DidTheyReadIt? Probably Not

Well, there's yet another privacy-skirting company on the horizon promising to "ensure" that when you send someone a message, you can verify (without their knowledge) whether or not they read it.

Form IT's perspective, I'd think these things would just get tossed out with the rest of the spam rubble. Given the technology (an itsy bitsy clear or 1x1 pixel gif that kicks off remote server code), I seriously doubt this company even reaches a 50 percent spam filter bypass rate.

Sure, there's a place for validation. For that you've got S/MIME and/or PGP, which can tell you something more important than "if" someone gives a damn about your email -- they can tell you and the recipient that you are who you say you are and that the message is what it claims to be. To me, that's much more important than corporate CYA tactics.

Whether or not this venture catches on, as long as vendors and ill-wishers both continue to exploit the same weaknesses within today's email clients, we may very well find ourselves returning to the days of Pine, eschewing all "rendered" messaging in favor of beautiful texxxxt. Ahhhh. Feel the breeze.