Glossary

A

Administrative Management Domain (ADMD)

The term Administrative Management Domain, more commonly shortened to ADMD, is used in many standards and related publications related to email. It refers to a single entity operating one or more computers within one or more Internet domain names under said entity's control. One example might be a small company with a single server handling email for that company's single domain. Or an ADMD might refer to a university operating many servers that fulfill differen roles, across different networks, all handling email for several different domains used by different groups within the university.

Anti-Spam

Referring to something which identifies and/or filters out messages believed to be spam. See also: Spam

B

Blocking policy

A common shorthand referring - in an email authentication context - to a DMARC policy that results in unauthorized messages not being allowed to reach the inbox. The policy may be "p=quarantine" or "p=reject" in this case.

E

Email Service Provider (ESP)

An Email Service Provider is typically a vendor or service bureau that sends messages on behalf of other organizations. They may use email addresses in Internet domains belonging to their client, or from their own domain(s), in various fields during the SMTP conversation (see RFC5321) or in the message headers (see RFC5322). They are sometimes referred to as Third Party Senders.

M

Mailflow

A group of messages that share some feature or characteristic in common. Typical examples would be all messages sent by a company to it's customers, between two companies or departments, from members of a mailing list to each other, or between two individuals.

Malicious Actor

A party that takes actions detrimental to the sender or receiver of messages, an organization, or the Internet at large. It is a fairly broad term because the number of malicious things that can be done with, to, or through email is rather large and difficult to document. A Spammer might be referred to as a Malicious Actor; somebody who phishes, or sends messages that seek to infect or subvert computers and/or networks would definitely fall under this category.

Message Receiver

In the transmission of an email message from one ADMD to another, this is the organization receiving the message on behalf of the intended recipient or end user. The Message Receiver may do this because the intended recipient utilizes mailbox services offered by the Message Receiver (Comcast, GMail, etc), or because they are an employee or member of the organization and have therefore been provided with a mailbox.

Message Sender

In the transmission of an email message from one ADMD to another, this is the organization sending the message on behalf of the Originator or end user.

O

Originator

The Originator is the author of a given email message. In different contexts it may refer to the end-user, application, or service that created the message; or to the ADMD providing email services to that party.

R

Reputation

In this context Reputation refers to various systems whereby a Message Receiver, or a vendor providing Reputation Services, may track the past actions of an Originator or Message Sender in order to determine the likelihood that they will send Spam or malicious content in the future.

S

Spam

Uninvited, unsolicited, and unwelcome email messages are commonly referred to as Spam. They are very often commercial in nature, but the term is used to refer to the fact that these messages are typically sent in large numbers to recipients who never asked for them and do not want them.