I posted about this awhile back. There is an option to send email with read receipt requested (using the "Disposition-Notification-To" header), which Mail apparently normally ignores -- so that the person who is sending you a message of this type doesn't get their notification that you've read the email, and yet you're still able to do so. (Therefore the "read receipt requested" feature itself is fairly useless.)

However, it is useful to be able to see who is sending you emails of this type. As such, I had set up a Rule in Mail to highlight any such emails as green, based on a tip over at macosxhints.com. Sure enough, I just got three emails of this type in my inbox this morning...

Just thought I'd pass this on. I wonder if it's some sort of default setting in some PC apps that they do this?

---

Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

Outlook does it because WinServer has a recall feature that permits you
to recall mail that hasn't been read from another WinServer, as long as
you are all using Outlook (so is my understanding).

Can you provide a link or a screenshot to what you engaged in Mail.app?

jimmy, here are the original posts (of COURSE, you would make me STF!):

[forums.macresource.com]
[forums.macresource.com]

... I cannot imagine that this should be set as a default for any program. I wonder if the people who are using it, are aware of it. (In some cases, I can see sending it this way, if you want to be sure the person has read it-- but for routine communications, I would say it's a bit obnoxious.)

---

Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

When I need to know if a message has been read, I call up the old OS-9 Outlook Express and use that. It works ... Mail does not work.

Of course in a couple of weeks we are going to a web based e-mail system so neither MAIL nor Outlook will work. Have not heard yet whether the address book will work.

One step forward ... two steps backward.

picking up on what Wurm said.... I used receipts pretty extensively with Netscape as my client.

I also instructed Netscape to notify me if a receipt was requested. I will assume this was a READ receipt, not a delivery receipt.

And for all of those requests, I would simply hit cancel when it would ask.

I have a friend who works for a company that all of his mails have this engaged. When I use Mail.app, I do NOT ever see anything about the receipt issue. So in addition to the
lack of HTML mail (vs RichText mail), I really liked that feature of Netscape, and will ultimately go back to it.

The only reason I'm not running it now is that I do like being able to get mail and do other things that are not RAM hogs, without having a broswer open.

I've not tried Thunderbird or whatever the Mozilla mail-only app is. Perhaps I will at some point.

jimmy, my understanding (from Wurm and M A V I C) is that the feature is essentially useless, because the recipient can always hit cancel and still read the message, and because Mail and other apps just ignore the header and let you read it. So... though it would be nice to be able to send mails of this sort through Mail, my main concern was being able to see when people are sending me mails of this sort.

In general, I've been pretty happy with Mail as my client; I had tried Entourage X at some point but couldn't stand it...

---

Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

You are correct - it is useless if cancelled. I would get the server delivered receipt from WinServers and some others. Very common on larger email systems as opposed to an AOL, which gives you nothing.

On Netscape, you had to tell it to notify you of a receipt request - otherwise it will send a receipt if asked. The other option was to simply ignore all requests, but like you, I was curious as to who is asking for them.

jimmy, this seems to be the best of all worlds-- with the Rule in Mail, you can see who's sending you the messages but they don't get the receipt. The only thing missing is that I'd like to be able to send messages like this myself, but... considering they can always bypass it anyway, I'm not sure how useful that would be.

---

Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)