Advice for Safe Handling of Malformed Messages

Although Internet message formats have been precisely defined since the 1970s, authoring and handling software often shows only mild conformance to the specifications. The malformed messages that result are non-standard. Nonetheless, decades of experience have shown that using some tolerance in the handling of the malformations that result is often an acceptable approach and is better than rejecting the messages outright as nonconformant. This document includes a collection of the best advice available regarding a variety of common malformed mail situations; it is to be used as implementation guidance.