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Comment by thingie | Hacker News Reader

I usually consider emails with some kind of read-receipt requests or (even worse) tracking images (which fortunately gets blocked in any decent email client) at least very rude.

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I don't like the idea of such stealth read-receipts too. I would expect that sooner or later tricks which allow implementation of this feature will be blocked in most email clients as security holes because as many others pointed out it can be used by spammers to verify email addresses.

Why not to use real read-recepit requests (MDN, DSN) and respect someone's rigth to disable it in their mail client?

I agree it's rude. If I received what would otherwise be a text email from a client/coworker/etc except now my mail client is saying "Images have not been downloaded", I'd get a little suspicious.

I'd probably assume it's a stupid email signature and ignore it. Either way, it doesn't help the sender much.

I remember noticing an image bug in a resume a web designer sent me once. I thought it was a bit tacky.

To help alleviate this concern there is opt-out for emails received from free EmailOracle accounts (there is a link at the bottom of the email that says "Metrics by EmailOracle, click here to opt-out").

That is too late. Collecting data like this is only legitimate (or, if the reciever is european, legal) if the collection only ever starts after the collecting party has recieved a qualified declaration of consent from the reciever of the bugged mail. If they don't get this consent before sending the mail, they are just scum.

What EmailOracle does is to enable prosumers with the ability to deal with outgoing email overload. We are a business tool and we have studies that show that this is a feature that is well-received and well-intentioned in enterprise communication.

This is also evidenced in how MS Outlook provides read-receipts for their emails, and Blackberry messages that also automatically do read-tracking.

Makers of a kitchen knives cannot really prevent customers from using the tool for nefarious purposes. We do our best to preserve the privacy of recipients and allow opting out as well.

This is also evidenced in how MS Outlook provides read-receipts for their emails

Which everyone who is aware of it disables. I'll be blocking your service on the firewall, just good information hygiene. Thanks for announcing it here!

This is a hot button issue in the sense that it "spies" on the foreign email reader without their permission. Many spammers use this same technique to verify if an email address is valid or not (e.g. checking if keyed-URL images loaded).

A few responses from people who don't like this idea might include:

- Blocking the service

- Auto-opening and auto-reading "every" email that comes into their inbox (no way to tell which one was/wasn't read)

- Being extra-careful, reading emails selectively (e.g. don't read anything after 4pm otherwise you might get stuck doing overtime)

As you might tell, I'm personally not a fan of this. But if I were a lawyer, or boss, or part of law enforcement, I might like this idea. The current implementation of "email receipts" is very broken, especially in the corporate world.

The thing is, if a company or employee ever gets burned by this, they'll block it. Most everyone I've worked with turns email receipts off in Outlook for this reason.

Don't take my cynicism to heart though. Nobody has tried this idea in this way (that I'm aware of). It's very interesting. You never know how it'll pan out unless you try. Plus this is just the opinion of some dude on the internet; not a very good indicator if it'll succeed or not. ;)

Best of luck to you and your team! :)

Alternatively, power users can just go back to mutt: http://www.mutt.org/

Unless I'm reading this wrong, the service relies on the broken misfeature of many modern email clients that diverge from the original RFCs for mail by treating HTML as something they can process. A client that only handles plain text email (with attachments as something separate to hand off to an external program) is safe from this kind of abuse.

Thanks for the feedback and support.

Yes, we agree that this tool will not appeal to everyone, but it is something that a lot of enterprise users have requested and thus we have built it with them in mind.

We'd also like to emphasize that open-tracking is only 1 feature in the bundle of tools that EmailOracle will offer, but it happens to be one that we were ready to launch with.

I've worked and consulted in over 15 very large enterprises. While it may not constitute a survey of the entire Fortune 500+, I've come into contact with enough business & IT professionals to know that is is - in fact - not a well-received feature. It's used by either underperforming folks as a CYA measure or other folks who have side-swiped by self-serving individuals.

There is no legitimate use or business-case for a read-receipt service, especially ones that use the same techniques as malware writers.

I fully support your third-party "who responded to me?" reporting & reminder tool, as I can see that being incredibly useful - especially to those who are not adept at scripting and/or using mailer APIs.

I have never worked in a large enterprise, or a Fortune 500 company, but email receipts are a necessary evil. Certain industries rely on time sensitive work to be done base upon an email. If this doesn't happen, business is lost and contracts fall through.

While I strongly dislike Outlook, their opt-in read-receipts are the best implementation that I know of as far as privacy and ease-of-use are concerned.

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