Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-08 Thread Maarten Bezemer


On Thu, 7 Jun 2012, Reindl Harald wrote:


Am 06.06.2012 23:59, schrieb Ed W:

I'm not sure why this is so hard to believe.  There is literally a class of 
customers that have a specification
which says that there must be a notification sent back to the sender whenever 
they download their emails.  I cannot
currently bid for their business.

A spec is a spec - either you can meet the spec or you can't bid for the 
business...


i'm not sure why it is so hard to believe that nobody should
bid for such idiotic specs - techs should act professional
and not like whores while try impossible and stupid things
which can sovle each mail-client since > 10 years and is not
the job of a mailserver


Does the spec say how to conform to it? I mean: does "the system" have to 
support the transmission of receipts?
Most bidding rounds I've been part of only had very rough descriptions of 
what should be possible. Not exactly how. (Too detailed specs, pointing 
heavily in the direction of one type of solution provider, can be easily 
challenged!)
So, even without Dovecot supporting DSN-stuff, it would be possible to bid 
for these types of clients. The system as a whole does support DSN's, when 
MUA is conforming to relevant specs. Most MUA's support some form of DSN 
of read notification. What's more: whatever choice you make, server side 
or client side, handling of these status messages (and ways to request 
them) heavily depend on the remote party's technology as well.


So, claiming you conform to the read-notification spec can be as easy as 
saying "yes, as long as you use a proper MUA".


--
Maarten


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-07 Thread Reindl Harald


Am 06.06.2012 23:59, schrieb Ed W:
> I'm not sure why this is so hard to believe.  There is literally a class of 
> customers that have a specification
> which says that there must be a notification sent back to the sender whenever 
> they download their emails.  I cannot
> currently bid for their business.
> 
> A spec is a spec - either you can meet the spec or you can't bid for the 
> business...

i'm not sure why it is so hard to believe that nobody should
bid for such idiotic specs - techs should act professional
and not like whores while try impossible and stupid things
which can sovle each mail-client since > 10 years and is not
the job of a mailserver




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Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-06 Thread Ed W

On 04/06/2012 15:14, Reindl Harald wrote:


Am 04.06.2012 15:36, schrieb Ed W:

Then tell them their only option is to buy Exchange Server and Outlook for 
everyone - but explain that this
'feature' *still* will not work for recipients that are outside of your control 
(ie, it will only work for local
recipients - and I *think* it is possible to set up Trusts with other external 
Exchange Servers, but not sure,
and if it does, it requires the explicit cooperation of the other systems 
admin).

Bottom line: do NOT promise the impossible to a client just to win the 
business. It is a losing proposition, as
you are beginning to see...


We run small ISP selling mail accounts to customers.  *our customers* want to
voluntarily tell senders when they have downloaded an email via POP.

and the sender for sure wants this too for every single message?
i doubt not



I'm not sure why this is so hard to believe.  There is literally a class 
of customers that have a specification which says that there must be a 
notification sent back to the sender whenever they download their 
emails.  I cannot currently bid for their business.


A spec is a spec - either you can meet the spec or you can't bid for the 
business...


Ed W


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-04 Thread Robert Schetterer
Am 04.06.2012 15:36, schrieb Ed W:
> I think you know about the MailASail business.  We run small ISP selling
> mail accounts to customers.  *our customers* want to voluntarily tell
> senders when they have downloaded an email via POP.  The basic
> requirement is when the message is accessed via POP, then the sender
> (presumably defined by the FROM address) is sent a notification.

this isnt what you asked in the subject

"Can we know when a user read our email?"

the best and true answer: "never"

---snip

as long all senders and users
are on the same mailsystem/storage
you might wrote i.e some watch daemon
on your smtp mailsystem
with if mail in storage
with "Disposition-Notification-To"
from "your sender"
grepped by sasl header "Authenticated sender:"
has gone from new to cur in "your recipients" storage maildir and
subfolders

you may also try use complex
smtp transport header_checks combis
with i.e
/(^Disposition-Notification-To:.*)/   REPLACE X-$1
to mark mail etc

and/or policy servers , milters etc
perhaps with writings in dbs and comparing verbose dovecot logs etc

cause there are uni ways to setup smtp and dovecot servers
you must find your way fitting your setup

as i said , i see only small relates to dovecot
cause the only header which is standard in mail clients
is  Message Disposition Notification, so the sender has to use it anyway
and you have to filter this mails by it additional only for "your
senders" and "your recipients"
then you have to find a way checking status of this mails in "your storage"

if you allready have amavis included, you might code it there somehow

or look at

http://mailfud.org/postpals/

policy server for ideas who you might goal

another way.

perhaps you might include a sieve global filter rule
with filtering Disposition-Notification-To only from "your sender
domains" and doing a simple mail notify action about it was delivered,
or using some no official sieve plugins for actions with external
binaries ( procmail etc )

-- 
Best Regards

MfG Robert Schetterer

Germany/Munich/Bavaria


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-04 Thread Reindl Harald


Am 04.06.2012 15:36, schrieb Ed W:
>> Then tell them their only option is to buy Exchange Server and Outlook for 
>> everyone - but explain that this
>> 'feature' *still* will not work for recipients that are outside of your 
>> control (ie, it will only work for local
>> recipients - and I *think* it is possible to set up Trusts with other 
>> external Exchange Servers, but not sure,
>> and if it does, it requires the explicit cooperation of the other systems 
>> admin).
>>
>> Bottom line: do NOT promise the impossible to a client just to win the 
>> business. It is a losing proposition, as
>> you are beginning to see...
>>
> 
> We run small ISP selling mail accounts to customers.  *our customers* want to
> voluntarily tell senders when they have downloaded an email via POP.

