Do not strip a header for its script

Answer Do not strip a header because of its script. RFC 6532 specifies internationalized email headers. Header fields can carry UTF-8, which means a From name, a subject, or another header can use characters outside the old ASCII set and still be a legitimate header. Deleting those characters to make a message look simpler is not a cleanup. It is a change to the message.

The note that started this: RFC 6532, Internationalized Email Headers, RFC 6532.

Solo ad lists are full of people whose names were never going to fit in a 26-letter alphabet. A platform that drops the name, replaces it with a question mark, or refuses the row is telling you something about the platform. If you care about safe solo ads sellers, ask what their software does with a name it cannot pronounce. The answer belongs in the order, next to the language you think you are buying.

This document is about headers. Internationalized addresses, the mailbox itself, are a related and separate topic with their own rules for SMTP. Do not let a seller wave one document and claim the other is handled. A header that displays a name, and an address that contains non-ASCII characters, can fail independently. Ask which one they have actually sent, to a mailbox you can open.

What does RFC 6532 change about email headers?

It specifies how email header fields can carry UTF-8, so names and other header text can use scripts beyond ASCII. A header with those characters is a normal header under this document. It is not garbage to be deleted.

For a long time, headers were forced through a narrower encoding, and programs that only expected that narrower world would choke, mangle, or strip. The internationalized form says the header value can be UTF-8 when the message is in that mode. Programs that speak the mode can read the name as a name. Programs that do not should fail in a visible way, not silently invent a different name. Silent invention is how a reader sees a stranger and marks the mail as unwanted.

You can test this without a lab. Send a message with a From display name in the script of the list, to your own mailbox at a major provider, through the same platform that will send the solo. If the name arrives intact, you have a fact. If it arrives as punctuation, you have a different fact. The brochure is not a third fact.

• A received copy shows the From name in the promised script.
• The subject arrives without replacement characters.
• The seller does not describe stripping as hygiene.
• Addresses and headers are tested as two separate questions.

Should a sender strip non-ASCII headers to be safe?

No. Stripping a header because of its script can drop a name the reader recognizes and can break a signature that covered the header. Ask the platform what it does. Do not call deletion a cleanup.

DKIM signs a list of headers. If a later hop removes or rewrites a signed header, verification fails. A failure of that kind is an authentication problem you caused in the name of tidiness. Tidiness was a workaround for old software. It is a poor default once the message is supposed to carry the characters in the open. Ask the platform whether it preserves the headers it signed. If the operator does not know, they are not the person to trust with a list of names they cannot type.

There is a difference between refusing a malformed message and punishing a message for using a script. Malformed is a syntax problem. A person's name is not a syntax problem. Keep those diagnoses in different sentences when a vendor explains a bounce.

Does an internationalized header place a solo ad in the inbox?

No. The document is about representing header text faithfully. Placement is a separate decision. A buyer's job is to see the real From name on a received copy, in the script the list was promised.

Faithful headers keep you from lying by accident. They do not make the offer welcome. A correct name on unwanted mail is still unwanted mail, now with the right name on it, which is worse for the brand than a garbled name only because the reader can tell who to blame. Get the name right. Get the permission right. Do not expect the character set to do the second job.

RFC 6532 says the header may carry the script. Let it. Stripping is how a file of real people becomes a file of placeholders, and placeholders do not click with intent.