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

[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