and the sender for sure wants this too for every single message?
i doubt not

> The basic requirement is when the message is accessed via POP, then the 
> sender (presumably defined by  the FROM address) is sent a notification.

have fun if ONE user has enabled "leave messages on server" and
his machine crashs - the next time he will setup his account
again he would self-DOS the mail-system

> Please don't argue about the spam aspects, etc - we are all on the same page 
> here

wait until one of the company get fired and leave you
a little "present" with a lot of forged senders

>  However, it's not an entirely foolish request

it IS a entirely foolish request

each mail client in this world supports "acknowledgment of receipt"
the sender has only to configure his account correctly and
the rcpt can decide if his client should send confirmations

* always
* per confirm on each message
* alaways for specific senders
* or even not send this bullshit at all

such things has CLEARLY not to be implemented on the server side

if the users are too stupid to user their mail-client and the
admins missing any knowledge to do this for the users solve
this problem by educate them in e-mail baiscs




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Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-04 Thread Ed W

On 03/06/2012 18:26, Reindl Harald wrote:


Am 03.06.2012 19:21, schrieb Michael Orlitzky:

On 06/03/12 12:06, Robert Schetterer wrote:

Am 03.06.2012 16:24, schrieb Michael Orlitzky:

I for one think the plugin is a good idea.

what the hell , should the plugin do and how ?
there is smtp dsn, nothing more makes sense

looking to the thread subject , you need to have new internet standard
called

"braindump over tcp"

this doesnt exist on exchange too

mail is smtp, dovecot is no smtp server


You could trigger on the 'seen' flag, and Dovecot is more than capable
of generating messages, especially to mailboxes under its control (see:
sieve)

and now tell us how you "connect" YOUR sent message over SMTP
to any seen fleeg of another user?



I think we are talking cross purposes about the design here

In my case I have a customer base on *dialup* who connect very 
infrequently.  They kind of want MDN to work, however, at least my 
understanding is that this is typically implemented by first the MUA 
downloading all messages, then generating MDN responses which need to be 
sent out - however, in the case of dialup this may be very far after the 
fact.


Therefore they request a kind of server side MDN.  So when the message 
is downloaded from the POP server, the POP server generates some form of 
MDN-a-like response on their behalf.  There are clearly limitations 
here, but equally the limitations are quite clearly explained - all we 
learn is that the message was downloaded, but in the case of very 
infrequent dialup users, this at least teaches us the earliest time that 
the user could have read the message.  Many of these users are corporate 
and have defined processes, so they may require the user to actually 
read and action all the emails which have been downloaded, hence it 
might be inferred that usually the message will be read soon after we 
learn it's downloaded - I don't think the goal is to get 100% knowledge 
of read time though, just an estimate and that it did actually arrive at 
this remote user is helpful


To put some meat on this type of user, we are talking about a group of 
users who might be mid-ocean or perhaps hanging around north/south pole 
or somewhere similarly remote.  They would be using satellite dialup 
devices which have significant costs.  So for example if we see the user 
dial in we learn:

- They aren't dead...
- With some confidence that the message has crossed the most uncertain 
part of the link and is at least now close enough to the user we just 
need to hope they actually read it
- This type of user is typically only receiving a small handful of 
messages. At 2.4Kbit you are struggling to receive emails, it's not 
assume that this type of user is getting the kind of volumes that you or 
I get


This is a niche user, however, I think the basic feature is actually not 
entirely stupid.  My competitors implement this feature quite crudely 
with just a generic message mailed out to the sender the first time the 
recipient (ie on our server) accesses and downloads and accesses the 
email.  I don't see anyone trying to send MDN compatible receipts, they 
literally just send a "Your message was downloaded by the recipient" message


Cheers

Ed W


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-04 Thread Ed W

On 03/06/2012 14:46, Charles Marcus wrote:

On 2012-06-03 4:43 AM, Ed W  wrote:

Look, I can argue against the idea easily, personally my objection is
mail loops, but the point is that the customer demands it, and at
present that prevents me bidding for certain types of business...
Basically the customer just wants to repro what they got with Exchange


Then tell them their only option is to buy Exchange Server and Outlook 
for everyone - but explain that this 'feature' *still* will not work 
for recipients that are outside of your control (ie, it will only work 
for local recipients - and I *think* it is possible to set up Trusts 
with other external Exchange Servers, but not sure, and if it does, it 
requires the explicit cooperation of the other systems admin).


Bottom line: do NOT promise the impossible to a client just to win the 
business. It is a losing proposition, as you are beginning to see...




You have the situation backwards.

I think you know about the MailASail business.  We run small ISP selling 
mail accounts to customers.  *our customers* want to voluntarily tell 
senders when they have downloaded an email via POP.  The basic 
requirement is when the message is accessed via POP, then the sender 
(presumably defined by the FROM address) is sent a notification.


Please don't argue about the spam aspects, etc - we are all on the same 
page here.  However, it's not an entirely foolish request - because the 
customer is on dialup MDN implemented by the mail client isnt really 
feasible, and DSN doesn't help us realise that the remote user has at 
least connected and accessed the mail.  So they are kind of asking for a 
limited server side implementation of MDN.  In fact this isn't that 
unreasonable, it's just problematic and unusual.


Ed W


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Tamsy

Richard wrote the following on 04.06.2012 05:20:



Date: Sunday, June 03, 2012 02:54:32 PM -0400
From: Jerry


On Sun, 03 Jun 2012 20:19:20 +0200
Reindl Harald articulated:

people are mostly to stupid to realize what they
are trying to accomplish and why it it a bad idea

this is why we professionals exist and if people
refuse what you are explaining them kiss them
goodbye - irt will be better for you over the long

No offense, but considering your business attitude and disdain for
potential clients and your opinion of them, it would be a far
better thing if they steered clear of you all together. There are
many considerate, intelligent, compassionate professionals out
there who would be willing to take on the difficult client. Any
"asshole" can service the routine, run of the mill, client. It
takes a true professional to work with and service a difficult
one.

