Did They Read Your E-Mail?

[marciaBR]

I would like to know if anyone knows about this program, if it woks,
etc.

http://www.didtheyreadit.com/

[Ryan Morehart]

Hm... I would have to create an account there to test. I think the only
way for it to work would be to use read receipts, which you could
already do on your own (assuming you use a desktop client), so I'm
somewhat skeptical about its usefulness.

Ryan

[Bertil]

It's not efficient if it asks the receiver to confirm.
Otherwise, I'm not sure this is legal in most countries: a third party
(you & DidTheyReadIt) did something on someone's computer without
asking. Delivering is a contract between the destinee and his provider.

[marciaBR]

Yeah, I agree w/Bertil; I had this suspicion about legality too. Funny
is, the ad for this program has been at my feeds a lot lately.

[Fuzzy Logic]

It's legal. Whether it's ethical or reasonable is another debate.

Fuzzy

[Jonathon Blake]

Marcia wrote:

> I would like to know if anyone knows about this program, if it woks,

It probably is one of the following:

* As a webbug inserted into the emails that you send out;
* Requires the recipient to read the email on their website;
* Includes some javascript that attempts to bypass your firewall, etc.

xan

jonathon

[dave]

Hey,

I don't know about didtheyreadit in particular but I've seen a couple
of these services in the past and I'm pretty sure they all work alike.
They do not ask for confirmation nor do they add anything to the
receiver's computer.

What is does do is use a reference to an image file which is embedded
in the email (this image could only be a pixel or anything that won't
actually show up in the e-mail). The way it works is that when you
send the e-mail, it embeds a unique image link within it in html
format. When a person then opens your email, it will automatically
access this link and therefore notify the service provider (ie.
didtheyreadit) that your e-mail has been read.

That's all that's to it. The obvious problem with this is that is a
person has images or html disabled (as many do now), the link will not
be accessed and you still won't know if it was read.

Hope this helps,

Dave

[Zack (Doc)]

From everything I've read before and again now (from their FAQ, it
doesn't work with text-based email clients, or off-line readers) that
is most likely exactly what it does. Adds a single clear pixel in
HTML to your message that loads from their servers. When the person
reads the mail, IF they display images (which we all know GMail does
not by default) it will load from their server, and they'll have the
IP and date/time the person read the message. It probably includes a
refresh parameter as they say they can usually tell how long a person
read it for.