Sorry about belaboring a point. Popping out a level, what defines an
identity? even when we send mail to someone? Is it a mailbox or rather an
authenticated user?
My impression is that if you ask that question to three people, you'll get
at least three answers, maybe more. Maybe it's a mailbox, maybe it's a
person, maybe it's something else. I expect that the address
"postmaster(_at_)google(_dot_)com" goes to and from an identifiable group of people
whose composition changes over time. The useful definitions seem to be
along the lines of "the same person or thing that sent/received mail last
time" or "a name string vouched for by a mutually acceptable authority."
pedantic to many reading this, but doesn't RFC7542 specify a notion of a
Network Access Identity which has a notion of canonicalization for email
addresses?
No. NAIs deliberately look sort of like e-mail addresses but they are not
e-mail addresses. They're login tokens and serve a very different purpose
than e-amil addresses do.
I realize that a lot of places use e-mail addresses as login tokens, but
login tokens are stil different from addresses. Every web site that wants
an e-mail address from me to use as a login identifier gets a different
address. Mail sent to those addresses is delivered to the same mail
sorting script, but I deliberately make the login tokens different.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl(_at_)taugh(_dot_)com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
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