Q: If I send an e-mail, is there a way to know if the recipient got it? I'm interested because some people to whom I've sent an e-mail say they never got it (not even in their spam folders.)
JOHN WEZOWICZ, Suffield, Conn.
A: There are ways to track whether an e-mail has been received, but none of them are very reliable and one is widely considered to be an invasion of privacy.
The "nice" ways to see if your e-mail has been received are to ask for a "read receipt" or a "delivery receipt" when you send the message. Mail programs that can do that include Microsoft's Outlook.com online mail service, the PC based Microsoft Outlook mail program and, to a lesser extent, the Gmail systems that are used by schools and businesses.
A read receipt is just a message that asks the recipient to respond if he or she reads the e-mail. But responding is voluntary. If the recipient fails to reply, you won't know if your e-mail was received. To make matters more complicated, some recipient e-mail systems may not allow the use of read receipts. As a result, read receipts might or might not work.
A delivery receipt is a little more sophisticated. It tells your e-mail server to ask the recipient's e-mail server to confirm that the e-mail was received. But not all recipient e-mail servers will respond to these requests. So, delivery receipts also might or might not work. (To learn more about e-mail read receipts and delivery receipts, see tinyurl.com/yc77ns3p).
The "less nice" way to see if an e-mail has been received is to put a "tracking pixel" in the e-mail. Tracking pixels are small, barely noticeable images that are downloaded to your e-mail message each time a recipient opens it. Tracking pixel software tells you who opened the e-mail. (For more details, see tinyurl.com/am2nzs84 and tinyurl.com/2p9849xr and tinyurl.com/dnwvawar).
However, there are two problems with using tracking pixel software:
