Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Thank you for sorting my 'Reply-To' problem, I just have one more little task that I would appreciate some help with.

Is it possible with mime:lite to get a confirmation that someone has read their mail? If not, is it one of the (many) other mime modules that is needed?

Alex.

"Big up to the monks, without them I would be nothing."

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Confirmation of sent/read mail
by no_slogan (Deacon) on Aug 29, 2002 at 15:07 UTC
    Is it possible with mime:lite to get a confirmation that someone has read their mail?
    There are some standard headers you can set to ask for a return reciept. You can set them with MIME::Lite just as well as anything else. There are also some dirty tricks you can play with html mail. However, all of these things are far too ripe for abuse by spammers, so I'm not going to give you any details. Those of us who have some sense have configured our MUAs not to send any kind of return reciept.

    Update: Hint: reverse engineering. Experiment with common mail programs used at your company. Send yourself e-mail requesting a reciept. Examine it carefully. Beware the dark side.

[reply]
      Ok, that is a good point, in the fight against spam, I'm glad you haven't detailed a solution. I didn't actually want confirmation advice for any evil purpose, but there are some reports that are sent out to employees where a confirmation is required. If I can't find anything out on the web, then I'll have to make do with a "please reply to this email" on the bottom of the email!

      Alex
[reply]

        A couple of things, Alex:

        • If you're in an environment where the MUA (and it's config, in many cases) is a matter of compony policy, you're probably OK relying on MUA confirmations. If the people at the co. have any choice in the matter, I wouldn't rely on them soely, if at all. Provide some other way to say "I've read this".
        • It's easy to get a message flagged as "read" in your MUA accidently; this would normaly send a return recipt. For example, in outlook, all you need to do is delete the prior mail and walk away. After a message has been previewed for a certian amount of time (configurable), it's considered read, even if the user wasn't actualy there. The machine has no way to tell if it's seat is occupied.
        • If there's a legal reason behind the confirmation requirement, this won't fill it.
        • Why not get an account here and stay a while?
        Update: I can't spell. Thanks, dws.

        Confession: It does an Immortal Body good.

[reply]

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