Something that seems to be missing from this discussion are
considerations of privacy and (personal) security. There are fairly
serious implications of a sender being able to tell that/when
someone has downloaded/opened a message -- including discovery of
daily patterns and potentially where the recipient is, or isn't.

I think it is our responsibility to understand these issues and
explain them to managers/clients in order to bring them along if we
refuse (as I would) to provide a capability such as this. [I always
set the sendmail "noreceipts" PrivacyOptions so it doesn't respond
to these disposition requests.]

One approach is to point out to managers/clients that if their
system is configured to return read receipts, anyone sending mail to
them on that system will be able to get these same types of
receipts. When they think about that they may not like the
implications and may reconsider their request.

Just because it is technically possible to do something (and even if
other vendors provide the capability) does not mean that it is the
ethically or legally responsible thing to do.


- Richard




I totally agree with Richard's point of few.

I would consider it as intrusive and even intimidating if the sender of 
an E-Mail can monitor whether and when I open/read his mail.
Just imagine this would happen with the good old hard printed mail the 
postman put into the mailbox at our door: As soon as we open the 
envelope and unfold the letter a microchip sends a note to the sender 
that his letter has been opened and read.
I can already see the public outcry if something like this would happen 
some day...


If somebody sends me a mail, it is up to me whether I want to open and 
read its content or whether I just want to bin it without having opened 
it. This is my right since the moment that mail has reached my mailbox, 
no matter whether it is a hardcopy mail or an E-Mail, it belongs to me 
and I can do with it whatever I like without letting the sender know how 
it has finally ended.




Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Richard


> Date: Sunday, June 03, 2012 02:54:32 PM -0400
> From: Jerry 
> 
>> On Sun, 03 Jun 2012 20:19:20 +0200
>> Reindl Harald articulated:
>> 
>> people are mostly to stupid to realize what they
>> are trying to accomplish and why it it a bad idea
>> 
>> this is why we professionals exist and if people
>> refuse what you are explaining them kiss them
>> goodbye - irt will be better for you over the long
> 
> No offense, but considering your business attitude and disdain for
> potential clients and your opinion of them, it would be a far
> better thing if they steered clear of you all together. There are
> many considerate, intelligent, compassionate professionals out
> there who would be willing to take on the difficult client. Any
> "asshole" can service the routine, run of the mill, client. It
> takes a true professional to work with and service a difficult 
> one.

Something that seems to be missing from this discussion are
considerations of privacy and (personal) security. There are fairly
serious implications of a sender being able to tell that/when
someone has downloaded/opened a message -- including discovery of
daily patterns and potentially where the recipient is, or isn't.

I think it is our responsibility to understand these issues and
explain them to managers/clients in order to bring them along if we
refuse (as I would) to provide a capability such as this. [I always
set the sendmail "noreceipts" PrivacyOptions so it doesn't respond
to these disposition requests.]

One approach is to point out to managers/clients that if their
system is configured to return read receipts, anyone sending mail to
them on that system will be able to get these same types of
receipts. When they think about that they may not like the
implications and may reconsider their request. 

Just because it is technically possible to do something (and even if
other vendors provide the capability) does not mean that it is the
ethically or legally responsible thing to do.


   - Richard

 


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Robert Schetterer
Am 03.06.2012 19:26, schrieb Reindl Harald:
> 
> 
> Am 03.06.2012 19:21, schrieb Michael Orlitzky:
>> On 06/03/12 12:06, Robert Schetterer wrote:
>>> Am 03.06.2012 16:24, schrieb Michael Orlitzky:

 I for one think the plugin is a good idea.
>>>
>>> what the hell , should the plugin do and how ?
>>> there is smtp dsn, nothing more makes sense
>>>
>>> looking to the thread subject , you need to have new internet standard
>>> called
>>>
>>> "braindump over tcp"
>>>
>>> this doesnt exist on exchange too
>>>
>>> mail is smtp, dovecot is no smtp server
>>>
>>
>> You could trigger on the 'seen' flag, and Dovecot is more than capable
>> of generating messages, especially to mailboxes under its control (see:
>> sieve)
> 
> and now tell us how you "connect" YOUR sent message over SMTP
> to any seen fleeg of another user?
> 
>> But... who cares?
> 
> people which cares about reality?
> 
>> The worst possible thing that can happen is that he
>> writes it and makes his customers happy
> 
> if it is his business make people happy with lies, ok
> my business is make people happy by telling them the truth
> 

the maximun with multi clients which "may" be goaled is a notice , if a
mail was/has seen-flagged-opened/downloaded ( pop3), as long as sender
and recipient are on the same server/storage/system

but seen-opened-flagged a mail is not "read the mail by the adressed
human recipient"
and human read a mail means not understand the content of the mail

nobody grant ever that is was the adressed recipient human in person
that opened the mail and did set the seen flag


"seen-flagged" means opened for display as/from a tec process !!!



by the way this differnce seems not to care by customers who want this
feature or may think its included elsewhere

i would recommand Mind melds over the wire like

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_%28Star_Trek%29#Mind_melds

as an ultimate solution for this problem *g
-- 
Best Regards

MfG Robert Schetterer

Germany/Munich/Bavaria


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Reindl Harald


Am 03.06.2012 20:54, schrieb Jerry:
> On Sun, 03 Jun 2012 20:19:20 +0200
> Reindl Harald articulated:
> 
>> people are mostly to stupid to realize what they
>> are trying to accomplish and why it it a bad idea
>>
>> this is why we professionals exist and if people
>> refuse what you are explaining them kiss them
>> goodbye - irt will be better for you over the long
> 
> No offense, but considering your business attitude and disdain for
> potential clients and your opinion of them, it would be a far better
> thing if they steered clear of you all together.

