What is <meta http-equiv="Reply-to" content="[email protected]" />?

Question

What does the following HTML code do?

<meta http-equiv="Reply-to" content="[email protected]" />

There does not seem to a "Reply-to" equivalent header in HTTP. Should I remove it or correct it?

Answer 1

That just looks like a developer didn't understand what they were doing.

Answer 2

I am not sure 'Reply-to' is still valid. It's not listed in the Sitepoint Reference. However, there is an ancient W3C spec that says:

HTTP servers may read the content of the document HEAD to generate header fields corresponding to any elements defining a value for the attribute HTTP-EQUIV. (14)

[…]

If the document contains:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="Tue, 04 Dec 1993 21:29:02 GMT">
<meta http-equiv="Keywords" CONTENT="Fred">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Reply-to" content="[email protected] (Roy Fielding)">
<Meta Http-equiv="Keywords" CONTENT="Barney">`

then the server may include the following header fields:

Expires: Tue, 04 Dec 1993 21:29:02 GMT
Keywords: Fred, Barney
Reply-to: [email protected] (Roy Fielding)

Answer 3

It was probably supposed to use the name attribute instead of http-equiv:

<meta http-equiv="Reply-to" content="[email protected]" />

The 'reply-to' option was intended to be a way of publishing your email address, back when there was no spam problem. Using it now will more than likely only result in spam email.