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

From: Todd Knarr (tknarr@silverglass.org)
Date: 06/26/02 

From: Todd Knarr <tknarr@silverglass.org>
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 05:40:30 GMT

In comp.security.unix <slrnahifi4.vol.bruno@cerberus.csd.uwm.edu> Bruno Wolff III <bruno@cerberus.csd.uwm.edu> wrote:
> 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).

Right, but in the situation in question we already _know_ the user in
question will deny having read the e-mail, and it's pretty probable that
they'll decline to respond to a confirmation request. What the original
questioner was looking for wasn't proof that the user read the e-mail,
but proof that the message was delivered to his mail client to be read.
That takes away the user's claims "Well, the system didn't deliver the
e-mail so how could I have read it?", so that he's limited to evasions
in the small gap between his inbox and his eyeballs instead of the
large gap between the sender's system and his inbox. 

-- 
Safety hint, dude ... never, ever get up to go to the john at night unless
you can actually feel your body.
                                -- Sonya Marie Gildencrantz

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