by business attidue is perfectly OK

i do not offer things where i know they
will not work i the real world

> There are many considerate, intelligent, compassionate professionals 
> out there who would be willing to take on the difficult client. 

it is not intelligent to discuss about "can we know when a user read
our email?" - tis question has only one answer: no, forget it

if a customer thinks he must have any half baken solution
to make him happy i am fine he is the custoerm of someone
which is not interested in quality at all because both
are matching togehter

> Any "asshole" can service the routine, run of the mill, client. 
> It takes a true professional to work with and service a difficult 
> one

you need not to tell me about routine, really not

i have written admin-backends for nearly all types of services
including mail-backends (partly for options most people even
do not know that they exist) in the last years and after that
i know  what is NOT possible in a acceptable service quality

often it is much more important to know and realize what
you CAN NOT implement in acceptable quality as what you can



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Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Jerry
On Sun, 03 Jun 2012 20:19:20 +0200
Reindl Harald articulated:

>people are mostly to stupid to realize what they
>are trying to accomplish and why it it a bad idea
>
>this is why we professionals exist and if people
>refuse what you are explaining them kiss them
>goodbye - irt will be better for you over the long

No offense, but considering your business attitude and disdain for
potential clients and your opinion of them, it would be a far better
thing if they steered clear of you all together. There are many
considerate, intelligent, compassionate professionals out there who
would be willing to take on the difficult client. Any "asshole" can
service the routine, run of the mill, client. It takes a true
professional to work with and service a difficult one.

-- 
Jerry ♔

Disclaimer: off-list followups get on-list replies or get ignored.
Please do not ignore the Reply-To header.
__


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Reindl Harald
Am 03.06.2012 20:11, schrieb Michael Orlitzky:
> On 06/03/12 13:26, Reindl Harald wrote:
>>
>> and now tell us how you "connect" YOUR sent message over SMTP
>> to any seen fleeg of another user?
>>
> Dovecot could write directly to their mailbox. Otherwise, it could do
> whatever the sieve vacation plugin does.

oh yeah, explain this the customers MUA when he clicks on "sent mail"

it is naive to believe some weird solution which
only works as long the sune shines is useable

>>> The worst possible thing that can happen is that he
>>> writes it and makes his customers happy
>>
>> if it is his business make people happy with lies, ok
>> my business is make people happy by telling them the truth
> 
> I don't think he plans to lie. I think he explained the limitations and
> they don't care.

if they don't care i would refuse them as customer

i saw way too often people saying "i do not care"
but later "oh but you did not explain THIS result exactly"

> People have different tastes. I wouldn't personally use ~100% of the
> things that I fix for other people

people are mostly to stupid to realize what they
are trying to accomplish and why it it a bad idea

this is why we professionals exist and if people
refuse what you are explaining them kiss them
goodbye - irt will be better for you over the long



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Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Michael Orlitzky
On 06/03/12 13:26, Reindl Harald wrote:
> 
> and now tell us how you "connect" YOUR sent message over SMTP
> to any seen fleeg of another user?
> 

Dovecot could write directly to their mailbox. Otherwise, it could do
whatever the sieve vacation plugin does.


>> The worst possible thing that can happen is that he
>> writes it and makes his customers happy
> 
> if it is his business make people happy with lies, ok
> my business is make people happy by telling them the truth

I don't think he plans to lie. I think he explained the limitations and
they don't care.

People have different tastes. I wouldn't personally use ~100% of the
things that I fix for other people.


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Reindl Harald


Am 03.06.2012 19:21, schrieb Michael Orlitzky:
> On 06/03/12 12:06, Robert Schetterer wrote:
>> Am 03.06.2012 16:24, schrieb Michael Orlitzky:
>>>
>>> I for one think the plugin is a good idea.
>>
>> what the hell , should the plugin do and how ?
>> there is smtp dsn, nothing more makes sense
>>
>> looking to the thread subject , you need to have new internet standard
>> called
>>
>> "braindump over tcp"
>>
>> this doesnt exist on exchange too
>>
>> mail is smtp, dovecot is no smtp server
>>
> 
> You could trigger on the 'seen' flag, and Dovecot is more than capable
> of generating messages, especially to mailboxes under its control (see:
> sieve)

and now tell us how you "connect" YOUR sent message over SMTP
to any seen fleeg of another user?

> But... who cares?

people which cares about reality?

> The worst possible thing that can happen is that he
> writes it and makes his customers happy

if it is his business make people happy with lies, ok
my business is make people happy by telling them the truth



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Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Michael Orlitzky
On 06/03/12 12:06, Robert Schetterer wrote:
> Am 03.06.2012 16:24, schrieb Michael Orlitzky:
>>
>> I for one think the plugin is a good idea.
> 
> what the hell , should the plugin do and how ?
> there is smtp dsn, nothing more makes sense
> 
> looking to the thread subject , you need to have new internet standard
> called
> 
> "braindump over tcp"
> 
> this doesnt exist on exchange too
> 
> mail is smtp, dovecot is no smtp server
> 

You could trigger on the 'seen' flag, and Dovecot is more than capable
of generating messages, especially to mailboxes under its control (see:
sieve).

But... who cares? The worst possible thing that can happen is that he
writes it and makes his customers happy and you pretend it doesn't exist.


