Someone i know sends me email with read and send receipts requested, but i cannot turn them off, so my sent items show receipts which have been sent against my will which really pisses me off. Is there anything i can do about this ?!
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Apple Mail violating me
- Thread starter brasiliangringo
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If its a me account u can log in via the browser on your mac/pc and then tap the little cog up the top right. From there you can tweak your account.
If its a me account u can log in via the browser on your mac/pc and then tap the little cog up the top right. From there you can tweak your account.
Its GMAIL so perhaps I will look there. Thanks.
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Nothing in GMAIL to help but i found this which sums my feelings up..
''They (read receipts) may be considered a violation of privacy: Your recipient may not want you to know exactly when they opened your email. For this reason, most modern email clients won't send a read receipt without the explicit confirmation of the recipient.''
But not Apple Mail, it makes up your mind about your own privacy - nice.
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Nothing in GMAIL to help but i found this which sums my feelings up..
''They (read receipts) may be considered a violation of privacy: Your recipient may not want you to know exactly when they opened your email. For this reason, most modern email clients won't send a read receipt without the explicit confirmation of the recipient.''
But not Apple Mail, it makes up your mind about your own privacy - nice.
Did you even read the link that chown33 posted? I did and found your answer in less than 60 seconds.
Yes i did - whats your point ? Take everything that you read as gospel because someone says its not possible ?!
So you didn't read far enough to get to the Terminal commands that you asked for.
The terminal is not some sort of magic silver bullet coated in fairy dust. It offers a different interface into the same application. Sometime some features are not exposed in the GUI but are to the command line. But normally this is not the case. I hate to say it but your request is naïve at best. There is likely no solution available and spending many hours investigating undocumented and likely unstable routes to hack into Mail.app to provide this does not seem like a good use of anyone's time.
Note this is a general comment aimed at the perception that a few terminal commands can do anything. I've not read the link above. It may be that there are preferences in Mail.app that can be set that are not visible in the GUI.
But this information relates to turning on/off read receipts from messages that i send and does not (unless i am mistaken) explain how to stop Mail sending read receipts for mail i have received.
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In considering that one poster shared a link explaining how there is a way to turn on/off read receipts in terminal when sending mail, my specific request seems entirely reasonable and your general comment slightly haughty and of no tangible value.
You would think it is entirely reasonable, but that functionality does not exist in the receiver's email app. If you are worried about your sent folder being cluttered, go through it once a week and strip them off. The bottom line is that apple has not provided a mechanism to disable it from the receivers perspective.
I'd say he is more worried about the privacy concerns. Maybe he doesn't want the sender to know they've sent to a valid address?
You're right, his subsequent post mentions his privacy concerns.
My other piece of advice is to mention this here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/
My other piece of advice is to mention this here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/
Yes my concerns are simply due to privacy, thanks for the replies and link. I will certainly provide feedback as it seems a genuine weakness and functionality that one should be able to control.
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Why do you say that?
They cannot respond individually to each and every submission to the feedback page. I do want to say that it does work, as there were occasions that people did use that to report a weakness in OSX and they subsequent updates included the fix.
Apple's customer support is tops in the industry so its difficult to accuse them of not caring about their customers. The bulk of evidence suggests otherwise.
The auto submission message confirmed not to expect a reply unless they needed to consult me further which i doubt they will as the problem is fairly self explanatory. In short, like you suggest, not very encouraging. I will of course revert if they do reply !!
Perhaps if i still had support i would be able to raise it directly with a person which would necessitate a response of sorts + be more helpful, however, i would agree their paid up apple care/warranty appears to work well - speaking from personal experience only.
Perhaps if i still had support i would be able to raise it directly with a person which would necessitate a response of sorts + be more helpful, however, i would agree their paid up apple care/warranty appears to work well - speaking from personal experience only.
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I went through customer service. 5 Days of back and forth emails, a day between each. 5 different people and everyone telling me to do exactly the same thing... which was exactly what i asked not to do.
Very bad service in my case and i gave them multiple opportunities to help.
Fair enough - i can see why your view has been tarnished. But at least they all said the same thing 
I speak with Vodafone on a regular basis and for the same problem I will often get a completely different solution depending on who i speak with. Testimony to that adage: 'get a 2nd opinion!'.
I speak with Vodafone on a regular basis and for the same problem I will often get a completely different solution depending on who i speak with. Testimony to that adage: 'get a 2nd opinion!'.
