Let us suppose that a Romeo receives a message from Juliet:

To forward this to Mercutio, Romeo would send a new message with a <forwarded/> payload of namespace 'urn:xmpp:forward:0'.

1. Forwarded stanzas SHOULD include all relevant child elements of the original stanza by default. However, an implementation MAY omit elements it deems irrelevant and safe to discard. An example would be omitting &xep0085; elements from <message> stanzas which typically do not make sense outside the context of a conversation session. However it should be noted that removing such elements can invalidate any digital signature on a stanza. If preserving a signature is important in the context this extension is used then child elements SHOULD NOT be removed.

2. The forwarding entity SHOULD add a <delay/> child to the <forwarded/> element to indicate to the recipient the date/time that the forwarding entity received the original stanza. The format of this element is described in &xep0203;.

3. The namespace of the forwarded stanza MUST be preserved (this is typically 'jabber:client'). If no 'xmlns' is set for the stanza then as per XML namespacing rules it would inherit the 'urn:xmpp:forward:0' namespace, which is wrong.

4. When this extension is employed simply for a user to forward a given message to a contact, the outer <message/> SHOULD contain a body (even if empty) and a receiving client should pay particular attention to ensure it renders both the sender's text and the forwarded message unambiguously.

5. When a forwarded stanza forms part of an encapsulating protocol, the <forwarded/> element SHOULD be a child of a tag of that protocol, and SHOULD NOT be included as a direct child of the transmitted stanza.

Receipt of a forwarded stanza from a third-party does not guarantee that the original stanza was actually received, or that the content has not been modified, by the forwarder. Integrity of the original stanza can only be determined through digital signing mechanisms such as described in &xep0285; and &xep0290;.

Considering the above an end-user client should take special care in its rendering of forwarded stanzas, such as forwarded messages, to ensure that the user cannot mistake it for a message received directly from the original sender.

An entity SHOULD NOT trust that forwards are genuine when receiving them unprovoked (i.e. outside the scope of another specification).

While security considerations are ultimately dependent upon the specifications using the format defined herein, forwarding introduces scope for stanza forgery such that authors of derivative specifications will need to address security considerations themselves. These need to cover which entities a client should accept forwards from, and which entities those are permitted to forward stanzas for. For example, a specification may choose to only trust forwards if they are received from the user's client, another client on the bare JID, or the user's server.