Confirmation of Reading

Gentlemen,

Is there any way that I can find out whether an email that I have sent
has been OPENED by the recipient, and is not just sitting in his
mailbox unread?

If I cannot confirm the opening of the email, is there any time limit
beyond which unopened mail is either, a) dumped, or, b) returned to
sender.

I do not know how the Internet works, so I am really looking for yes/no
answers, rather than references to Mailer-Daemons and similar
esoterica.

All help gratefully received, and may I wish a Happy New Year to all
who read this.

Kind Regards,

Dave Gibson

Re: Confirmation of Reading

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davegibson writes:

> Gentlemen,
>
> Is there any way that I can find out whether an email that I have sent
> has been OPENED by the recipient, and is not just sitting in his
> mailbox unread?

No.

> If I cannot confirm the opening of the email, is there any time limit
> beyond which unopened mail is either, a) dumped, or, b) returned to
> sender.

No.



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Re: Confirmation of Reading

On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, davegibson wrote:
> Is there any way that I can find out whether an email that I have sent
> has been OPENED by the recipient, and is not just sitting in his
> mailbox unread?

There is no reliable way to do this.

A not-fully-reliable way is to embed a URL for a zero-size image in the
message and hope that some stupid mail reader will automatically open it.
Then when the URL is open, you know that the message has been opened.
This practice, called an "email bug", is not reliable since there are many
people (such as myself) are quite smart enough and would not even think of
using a mail reader that would open a bug. It's also the earmark of
spammers, and thus its use would tend to get you categorized as one.

> If I cannot confirm the opening of the email, is there any time limit
> beyond which unopened mail is either, a) dumped, or, b) returned to
> sender.

No, it will just sit in the recipient's INBOX as long as that recipient
is valid for email. What happens if an account is closed depends entirely
upon site policy, but most sites just stop new incoming mail and don't
return old unread mail.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

Re: Confirmation of Reading

davegibson wrote:
> Gentlemen,
>
> Is there any way that I can find out whether an email that I have sent
> has been OPENED by the recipient, and is not just sitting in his
> mailbox unread?

Well, Mark and Sam have already explained how the *real* e-mail
network works, but besides the real/standard e-mail network, there is
the subset of users which use *Microsoft's* software for sending and
receiving e-mail, most notably Outlook Express (OE) and "Outlook" (any
Outlook version which does *not* have "Express" in its name).

For *that* *subset*, you can *try* to get a "Read Receipt". For
example for OE on the sending side: Tools -> Options... -> Receipts ->
tick the "Request a read receipt for all sent messages" option. The help
("?") for that option says:

[Start quote:]
Specifies whether a request for a read receipt is sent with all outgoing
messages. Message recipients can choose whether or not to send receipts.
If the message recipient agrees to send a read receipt, the receipt will
be sent when the message has been opened.
[End quote.]

So if you, the sender, use this facility and the recipient uses OE or
Outlook and agrees to send a receipt, then *if* you get the receipt, you
can *assume* that *someone*/something on the recipient side has opened
the message. Note: You do not *know* it (for sure), but it's reasonable
to *assume* it. Also, if you do *not* get a receipt, that does not mean
it has not been opened. It may have been opened or not, you have no way
of knowing/assuming.

I guess the bottom line is that when someone *responds* to your
message, you can safely assume that (s)he has opened it, but it's still
assume, not know, and you do not know if (s)he has read it, let alone
understood it. So it looks a lot like 'normal' 'surface'/paper/
mail, doesn't it? :-)

[rest deleted]

Re: Confirmation of Reading

Gentlemen - Sam, Mark & Frank especially,

Thanks for your responses - it is as I thought - I cannot know whether
the recipient has opened an email or not. Although, with AOL, (which I
use), when emailing another AOL member, one can tick a *Return Receipt*
box on the email one is sending, when one gets an email back when the
recipient opens the email. This only works bewteen AOL members, and
most of my emails are to people on other ISP's.

Thanks once again,

Dave Gibson

Re: Confirmation of Reading

davegibson wrote:
> Gentlemen - Sam, Mark & Frank especially,
>
> Thanks for your responses - it is as I thought - I cannot know whether
> the recipient has opened an email or not. Although, with AOL, (which I
> use), when emailing another AOL member, one can tick a *Return Receipt*
> box on the email one is sending, when one gets an email back when the
> recipient opens the email. This only works bewteen AOL members, and
> most of my emails are to people on other ISP's.

