I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the ability to see
if someone had actually bothered to open your email but I can't seem to
find anything like that now. Is anyone aware of such a service?
especially one that doesn't require an account (kinda like a Mailinator
thing? [not requiring an account that is]). Any help/suggestions would
be greatly appreciated!
Cheers,
-Gaiko
In article <1108959248.388190.229200@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
>
>I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the ability to see
>if someone had actually bothered to open your email but I can't seem to
>find anything like that now. Is anyone aware of such a service?
>especially one that doesn't require an account (kinda like a Mailinator
>thing? [not requiring an account that is]). Any help/suggestions would
>be greatly appreciated!
I think you could hide a URL pointing to jellycounter.com in HTML mail
messages if your correspondents are dumb enough to use an HTML-enabled
(more properly HTML-crazed) MTA. See http://www.jellycounter.com/
That comes to mind because the owner of jellycounter.com recently asked
me to remove his domain name from my private blacklist. In formulating
my reply to his objection, it occurred to me that the tactic of rejecting
mail containing URLs blacklisted domain names is interesting for dealing
with that kind of privacy invasion. (I can't tell whether Jellycounter.com
sanctions that use of its URLs. I do know that plenty of example of
spam containing them have been reported.)
I've been doing preliminary testing of spamvertised URL blacklisting
using sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org. It has yet to find any spam not caught
by my other defenses. It seems less effective than greylisting, but
if you can't use greylisting, perhaps because you don't run your own
MTA, it looks promising.
--
Vernon Schryver vjs@rhyolite.com
news:1108959248.388190.229200@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com.. .
>
> I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the ability to see
> if someone had actually bothered to open your email but I can't seem to
> find anything like that now. Is anyone aware of such a service?
> especially one that doesn't require an account (kinda like a Mailinator
> thing? [not requiring an account that is]). Any help/suggestions would
> be greatly appreciated!
>
Yes, IIRC, didtheyreadit.com
I added this to my hosts file:
127.0.0.1 sys.rampellsoft.com
So much for tracking whether I read it.
--
McWebber
"Richter points to the lack of legal action against his company as proof
that he's operating appropriately."
Information Week, November 10, 2003
gaikokujinkyofusho@gmail.com wrote:
> I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the ability to see
> if someone had actually bothered to open your email but I can't seem to
> find anything like that now. Is anyone aware of such a service?
> especially one that doesn't require an account (kinda like a Mailinator
> thing? [not requiring an account that is]). Any help/suggestions would
> be greatly appreciated!
>
There's nothing that will universally work. There are RFC 2298 return
receipts, which are often ignored (I don't have any stats for how often,
but I imagine it's rare to get a response.)
The other technique is a webbug in html email (that is, html email with
a small tracking image pulled from a server somewhere [as opposed to
sent as an attachment.]) This will, of course, completely fail to pick
up on people using non-HTML mail clients, and some people block html
email, or use it as part of a scoring system (eg Spamassassin, which
also tries to recognise webbugs.)
Basically, you can have a system which you cannot trust to tell you a
mail has not been read (you can't really tell that a mail has been read,
either, only that it's been opened) and which will increase the chances
of your mail being blocked.
Andrew
> I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the ability to
see
> if someone had actually bothered to open your email but I can't seem
to
> find anything like that now. Is anyone aware of such a service?
I have a service like that. It's called "water cooler" or alternatively
"coffee machine". It uses the renowned smalltalk protocol:
"Hey Eddie! Did you get my email?!"
"Yeah. Looked interesting. I'll answer it later today."
"Cool. Later."
"Later."
--
Flyboy
94th spam pursuit squadron
gaikokujinkyofusho@gmail.com writes:
> I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the ability to see
> if someone had actually bothered to open your email but I can't seem to
> find anything like that now. Is anyone aware of such a service?
> especially one that doesn't require an account (kinda like a Mailinator
> thing? [not requiring an account that is]). Any help/suggestions would
> be greatly appreciated!
There is such thing as Message Disposition Notification (*).
Or course the recipients' user agents are always free to silently
ignore such a request.
Then there is other indirect covert channels.
Starting from MIME's message/external-body -type (**)
but not forgot various HTML related methods.
/ Kari Hurtta
(*) http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3798.txt
(**) http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2046.txt
In article <1108959248.388190.229200@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>, says...
> I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the ability to see
> if someone had actually bothered to open your email but I can't seem to
> find anything like that now. Is anyone aware of such a service?
> especially one that doesn't require an account (kinda like a Mailinator
> thing? [not requiring an account that is]). Any help/suggestions would
> be greatly appreciated!
