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Testing didtheyreadit.com's Mail-Tracking Claims

Posted by timothy on from the fantastic-claims-require-extraordinary-evidence dept.

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.

8 of 400 comments (clear)

  1. THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING ! by ThinkAboutYourBreath · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Hello, and THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING

    Yes that's right, THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING. Why you might ask? Well it's simple!

    Your brain usually takes care of breathing FOR you, but whenever you remember this, YOU MUST MANUALLY BREATH! If you don't you will DIE.

    There are also MANY variations of this. For example, think about:

    1. BLINKING!

    1. SWALLOWING SALIVA!

    1. HOW YOUR FEET FEEL IN YOUR SOCKS!

    1. THAT ANNOYING SONG THAT GETS STUCK IN YOUR HEAD!


    In conclusion, the THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING troll is simply unbeatable. These 4 words can be thrown randomly into article text trolls, into sigs, into anything, and once seen, WILL FORCE THE VICTIM TO TAKE CARE OF HIS BREATHING MANUALLY! This goes far beyond the simple annoying or insulting trolls of yesteryear.

    In fact, by EVEN RESPONDING to this troll, you are proving that IT HAS CLAIMED ANOTHER VICTIM -- YOU!

  2. fp! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    DidTheyReadIt is much more powerful from standard "return receipts." It differs from standard read-receipts because it works regardless of the e-mail program being used by the recipient. Standard read-receipts don't work if someone views your e-mail in web-based e-mail programs like Hotmail or Yahoo!, and some desktop e-mail programs can't process them either. Even when an e-mail program does support them, a lot of times they are ignored by the recipient. Also, they recipient knows that your e-mail is being tracked. DidTheyReadIt works automatically, without alerting the recipient that the e-mail is being tracked.

  3. uh oh by rune2 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    /me puts on my tinfoil hat

  4. Idiots. by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    What a bunch of fucking numb nuts. It reminds me of the time my grandmother received a derogatory email. She called me to say that she's been receiving these for the past few weeks, all from the same address, and that she didn't know what to do. I asked her to forward it to me, but she claimed it had disappeared from her Yahoo email box. How could that be? Well, she had some neighbor, whom she claims knows a LOT about computers (yeah right), and he told her that some really smart uber-hacker put a "bomb" in her mailbox that caused that email to disappear without her deleting it. Uh, yeah. And did you know that those old 2x CD-ROM drives from, like, 1992 could write to a CD-ROM disc? (A silver, pressed one!) Yeah, some idiot told me that once, too...

    In other words, anything that looks sufficiently mysterious is deemed to be magic. What a bunch of StuplePeopid.

  5. Re:Link doesn't work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    mods, mod this guys down. the link in the article clearly does work, this guy is just karma whoring for all he's worth!

  6. Re:How it 'works' by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Thanks.

    I think we already cleared that up about half an hour before you posted.

    I KNOW I was wrong, I have been moderated down as such.

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  7. Re:Link doesn't work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Of course he's a lying karma whore! Oh wait, 3 comments above this one says the same fucking thing. Moron.

  8. Funny by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Funny how this gets modded "funny", and a message saying the same thing, posted 5 minutes before this one gets modded "redundant"...