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The Robustness principle and email

Published 18 June 2014 · Last updated 4 September 2026 · Author: Franck Martin

Originally published on LinkedIn

John Postel wrote in RFC 761: "TCP implementations should follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others."

This is often referred as the robustness principle:

"Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others"

However it never meant accept anything someone is throwing at you.

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