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Robert Schetterer
Am 03.06.2012 16:24, schrieb Michael Orlitzky:
> On 06/03/12 04:43, Ed W wrote:
>>
>> Look, I can argue against the idea easily, personally my objection is 
>> mail loops, but the point is that the customer demands it, and at 
>> present that prevents me bidding for certain types of business...  
>> Basically the customer just wants to repro what they got with Exchange
> 
> 
> I for one think the plugin is a good idea.

what the hell , should the plugin do and how ?
there is smtp dsn, nothing more makes sense

looking to the thread subject , you need to have new internet standard
called

"braindump over tcp"

this doesnt exist on exchange too

mail is smtp, dovecot is no smtp server


> 
> I think read receipts are dumb, of course. But if the customer won't be
> persuaded, I would rather have them give their money to you than to the
> guy who thinks they're a great solution.
> 
> Plus, it will make Dovecot a little bit better as a side effect.


-- 
Best Regards

MfG Robert Schetterer

Germany/Munich/Bavaria


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Michael Orlitzky
On 06/03/12 04:43, Ed W wrote:
> 
> Look, I can argue against the idea easily, personally my objection is 
> mail loops, but the point is that the customer demands it, and at 
> present that prevents me bidding for certain types of business...  
> Basically the customer just wants to repro what they got with Exchange


I for one think the plugin is a good idea.

I think read receipts are dumb, of course. But if the customer won't be
persuaded, I would rather have them give their money to you than to the
guy who thinks they're a great solution.

Plus, it will make Dovecot a little bit better as a side effect.


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Charles Marcus

On 2012-06-03 4:43 AM, Ed W  wrote:

Look, I can argue against the idea easily, personally my objection is
mail loops, but the point is that the customer demands it, and at
present that prevents me bidding for certain types of business...
Basically the customer just wants to repro what they got with Exchange


Then tell them their only option is to buy Exchange Server and Outlook 
for everyone - but explain that this 'feature' *still* will not work for 
recipients that are outside of your control (ie, it will only work for 
local recipients - and I *think* it is possible to set up Trusts with 
other external Exchange Servers, but not sure, and if it does, it 
requires the explicit cooperation of the other systems admin).


Bottom line: do NOT promise the impossible to a client just to win the 
business. It is a losing proposition, as you are beginning to see...


--

Best regards,

Charles


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Robert Schetterer
Am 03.06.2012 10:43, schrieb Ed W:
> On 03/06/2012 09:06, Linda Walsh wrote:
>> Ed W wrote:
>>>
>>> Just to register interest, but at some point I will need to consider
>>> writing a plugin or similar to achieve exactly this.
>>>
>>> Situation is that several of our competitors offer such a feature, ie
>>> known pool of users on dialup or intermittently connected systems,
>>> provide an alert back to the sender when your email has been
>>> "accessed/downloaded" by the remote user.
>> ---
>>My dentist used a service that claimed to provide a read-notification.
>>
>> It was just an embedded web-bug in the email that I could choose to
>> display or not ... if the client doesn't want to cooperate, you can't
>> tell when the person read it.  All you could do is tell when a client
>> downloaded it from dovecot...which doesn't say much for clients that
>> are left on 24/7...
>>
> 
> Please folks - don't argue with me - I'm the wrong person!  The
> recipient who is receiving these emails, ie the person being "bugged" is
> demanding that they are "buggable".  If they demand it and it's a
> requirement for providing them service then I have to give it to them if
> I want the business.
> 
> The users are on satellite dialup and barely have enough bandwidth to
> download a few KB of emails, they certainly can't trigger web bugs to
> trigger read receipts.
> 
> Look, I can argue against the idea easily, personally my objection is
> mail loops, but the point is that the customer demands it, and at
> present that prevents me bidding for certain types of business... 
> Basically the customer just wants to repro what they got with Exchange
> 
> Cheers for ideas though!
> 
> Ed W

Hi Ed, you can have dsn
http://www.postfix.org/DSN_README.html

you can have mdn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_receipt

so this is internet (smtp ) standards
and has nearly nothing to do with imap/dovecot

also whatever solution you use there is no way
to find out if a user has read a mail unless you asked him in person
( and then you might find out if the recipient has understood what he
had read *g)

the maximum you may reach is get notice if a mail has tec side  reached
the recipient, the user must not accept your wish to notice you if he
opens the mail ( which also would not mean he has read the mail )

this is with internet mail, by intranet mail systems
( which means the recipient is on the same mail system and storage)
typical for company mail sites with exchange and/or notes etc
you have a dediacted client i.e outlook for exchange , so here its
possible to implement inside actions whatever tec of this system is able
to do.

But as soon as you mail to internet, this features may
get useless , cause you never know what tec is used on the recipient side
so nobody may invest time in create useless internet standards

however youre free to code or pay someone to code for you what you want
specially for your wanted feature. But i see no real relate to dovecot,
cause mail is recent sent via smtp

Dont compare mail systems this way, they are totally different
however they do imap/pop3/smtp
specially with echange some stuff will only work with outlook and
active directory

-- 
Best Regards

MfG Robert Schetterer

Germany/Munich/Bavaria


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Reindl Harald


Am 03.06.2012 10:43, schrieb Ed W:
> Please folks - don't argue with me - I'm the wrong person!  The recipient who 
> is receiving these emails, ie the
> person being "bugged" is demanding that they are "buggable".  If they demand 
> it and it's a requirement for
> providing them service then I have to give it to them if I want the business.
> 
> The users are on satellite dialup and barely have enough bandwidth to 
> download a few KB of emails, they certainly
> can't trigger web bugs to trigger read receipts.
> 
> Look, I can argue against the idea easily, personally my objection is mail 
> loops, but the point is that the
> customer demands it, and at present that prevents me bidding for certain 
> types of business...  Basically the
> customer just wants to repro what they got with Exchange

kiss him goodbye with exchange

what do you expect?
only some idiots are using such "features"

even if you find a opensource solution yiu can imagine how
well tested it would be and how many troubles you will have
after the setup

"if I want the business" -> do you need this business to survive?
if no -> kiss him goodbye, if yes -> i doubt you will not survive



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Description: OpenPGP digital signature


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Ed W

On 03/06/2012 09:06, Linda Walsh wrote:

Ed W wrote:


Just to register interest, but at some point I will need to consider 
writing a plugin or similar to achieve exactly this.


