XEP-0377: Spam Reporting

WARNING: This Standards-Track document is Experimental. Publication as an XMPP Extension Protocol does not imply approval of this proposal by the XMPP Standards Foundation. Implementation of the protocol described herein is encouraged in exploratory implementations, but production systems are advised to carefully consider whether it is appropriate to deploy implementations of this protocol before it advances to a status of Draft.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Many spam and abuse prevention techniques rely on users being able to report other users who are sending unwanted messages, or specific instances of abuse. Blocking Command (XEP-0191) [1] allows users to block spammers, but does not provide a mechanism for them to report a reason for the block to the server operator. This specification extends the blocking command to optionally provide an abuse report.

2. Discovering Support

Entities that support Service Discovery (XEP-0030) [2] and abuse reporting MUST respond to service discovery requests with a feature of 'urn:xmpp:reporting:0' and with a feature for each reason supported by the responding entity as described in the relavant specifications. Eg. a response from a server that supports reporting and understands the abuse and spam reasons defined later in this specification might look like the following:

Example 1. Service discovery information response

<iq from='shakespeare.lit'
    id='ku6e51v3'
    to='kingclaudius@shakespeare.lit/castle'
    type='result'>
  <query xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/disco#info'>
    <feature var='urn:xmpp:reporting:0'/>
    <feature var='urn:xmpp:reporting:reason:abuse:0'/>
    <feature var='urn:xmpp:reporting:reason:spam:0'/>
  </query>
</iq>

3. Payload

The payload for reporting abuse to the server takes the form of a <report/> qualified by the 'urn:xmpp:reporting:0' namespace (see Namespace Versioning regarding the possibility of incrementing the version number). Report payloads are reusable and MUST NOT be sent without first being wrapped in a stanza.

Example 2. The most basic report payload

<report xmlns="urn:xmpp:reporting:0" />

Abuse reports MAY include a reason for the report and servers MUST tolerate unknown XML elements in a report without making assumptions about the semantic meaning of unknown elements.

This document defines the following reasons for a report:

Clients MUST include only one reason per report.

Reports MAY contain a user provided message explaining or providing context about the reason for the report. See also the Internationalization Considerations section of this document.

Example 3. Report with optional reason and text

<report xmlns="urn:xmpp:reporting:0">
  <text xml:lang="en">
    Never came trouble to my house like this.
  </text>
  <spam/>
</report>

4. Use with the Blocking Command

To send a report, a report payload MAY be inserted into an <item/> node sent as part of a request to block a spammer as defined in Blocking Command (XEP-0191) [1]. For example:

Example 4. Report sent with blocking command

<iq from='juliet@capulet.com/chamber' type='set' id='block1'>
  <block xmlns='urn:xmpp:blocking'>
    <item jid='romeo@montague.net'>
      <report xmlns="urn:xmpp:reporting:0">
        <abuse/>
      </report>
    </item>
  </block>
</iq>

Servers that receive a blocking command with a report MUST block the JID or return an error just as they would if no report were present. Servers then MAY take other actions based on the report, however, such actions are outside the scope of this document.

5. Implementation Notes

Clients that support sending reports as part of the blocking command SHOULD expose interfaces to both block a JID without reporting it as abusive, and to block and report a JID.

6. Internationalization Considerations

If one or more <text/> elements are present they SHOULD include 'xml:lang' attributes specifying the natural language of the XML character data.

7. Security Considerations

This document introduces no additional security considerations above and beyond those defined in the documents on which it depends.

8. IANA Considerations

This document requires no interaction with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) [3].

9. XMPP Registrar Considerations

<reason>
  <name>The name of the abuse report reason.</name>
  <urn>urn:xmpp:reporting:reason:{name}:{ver}</urn>
  <desc>A natural-language summary of the reason.</desc>
  <doc>
    The document in which the report reason is specified.
  </doc>
</reason>

<reason>
  <name>Spam</name>
  <urn>urn:xmpp:reporting:reason:spam:0</urn>
  <desc>Used to report a JID that was sending spam messages.</desc>
  <doc>XEP-0377</doc>
</reason>

<reason>
  <name>Abuse</name>
  <urn>urn:xmpp:reporting:reason:abuse:0</urn>
  <desc>Used to report general abuse that is not covered by a more specific reason.</desc>
  <doc>XEP-0377</doc>
</reason>

10. XML Schema

An XML schema will be added before this specification moves to draft status.

11. Acknowledgements

Thanks to the participants of the XMPP Summit 20 in Austin, TX who discussed this XEP: specifically to Waqas Hussain, Kevin Smith, Lance Stout, and Matthew Wild. A special thanks to Daniel Wisnewski for giving the presentation that kicked off the anti-abuse work.

Appendices

Appendix A: Document Information

Series: XEP
Number: 0377
Publisher: XMPP Standards Foundation
Status: Experimental
Type: Standards Track
Version: 0.1.0
Last Updated: 2016-05-25
Approving Body: XMPP Council
Dependencies: XMPP Core, XMPP IM, XEP-0191
Supersedes: None
Superseded By: None
Short Name: NOT_YET_ASSIGNED
Source Control: HTML
This document in other formats: XML  PDF

Appendix B: Author Information

Appendix C: Legal Notices

Appendix D: Relation to XMPP

The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined in the XMPP Core (RFC 6120) and XMPP IM (RFC 6121) specifications contributed by the XMPP Standards Foundation to the Internet Standards Process, which is managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force in accordance with RFC 2026. Any protocol defined in this document has been developed outside the Internet Standards Process and is to be understood as an extension to XMPP rather than as an evolution, development, or modification of XMPP itself.

Appendix E: Discussion Venue

The primary venue for discussion of XMPP Extension Protocols is the <standards@xmpp.org> discussion list.

Discussion on other xmpp.org discussion lists might also be appropriate; see <http://xmpp.org/about/discuss.shtml> for a complete list.

Errata can be sent to <editor@xmpp.org>.

Appendix F: Requirements Conformance

The following requirements keywords as used in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119: "MUST", "SHALL", "REQUIRED"; "MUST NOT", "SHALL NOT"; "SHOULD", "RECOMMENDED"; "SHOULD NOT", "NOT RECOMMENDED"; "MAY", "OPTIONAL".

Appendix G: Notes

Appendix H: Revision History

Note: Older versions of this specification might be available at http://xmpp.org/extensions/attic/

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