Testing didtheyreadit.com's Mail-Tracking Claims

iosdaemon writes "didtheyreadit.com claims to be able to track your sent email: "When, exactly, your email was opened. How long your email remained opened. Where, geographically, your email was viewed. DidTheyReadIt works with every single internet provider and e-mail account, including EarthLink, AOL, NetZero, Juno, Netscape, Hotmail, Yahoo, and much more." Read on for more.

"This appears to be snake oil. I put it to test just in case someone had come up with some magical code. I sent email from a Yahoo.com account through the service, to an account on a Linux Box. Running tcpdump, I received the email from my pop and let 5 minutes pass before opening it. I left the message open with the cursor in the text for another 5 minutes. Tcpdump revealed absolutely no questionable traffic. And, the service control panel indicated the email had not been viewed. Sending email to a Yahoo.com account results in a 'read' in the service CP. But I had the message open for 10 minutes, and it indicated a 2-minute read......"

The company's "How it works" page explains the system to some degree; it involves redirecting all mail to be tracked through their servers by appending "didtheyreadit.com" to your recipient's email address. I doubt this is mutt-compatible ... Reader xrxzzy points out USAToday's article on the service as well.

Lets Implement a Similar System

[KhalidBoussouara]

To see if people read the article before posting on Slashdot.

This post is a joke so don't moderate down. Also I am aware that this wouldn't be really effective.

Why not do it yourself

[Crashmarik]

If the recipient is using a text based email program theres no way in heck anything is going to track whether the mail was opened or read. If its an HTML reader like Outlook just pop a web beacon and let your server monitor it. If you can't figure out how to make this work yourself, you probably shouldn't be allowed to go spying on others anyway.

Re:this is cool

[madprof]

So, in fact, this is not cool at all then.

Re:Definitely snake oil.

[E_elven]

There's a way to go off line? What does one do in this 'off-line' state?

In Soviet Russia

[martingunnarsson]

In Soviet Russia e-mail monitors YOU!

*ducks*

Re:this is cool

[Anonymous Coward]

The infinite refresh to tell how long they read the email for is annoying in that it makes it look like the email never finished loading. Can someone see how outlook responds to this?

I'm just guessing here, but, based upon my previous experiences with Outhouse, it probably downloads an activeX script from a site in Korea and promptly reboots. But then again, that's the default behavior.

I'M RICH!!

[nacturation]

Now I'm going to finally get Bill Gates and tons of other companies to finally pay up! [snopes.com]

Re:Definitely snake oil.

[plankers]

You call your broadband company/ISP and have them fix the situation.

mwahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

Devious suggestion: Buy misspellings of their domain, then capture all emails you receive. Hours of fun!

Awesome!

[CRC'99]

Now I'll be able to find out if the boss is actually reading my email!

heh - and he says he doesn't get it :)

Re:get your privacy back easily

[Pike65]

How do I do that in pine?

Re:Lets Implement a Similar System

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT DOWN. This wouldn't be effective mea...
aww crap.

Re:Smoke and mirrors

[DaHat]

And now we all DoS their site as we try to load that image to see if it really does work...

It seems to be good, just an awful slow load (which no doubt is intentional to measure the length of your 'reading' of the e-mail).

Re:Single pixel gif?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets hear it for making money from people's ignorance!

Yeah! Go Microsoft!

Re:Definitely snake oil.

[V.P.]

127.0.0.1 -- There you go!

Actually

[t_allardyce]

I've got a better idea, stick a porn banner in your email which links to a site on your server, then check the logs and see *exactly* how *long* they errr.. *read* your *email* and which page they *read* the most ;) ah probably been done

im *really* *really* sorry for the asterix's (spelling)

Can I Short This Stock?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, the new version of outlook express due to ship with service pack 2 for xp, disables image loading for just this reason.

Say buhbye to your business model. When 98% of email readers no longer can be sniffed, your business is dead.

Can I short your stock?

It's a scam, and here's how I know

[BillX]

I have identified this service to be a scam using the "superfluous female person standing next to logo" method. I'm still wondering where her headset went, though...

Re:How it 'works'

[jburroug]

(how many business majors know that you can make a screenshot in windows?)

/me raises hand

Ahem. I happen to have a BBA in Management. I know how to take screen shots under Windows. You just hit "printscreen" and paste, though I prefer to use a nifty little utility called "ScreenHunter" Of course the only time I need to take screenshots in windows is at work, since that's the only time I ever use windows. I'm typing this message in Mozilla, on a Linux box, running GNUStep (nee Window Maker) for my window manager, with xinerama running for dual displays. If someone sent me email through didtheyreadit it wouldn't track me because I use PINE as my MUA, running directly on the FreeBSD server that runs my domain, acerbic.org. The last time I took a screenshot on this setup I used The Gimp to capture VNC screens on an XP box I'd setup for a client to digitize images pulled off an analog MRI unit. I was documenting the system for him.

Don't assume that every business major out there is some noob that couldn't hack it in CS. I chose to major in business because I knew I could learn the tech stuff I wanted to on my own, but for the finer points of business and economics I wanted a formal education in. In fact my first job out of college was as a Unix SysAdmin for an ISP, after that I worked as IT manager for a cancer clinic. A couple of months ago I got out of hands on tech work to take a job as an account manager at an ASP - I wanted a change of pace.

Just like the mythical geek girls and liberty defending geek lawyers there exist geek 'suits' as well, some with more techie experience than most of the posters on /. I get sick of hearing the standard lines reffering to business majors as technological retards spouted off by slashdotters whose only claim to geeks status is using kazaa-lite to download bad music off the 'net. Not that I'm implying that you fall into this catagory, or that you were specifically attacking me or anything, I'm just tired of hearing how dumb business majors are.