Subject: Re: Return Receipt et al

From: Joe Ilacqua <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1993 16:20:15 -0500

Since it is only a receipt of delivery to your mail box, and
does not in anyway guarantee that you have seen them message, I'm not
sure I see the philosophical problem.  All it does is inform the
sender that the various mail links are functioning.

->Spike

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From: Jason Haar <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1993 10:36:18 +1300 (NZDT)

<nl>
<bold><excerpt>Excerpts from Mailing-Lists.Info-Pine: 1-Mar-93 Re: Return Receipt et al Joe [email-masked] (260)</excerpt></bold><nl>
<nl>
<nl>
<excerpt>	Since it is only a receipt of delivery to your mail box, and<nl>
does not in anyway guarantee that you have seen them message, I'm not<nl>
sure I see the philosophical problem.  All it does is inform the<nl>
sender that the various mail links are functioning.<nl>
</excerpt><nl>
You are confusing a delivery-receipt with a read-receipt (<bold>Delivery-Receipt-To:</bold> vs <bold>Read-Receipt-To:</bold> header)<nl>
<nl>
Cheers<nl>
<nl>
Jason Haar

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 13:31:19 -0800 (PST)

> sender that the various mail links are functioning.

I occasionally receive email that I want no acknowledgement of its delivery
returned to the sender.  That is, I expressly want to be able to deny having
ever received the message if questioned.  Sometimes, an ``e-mail black hole''
is the only way to get rid of certain individuals.

If the sender really wants to check the mail links, the sender could send a
round-trip message using something like the % hack.  For example, I could send
a message to [email-masked] to see if mail to/from world.std.com
works from Panda.  But, I claim that I have no right to know whether or not a
message I sent makes it to [email-masked]'s mailbox unless Joe Ilacqua
decides to give me that information.

If it's really important to me that I know if the message got there, I will
say ``Please acknowledge this message immediately.''  If Joe wants to do that,
he can do a reply with the single word ``ack'' as a message.  If he doesn't,
well, he doesn't.  It's his choice.  A programmed procedure eliminates that
choice.

Consider, too, the frightening possibility of lawsuits getting served via
email in light of the well-known irresponsible ways that people sometimes use
email.

However, the bottom line is that there is at present *no* standard way of
requesting return receipts, only various (different and non-interoperable)
hacks in different mailers.  If all your correspondents use sendmail on UNIX,
and none of them are nasty sorts like me that deliberately patched the code
out, then you could have a working receipt facility.  That is not a realistic
set of assumptions to make on the Internet.

I don't see any particular reason why Pine shouldn't make it possible to send
a Return-Receipt-To header.  On the other hand, who can take responsibility
for making sure it works?

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From: [email-masked] (Will Estes)
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 93 14:56:13 PST

'Mark Crispin says:'
> is the only way to get rid of certain individuals.

I think this is an application issue, not a problem with
Return-Receipt-To:.  I think you are requesting a capability within
sendmail to - on a case-by-case basis - refuse acknowledgement of
receipt to particular individuals when the destination is you.  

But the vast majority of people who use this feature simply want to
know that the mail arrived intact.  I know I never use that header
unless I'm dealing with someone on a mail system that loses mail, so
having acknowledgement of receipt is quite important.  

> set of assumptions to make on the Internet.

But it's all we've got, and it sort of works in 80% of the cases.  I
can't understand something that is useful 80% of the time just
because occasionally it is not.

-- 
Thanks,
Will Estes              Internet: [email-masked]
U.S. Computer           Cupertino, CA  95014