scope of this document.

1.1.  Types of automatic responses

   There are several different types of automatic responses.  At least
   two types of automatic responses have been defined in IETF standards
   - Delivery Status Notifications [I2.RFC 3464] which are intended to
   report the status of a message delivery by the message transport
   system, and Message Disposition Notifications [I3.RFC 3798] which are
   intended to report of the disposition of a message after it reaches a
   recipient's mailbox.  These responses are defined elsewhere and are
   generally not within the purview of this document, except that this
   document recommends specific cases where they should or should not be
   used.

   Other types of automatic response in common use include:

   -  "Out of office" or "vacation" notices, which are intended to
      inform the sender of a message that the message is unlikely to be
      read, or acted on, for some amount of time,

   -  "Change of address" notices, intended to inform the sender of a
      message that the recipient address he used is obsolete and that a
      different address should be used instead (whether or not the
      subject message was forwarded to the current address),

   -  "Challenges", which require the sender of a message to demonstrate
      some measure of intelligence and/or willingness to agree to some
      conditions before the subject message will be delivered to the
      recipient (often to minimize the effect of "spam" or viruses on
      the recipient),

   -  Email-based information services, which accept requests
      (presumably from humans) via email, provide some service, and
      issue responses via email also.  (Mailing lists which accept
      subscription requests via email fall into this category),

   -  Information services similar to those mentioned above except that
      they are intended to accept messages from other programs, and






Moore                       Standards Track