Subject: Is there a way...

From: Nicole Melody Barbary <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 00:04:26 -0600

I am curious to know if there is a way to tell if the mail you have sent
to someone has been read or not and if there is a way, how do you do it?

Nicole Barbary

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From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 09:33:39 +0100 (BST)

Ring them up and ask them.

(Slightly longer answer: there is no reliable way.  The best you can do is
to include a special header (whose syntax I forget) that REQUESTS the
recipient's e-mail program to return an acknowledgement when it is read.
However many e-mail programs do not do this, and those that do have
probably had the feature turned off either by the individual or the system
manager, viewing it as an invasion of their privacy.)

Cheers,

Mike Brudenell                                         <[email-masked]>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York, YO1 5DD, UK
Tel: +44-1904-433811  FAX: +44-1904-433740  http://www.york.ac.uk/~pmb1/

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From: Don Sugarman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 07:38:27 -0400 (EDT)

> Ring them up and ask them.

Nicole, 

Mike speaks the truth. 

We used to include a request for receipt in the message.  Something like

"Please respond by reply e-mail to acknowledge receipt.  Thank you."

Of course, if you are writing to someone working *for* you or to a spouse,
you can drop the 'thank you' or substitute 'or else.'  ;-)

Don Sugarman
[email-masked]

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From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 20:08:00 -0400

> to someone has been read or not and if there is a way, how do you do it?

    The general answer is ........ NO.  Some proprietary mail systems
allow this, but there is no Internet-wide standard for it, and
therefore no general way to do it.

Paul                             <[email-masked]>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key 
Home Page:  URL: http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

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From: Juan Alday <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 15:23:21 +0000

> to someone has been read or not and if there is a way, how do you do it?

I guess you cant... :-( (well, some propietary systems let you do it, but
generally speaking, its not implemented. There isn't any RFC concerning it
(as far as I know)...

Well, you can sometimes (it doesn't work quite often) finger the receiver. 
If the systems allows it, you might know at least when did he last check
his mail:

me@MySystem> finger user1
Login: user                             Name: Test Account
Directory: /home/users/user1            Shell: /bin/tcsh
Last login Fri Jul 26 14:22 (   ) on tty1
New mail received Fri Jul 26 15:19 1996 (   )
     Unread since Fri Jun 12 14:22 1996 (   )
No Plan.

You see?? 

CU,
			- Juan -
_____________________________________________________________________________
                              Juan ALDAY 
               SPAIN              |                 FRANCE              
          [email-masked]        |        [email-masked]
     http://www.encomix.es/~alday | 504G | Rue de Tolbiac 212 | 75013 PARIS
      Finger for Geek Code Info   |        Phone: +33 1 45818458
      Finger for PGP Public Key   | Alt. email: [email-masked]  
____________________________________________________________________________

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 22:44:10 GMT

I believe there is no way to know if someone read an email sent
through the Internet. On private LANS, some programs do allow this
capability. Groupwise is one package that will tell you if someone has
opened your mail message.