Read receipts, whether RFC compliant in the MUA, or through surreptitious
web bugs, are not 100% reliable. If you need reliable, contact the other
party directly; even postal receipts only show that somebody signed for a
message, not that they even opened it, much less read it.
--
Norman
~Win dain a lotica, En vai tu ri, Si lo ta
~Fin dein a loluca, En dragu a sei lain
~Vi fa-ru les shutai am, En riga-lint
gaikokujinkyofusho@gmail.com wrote:
> I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the ability to see
> if someone had actually bothered to open your email but I can't seem
> to find anything like that now. Is anyone aware of such a service?
> especially one that doesn't require an account (kinda like a
> Mailinator thing? [not requiring an account that is]). Any
> help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
This is an excellant way to receive unreliable information on what happened
to your email and annoy lots of your recipients in the process. Whatever it
is you are trying to do, balance it against the negative aspects and
consider if the gain is worth the pain.
In <1108959248.388190.229200@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>, on
02/20/2005
at 08:14 PM, gaikokujinkyofusho@gmail.com said:
>I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the ability to
>see if someone had actually bothered to open your email but I can't
>seem to find anything like that now.
Necromancers-R-us? Savvy users turn off return receipts and automatic
HTML rendering, so the only ones that you can track are the clueless.
Even if you could do it, there would be the issue of violations of
privacy laws.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, truly insane Spews puppet
Unsolicited bulk E-mail will be subject to legal action. I reserve
the right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org
On 20 Feb 2005 20:14:08 -0800, gaikokujinkyofusho@gmail.com
> I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the ability
> to see if someone had actually bothered to open your email
> but I can't seem to find anything like that now. Is anyone
> aware of such a service? especially one that doesn't require
> an account (kinda like a Mailinator thing? [not requiring
> an account that is]). Any help/suggestions would be greatly
> appreciated!
There's no way to tell that unless they send you a receipt of
some kind.
You can't even tell whether they actually saw it or not:
A spam-filter on the local machine could send it to /dev/null
silently, and all the delivering MTA could tell you is that it
was accepted by their MTA.
From there it would probably go to a POP or IMAP server and
the logs there could only tell you that it had been received
from such-and-such MTA and downloaded by your fetching program.
_If_ their logging was that thorough.
Not to mention that mails can be lost at any stage along the
way.
Sorry, but you are simply out-of-luck.
Welcome to the realities of computer networking.
AC
--
Pro-Active Spam Fighter
Pass-list --> Spam-Filter --> Challenge-Response
http://tinyurl.com/2t5kp
gaikokujinkyofusho@gmail.com wrote:
> I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the ability to see
> if someone had actually bothered to open your email but I can't seem to
> find anything like that now. Is anyone aware of such a service?
I know of one -- it's amazing!
It's a little box that sits on my desk. I press a few buttons, hold
a funny handset to my ear, and after a few seconds, I say:
"Hey, Bob! Did you open that e-mail I sent you earlier?"
and Bob answers!
It's amazing!
--
David.
On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 21:18:58 -0500, David F. Skoll
> gaikokujinkyofusho@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the
>> ability to see if someone had actually bothered to open your
>> email but I can't seem to find anything like that now. Is
>> anyone aware of such a service?
>
> I know of one -- it's amazing!
>
> It's a little box that sits on my desk. I press a few buttons,
> hold a funny handset to my ear, and after a few seconds, I say:
>
> "Hey, Bob! Did you open that e-mail I sent you earlier?"
>
> and Bob answers!
>
> It's amazing!
:-)
If it matters, I ask for a receipt (hit reply and type in a row
of letters and send it ...).
I tell them that if I don't receive a response that I will assume
they didn't receive it.
Another way is to encrypt the mail body (or a critical part of
it) and force them to mail you to get the key. Or to obtain it
from a website that logs the IPs of anyone who accesses the
webpage (a little sneakier).
Curiosity gets the better of most people...
AC
This is a MIME GnuPG-signed message. If you see this text, it means that
your E-mail or Usenet software does not support MIME signed messages.
--=_mimegpg-commodore.email-scan.com-18727-1109129366-0001
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Beavis writes:
> On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 21:18:58 -0500, David F. Skoll
>
>
>> gaikokujinkyofusho@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>> I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the
>>> ability to see if someone had actually bothered to open your
>>> email but I can't seem to find anything like that now. Is
>>> anyone aware of such a service?
>>
>> I know of one -- it's amazing!
>>
>> It's a little box that sits on my desk. I press a few buttons,
>> hold a funny handset to my ear, and after a few seconds, I say:
>>
>> "Hey, Bob! Did you open that e-mail I sent you earlier?"
