OpenConext / OpenConext/OpenConext-pdp

case sensitivity of email address matching

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@baszoetekouw is already working on this.

Since Jul 7, 2026.

Needs refinement
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Java
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Description

Current matching of email addresses is case-sensitive. That seems to be unexpected for users, for example as expressed in CXT-85236:

Daar waar we een uitzondering op mailadres hadden ingesteld bleek deze uitzondering case-sensitive te zijn. Dus als iemand met mailadres H.R.Foobar@assc.xxxuniv.nl stond uitgezonderd, maar in de authenticatie werd h.r.foobar@assc.xxxuniv.nl meegestuurd, dan werd de user alsnog niet doorgelaten door de autorisatieregel. Mogelijk kunnen jullie dit nog aanpassen aan jullie kant, want mailadressen horen niet case-sensitive te zijn voor zover ik weet. Eigenlijk moet de autorisatieregel bijv. checken of de lowercase-variant van het mailadres in de regel overeenkomt met de lowercase-variant van het mailadres in de authenticatie. Dan haal je de case-sensitivity eruit.

However the RFC is quite explicit that the local part is in fact case sensitive:

The local-part of a mailbox MUST BE treated as case sensitive.

(https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5321#section-2.4)

In practice however, all major MTA implementations that I know of treat local-parts as case-insensitive, so it might be more in line with what users expect to make the matching case-insensitive.

Need to be discussed further.

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