1

AFAIK there is no RFC or other standard to retrieve an avatar (image/icon) from an email address.

I think this would be a great feature.

One possible solution:

Get avatar via DNS

  1. user enters his email address.
  2. The domain belonging to this email adress DNS gets asked: Avatar for "foo@example.com"
  3. DNS replies: Get image from URL. For example: http://example.com/foo.png

Questions

  • Is there already a RFC or other standard?
  • Why is there no such standard yet?
  • How to get it come true?

I know that Gravatar exists. But AFAIK it is not a standard.

guettli
  • 25,042
  • 81
  • 346
  • 663
  • I don't think there are any RFCs governing this. There is RFC6749 OAuth 2.0, which describes an authorization framework for retrieving such information, but OAuth services choose their own representation of user profile pics (e.g. Facebook works differently from Google or Twitter). For your new RFC, get every stakeholder to join in, then either propose a new IETF working group (https://www.ietf.org/wg/) or make an independent submission (see RFC4846). Good luck. – PeterK Dec 03 '15 at 07:49
  • Gmail retrieves the Google+ image, MS Outlook retrieves the image from AD (or AAD), the methods are completely different and there's no known standard, I also came across this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26938529/avatar-for-an-email-address – Yaron Dec 13 '15 at 14:58

2 Answers2

1

Currently there is no RFC for this. To verify you can search the existing RFC's at: https://www.rfc-editor.org/retrieve/

Also, the process to create an RFC is non-trivial. However, if you are ok with an RFC in the experimental or informational category, you could consider the Independent Submission process which is detailed at: https://www.rfc-editor.org/about/independent/

Rajesh
  • 189
  • 15
0

It's not for a (single) email address but for a whole domain.

So if you have your own domain for your email adress (or if you're a company), there is BIMI which is already supported by google/gmail, yahoo, verizon and fastmail.

sebbu
  • 126
  • 1
  • 6