Situation is that several of our competitors offer such a feature, ie 
known pool of users on dialup or intermittently connected systems, 
provide an alert back to the sender when your email has been 
"accessed/downloaded" by the remote user.

---
   My dentist used a service that claimed to provide a read-notification.

It was just an embedded web-bug in the email that I could choose to 
display or not ... if the client doesn't want to cooperate, you can't 
tell when the person read it.  All you could do is tell when a client 
downloaded it from dovecot...which doesn't say much for clients that 
are left on 24/7...




Please folks - don't argue with me - I'm the wrong person!  The 
recipient who is receiving these emails, ie the person being "bugged" is 
demanding that they are "buggable".  If they demand it and it's a 
requirement for providing them service then I have to give it to them if 
I want the business.


The users are on satellite dialup and barely have enough bandwidth to 
download a few KB of emails, they certainly can't trigger web bugs to 
trigger read receipts.


Look, I can argue against the idea easily, personally my objection is 
mail loops, but the point is that the customer demands it, and at 
present that prevents me bidding for certain types of business...  
Basically the customer just wants to repro what they got with Exchange


Cheers for ideas though!

Ed W


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-03 Thread Linda Walsh

Ed W wrote:


Just to register interest, but at some point I will need to consider 
writing a plugin or similar to achieve exactly this.


Situation is that several of our competitors offer such a feature, ie 
known pool of users on dialup or intermittently connected systems, 
provide an alert back to the sender when your email has been 
"accessed/downloaded" by the remote user.

---
   My dentist used a service that claimed to provide a read-notification.

It was just an embedded web-bug in the email that I could choose to 
display or not ... if the client doesn't want to cooperate, you can't 
tell when the person read it.  All you could do is tell when a client 
downloaded it from dovecot...which doesn't say much for clients that are 
left on 24/7...






Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-02 Thread Brett @Google
On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 8:02 PM, Reindl Harald wrote:

>
> Am 02.06.2012 11:53, schrieb Ed W:
> > On 14/05/2012 17:38, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> >> On Mon, 2012-05-14 at 08:56 -0700, Beto Moreno wrote:
> >>
> >>>   I have seen some emails servers that if I send a email to other
> >>> person I can see if that person have read our emails and with a option
> >>> to delete the email if the person hasn't read our email.
> >>>
> >>>   Does dovecot have some like this feature?
> >> This doesn't really work with IMAP/POP3 protocols. It requires Exchange
> >> or something else.
> >>
> >> What would be possible is to check if a user has _downloaded_ your
> >> message, but many clients download messages immediately when they arrive
> >> so it might not be very useful. And in any case Dovecot has no such
> >> feature.
>

As general thoughts..

This sounds more like a workgroup collaboration functionality. It assumes
that users in said workgroup all use the same outlook server (or they are
in an equivalent security domain or trust).

Outlook only lets you retract an email if the user is on the same outlook
server, and it has not been read/downloaded?. If the user is a different
email server or the mail has been read/downloaded?, the retract will always
fail.

So it would be no different in for dovecot. If the mail to be retracted was
on the local mailer spool then in theory it could be removed.. but it is
basically allowing a third party to delete things out of some other user's
mail spool, with the precondition that they sent the original email AND the
mail has not been read (downloaded) from the dovecot server. This would
mean that dovecot would need to somehow securely tag when an email is
authorized and delivered by dovecot, say from a the postfix lda, such that
it could later match up a subsequent request to retract said email, to the
user that sent it. Outlook is more like IMAP than POP, in that mail stays
on the server but is locally cached / downloaded.

Outlook can do this as it is both a mail sending agent and a mail receiving
agent, it unambiguously knows when a mail comes from an authenticated user,
and that it is a locally destined mail. Dovecot may or may not be
responsible for putting a mail from a user into the mail spool (in some
configurations postfix/sendmail can do this) so it cannot absolutely relate
who sent the email, to who wants to retract it.

So for this even to be possible, retractable messages would need be
present, and dovecot to unambiguously be able to relate an email received
by dovecot with it's original sender, which seems unlikely.

Even then there is a question of how you would provide the request for
deletion for dovecot to perform. This implies that there would be a new
command to POP/IMAP to trigger and authorize such a retraction also. Then
this new command would need to be standards-track so mail user agents would
know a server has such a feature to call it.

Sounds very difficult. I think outlook sends a specially crafted email, i
doubt it is standards track as it is all happening within the same
application in the case out outlook.

Cheers
Brett

-- 
*The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.*
*
Albert Einstein*


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-02 Thread Reindl Harald


Am 02.06.2012 11:53, schrieb Ed W:
> On 14/05/2012 17:38, Timo Sirainen wrote:
>> On Mon, 2012-05-14 at 08:56 -0700, Beto Moreno wrote:
>>
>>>   I have seen some emails servers that if I send a email to other
>>> person I can see if that person have read our emails and with a option
>>> to delete the email if the person hasn't read our email.
>>>
>>>   Does dovecot have some like this feature?
>> This doesn't really work with IMAP/POP3 protocols. It requires Exchange
>> or something else.
>>
>> What would be possible is to check if a user has _downloaded_ your
>> message, but many clients download messages immediately when they arrive
>> so it might not be very useful. And in any case Dovecot has no such
>> feature.
> 
> Situation is that several of our competitors offer such a feature

others doing something stupid is not a good argument

> provide an alert back to the sender when your email has been
> "accessed/downloaded" by the remote user.

you realize that this is only possible if the RCPT is on
your own server and not remote mails?

