The only caveat with this is if your mail client blocks the loading of images by default. Spammers used the trick of a 1px X 1px transparent jpg to track their conversions so some mail clients stopped loading images by default. Jeffrey Taylor 613-325-1368 On 2012-01-06, at 8:14 PM, Glenn Henshaw <thraxisp4 [ at ] mac [ dot ] com> wrote: > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > Linux mailing list > Linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca > http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/linux