How can I stop delivery reciepts being sent?

[Robert]

I have outlook 2002 & have recently started to get some spam which
automatically tries to send a delivery receipt back to the sender. Also,
when I delete the message outlook tells me the sender has asked for a
receipt to be sent to him when the message has been deleted, do I wish to
send, yes or no. So I select no. At least I get asked, unlike the delivery
receipt. (I'm also asked for conformation before sending a read receipt to
anyone who wishes one). Why don't I get asked before sending a delivery
receipt? Is there any way for me to stop this? All e-mail sending &
receiving is done through my Norton internet security to check for viruses,
but the delivery receipt seems to bypass this, getting sent directly through
Outlook. This causes more problems, as the account in question where I'm
sent these e-mails is not my main one, so I'm not connected to the internet
with this account. The ISP rejects the sending of the delivery receipt as
I'm not using them to connect to the internet, sending can only be done when
I am connected through them. Therefore outlook just keeps trying to send the
message & will not stop, even after closing & restarting outlook. The
receipt doesn't show in the outbox (or anywhere else), so I can't stop it or
delete it. The only way for me to get rid of the receipts from outlook, is
to connect by the ISP which the receipt is trying to be sent through, so
letting it be sent, (not in my opinion a good idea). So I prefer to replace
my outlook data file with a backup copy.
Anyone help?
Rab.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Why don't I get asked before sending a delivery receipt?

Because delivery receipts are sent by your mail server before Outlook ever
sees the message, not by Outlook.

Is there any way for me to stop this?

Ask your ISP if there's a way to disable delivery receipts.

All e-mail sending & receiving is done through my Norton internet security
to check for viruses,

Scanning outgoing mail is pointless and scanning incoming mail is fraught
with problems. You should uninstall your AV program and reinstall without
the mail scanning feature. You'll still be just as protected.

 

[VanguardLH]

I have outlook 2002 & have recently started to get some spam which
automatically tries to send a delivery receipt back to the sender. Also,
when I delete the message outlook tells me the sender has asked for a
receipt to be sent to him when the message has been deleted, do I wish to
send, yes or no. So I select no. At least I get asked, unlike the delivery
receipt. (I'm also asked for conformation before sending a read receipt to
anyone who wishes one). Why don't I get asked before sending a delivery
receipt? Is there any way for me to stop this? All e-mail sending &
receiving is done through my Norton internet security to check for viruses,
but the delivery receipt seems to bypass this, getting sent directly through
Outlook. This causes more problems, as the account in question where I'm
sent these e-mails is not my main one, so I'm not connected to the internet
with this account. The ISP rejects the sending of the delivery receipt as
I'm not using them to connect to the internet, sending can only be done when
I am connected through them. Therefore outlook just keeps trying to send the
message & will not stop, even after closing & restarting outlook. The
receipt doesn't show in the outbox (or anywhere else), so I can't stop it or
delete it. The only way for me to get rid of the receipts from outlook, is
to connect by the ISP which the receipt is trying to be sent through, so
letting it be sent, (not in my opinion a good idea). So I prefer to replace
my outlook data file with a backup copy.
Anyone help?
Rab.

Delivery receipts are requested by the sender to your mail server, NOT
to your e-mail client. Are you managing your mail server?

Rare few mail servers bother to respond to a delivery receipt. This is
asking for positive feedback that the e-mail arrived at the destination
domain. Instead the mail servers send back negative feedback: if there
was a delivery problem, the mail session with the sending mail server is
rejected (and the sending mail server reports the rejection to the
sender) or an NDR (non-delivery report) e-mail gets sent back to the
sender (if delivery isn't checked until after the mail session is over
between sending and receiving mail hosts). The lack of negative
feedback is the positive feedback, so there is no point in wasting the
resources to report the successful delivery. Far more mail is
deliverable than not deliverable - except for spam.

Since you don't manage your mail server, you don't get to control over
how it handles delivery confirmations. Contact your e-mail provider and
ask them how they handle delivery receipts.

