The usual trick is to include an image fetched by a URL. The URL contains the image address, as well as some unique identifier that identifies you. The image is fetched when you display the page, confirming that you received it. MUAs (User Agents) also support Return Receipts to varying degrees. Most ask you if you want to reply. ... Glenn -- Glenn Henshaw Waterloo, Canada Email: thraxisp4 [ at ] mac [ dot ] com On 2012-01-06, at 7:26 PM, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > lunching with some friends today, and got into an interesting debate > with someone who was a lawyer and someone who was a marketing person. > > we started talking about sending out email, and whether it was > technically possible to "verify" whether an e-mail was received and/or > read. > > the marketing lady was adamant that the way she sent out e-mail was > to include a URL in the email, so that when the reader clicked on the > URL for more information, that represented a verification that that > person *must* have received and read the email. > > well, sure, but what if they don't click on the link, i asked? the > person could very well have received and read the email, then decided > to not go any further. so that didn't really prove anything. > > the lawyer took it one step further, asking whether there was a way > to absolutely *guarantee* that someone you emailed had read that > email. i'm not a mail protocol expert but i thought about it briefly, > then said i didn't think so, and used my mail setup as an example. > > people can email me, and i'm fairly sure you can ask for receipt > confirmation up to a point. but the final step in my getting email > involves my doing a manual "fetchmail" to get mail from my mail > provider. > > once i do that, the email is on *my* local machine, and i don't see > how anyone can guarantee to know if i've read that email or not. once > i fetch the email, i open up "alpine", at which point i can see all > the subject headers. and at that point, i'm quite free to ruthlessly > delete mail messages based simply on their subject lines, without ever > reading those emails. > > i don't see any way, once the email is on my system, that the sender > can possibly know whether i read that email. the best i can see is > that they *might* be able to confirm that i downloaded it. but i > don't see any way to confirm anything beyond that. > > thoughts? > > rday > > -- > > ======================================================================== > Robert P. J. Day Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA > http://crashcourse.ca > > Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday > LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday > ======================================================================== > > _______________________________________________ > Linux mailing list > Linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca > http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/linux