GB/T 46467-2025Chinese internet email addresses - Technical requirements for internet message access protocol support (English PDF)

Foreword

This document complies with the provisions of GB/T 1.1-2020 "Standardization Work Guidelines Part

1.Structure and Drafting Rules of Standardization Documents". Drafting. Please note that some content in this document may involve patents. The issuing organization of this document assumes no responsibility for identifying patents. This document was proposed and is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China. This document was drafted by: China Internet Network Information Center, Guangdong YingShi Computer Technology Co., Ltd., and Computer Network Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Information Center, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Internet Society of China, China Telecom Group Corporation, Tsinghua University, China United Network Communications China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd., Domain Name Registration Management Center for Government and Public Institutions, Beijing 263 Enterprise Connect Xinyi Co., Ltd., China Communications Standards Association. The main drafters of this document are. Yang Xue, Yao Jiankang, Chen Leihua, Li Yanbiao, Wu Xiucheng, Wang Lang, Xu Lei, Pei Wei, Zhang Rongsheng, Ding Jiajia, and Zhong Rui. Jiao Haiyan, Lin Yanzhong, Chen Yingtang, Qin Xiaowei, Liu Baojun, Liu Yue, Sun Le, Li Qinfeng, Fu Yu, He Wei, Cai Qing, Xiao Jianfang, Zhang Zhiyong, Wang Chao Wang Cuicui, Yu Wei, Zhou Xiaolei, Gong Jia, Du Ming. Chinese Email Address Interactive Mail Access Protocol IMAP Technical Requirements

1 Scope

GB/T 46467-2025 is the Chinese national standard covering making IMAP work with addresses written in Chinese characters - the internationalised handling through the whole protocol, the mailbox naming, and the behaviour required of a server when the client cannot cope. First edition, with the POP standard GB/T 46465-2025 and the framework GB/T 46466-2025. In force from 1 February 2026. Issued on 31 October 2025, it has been in force since 1 February 2026.

This document specifies the technology for supporting Chinese email addresses using the Interactive Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) on the Internet. Require. This document applies to email service providers and software vendors developing applications or services that support Chinese email.

2 Normative references

The contents of the following documents, through normative references within the text, constitute essential provisions of this document. Dated citations are not included. For references to documents, only the version corresponding to that date applies to this document; for undated references, the latest version (including all amendments) applies. This document.

GB/T 1988-1998 Information Technology - Seven-bit Coded Character Set for Information Interchange

GB/T 44266-2024 General Technical Requirements for Chinese Domain Names SION4rev1) IETF RFC 6858 Simplified POPand mechanism for Internationalized Mail Service Protocol and Interactive Mail Access Protocol.

3 Terms and Definitions

The following terms and definitions apply to this document.

3.1 Email (electronicmail) On a computer network, this refers to the communication between user terminals. [Source: GB/T 5271.32-2006, 32.01.01, with modifications]

3.2 Unicode character Characters are identified by their position or code point, and each character is given a unique number.

Note. For example, U 12AB refers to the character located at 12AB in the Unicode table. [Source: GB/T 46465-2025, 3.2]

3.3 This method represents a string of characters in the Unicode character encoding table as a string of bytes. The characters are represented using...