Uses of content-disposition in an HTTP response header

Note that RFC 6266 supersedes the RFCs referenced below. Section 7 outlines some of the related security concerns.

The authority on the content-disposition header is RFC 1806 and RFC 2183. People have also devised content-disposition hacking. It is important to note that the content-disposition header is not part of the HTTP 1.1 standard.

The HTTP 1.1 Standard (RFC 2616) also mentions the possible security side effects of content disposition:

15.5 Content-Disposition Issues

RFC 1806 [35], from which the often implemented Content-Disposition
(see section 19.5.1) header in HTTP is derived, has a number of very
serious security considerations. Content-Disposition is not part of
the HTTP standard, but since it is widely implemented, we are
documenting its use and risks for implementors. See RFC 2183 [49]
(which updates RFC 1806) for details.


Well, it seems that the Content-Disposition header was originally created for e-mail, not the web. (Link to relevant RFC.)

I'm guessing that web browsers may respond to

Response.AppendHeader("content-disposition", "inline; filename=" + fileName);

when saving, but I'm not sure.