Normally one's ISP / MSP (Mail Service Provider) does not dictate
which e-mail client software one uses, but I understand that AOL is
a quite special ISP/MSP. Since I have no experience with nor knowledge
about how AOL works, I can not help you further, but perhaps others can.
(I.e: Can AOL users use Outlook or Outlook Express? If not, why not?)

As I said, for the 'Microsoft e-mail network' (my term) to work, not
only the sender (you), but also the recipients have to use Microsoft
Outlook or Outlook Express, so it would be interesting, for you, to know
what e-mail (client) software the majority of your correspondents use.

Re: Confirmation of Reading

On 5 Jan 2006 02:47:01 -0800, davegibson wrote:
> Gentlemen - Sam, Mark & Frank especially,

Like Mark I don't use an email program that opens URLs automatically. I'll
complain to Mark directly if the program I use ever does.

> Thanks for your responses - it is as I thought - I cannot know whether
> the recipient has opened an email or not. Although, with AOL, (which I
> use), when emailing another AOL member, one can tick a *Return Receipt*
> box on the email one is sending, when one gets an email back when the
> recipient opens the email. This only works bewteen AOL members, and
> most of my emails are to people on other ISP's.

You can tick Read Receipt, Delivery Receipt, or AOL's Return Receipt as
much as you like some of us will never honour such requests. I set the
"No" option in my program for 'send Read Receipts'.

Regards, Trevor

<>< Re: deemed!

Re: Confirmation of Reading

Trevor.Jenkins@suneidesis.com (Trevor Jenkins) writes:

> On 5 Jan 2006 02:47:01 -0800, davegibson wrote:
> > Gentlemen - Sam, Mark & Frank especially,
>
> Like Mark I don't use an email program that opens URLs automatically. I'll
> complain to Mark directly if the program I use ever does.
>
> > Thanks for your responses - it is as I thought - I cannot know whether
> > the recipient has opened an email or not. Although, with AOL, (which I
> > use), when emailing another AOL member, one can tick a *Return Receipt*
> > box on the email one is sending, when one gets an email back when the
> > recipient opens the email. This only works bewteen AOL members, and
> > most of my emails are to people on other ISP's.
>
> You can tick Read Receipt, Delivery Receipt, or AOL's Return Receipt as
> much as you like some of us will never honour such requests. I set the
> "No" option in my program for 'send Read Receipts'.

However Delivery Status Notifications (DNS) are much harder to
avoid because it is ESMTP option.

( In theory, if next SMTP host does not negotiate DSN on ESMTP,
smtp server will send notification itself that next host
does not support DSN.

So net result is that something always will generate DSN,
if sending smtp is asking them.

However this does not tell reading of mail at all. If status
is 'relayed' then next smtp host did not supported DSN.
If status is 'delivered' then mail was delivered to mailbox.
)

/ Kari Hurtta

Re: Confirmation of Reading

On Thu, 5 Jan 2006, Trevor Jenkins wrote:
> Like Mark I don't use an email program that opens URLs automatically. I'll
> complain to Mark directly if the program I use ever does.

If that were to happen, I wouldn't be the person to complain to. What's
more, you'd have to get in line behind me to complain... :-)

Fortunately, there is little chance of that ever happening.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

Re: Confirmation of Reading

Post removed (X-No-Archive: yes)

Re: Confirmation of Reading

"D. Stussy" writes:

> On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, davegibson wrote:
> > Gentlemen,
> >
> > Is there any way that I can find out whether an email that I have sent
> > has been OPENED by the recipient, and is not just sitting in his
> > mailbox unread?
>
> As you have already heard from the other replies, not reliabily.
>
> There was once a "Return-Receipt-To:" header before SMTP had DSN extensions
> added to it, and it's possible that some reading software may respond to it
> when a message is deleted. The feature is definently depreciated.

Well,

Return-Receipt-To:

was used by sendmail. Sendmail dropped it when it started support SMTP
DSN extensions.

That header (Return-Receipt-To:) is still reacted by some MTAs however.


There is
Disposition-Notification-To:
-header (RFC 3798).


/ Kari Hurtta