>>
>> and Bob answers!
>>
>> It's amazing!
>
> :-)
>
> If it matters, I ask for a receipt (hit reply and type in a row
> of letters and send it ...).
>
> I tell them that if I don't receive a response that I will assume
> they didn't receive it.
Hey, everyone who ever received a non-crank mail from Beavis, please raise
your hand!
--=_mimegpg-commodore.email-scan.com-18727-1109129366-0001
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Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
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--=_mimegpg-commodore.email-scan.com-18727-1109129366-0001--
In article
says...
> Hey, everyone who ever received a non-crank mail from Beavis, please raise
> your hand!
>
I hear cicadas buzzing...
--
Norman
~Win dain a lotica, En vai tu ri, Si lo ta
~Fin dein a loluca, En dragu a sei lain
~Vi fa-ru les shutai am, En riga-lint
In article
Connor says...
> If it matters, I ask for a receipt (hit reply and type in a row
> of letters and send it ...).
> I tell them that if I don't receive a response that I will assume
> they didn't receive it.
> Another way is to encrypt the mail body (or a critical part of
> it) and force them to mail you to get the key. Or to obtain it
> from a website that logs the IPs of anyone who accesses the
> webpage (a little sneakier).
> Curiosity gets the better of most people...
That is what spammers are counting on...
--
Norman
~Win dain a lotica, En vai tu ri, Si lo ta
~Fin dein a loluca, En dragu a sei lain
~Vi fa-ru les shutai am, En riga-lint
As far as I'm concerned, I'll open my email when I damn well feel like
it, and it's nobody's damn business, whether they sent it or not.
This is exactly the kind of spammer trick that should be illegal.
news:1109139214.244965.270590@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com
> As far as I'm concerned, I'll open my email when I damn well feel like
> it, and it's nobody's damn business, whether they sent it or not.
10-4 on that one.
--
use hotmail for email replies
In message
Connor
>Another way is to encrypt the mail body (or a critical part of
>it) and force them to mail you to get the key. Or to obtain it
>from a website that logs the IPs of anyone who accesses the
>webpage (a little sneakier).
If ever there was a justifiable case for JHD.
--
HAM AND EGGS: A day's work for a chicken; A lifetime commitment for a pig
In article
Sam
>-=-=-=-=-=-
>
>Beavis writes:
>
>> On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 21:18:58 -0500, David F. Skoll
>>
>>
>>> gaikokujinkyofusho@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the
>>>> ability to see if someone had actually bothered to open your
>>>> email but I can't seem to find anything like that now. Is
>>>> anyone aware of such a service?
>>>
>>> I know of one -- it's amazing!
>>>
>>> It's a little box that sits on my desk. I press a few buttons,
>>> hold a funny handset to my ear, and after a few seconds, I say:
>>>
>>> "Hey, Bob! Did you open that e-mail I sent you earlier?"
>>>
>>> and Bob answers!
>>>
>>> It's amazing!
>>
>> :-)
>>
>> If it matters, I ask for a receipt (hit reply and type in a row
>> of letters and send it ...).
>>
>> I tell them that if I don't receive a response that I will assume
>> they didn't receive it.
>
>Hey, everyone who ever received a non-crank mail from Beavis, please raise
>your hand!
>
>
Paging Mr. Holly. Buddy Holly to the white courtesy phone.
>I think you could hide a URL pointing to jellycounter.com in HTML mail
>messages if your correspondents are dumb enough to use an HTML-enabled
>(more properly HTML-crazed) MTA. See http://www.jellycounter.com/
>
>That comes to mind because the owner of jellycounter.com recently asked
>me to remove his domain name from my private blacklist. In formulating
>my reply to his objection, it occurred to me that the tactic of rejecting
>mail containing URLs blacklisted domain names is interesting for dealing
>with that kind of privacy invasion. (I can't tell whether Jellycounter.com
>sanctions that use of its URLs. I do know that plenty of example of
>spam containing them have been reported.)
A large fraction of the crap I get in asian languages I can't even
read has references to counters/tracking at bravenet. For example:
src="http://pub46.bravenet.com/counter/code.php?
id=375383&usernum=3907812608&cpv=2">
(line breaks added by me)
How many spammers are dumb enough to use free "counters" like this?
Anybody using them for filter bait?
--
The suespammers.org mail server is located in California. So are all my
other mailboxes. Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited
commercial e-mail to my suespammers.org address or any of my other addresses.
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam.
