Force email receipts?

  • Thread starter Thread starter clintonG
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clintonG

I haven't written any mail handlers using .NET at this time. I need to know
however if there is a failsafe methodology supported by the classes in the
framework if it will be possible to send mail through an ASP.NET form that
will force a delivery receipt to be returned and if there is then a method
to over-ride any mail client that allows the recipient to prevent receipts
from being sent back to the sender.

Any methodology will do as long as its fail safe so the methodology can
stand up to being scrutinized by the courts if neccessary.


<%= Clinton Gallagher
METROmilwaukee (sm) "A Regional Information Service"
NET csgallagher AT metromilwaukee.com
URL http://metromilwaukee.com/
URL http://clintongallagher.metromilwaukee.com/
 
There is no way to do this, not with current mail programs. Users are
given the option to send regular receipt messages or not.

To get around this, some senders will have links to images on web sites
which pass a unique identifier for that recipient. However, now, most email
clients will allow the user to download external images only if they want
to, and not by default.

There is no way to absolutely positively FORCE a recipient to
acknowledge a reciept.

Hope this helps.
 
Short answer is NO.

Email clients are autonomous and so each handle requests differently. Some
clients may not even recognize such requests in the mail message.

Actually, it is kind of great that a server half way around the world cannot
control the behavior of my machine and applications. What would be the
purpose of a setting if some message could override it?
 
Yea it does help Nicholas. Thank you for your comments.

<%= Clinton Gallagher

Nicholas Paldino said:
There is no way to do this, not with current mail programs. Users are
given the option to send regular receipt messages or not.

To get around this, some senders will have links to images on web sites
which pass a unique identifier for that recipient. However, now, most
email clients will allow the user to download external images only if they
want to, and not by default.

There is no way to absolutely positively FORCE a recipient to
acknowledge a reciept.

Hope this helps.

--
- Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]
- (e-mail address removed)

clintonG said:
I haven't written any mail handlers using .NET at this time. I need to
know however if there is a failsafe methodology supported by the classes
in the framework if it will be possible to send mail through an ASP.NET
form that will force a delivery receipt to be returned and if there is
then a method to over-ride any mail client that allows the recipient to
prevent receipts from being sent back to the sender.

Any methodology will do as long as its fail safe so the methodology can
stand up to being scrutinized by the courts if neccessary.


<%= Clinton Gallagher
METROmilwaukee (sm) "A Regional Information Service"
NET csgallagher AT metromilwaukee.com
URL http://metromilwaukee.com/
URL http://clintongallagher.metromilwaukee.com/
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
In vertical markets there is a problem with liability that is incurred by
senders who have no reliable and provable methodology to prove they actually
sent mail to a recipient who can claim they never received it. Thanks for
acknowledging what I thought I was going to hear.

<%= Clinton Gallagher
 
Any methodology will do as long as its fail safe so the methodology can
stand up to being scrutinized by the courts if neccessary.
Click to expand...

As others have written, this is not possible. Even using the unique
identifiers on images wouldn't stand up in court. If they have a preview
pane turned on, your system would show that the received the message, but
they may have deleted it before reading it.

A better solution would be to give e-mail them a link to a website
containing their message. That way, they would have to actively do something
to read the message.

You also need to give them a reason to want to respond, like preventing any
further transactions on their account until they have responded to all
messages. This is more of a policy issue than a technology issue.
 
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