SUMMARY: Receipt of Mail

From: Jake (mwj@jakes.msfc.nasa.gov)
Date: Fri May 28 1993 - 03:59:06 CDT

Original question was:
 Does anyone know if it is possible to have the sendmail program return a
 receipt for successful mail delivery / mail open?

Responses were:
 10 Said put "Return-Receipt-To: hostname.domain.com" in the mail header.
  1 Said finger the mail address before and after the mail is sent.
  2 Said use "sendmail -v".
  1 Said use the "vacation" feature of sendmail.
  1 Said use an executable attachment that the recipient can click on that
      would send a "receipt like" mail message back. 

---
 15   Respondents

There is no way to tell when your mail is read by the recipient, only when it's
delivered.  The executable attachment, mentioned above, comes close, but is 
obviously unreliable.

The following works good enough for me:

Using the Mailtool in Sun OpenWin 3.0...

"Under the (Edit) menu, you will find Properties ...  Under (Category) switch
to the Compose Window. Insert in the Header Field: Return-Receipt-To, then
Default Value: <the machine name to receive the receipt>, (Add) then (Apply)"

This will cause the "Return-Receipt-To: name.domain" header line to be inserted in each mail message that is sent.  Finger the mail address before and after the
mail message is sent to see if there is any unread mail.  This last part is 
obviously not automatic or reliable because some sites have finger turned off 
for security reasons.

Thanks to all that responded.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jake                   
mwj@jakes.msfc.NASA.gov
Network Management Systems
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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