Significant characteristics of email

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This table lists properties and components taken from Recommended Property Set, Significant Properties Testing Report: Email, Gareth Knight, Digital Curation Specialist, InSPECT project, 30 March 2009.

name	definition	function description
Local-part	The user account of the Agent assigned by a mail provider. The local-part is identified by alphanumeric characters prior to the @ symbol of an email address.	Establishes the provenance (and as a result support or contradict its authenticity) of message by identifying the user account that was used to transmit the message.
Domain-part	The host or domain name used by a DNS to indicate the mail provider that handles the email message.	Establishes the provenance (and as a result support or contradict its authenticity) of message by identifying the domain from which the message originated.
Domain-literal (if present)	The IP address of the source or destination domain.	Establishes the provenance (and as a result support or contradict its authenticity) of message by identifying the machine address from which the message originated
Display name	A plain text indication of the Agent ‘s name	Establishes the provenance (and as a result support or contradict its authenticity) of message by identifying the name of the Agent specified for the mail account.
Relationship	The relationship that the Agent has with the email message, e.g. creator, sender, recipient (primary, CC, BCC)	Establishes the provenance (and as a result support or contradict its authenticity) of message by identifying how each agent relates to the email
Subject	A short string that may identify the topic of the message. The subject line may be blank, indicate the content of the email to which the Sender is replying, or contain other information.	The Subject may provide qualitative information that indicates the message purpose. Additionally, it may provide a simple method to sort several emails into a thread when used in conjunction with the received date.
Trace-field	Indicates the route that the email took to travel from the sender from the recipient and when it occurred. A repeatable value consisting of an optional “Return-Path” field and one or more “Received” fields.	The trace fields are external to the control of the sender and recipient and, therefore may be thought more trustworthy than the Sent and Received date for validation.
Attachments	An identifier that indicates one or more attachments associated with the email.
Message-ID
Messages
Sent-date	The date and time that an email was completed by a Creator and/or transmitted by the Sender, or received by a Recipient.	The sent-date is obtained from the system settings of the sender ‘s machine. It may indicate the datetime in which an idea was expressed. However, there is the potential that the datetime has been accidentally or deliberately altered, which may result in the value being untrustworthy.
Received date	The date and time that an email was received by the recipient‘s host.	Indicates the datetime that an email was received. However, it does not confirm that the email was downloaded or read by a recipient.
Keywords
Message body and associated mark-up