Email Delivery Receipts - Please don't do that...

Microsoft Outlook and many other email clients support functionality known as "delivery receipts" or "email return receipts."

Basically, it prompts the recipient if they'd like to send a message back to the sender confirming their email was received and presumably read.

I won't get into how to enable it, because I wish you wouldn't.

Now, I understand that there are legitimate problems with email delivery. Email is often important, and sometimes things get, "lost in the system." It would be nice to know if that important message made it to the intended recipient.

But please, consider for a moment the psychological impact upon the person opening your email. Usually the message I come away with is:

"Gotcha! I know you got my email - don't pretend you didn't. Don't even think about not responding to me. I demand attention!"

I pause a moment and reflect upon what happened in the sender's childhood to develop such an attitude. I then click "No, I don't want to send a return receipt" - and promptly move the request to the back of the queue.

I do respond to them, but I make sure to sit on the message for 24-36 hours first (unless the message really does look critical). I've found the worst thing to give someone demanding special attention, is special attention.

Some third-party software offers similar message tracking without prompting the user if it's OK to track them or not. The software attaches a link to an image in each email - which then triggers a hit against a web server when viewed by the victim... I mean recipient.

This is exactly what spammers try to do with tracking images. As a result, it may be devoured by a good percentage of spam utilities. When I personally get such an email, there's a real good chance I might not "see it" if the sender isn't already a paying customer.

So, what should you do to make sure you're notified of an important email getting received? How about the following?

"Hi, Stan - could you let me know when you get this message? I understand it may take a while to answer the questions I asked - but our email server has been having some problems - and I want to make sure it got to you."

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