> Personally I don't think it's a great feature and my competitor's 
> implementations 
> often cause mail loops and other nasties

which should be enough for argumentation why such things are
making more damage as they solve problems and they are only
working for non-relay mails

> However, bottom line is that you can't win the bid if you can't offer the 
> feature...

surely YOU can win, you must learn to sell quality and explain
why you are not doing anything someone wishes if you are sure
that it is a bd idea

why would i want a customer which enforces me to impelement a solution
where i am sure that it is stupid - if he does not understand my
argumentation he better is not my customer



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Description: OpenPGP digital signature


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-06-02 Thread Ed W

On 14/05/2012 17:38, Timo Sirainen wrote:

On Mon, 2012-05-14 at 08:56 -0700, Beto Moreno wrote:


  I have seen some emails servers that if I send a email to other
person I can see if that person have read our emails and with a option
to delete the email if the person hasn't read our email.

  Does dovecot have some like this feature?

This doesn't really work with IMAP/POP3 protocols. It requires Exchange
or something else.

What would be possible is to check if a user has _downloaded_ your
message, but many clients download messages immediately when they arrive
so it might not be very useful. And in any case Dovecot has no such
feature.


Just to register interest, but at some point I will need to consider 
writing a plugin or similar to achieve exactly this.


Situation is that several of our competitors offer such a feature, ie 
known pool of users on dialup or intermittently connected systems, 
provide an alert back to the sender when your email has been 
"accessed/downloaded" by the remote user.


Personally I don't think it's a great feature and my competitor's 
implementations often cause mail loops and other nasties.  However, 
bottom line is that you can't win the bid if you can't offer the feature...


Feels like a plugin rather than core functionality, but would be cool if 
someone wanted to produce something...


Cheers

Ed W


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-05-16 Thread Eduardo M KALINOWSKI

On Ter, 15 Mai 2012, Joseph Tam wrote:

It works by placing innocuous individualized tags in HTML formatted
Email e.g.  "http://your.domain/?id={hash}>" that downloads a
1x1 dot).  You can then correlate web logs with the hashes to see which
messages got rendered.  A hit does not necessarily mean it got read, and
the absense does not mean it was ignored, but it's better than nothing.
If you value your privacy, turn off HTML rendering on your Email reader.


Even with HTML on, many (if not most) readers, including webmail ones,  
disable loading remote images to avoid the problem, unless the users  
specifically asks the images to be loaded.


--
Spock: We suffered 23 casualties in that attack, Captain.

Eduardo M KALINOWSKI
edua...@kalinowski.com.br





Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-05-15 Thread Joseph Tam

On Tue, 15 May 2012, Stan Hoeppner writes


This "unsend" feature was created to protect idiots from themselves,
nothing more.  Which is why the IETF draft went nowhere.

You can only "fix" some types of human stupidity with software.  This is
not one of them.


I thought someone could make money coming up with an "unsend" and
"untwitter" service that all it does is to queue the outgoing message
for 5 minutes, during which the sender can re-consider and remove it
from the queue. Sorot of like the kill-switch for live broadcasts.
But as the saying goes, you can't make things foolproof, as they keep
making better fools.

As to the OP trying to determine whether an Email message has been read,
an indirect and imperfect technique, used by spammers and marketing critters,
is to web bug

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_bugs

It works by placing innocuous individualized tags in HTML formatted
Email e.g.  "http://your.domain/?id={hash}>" that downloads a
1x1 dot).  You can then correlate web logs with the hashes to see which
messages got rendered.  A hit does not necessarily mean it got read, and
the absense does not mean it was ignored, but it's better than nothing.
If you value your privacy, turn off HTML rendering on your Email reader.

Joseph Tam 


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-05-15 Thread Beto Moreno
On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 5:54 PM, Stan Hoeppner  wrote:
> On 5/14/2012 7:18 PM, Beto Moreno wrote:
>
>> This feature I'm speaking is users from the same domain not externals 
>> domains.
>>
>> Maybe is a Exchange feature I don't know because I have seen the email
>> client but just the client side and don't have any contact with the IT
>> side.
>
> I've only seen this feature in MS Exchange.  It may also exist in Notes
> and GroupWise.  These are the primary 3 corporate (i.e. PAID) groupware
> platforms.  As they serve the office drone masses they apparently need
> such a feature.  Consider this scenario:
>
> Guys at the water cooler play a sick joke telling a gullible fellow
> drone that he's been fired.  Drone believes it, emails an inflammatory
> letter of resignation to his boss before packing his things.  Just after
> he hits send the guys tell him it was a joke...
>
> This "unsend" feature was created to protect idiots from themselves,
> nothing more.  Which is why the IETF draft went nowhere.
>
> You can only "fix" some types of human stupidity with software.  This is
> not one of them.
>
> --
> Stan

hahahaha ok.

Thanks all of u guys for your input, I will forget this, thanks again!!!


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-05-14 Thread Stan Hoeppner
On 5/14/2012 7:18 PM, Beto Moreno wrote:

> This feature I'm speaking is users from the same domain not externals domains.
> 
> Maybe is a Exchange feature I don't know because I have seen the email
> client but just the client side and don't have any contact with the IT
> side.

I've only seen this feature in MS Exchange.  It may also exist in Notes
and GroupWise.  These are the primary 3 corporate (i.e. PAID) groupware
platforms.  As they serve the office drone masses they apparently need
such a feature.  Consider this scenario:

Guys at the water cooler play a sick joke telling a gullible fellow
drone that he's been fired.  Drone believes it, emails an inflammatory
letter of resignation to his boss before packing his things.  Just after
he hits send the guys tell him it was a joke...