For read receipts, it is entirely up to you how you configure your
e-mail client's options. Read receipts mean just that: the message has
been read so THEN send back a reciept. That cannot be handled at the
mail server. The mail server doesn't know when you have *read* an
e-mail, only if you have downloaded it. In Outlook, go to its tracking
options and configure how you want to handle read receipts. If you
never want to send them, select "never send".

Some anti-spam software can strip out the read receipt header added by
the sender. So matter what you configure in your e-mail client, it will
never see that header so it will never respond even if you set it to
"always send". The e-mail client has to see the header to know a read
receipt was requested.

Any sender that includes a delivery confirmation header will very highly
likely never get one. The vast majority of mail servers ignore that
header. Any sender that includes a read confirmation header will likely
not get one since most users configure their e-mail clients to ignore
that header.

If you are at a company whose policies dictate that you must enable read
receipt acknowledgements then their mail server should be configured to
strip this header from inbound outside (external) e-mails. That way,
only employees of the company can include the read confirmation header.
It will get stripped out at the company's mail server for inbound
e-mails that originate outside the company.

Your e-mail client never responds to delivery receipt requests. That's
the function of the mail server, if enabled. Your e-mail client MAY
respond to read receipt requests if configured to do so ("always send",
or "prompt" and you say Yes, or "never send"). It's your choice for
read receipts. It's not under your control for delivery receipts.

 

[Robert]

Thanks for the info Brian. I can see what you mean about delivery receipts
being sent by my server rather than Outlook. If this is the case, what is
outlook trying to send, as it's definitely trying to send something whenever
I get an e-mail requesting delivery receipts? If a sender requests a read
receipt or a receipt to say when a message has been deleted, I have outlook
set up to ask me first before sending these.

 

[Robert]

Cheers for the help Vanguard. You are correct in thinking that I don't
manage my own mail server, so see how I can't do anything about the delivery
receipts. But this is still a mystery, is there anything else that outlook
might be trying to send each time I receive a mail that has a request for a
delivery receipt? It's not a read receipt, as I have this set up as you say,
to ask me what to do each time (this is definitely working okay, as one of
my contacts frequently requests read receipts & I'm asked if I want to send
one or not).

This problem only happens with outlook, as I've tried downloading my mail
with outlook express, & when I get one of these mails requesting the
delivery receipt nothing happens, outlook express doesn't try to send
anything, whereas outlook does. As these receipts (or whatever it is) don't
show in the outbox or sent items of outlook, I have no way of getting to see
what it is, (read receipts do show in outlook express).

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Thanks for the info Brian. I can see what you mean about delivery receipts
being sent by my server rather than Outlook. If this is the case, what is
outlook trying to send, as it's definitely trying to send something
whenever I get an e-mail requesting delivery receipts? If a sender
requests a read receipt or a receipt to say when a message has been
deleted, I have outlook set up to ask me first before sending these.

Frankly, I don't know as I find that unexpected. Perhaps someone else will
be able to answer.

 

[VanguardLH]

Cheers for the help Vanguard. You are correct in thinking that I don't
manage my own mail server, so see how I can't do anything about the delivery
receipts. But this is still a mystery, is there anything else that outlook
might be trying to send each time I receive a mail that has a request for a
delivery receipt? It's not a read receipt, as I have this set up as you say,
to ask me what to do each time (this is definitely working okay, as one of
my contacts frequently requests read receipts & I'm asked if I want to send
one or not).

This problem only happens with outlook, as I've tried downloading my mail
with outlook express, & when I get one of these mails requesting the
delivery receipt nothing happens, outlook express doesn't try to send
anything, whereas outlook does. As these receipts (or whatever it is) don't
show in the outbox or sent items of outlook, I have no way of getting to see
what it is, (read receipts do show in outlook express).

Outlook doesn't respond to delivery confirmation headers so that's not
what would make Outlook send a hidden "receipt" e-mail. If you
configured tracking options to Never send a read receipt then that also
would not be a cause for Outlook to send a "receipt" e-mail. If you had
that option enabled or were prompted and said Yes and you are wondering
why you NOW are still having a hidden e-mail getting sent then you might
have a read receipt stuck in your Outbox. Outlook won't show receipt
items so you cannot delete them using Outlook's GUI. You have to use
OutlookSpy or Microsoft's MDBVU32.EXE utility to directly edit the
message store (.pst file). There are instructions on how to use those
utilities but no point in posting them if that's not a current problem
for you.

