[UA-EAI] Self-certification guide item: transcribing foreign-script email addreses

[John Levine]

On Mon, 16 Aug 2021, Jim DeLaHunt via UA-EAI wrote:
> In today's technology WG meeting, Satish Babu brought up an interesting 
> situation. What about the case where a user receives an email message from an 
> address which is written in a script which they cannot read?
>
> What should, ideally, happen in this case?  Should we reflect that in the 
> "Self-Certification of EAI Support" guide, perhaps as a Platinum-level 
> feature?
>
> I imagine that a reader who gets an email address where they can't read the 
> From: address wants two things:
>
> 1. Comprehension: to know who sent the message, and how they relate to the 
> receiver
>
> 2. Security: to know that the message is safe to open and read and trust

This sounds to me like a great deal of complexity looking for a problem.

For technical safety, does the message contain a virus or link to a 
malware site, the From: address is completely irrelevant.  The contents 
are what matter.

For what we might call phishing safety, is this message what it seems to 
be, the contents are more important than the author's address.  If you 
can't read the address, you're not going to be able to tell very much 
about the author.  If transliteration is even possible, which it isn't 
from languages like Chinese or Japanese, I still don't see how that would 
help if you don't know the author.

On the other hand, I get mail all the time from colleagues in Asia whose 
return addresses are in their own language but the message is in a 
language I can read.  I would prefer that my mail program not make 
"helpful" modifications to those.

Regards,
John Levine, john.levine at standcore.com
Standcore LLC