DELIVERY receipts are not received even when requested

[BigT]

I am using Outlook 2003 and used to receive delivery receipts and read
receipts when requested. I now only receive read receipts - if the receipient
has the read receipt facility. I need to have confirmation that certain
emails have arrived at their destination even if I don't get
confirmation/proof that they have been read, but I no longer receive my
delivery receipts for some reason. I have various email accounts but cannot
receive from any of them - could this be something to do with my settings in
Outlook?

 

[Brian Tillman]

I am using Outlook 2003 and used to receive delivery receipts and read
receipts when requested. I now only receive read receipts - if the
receipient has the read receipt facility. I need to have confirmation
that certain emails have arrived at their destination even if I don't
get confirmation/proof that they have been read, but I no longer
receive my delivery receipts for some reason.

Are your recipients internal to your organization or are they external
recipients? If the latter, you have no way of controlling how their mail
servers or client will or will not respond to receipt requests.

 

[BigT]

Thanks for your reply Brian. My recipients are from various companies on my
database. I always used to receive delivery and read receipts when requested
but I no longer receive the delivery ones even to the same people I used to
request them and receive them from before. One of my accounts goes directly
through my ISP, the other goes through a host. Could this be anything to do
with it? Ihave always worked this way but could it mean they have changed
their settings?

 

[Brian Tillman]

Thanks for your reply Brian. My recipients are from various companies
on my database. I always used to receive delivery and read receipts
when requested but I no longer receive the delivery ones even to the
same people I used to request them and receive them from before. One
of my accounts goes directly through my ISP, the other goes through a
host. Could this be anything to do with it? Ihave always worked this
way but could it mean they have changed their settings?

I don't think the path the message travels is that germane, but some servers
do not pass receipt requests. If it's happening with a number of recipients
at the same site, I'd lean that way, but if it's to seemingly random
recipients, I think it more likely that they've disabled honoring requests.
Delivery receipt requests are typically handled by the recipient's mail
server while read receipt requests are handled by the mail client.

 

[Bob [BVP]]

In the age of massive spam, delivery and read receipts are
golden to harvesting known-working-good email addresses.
Many mail admins just disable them, for good reason. I know
I have on our systems. Most likely your just seeing a once
well intentioned feature of mail servers being disabled because
abuse.

Bob

 

[Vanguard]

I am using Outlook 2003 and used to receive delivery receipts and read
receipts when requested. I now only receive read receipts - if the
receipient
has the read receipt facility. I need to have confirmation that certain
emails have arrived at their destination even if I don't get
confirmation/proof that they have been read, but I no longer receive my
delivery receipts for some reason. I have various email accounts but
cannot
receive from any of them - could this be something to do with my settings
in
Outlook?

Sounds like the admins for the receiving mail hosts finally decided to stop
wasting bandwith and CPU cycles on duplicating the status of delivered
mails. They already send back NDRs (non-delivery reports) if there is a
problem getting an accepted e-mail into a recipient's mailbox, or they
reject the message during the mail session if it is undeliverable (so an NDR
should come from your mail server). They already expend plenty of resources
to provide negative feedback regarding delivery. There is no need for them
to also duplicate that result by sending positive feedback on what they
accepted. They only need to tell you when they won't accept your messages;
otherwise, they accepted it (i.e., no bad news is good news).

That doesn't help you but it is waste of their resources to send positive
feedback when the negative feedback is sufficient regarding whether or not
THEY will deliver your message. Another reason for NOT sending back a
requested delivery reciept is to eliminate spammers from sending a bunch of
bogus messages to generated usernames at a domain to see which ones got
accepted by getting the delivery reciept. When someone knocks at your door
and you say "No one is here", you've pretty much defeated your purpose and
should have instead simply not answered at all if you did not want the
caller to know if anyone was home or not. The receiving mail server is not
interested in helping spammers that slam a huge list of generated usernames
to compile lists of existing accounts on their domain. The spammers would
prefer the receiving mail server to all the work to compile a list (by it
having to send the separate delivery receipt) rather than waste the spammers
time (or the mailer trojan's time) to account for rejected messages during a
mail session. While spammers would prefer to use read receipts to compile
lists of *active* accounts (those that are monitored and response with the
receipt), delivery receipts also verify real accounts whether they are
active or not. You ever wonder how you got spammed at an e-mail address
that you have yet to divulge to anyone, like for a brand spanking new
account? Well, one cause is that the spammer uses a name generator and
simply slams a domain with all those account name, so yours was already
getting targeted before it existed. However, if the spammer can simply
query a mail server as to which accounts actually exist there then the
spammer has a piece of information that you don't want them to have. Hiding
works far better than announcing your valid e-mail address to a spammer.
The spammer can slam a mail server with a bunch of names, collect the
delivery receipts for those accounts that exist, and then abandon that
receiving mail account to use their updated existing account list to reduce
their resources to deliver their spam to just existing accounts. Using
delivery receipts is more effort than most spammers will bother with, but
I'd rather not provide any ammunition to a spammer.

Because negative feedback tells you whether a mail got delivered or not (and
is as reliable as hoping you get positive feedback), and to eliminate
spammers from cultivating lists of existing accounts on their domain, many
mail services will no longer respond to delivery receipts. Sending negative
feedback is an older scheme than sending out positive feedback. Since
requesting the delivery receipts used to work at those destination domains
but recently stopped working, you'll have to contact the mail admins at
those destination domains to find out why they stopped sending delivery
receipts. The recipients at those destination domains have no control over
this mail server function.