The only other "receipt" method that I can think of are web beacons.
These are only effective if you render HTML-formatted e-mails. If you
read your e-mails in plain-text mode, they are worthless. If you let
Outlook render the HTML-formatted e-mails, the default option in Outlook
2003/2007 is to block externally linked content (i.e., image files from
file servers). When you render the HTML-formatted e-mail, the external
image for the web beacon gets retrieved from the file server. Since it
can be unique to a recipient, and when the file server sees that file
got retrieved, then it knows you opened that e-mail. With the default
block option in Outlook, that image doesn't get retrieved. This is how
MsgTag and other tracking services figure out if you opened your e-mails
in which they inserted a web beacon but plain-text mode or the external
image blocking option defeats that spammer trick (MsgTag doesn't do spam
but they borrowed the spammer trick, as did some other similar
services). So make sure Outlook 2003/2007 is configured to use the
Restricted Sites security zone for HTML e-mails, that the option to
block external images is enabled, and read receipts is set to Never.

Your problem is that you are still using Outlook 2002. It doesn't have
an option to block externally linked content (images which can be used
as web beacons, and not even visible when you render the HTML-formatted
e-mail). There are anti-spam programs that can remove or disable these
externally linked images. I used to use SpamPal (haven't needed it my
fresh setup as I'm not getting enough spam to bother going back to using
SpamPal again). It has an HTML-Modify plug-in. I would disabled using
that plug-in to tag e-mails as spam because its heuristic are too old
and you can't set the scoring level for the HTML nasties that might be
present in an HTML-formatted e-mail. But you can have it disabled
externally linked images. Instead of removing the image from the
HTML-formatted e-mail, it changes the <IMG> tag to an undefined <XIMG>
tag. The e-mail client won't understand that tag so the image isn't
display (which would've meant it had to get yanked from the file
server). Alas, unlike OL2003/2007, you won't have a convenient option
to click on to show the blocked external images. To see them if you
need them, you can look at the source of the HTML e-mail to see the URL
in the href parameter to go look at it with a web browser, or you could
save the HTML code in the e-mail to save in an .html file and look at it
in a web browser. Usually the externally linked images are just fluff,
anyway so I never missed them much but once in awhile I needed to see
what was in a blocked image.

 

[Robert]

Thanks for the useful info, some good stuff there. I don't really know if
the problem e-mails are html or not as I don't open them & don't use the
preview pane. So this should mean I don't download any web beacons or
anything. The other thing you mention is that I might have a read receipt
stuck in my outbox. This can't be the case, as I keep having to replace my
..pst file with a backed up version to get rid of these unknown receipts.
(The other way I could get rid of them would be to connect to the ISP
through which the e-mail account is with, thus allowing the mystery receipt
to be sent. I can receive e-mails from them with my other main ISP but not
send, so the problem receipts really are stuck in the outbox till I replace
the .pst file. I've never allowed them to be sent to get rid of them). The
replacement .pst file doesn't try to send anything until I get one of the
problem e-mails, then it does. The Microsoft's MDBVU32.EXE utility you
mention sounds just like what I may be needing, how does it work & where can
I get it?

 

[Robert]

Further to my last post, I found & downloaded the Microsoft app you
mentioned. This showed the problem e-mails to be "Not read" receipts within
the root folder, hence the reason for them not showing. This seems to be a
problem with others as well, see "My outlook is compromised and being used
to send spam" posts dated 27/09/08. I had two not read messages, so tried to
delete them using the application, but this failed to work, (don't know if
it was maybe something I was doing wrong, so will try again if I get any
more). What is the correct procedure to delete messages in the root folder
with Microsoft's MDBVU32.exe? I did try to delete a message in another
folder & this worked, but after following the same procedure in the root
folded, the not read receipts just remained where they were, I had to
replace the .pst file with my backup to get rid of them.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Frankly, I don't know as I find that unexpected. Perhaps someone else
will be able to answer.

Anecdotal evidence implicates a recent update to Office, but we'll have to
wait and see.