Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!uunet!apexepa!gary
From: gary@apexepa.UUCP (Gary Wisniewski)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: automatic ack
Summary: A hack for return receipt
Message-ID: <106@apexepa.UUCP>
Date: 24 Feb 91 16:05:49 GMT
References: <1991Feb14.183738.19966@ecf.utoronto.ca> <1991Feb16.134117.16879@ora.com>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Apex Software Corp., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Lines: 21

>In article <1991Feb14.183738.19966@ecf.utoronto.ca> stefano@ecf.toronto.edu (Bruno Di Stefano) writes:
> Many students in my UNIX class have asked me if there is any
> feature that allows the sender of an email message to receive an
> automatic acknowledgement of the receipt of the message at
> the receiver site. I would be interested in knowing of 
> solutions to this problem in different flavours of UNIX 
> and different mailing programs.

I use a rather odious hack when I need to do this.  If I send mail to
stefano@ecf.toronto.edu, I include a "Bcc: bogus_receipt@ecf.toronto.edu"
so that the mailer daemon on ecf sends me notification of arrival in
the form of a unknown user message.

Since this is sometimes annoying to sysops, I refrain from doing this
except when I must be certain there was no failure in transport.  I deal
with lots of people who claim that their mail was "lost" somewhere (a popular
excuse when folks don't want to admit they received some important mail).
It's nice to know that the mail arrived at the site.
-- 
Gary Wisniewski              uunet!apexepa!gary
Apex Software Corporation    gary@apexepa.uucp          Phone: (412) 681-4343