ietf-smime
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Re: The subject line leakage problem

2001-12-19 13:07:45

This is getting much more complicated than it needs to be, and is likely to break interoperability with non-enhanced clients.

The simplest thing to do is to say:
- Senders should put the minimum that they want in the unprotected headers
- Senders include as much as they want protected in a text/rfc822-header part at the beginning of a multipart/mixed message - Enhanced clients should display the message with the headers from the text/rfc822-header part moved to where the user thinks he/she sees the headers. In the case of headers that are in both in the 822 message and in the text/rfc822-header body part, the latter wins (because it is protected) - The moved-up headers may cause side-effects that the MUA should act on. For example, if the Cc: in the 822 headers is "bill(_at_)example(_dot_)com" but the Cc: in the protected headers is "amy(_at_)example(_dot_)com", the "reply to all" action should include amy but not include bill.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium