Subject: silly question

From: Ruth Lazkoz Saez <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 17:12:46 +0100 (GMT+0100)

Dear Sir or Madam:

I hope you will be able to help me without taking to much time to do it.

Is there any way to know if a message has been read by the receiver?

			Thanking you in advance I remain sincerely yours,

					Ruth Lazkoz

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From: Robin S Socha <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 18:19:24 +0200 (CEST)

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  >I hope you will be able to help me without taking to much time to do it.

Everyone's more than welcome to ask question here, that's what the list is
for :-)

  >Is there any way to know if a message has been read by the receiver?

No. It is not even possible to tell if the mail has been received. Compare
the situation to a regular postal system: You post a letter, but unless
you've taken certain steps, you cannot be sure that it has reached its
addressee.

And to answer the next question... :-) Yes, there are certain steps you can
take to make sure your mail has reached its addressee. However, those
involve certain software on behalf of both parties. Here on my system, I'm
running procmail. There are a few people that depend on their mails reaching
me, so I've set up an auto-acknowledging system for them. This system can be
turned on and off via email, either by myself or by them if they feel this
step unnecessary. But, as I said, the other party has to take similar steps,
too. From my experience, it's enough to be notified that a mail could *not*
be delivered (you normally get a message from your ISP after 5 hours and
then again after some days).

Hope that helps.

Robin

- -- 
Robin S. Socha, M.A., Political Science Dept., Bonn University, Bonn
To get my pgp public key, send an e-mail with the subject "get pgp key"
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		"Get a room" (c) Ray Cummins 1997

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From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 11:59:55 -0400

> Is there any way to know if a message has been read by the receiver?

    In general, no.  Sorry.  Some proprietary mail systems can provide
a receipt indicating that a mail message has been opened, but such
systems are just that -- proprietary and private.  There is no standard
on the Internet as a whole providing for what you want.  Mail systems
on the Internet are so diverse that I expect it would be technically
difficult to implement such a standard.  In Pine (and other mailers),
you can create a Return-receipt-to: header requesting a delivery
receipt, but there is no way to force the receiving system to honor it. 
Some do, but many do not.  And even if you get such a receipt back, it
only indicates that the mail has been delivered, not that it has been
read.

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
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