Thread: How abt this idea..

  1. #1
    Its not rocket science vasanth's Avatar
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    How abt this idea..

    Well i was having this simple neat idea.. how abt a site(ASP, since i know it)..where people can signup and generate HTML tags.. these tags can be put in an email and sent.. so the user can keep track of stuffs like( the day and time the mail was opened etc etc).. do you think this will work(in the sense users using it)..


    and is anyone interested in doing it with me.. and what do you think.. are there better ways to do it..


    thnx
    vasanth

  2. #2
    Registered User Commander's Avatar
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    can u explain it a little more?
    oh i'm sorry! i didn;t realize my fist was rushing to meet ur face!

    MSN :: [email protected] []*[]

  3. #3
    Its not rocket science vasanth's Avatar
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    Originally posted by Commander
    can u explain it a little more?
    Ok let me explain it correctly.. COnsider you have a mail id [email protected] and want to send a mail to [email protected] but once you send the mail you will not know wheather the mail has been read or not, even if read you will not know when it was read, number of times it was read, the duration etc etc...


    So what i was thinking is a site which will generate tags which you can include in your mail.. So when the user opens his mail the tag will reques an image from my server and register details like time, ip, duration etc etc which you can later login and check out.. so this way you can be sure that your mail was read and get more details such as when it was read etc...

  4. #4
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    actually that is not a bad idea as long as u put into consideration that someppl might not want to let the sender know that they are reading the email. there are other risks involved.

    but i like the idea.
    oh i'm sorry! i didn;t realize my fist was rushing to meet ur face!

    MSN :: [email protected] []*[]

  5. #5
    Pursuing knowledge confuted's Avatar
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    Aaaaaactually... it already exists. You can request a read reciept from Outlook Express, and most likely other mail programs.
    Away.

  6. #6
    Its not rocket science vasanth's Avatar
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    Originally posted by confuted
    Aaaaaactually... it already exists. You can request a read reciept from Outlook Express, and most likely other mail programs.
    but what i am thinking is for webbased mail accounts... say hotmaiul,yahoo,rediff etc etc where people usually send mail from a browser...

    and the reource required to create a basic service like this is almost free.. Whats are your thoughts on this...
    Last edited by vasanth; 08-15-2003 at 10:13 PM.

  7. #7
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    by what i understood, it would be automatic.... no clicking to send receipt.. or am i getting this all wrong?
    oh i'm sorry! i didn;t realize my fist was rushing to meet ur face!

    MSN :: [email protected] []*[]

  8. #8
    Its not rocket science vasanth's Avatar
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    Originally posted by Commander
    by what i understood, it would be automatic.... no clicking to send receipt.. or am i getting this all wrong?
    yes it will be automatic.. no clicking by the reader.. Since the image from the tag will be automatically be loaded....

  9. #9
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    Using images has been working for spammers for awhile. But you have to keep of track of who gets what pic.

    Do web-based emails always load the images? Doesnt yahoo make it a attachment you have to download?

    There could be problems, but decent idea.

  10. #10
    Its not rocket science vasanth's Avatar
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    Originally posted by mart_man00
    Using images has been working for spammers for awhile. But you have to keep of track of who gets what pic.

    Do web-based emails always load the images? Doesnt yahoo make it a attachment you have to download?

    There could be problems, but decent idea.
    well the image will be a part of the HTML mail... for example i could include a image like

    <IMG SRC="http://trackmymail.com/tracker?this_is_a_query_string">


    So when the page loads the image isrequested for but along with that the query string is sent to the server... THis query string can represent the id of the mail being read... But i herd from some one that some spam filters dont allow immages with queries to be loaded since spammers can harvest mail id's like this.. to overcome this we can parse the image path to be


    <IMG SRC="http://this_is_a_query_string.trackmymail.com/tracker.gif">

    so here instead of the query as an argument the query becomes a part of the URL.. so have to have some option at the host where we can extract the subdomain as a query..

    so this query string will change with differentmails...


    example
    <IMG SRC="http://mail_to_bob_id3453gdgd.trackmymail.com/tracker.gif">


    <IMG SRC="http://mail_to_vasanth_idgd43gdgd.trackmymail.com/tracker.gif">


    etc etc...

    so the DB can be even a simple access since we have to just keep track of id's generated ans sent and have to match it every time a query is made for the image(mail opened)...

    One of my friends suggested me another idea(he calims he had seen this somewhere..).. where instead of the user including the tag.. the user could send a amil to a different address to achieve all this..


    If the user has to send a mail to say [email protected] he has to change this address to [email protected] (where trackmymail.com is our site).. so since this mail will reach trackmymail.com here the server can send the mail to the original address [email protected] with the tags included and the return address as the address of the original sender.. this way the user just has to include .trackmymail.com after the address to track his mail...


    anyone interested...
    Last edited by vasanth; 08-16-2003 at 12:06 AM.

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