On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 04:35:12 -0600, Hal Murray
>>I think you could hide a URL pointing to jellycounter.com in
>>HTML mail messages if your correspondents are dumb enough to
>>use an HTML-enabled (more properly HTML-crazed) MTA. See
>>http://www.jellycounter.com/
>>
>>That comes to mind because the owner of jellycounter.com
>>recently asked me to remove his domain name from my private
>>blacklist. In formulating my reply to his objection, it
>>occurred to me that the tactic of rejecting mail containing
>>URLs blacklisted domain names is interesting for dealing
>>with that kind of privacy invasion. (I can't tell whether
>>Jellycounter.com sanctions that use of its URLs. I do know
>>that plenty of example of spam containing them have been
>>reported.)
>
> A large fraction of the crap I get in asian languages I can't
> even read has references to counters/tracking at bravenet. For
> example:
> src="http://pub46.bravenet.com/counter/code.php?
> id=375383&usernum=3907812608&cpv=2"> (line breaks added by me)
>
> How many spammers are dumb enough to use free "counters" like
> this? Anybody using them for filter bait?
>
Jeesh. I discovered one even dumber, and it's in spam apparently
of Western origin -->
X-Batch-Number:
My filter now sends any mail (not passlisted) with that header
straight to /dev/null.
AC
--
Pro-Active Spam Fighter
Pass-list --> Spam-Filter --> Challenge-Response
http://tinyurl.com/2t5kp
In article
Hal Murray
>A large fraction of the crap I get in asian languages I can't even
>read has references to counters/tracking at bravenet. For example:
>
> src="http://pub46.bravenet.com/counter/code.php?
>How many spammers are dumb enough to use free "counters" like this?
>Anybody using them for filter bait?
A name-based DNS blacklist of web bugs would be a good use of
body URL DNS blacklisting. My tests of new code in the DCC client
programs to optionally do body URL DNS blacklisting has turned up
the problems I anticipated with too-slow DNS severs for exactly the
URLs you'd want to blacklist by IP address. Name-based DNS blacklisting
is not vulernable to the slow spammer DNS servers.
I've a kludge involving fork() to use the nearly universal single-thread
DNS resolver libraries in threaded spam filter environments such as
sendmail milters. I'm now wrestling with optionally answering incoming
mail with a 4yz temporary rejection if the total time spent doing DNS
body blacklisting exceeds a threshold. It seems plausible that repeated
retransmissions by the SMTP client will eventually prime the local
recursing DNS server with the answers except on one bad case.
The bad case is spam contain things like
where foo.example.com needs tens of seconds to resolve or fail to
resolve. A spammer must have visible URLs work fast enough to keep
the suckers reading the spam, but can use that hidden tarpits to
sabotage body URL DNS blacklisting. I figure that a persistent 4yz
rejection is good enough for the bad case.
Of course, this filtering can't be used on postmaster@, abuse@, and
other accounts.
Vernon Schryver vjs@rhyolite.com
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
> In <1108959248.388190.229200@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>, on
> 02/20/2005
> at 08:14 PM, gaikokujinkyofusho@gmail.com said:
>
>> I seem to recall a service (way back) that gave you the ability to
>> see if someone had actually bothered to open your email but I can't
>> seem to find anything like that now.
>
> Necromancers-R-us? Savvy users turn off return receipts and automatic
> HTML rendering, so the only ones that you can track are the clueless.
> Even if you could do it, there would be the issue of violations of
> privacy laws.
But if you send a second email, and it's rejected with a "5xx Stupid
tracking bug jerk!", then you know your first email was probably examined...
--
Ron Sharp.
In article <87FTd.1223$qZ5.492@fe51.usenetserver.com>,
Android Cat
>Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
>> Necromancers-R-us? Savvy users turn off return receipts and automatic
>> HTML rendering, so the only ones that you can track are the clueless.
>> Even if you could do it, there would be the issue of violations of
>> privacy laws.
>
>But if you send a second email, and it's rejected with a "5xx Stupid
>tracking bug jerk!", then you know your first email was probably examined...
That's why an error message in response to a security violation should
not provide any information (other than the fact that a security violation
was detected).
--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it bad been done by.
It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses where so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
>But if you send a second email, and it's rejected with a "5xx Stupid
>tracking bug jerk!", then you know your first email was probably examined...
Maybe it was examined by a script.
Any block lists focusing on email with tracking info? I know of two
types. One is web bugs. The other is codes in URLs that get to
content. Are there others?
--
The suespammers.org mail server is located in California. So are all my
other mailboxes. Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited
commercial e-mail to my suespammers.org address or any of my other addresses.
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam.
This post is a rubbish. I no believe.