Re: tracking forwarded emails using PHP

On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 09:23 -0500, Andrew Ballard wrote: > On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 9:07 AM, Ashley Sheridan > <ash@ashleysheridan.co.uk> wrote: > > I think that people removing themselves from mailing lists is a little extreme. I > > wouldn't remove myself just because I thought I was being tracked. > > You might not, but some people will. One (of many) of the problems > with that approach is that the same technique has been used by > spammers to validate which addresses actually get delivered and read. > > > There is another way to track reading of emails though. Microsoft Outlook created > > something called read receipts. Users still have to accept the read receipt to be sent to the > > sender, so it might be a slightly more obtrusive way of finding out who read what, and afaik, it > > only works on the first read of an email. I don't know exactly how they are formed, but I > > believe it is some form of special attachment to the email that is recognised by some email clients. > > > > Thanks, > > Ash > > http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk > > This is just an additional header or two at the top of the mail > message. I'm not positive, as I've never used them, but look up > "Read-Receipt-To" and "Disposition-Notification-To". This approach > allow the user to have total control over whether they wish to notify > you. Keep in mind that 1) not all clients recognize these headers, and > 2) many people again will choose to say "No". > > Andrew > Yeah, it's a shame, spammers are ruining a lot of good things about email. The problem really is that email as a standard is pretty old and has quite a few exploitable areas. I guess until email2 these things will continue to plague us! Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk