Re: "proving" a user received an email (good gosh)

From: Bruno Wolff III (bruno@cerberus.csd.uwm.edu)
Date: 06/26/02 

From: Bruno Wolff III <bruno@cerberus.csd.uwm.edu>
Date: 26 Jun 2002 03:54:36 GMT

In article <slrnahhu6u.dh.Faux_Pseudo@fugozi.cx1209071-a>, Faux_Pseudo wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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> - --(Once apon a time, in comp.security.unix,)--
> --(Bruno Wolff III said it like only they can.)--
>> It someone really needs a confirmation that the message was read by a human,
>> it should ask for a confirmation in the body of the message.
>
>
> Bad idea. Any user where confirmation is an issue is a user who knows
> enough to not confirm delivery of the message. What whould be better
> is a "X-Lieing-User: yes" header that the mail client or MTA can check
> and find out if the message did get properly routed and then the mail
> client can look for the header and at the top of the email put a
> little "In opening this mail a notification was sent to the sender"

MTAs can't tell if someone actually read the message. If you to know if
they actually read it, then ask them to reply in a way that can't be
automated. Automated replies from MTAs and MUAs don't really prove that
someone read the message, though they might suggest they did and rule out
some kinds of problems (such as mistyped addresses).

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