derrick wrote on Feb 6^th, 2007 at 3:41pm:

Before I got the latest version of OE I used to do that. OE6 allows you to disable the loading of images in e-mails. Once you have opened such an email, you can then select the option to view the images. This gets round the possibility of it being a spam email that has an image in it that when loaded confirms your email address as being a live one, thus they send you more spam. The MSGTAG service works in the same way. It's also worthwhile remembering that for MSGTAG to work, the recipient must have a live internet connection and that MSGTAG isn't blocked by a firewall.

bbb_uk wrote on Feb 6^th, 2007 at 6:56pm:


These services may well provide the facility not to display images but many users don't enable it because it deprives them of crucial content from legitimate email senders.  Norton Antispam gave me the facility not to display images in emails but I had to turn it off as it was so inconvenient.

Another way to loook at MSGTAG is that its a permanently free service (for the basic service which seems to offer eveyrything you need) and increases the number of confirmed email receipts above using just Read Receipt.  I frequently have to use likely email addresses for senior management in organisations that I am trying to get action from and often the junior customer service staff will not provide me with those email addresses.   Therefore anything which is free and increases the total number of read receipts I get has to be a bonus.

The way I look at it is that if I don't have a read receipt I have no guarantee a message has been read as there are loads of email servers that don't bounce messages for non-existent or closed email accounts.