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.

Comments

Re:How it 'works'

[jacobdp]

This is nothing more than off-site image tracking, as has been seen in spam for ages and ages.

And yet they claim that there's no way the recipient can know that the message is being tracked (see their FAQ) It may not be complete snake oil, but the company is definitely lying about the service's transparency.

And they route all your mail through their servers. I wouldn't be surprised if they soon started selling "pre-confirmed" email address lists.

Depressing...

[Gutboy_Barrelhouse]

Does anyone else find it depressing that the entire privacy issue this service (creates? no... inflames?) hinges on the fact that 99% of Internet users probably don't know whether they're reading email as HTML or plain text?

Re:No good

[Z-MaxX]

Unless it works for every single message it's no good.

So true. And this is straight from their main page:

"Are you as sick of getting the "I never got your email." line as I was? This will eliminate that excuse completely. It really lets you know whom you're dealing with."

Now you simply say, "My spam filter blocks images." And you may have a reason then to think that the person who sent you the message doesn't trust you.

You can't solve a people problem with technology.

Re:How it 'works'

[MarkGriz]

No need to render it useless. The service seems pretty useless all by itself.