On 04/03/13 14:03, Mark Rogers wrote:
Once upon a time these sort of methods worked well, but spammers used them to detect which email addresses were valid (and went to people who actually looked at the spam). So every decent email package blocks linked images by default, although usually you can enable them for known senders. So if you can convince your recipient to configure their email software to show linked images then these methods can still work, but surely these days for general use these must fail more often than they succeed.
Agreed!
Sadly there isn't a good solution. On the other hand, I'm not sure I want people to know I've read an email, so maybe sadly isn't the word. Frequently I'll "open" an email, realise it needs actual attention (not just "mark read, move to next email", mark it unread and return to it later. Telling the sender at this point that I have "read" it is at best misleading!
An old Windows Email program used by Demon users called Turnpike used to amuse me. Its message said something like
"The message that you sent to xxxx has been displayed on their computer. This does not necessarily mean it's been read or understood."
IIRC Thunderbird can be configured to ask if it sends a "read notification", so you can send it, or not as you feel.