Re: HTML formatted email

Steve:

On Wed, 18 July 2001, "Steve Richter" wrote:

> >I would guess you are speaking of 'Return receipts'' but I'd bet that this
> is not what Steve was asking about. I believe he had a significantly more
> troublesome "feature" in mind.
> 
> I have in mind the activity I see on my dsl modem when I open a msg from say
> a yahoo msg board. I assume info is being sent back to yahoo saying that I
> am reading the email msg they sent me.
> 
> Does "return receipt" sent back its ack msg to the sender when the isp
> receives the msg, when the email recipient receives the msg from the isp or
> when the msg is opened and read by the recipient?

First, if you use a client that allows you to save the actual e-mail to a file, 
I'd very much appreciate seeing one of those. Without seeing it, I can't say if 
it's the same or not. Of course, even if I see it, I might not know; I'm not an 
expert and new stuff shows up all the time.

As for "return receipt", I've seen examples of both 'delivered' and 'received' 
notices, but don't know enough about standards to say whether support is common 
for both types. In general, confirmation of delivery would refer to the e-mail 
being accepted by the server. I suspect this feature is seldom enabled on 
purpose, although the complementary non-delivery notice is almost as valuable. 
A confirmation of receipt would be sent by the client program if the feature is 
enabled as the default or the recipient explicitly allows each response; this 
is what is commonly understood to be a "return receipt" and might be sent at 
the moment the client downloads from the server or when the recipient actually 
does something to the e-mail including deleting it without ever reading it.

Finally, to clarify my previous message, I was specifically thinking of such 
techniques as "E-mail Wiretapping". This might be what Yahoo! messages do; I 
can't say. But it's simply an example of what can happen when you step outside 
of plain-text e-mail.

Not to say that "plain-text" doesn't have perils. Does anyone else remember 
ANSI bombs? Now those were sure interesting in their day.

Tom Liotta



-- 
Tom Liotta
The PowerTech Group, Inc.
19426 68th Avenue South
Kent, WA 98032
Phone  253-872-7788
Fax  253-872-7904
http://www.400Security.com


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