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Earlier forms of e-mail address included the somewhat verbose notation required by X.400, and the UUCP "bang path" notation, in which the address was given in the form of a sequence of computers through which the message should be relayed. This latter was in wide use for several years, but was superceded by the generally more convenient SMTP form.

The format of Internet e-mail addresses is defined in RFC 2822, which permits only a subset of ASCII characters in e-mail addresses. RFC 1642, however, defines UTF-7, a way of encoding all Unicode characters using only characters permitted in e-mail; e-mail addresses using this standard are most commonly seen in Asia and not widely used in Europe or North America.

Addresses found in the headers of e-mail should not be considered authoritative, because SMTP has no mechanism for authenticationIn computer security, authentication is the process by which a computer, computer program, or another user attempts to confirm that the computer, computer program, or user from whom the second party has received some communication is, or is not, the claim. Forged e-mail addresses are often seen in spam and in phishingIn computing, phishing short for password harvesting fishing is the luring of sensitive information, such as passwords and other personal information, from a victim by masquerading as someone trustworthy with a real need for such information. It is a form and similar scams, leading to several initiatives, such as Sender IDSender ID is an anti- spam proposal from the MARID IETF working group, joining Sender Policy Framework and Caller ID. The Sender ID proposal is currently the subject of controversy regarding intellectual property and licensing issues: Microsoft holds pate, which aim to make such forgeries easier to spot. The most reliable method of authentication, however, is to require that messages be digitally signedIn cryptography, digital signatures are a method of authenticating digital information often treated, sometimes too closely, as analogous to a physical signature on paper. Whilst there are analogies, there are also differences which can be important..

1 See also

• Stopping e-mail abuseE-mail has become the subject of much abuse, in the form of both spamming and E-mail worm programs. Both of these flood the in-boxes of E-mail users with junk E-mails, wasting their time and money, and often carrying offensive, fraudulent, or damaging con

2 References

• RFC 1642: UTF-7: A Mail-Safe Transformation Format of Unicode
• RFC 2822: Internet Message Format