Quoting Charles Cazabon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
The concept of mail receipts is poorly designed; there is no way to implement a reliable receipt notification system with SMTP mail. *Many* of the better mail packages therefore do not implement support for it -- why have a feature if you *know* it can never work properly?
I think it's an overstatement to say that "it can never work properly". It's actually "it _might not_ work properly". It still serves its purpose when it does work - see below.
It's also seen as an invasion of privacy.
It certainly creates some annoyance on the recipient end. But I don't see how it is an invasion of privacy as long as the MUA has my consent before sending a receipt.
Mail receipts are essentially one of those features that commercial MUA vendors include as a marketing checkbox feature, but which serve little or no useful purpose in the real world.
Well, in the corporate* world where people communicate over Lotus Notes or Outlook, they tend to use mail receipts a lot. And _because_ they all communicate over the same MUA that supports the feature, it actually does work and become useful.
Now _I_ don't use these mail receipts, nor do _I_ like getting them, because of the annoyance factor. But then I respect it when others request one - at least before they start abusing it.
My 2 cents. -- Jing Xue *: that's real enough for me. YMMV.
