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

[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