message content

The substantive payload of a communication — what is actually being said, transmitted, or conveyed — as distinct from routing, header, or envelope data (metadata) that describes how, when, or between whom the communication traveled. In security and compliance contexts, it is the object of deep-packet inspection, content-filtering controls, and data-loss-prevention policies: boundary protection devices such as routers, gateways, and firewalls can provide "a message-filtering capability based on message content (e.g., implementing key word searches)" to enforce policy on what data crosses a boundary. In law and privacy regulation, message content occupies a higher protection tier than metadata: a written letter's words are content while its address is metadata; a phone conversation is content while the date and numbers involved are metadata, and courts have consistently treated content as more sensitive than metadata. The content/metadata boundary is itself contested — the distinction is increasingly under pressure, as it is becoming harder to separate content from metadata, for example in deciding whether an email subject line is content or metadata.

Advisory only. A term this product ships is defined by an authority document, not by a search result.