This "unsend" feature was created to protect idiots from themselves,
nothing more.  Which is why the IETF draft went nowhere.

You can only "fix" some types of human stupidity with software.  This is
not one of them.

-- 
Stan


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-05-14 Thread Beto Moreno
On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 11:15 AM, Jerry  wrote:
> On Mon, 14 May 2012 19:55:16 +0300
> Timo Sirainen articulated:
>
>>On Mon, 2012-05-14 at 18:45 +0200, Reindl Harald wrote:
>>> >  I have seen some emails servers that if I send a email to other
>>> > person I can see if that person have read our emails and with a
>>> > option to delete the email if the person hasn't read our email.
>>> >
>>> >  Does dovecot have some like this feature?
>>>
>>> first dovecot is not a MTA, so no
>>> even if it would be a MTA think about
>>> how email works:
>>>
>>> * you send a message via SMTP over your MTA
>>> * your MTA dellivers the message to the target MX
>>> * how will you bring back any mail after that?
>>
>>This could work within a single email server, and could be useful in
>>situations like "oops, I just sent an unfinished email to colleague".
>>
>>There is also an expired draft to make it work across multiple servers:
>>http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-leiba-morg-message-recall-00
>
> Thanks Timo, I was not aware that there was a draft addressing this. It
> certainly would be useful in certain environments.
>
> --
> Jerry ♔
>
> Disclaimer: off-list followups get on-list replies or get ignored.
> Please do not ignore the Reply-To header.
> __
>

This feature I'm speaking is users from the same domain not externals domains.

Maybe is a Exchange feature I don't know because I have seen the email
client but just the client side and don't have any contact with the IT
side.

Thanks!!!


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-05-14 Thread Jerry
On Mon, 14 May 2012 19:55:16 +0300
Timo Sirainen articulated:

>On Mon, 2012-05-14 at 18:45 +0200, Reindl Harald wrote:
>> >  I have seen some emails servers that if I send a email to other
>> > person I can see if that person have read our emails and with a
>> > option to delete the email if the person hasn't read our email.
>> > 
>> >  Does dovecot have some like this feature?
>> 
>> first dovecot is not a MTA, so no
>> even if it would be a MTA think about
>> how email works:
>> 
>> * you send a message via SMTP over your MTA
>> * your MTA dellivers the message to the target MX
>> * how will you bring back any mail after that?
>
>This could work within a single email server, and could be useful in
>situations like "oops, I just sent an unfinished email to colleague".
>
>There is also an expired draft to make it work across multiple servers:
>http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-leiba-morg-message-recall-00

Thanks Timo, I was not aware that there was a draft addressing this. It
certainly would be useful in certain environments.

-- 
Jerry ♔

Disclaimer: off-list followups get on-list replies or get ignored.
Please do not ignore the Reply-To header.
__



Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-05-14 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Mon, 2012-05-14 at 18:45 +0200, Reindl Harald wrote:
> >  I have seen some emails servers that if I send a email to other
> > person I can see if that person have read our emails and with a option
> > to delete the email if the person hasn't read our email.
> > 
> >  Does dovecot have some like this feature?
> 
> first dovecot is not a MTA, so no
> even if it would be a MTA think about
> how email works:
> 
> * you send a message via SMTP over your MTA
> * your MTA dellivers the message to the target MX
> * how will you bring back any mail after that?

This could work within a single email server, and could be useful in
situations like "oops, I just sent an unfinished email to colleague".

There is also an expired draft to make it work across multiple servers:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-leiba-morg-message-recall-00




Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-05-14 Thread Reindl Harald


Am 14.05.2012 17:56, schrieb Beto Moreno:
>  Hi.
> 
>  I have seen some emails servers that if I send a email to other
> person I can see if that person have read our emails and with a option
> to delete the email if the person hasn't read our email.
> 
>  Does dovecot have some like this feature?

first dovecot is not a MTA, so no
even if it would be a MTA think about
how email works:

* you send a message via SMTP over your MTA
* your MTA dellivers the message to the target MX
* how will you bring back any mail after that?



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature


Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-05-14 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Mon, 2012-05-14 at 08:56 -0700, Beto Moreno wrote:

>  I have seen some emails servers that if I send a email to other
> person I can see if that person have read our emails and with a option
> to delete the email if the person hasn't read our email.
> 
>  Does dovecot have some like this feature?

This doesn't really work with IMAP/POP3 protocols. It requires Exchange
or something else.

What would be possible is to check if a user has _downloaded_ your
message, but many clients download messages immediately when they arrive
so it might not be very useful. And in any case Dovecot has no such
feature.




Re: [Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-05-14 Thread Odhiambo Washington
On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 6:56 PM, Beto Moreno  wrote:

>  Hi.
>
>  I have seen some emails servers that if I send a email to other
> person I can see if that person have read our emails and with a option
> to delete the email if the person hasn't read our email.
>
>  Does dovecot have some like this feature?
>
>  Thanks!!!
>

Here?? Hmm, you are in the wrong planet. Not in this side of the universe.
You need to cross over to the Redmond constellation.


-- 
Best regards,
Odhiambo WASHINGTON,
Nairobi,KE
+254733744121/+254722743223
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
I can't hear you -- I'm using the scrambler.


[Dovecot] Can we know when a user read our email?

2012-05-14 Thread Beto Moreno
 Hi.

 I have seen some emails servers that if I send a email to other
person I can see if that person have read our emails and with a option
to delete the email if the person hasn't read our email.

 Does dovecot have some like this feature?

 Thanks!!!