Fair enough - i can see why your view has been tarnished. But at least they all said the same thing
Not exactly. Similar but not the same. The main problem is each time they did not answer the question i'd asked.
My point in posting the URL was that, according to that URL, Mail.app doesn't send receipts. You don't have to "turn them off", because they're not turned on to start with.
If you believe that URL to be wrong, i.e. you believe that Mail.app is, in fact, sending receipt notices, then please provide some basic evidence that this is happening. For example, send an email with receipt requested to your Mail.app account, from some other account. Open in Mail.app. Then check in your other account that a receipt is actually delivered. Post your results.
If Mail.app really does send receipts, then please identify which version of Mail.app it is.
I'm fairly sure that receipts were not supported at all until somewhat recently, perhaps in the 10.5 or 10.6 OS releases. If receipt requests were added on outgoing mail, then it seems likely to me that there's a preference or option to control receipts on incoming mail.
Yeah, I don't know what's going on with op's mail, but to the best of my knowledge, Mail does not respect read receipts. Similarly, I don't think Gmail has read receipts for personal emails either.
If you really want to protect your privacy, I'd suggest going to Preferences>Viewing and uncheck the "Display remote images in HTML messages" box, since that's another indirect way to get a read confirmation.
The URL you kindly posted confirms that mail DOES indeed send read receipts to senders who request them using Outlook.
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That URL says:
Mail does ignore the requests. Read receipts are only actioned if you're using Outlook.
This means if you're using Outlook to read mail, it will perform the read-receipt action, i.e. send back a read-receipt. It doesn't mean Mail.app will send receipts to those senders who use Outlook.
If you look at the links referred to by that URL, such as this one:
http://email.about.com/od/macosxmailtips/qt/et_request_recp.htm
and scroll down to the heading "Not Only Request but also Respect and Send Read Receipts", you'll see it says:
Unfortunately, Mac OS X Mail does not respect read receipts. If you get an email requesting a read receipt, nothing special happens.
That is, Mail.app does not send any actual read-receipt messages back to senders.
In fact, nothing I can find says that Mail.app ever sends any read-receipts. That's why I asked if you have confirmed that it does this, by using an email account that actually requests a read-receipt.
The Internet standard for email receipts is "Advisory". Which means that email-readers, such as Mail.app, are not required to implement receipts. Whether to send a read-receipt is entirely up to the email-reader app, and presumably, the person using it, who may not want receipts sent.
Here's an MR thread advising against relying on read-receipts:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1183650/
The reason for that advice: many email-reader apps do not act on the receipt request. So if you're depending on seeing a receipt, you could reach the wrong conclusion.
Again, if you have evidence that Mail.app actually sends receipts, please post it. For example, perform a test and see if Mail.app really sends a receipt back to the sender. If it doesn't actually send read-receipts, then there's no privacy issue.
EDIT
I did a test using Mail.app.
First, I followed the instructions for adding the headers that request receipts:
http://www.rawcomputing.co.uk/mactips40.html
I used a To-address located at mailinator.com, simply so it would be different from my normal email address.
Next, I sent myself a test email. It showed up in my Mail.app inbox almost instantly.
Next, I looked at the full set of message headers using the "Long Headers" toolbar button (customize your Mail.app toolbar if needed). This showed the Return-Receipt-To and Content-Disposition-To headers were actually in the message. So if Mail.app is going to act on those headers, by actually sending a read-receipt, then the headers are confirmed to exist.
When I read the test email, however, nothing was sent to the mailinator.com address. So, as described everywhere I can find, Mail.app does not honor requests to send read-receipts.
This test was done on OS version 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. It may be that 10.7 Lion's Mail.app is different, and really does send read-receipts. If that's so, I'd like to see a test done and the evidence posted.
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I should have been clearer. What is happening is this: mail is sending DELIVERY receipts in the form of an individual email as soon as an email from outlook is received in my inbox (with delivery request set from sender).
The delivery confirmation email is sent before i even read the email and is viewable as an email in sent items.
Hope this clear things up but still doesnt change the fact an email is being sent without my consent. I can happily evidence this is happening if anyone wants.
The delivery confirmation email is sent before i even read the email and is viewable as an email in sent items.
Hope this clear things up but still doesnt change the fact an email is being sent without my consent. I can happily evidence this is happening if anyone wants.