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You’ve got mail
HOW often have you encountered a situation where an intended mail was sent without any error but the recipient claimed that he did not get it?
There could be several reasons for the scenario but instead of waiting for the recipient to acknowledge the delivery of mail, the sender can find out the delivery status of the mail by the built-in (but optional) functionality of email system. Other than the built-in mechanisms, there are services over the internet as well which claims to let the subscribers know if their email was actually read or not.
Today we are going to explore one such service: Did They Read It (DTRI for short). Exploring how the service works also lets us delve into one of the strategies of spammers to collect “hot” email addresses, that is, the confirmed live ones on which some activity is going on. DTRI is free for 10 messages and works with various mail clients and through a plug-in with MS Outlook mail client or without a plug-in if web-based email like Yahoo! or Hotmail is used.
After installation of plug-in, set-up screen appears which requires email (the one used for registration) and password. Once set-up is done, clicking the “Tracking On” button is used to turn tracking on or off. Every mail which is to be tracked must have “.didtheyreadit.com” at the end of intended email address. For example, recipient harry@potter.com would become harry@potter.com.did theyreadit.com. No wonder this is a different email address than actual, but the scheme lets the mail pass through DTRI servers for tracking purposes.
Once at DTRI server, the trailing domain is removed and the mail is delivered to the actual recipient to whom the mail looks exactly same — except for the fact that some clients may ask permission for a picture download. If the recipient reads the message, a report mail is generated for the sender that contains mail’s opening date and time, country, ISP and browser info.
How is it done?
The trick employed by DTRI is very common among spammers. But what is different about the service is that it has made it available to the netizens who do not have any technical expertise. When an email is about to be sent, the background tracker of DTRI gets a unique code by first transmitting email information to the server, and embeds it in HTML body in from of an image tag. When the recipient opens the mail and the image reference is resolved by making a connection to the server, the same identification code is sent. Through this interaction, the time and IP is logged and mailed back to the sender.
How to stop DTRI auto-confirmations
Since DTRI works with HTML processing, reading the email in any text-only client or text mode renders the functionality disabled. For web-based emails, make sure that if images are displayed automatically in emails, DTRI tracking image (one pixel only) will also be downloaded thus giving the sender read receipt.
Also, question of privacy is of importance though the service guarantees that emails are kept private in the process of tracking. Apart from tracking, other options provided through the web by this service include turning off read confirmation mail, making it recurring for each read and enabling read duration.
Other such services include Sent There and Read Notify which provide extended options like SMS notification, self-destructive emails, mail recall options and enabling Delivery Service Notifications/Message Disposi- tions enabling which is absent in popular free web-bases services like Yahoo! and Gmail.
Read-receipt in traditional mail clients
If you are relying on traditional email clients, here is how read and delivery receipts can be enabled. While composing a new in Mozilla Thunderbird, go to File > New > Message.
In Options, select Return Receipt. In MS Outlook Express, go to Tools and select Request Read Receipt. In MS Outlook XP/2003, press Options button on the email toolbar, Message Options window will appear. Put a check on “Request delivery/read receipt for this mail”.
Similarly, there is an option in mail clients that governs what to do when an incoming mail asks for delivery receipts — to automatically send, reject or prompt before taking any action because these receipts are not intended to be stealth. Though useful in corporate environments, the ability of receipts can pose a security risk as it confirms existence of a particular email address. So exercise caution!
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