Subject: [Ietf-not43] use case: unwanted email

From: [email-masked] (Andrew Newton)
Date: 12 Apr 2002 12:49:55 -0400

As noted in the BoF minutes, concensus was that 3 use cases be
developed.  Here is the first one.  Comments and questions welcomed.

Use Case: Unwanted E-mail From A Domain

Description:

Actor A is receiving a large amount of e-mail from Actor B.  This e-mail
contains large attachments and is of no use or desire to Actor A. 
Requests to have the e-mail stopped have gone unanswered or bounce with
error messages indicating the mail box for Actor B is full.  Actor A
would like to contact a technical administrator.  Actor A would also not
like to resort to such tactics as blocking all e-mail from Actor B's
domain as it would block very important e-mail from other addresses with
that domain.

Problem Statement #1:

Actor A is unfamiliar with the .us domain and does not know the name of
the administrative information server.  There is no prescribed method
for him to determine the name of any server for any domain.

Possible Solutions to #1:

A) A registering authority for all administrative information servers
can be setup to be the central repository for all the server names.  The
possible risk to this solution is that it places too much power into the
hands of a single organization and also risks being a central point of
failure for all administrative information lookups.

B) A naming scheme could be defined to standardize how the names are to
be found and allow for the use of other advanced features that can be
offered by use of the best common practices of a modern, federated
naming system.

Problem Statement #2:

The contact information held at the registering authority for the
technical contact of Actor B's domain contains only a disconnected phone
number.

Possible Solutions to #2:

A) Defer to a policy statement to fix the problem.

B) Define a mechanism to allow referrals to a registrant's information
server.  Some registrants may opt to run one of these and therefore may
be more inclined to keep it up to date.  In addition, they may decide to
offer more information than would be collected or distributed by the
registering authority, such as a separate e-mail address to send e-mail
abuse or problems versus just an e-mail address for a domain contact.