Show HN: A Standard for Misdirected Email | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A Standard for Misdirected Email

datatracker.ietf.org

10 pointsdweekly4 comments

Hey folks! Over Christmas break I received an email for Diane. I'm not Diane. It was a transactional email so didn't have subscribe and there was no standard way to inform the commercial sender they had the wrong person. With postal mail you just write "No Such Recipient, Return To Sender" but there's no direct equivalent for email! But there could be. So I mirrored a proposed standard to solve for this after RFC 8058 (One Click Unsubscribe). It has had some good discussion on the IETF ART list and I'm looking forward to presenting at IETF 119 but would love the HN community's thoughts about solving for this!

I guess this proposal doesn't really in any way address the issue I have, which is that I get a lot of email as a result from service signups from someone with the same name as me, but she's completely unable to acknowledge that my gmail address is not her gmail address.

I know where she lives and works, I've had emails about her grocery deliveries, emails from her solicitor (lawyer in american-speak), emails about relatives dying, but the only way I have to contact her is via twitter, and it's not really worth signing up for that just to send her a DM knowing that she'll pay no attention anyway (I've contacted co-workers of hers before that she's given my gmail to, and they are willing to change their actions, but she is not).

How would the proposal not address your situation? You could inform the service providers in question in a structured way that they have the wrong email address for their user, ideally with one click from your mail client.

I suppose it can, it just feels to me somewhat deceptive declaring 'this recipient doesn't exist' when the email address is correct and valid for me, it's just that the other user who filled out the form on their site is a moron.

Also I'd be worried about ramifications if I sometime later did want to fill out their form for whatever they're offering, would it still accept it, or would it go 'nope, you don't exist, walk on'

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