How do I get a notification when anyone I send an email to forwards that email?
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You cannot.
It is not possible to tell if an email has been forward in any reliable
way.
Those emails telling you that you might win money by forwarding them on? Bogus. Each and every one
of them.
Let me explain a little why this is so.
•
Email Notification 101
“And no, there's no super-secret, hidden, behind-the-scenes email tracking technology...”
The lure of the "notification on forward" fallacy is based on the
not-completely-false "notification on receipt" feature that is, indeed, part of
the email specification.
It is possible to request what's called a "read receipt" when you
send a
message. The idea is that, when you send an email and the recipient
opens it, their email program would respond by sending an email back
that says that the message has been opened and presumably read by the
recipient.
The problem is that it's not guaranteed to work and in fact, it rarely does.
As you can see above, I get asked by Thunderbird when a message comes in
with read receipt requested. Most people, myself included, will hit Ignore.
In fact, most people have their email programs configured to completely
ignore and never even display such requests.
Ask all you want, but you're not very likely to get notified one way or the
other.
Even though there's a "notify on read" option (that rarely works), there is
no corresponding "notify on forward" request or option.
And even if there was, you can guess how most people would have it
configured: always ignore.
And no, there's no super-secret, hidden, behind-the-scenes email tracking
technology that can somehow tell when you've opened, read, or forwarded an
email. That would require the cooperation of every email program on the planet
- even the open-source ones - and that's just not going to happen.
Open Tracking
There's another technology that often confuses the issue, and that's "open
tracking".
It is possible to tell if an email has been opened - if and only
if:
The email message includes a reference to an embedded image that is located
on a server out on the internet.
The email recipient chooses to allow that image to display.
The act of fetching an image from a remote server to be displayed in an
email message can be used to tell that the message was opened.
Which is exactly why all modern email programs don't show images by
default.
Spammers often use this technique to determine if a real person
opens the
email that they sent; that's why email programs default to not showing
you images unless or until you tell the program otherwise.
And this still does not allow them to track if a message has been forwarded
or by whom.
Forward Tracking could be possible
The thing that really confuses the issue, of course, is that it's
conceptually possible that forward tracking could be implemented.
On the open internet email system that we all use today, it has not been nor will it ever be implemented.
Closed systems, on the other hand, are another matter.
I use the term "closed system" to mean environments where all email users -
both senders and recipients - are using the exact same email systems and
servers.
A great example might be the email system within a corporation.
It's conceivable that such a system might be able to track the flow
of an individual message within the system. As soon as the message
leaves the system - say out to some random recipient on the internet - then
such tracking is once again going to fail.
And for the record, I'm not aware of any closed systems that do this kind of
tracking, but it is possible.
We send a lot of email these days—at work, at home, on our phones…
But do you know what all the email jargon means? Keep reading to find
out more about the difference between the various ways to receive email.
Whether you use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, or email configured on
your own website—there’s more to receiving email that it might seem
like on the surface. Today, we’ll be focusing on some answering some of
the most common stumbling blocks when it comes to setting up new email
accounts, and explaining the difference in clear language. For our
geekier readers that already know that stuff, feel free to join in the
discussion—let us know how you explain to relatives and tech-challenged
coworkers the difference in common email setups… or simply share this
guide and save yourself the trouble of explaining it!
Email Clients vs Webmail
Before we explain the different protocols used to download emails,
let’s take a few minutes to understand the simpler stuff—the difference
between email clients and webmail. If you’ve ever
started a Gmail, Hotmail, or other email account, chances are you’ve
used webmail. If you work in an office and use a program like Microsoft
Outlook, Windows Live Mail, or Mozilla Thunderbird to manage your
emails, you’re using an email client.
Both webmail and email clients are applications for sending and
receiving email, and they use similar methods for doing this. Webmail
is an application that is written to be operated over the internet
through a browser, usually with no downloaded applications or
additional software necessary. All of the work, so to speak, is done by
remote computers (i.e. servers and machines you connect to through the
internet).
Email clients are programs that are installed on local machines
(i.e. your computer, or the computers in your office) to interact with
remote email servers to download and send email to whomever you might
care to. Some the back end work of sending email and all of the front
end work of creating a user interface (what you look at to receive your
email) is done on your computer with the installed application, rather
than by your browser with instructions from the remote server. However,
many webmail providers allow users to use email clients with their
service—and here’s where it may start to get confusing. Let’s run
through a quick example to explain the difference.
We sign up for a new email address with Google’s Gmail and begin
sending and receiving email through the webmail service. Google is
providing two things for us—a web frontend, and a mail server backend
for sending and receiving the emails. We communicate with the email
server backend by using the webmail frontend. Through our pointing,
clicking, and typing, we’re telling the email server who we want to
send email to, and what we want to say.
But, we might decide that we don’t like Google’s new look for Gmail,
so we decide to switch to an email client, like the free program Thunderbird.
Instead of using our web based client (Gmail’s web interface) to
interact with Google’s Gmail servers (the mail server backend), we use
a program installed on our computers (in this case, Thunderbird) to
contact the mail server backend ourselves, and sidestep webmail
altogether. Google (and other webmail providers) offer all of these
products, including the web frontend and the mail server backend. You
can use both of them or only the mail server backend
and still be using “Gmail.” And with that confusion dispelled, let’s
take a look at the common email protocols you’ll run into using email
clients or mobile phones.
POP3, Post Office Protocol
POP, or Post Office Protocol, is a way of retrieving email
information that dates back to a very different internet than we use
today. Computers only had limited, low bandwidth access to remote
computers, so engineers created POP in an effort to create a dead
simple way to download copies of emails for offline reading, then
remove those mails from the remote server. The first version of POP was
created in 1984, with the POP2 revision created in early 1985.
POP3 is the current version of this particular style of email
protocol, and still remains one of the most popular. Since POP3 creates
local copies of emails and deletes the originals from the server, the
emails are tied to that specific machine, and cannot be accessed via
any webmail or any separate client on other computers. At least, not
without doing a lot of email forwarding or porting around mailbox files.
While POP3 is based on an older model of offline email, there’s no
reason to call it obsolete technology, as it does have its uses. POP4
has been proposed, and may be developed one day, although there’s not
been much progress in several years.
IMAP, Internet Message Access Protocol
IMAP was created in 1986, but seems to suit the modern day world of
omnipresent, always-on internet connectivity quite well. The idea was
keep users from having to be tied to a single email client, giving them
the ability to read their emails as if they were “in the cloud.”
Compared to POP3, IMAP allows users to log into many different email
clients or webmail interfaces and view the same emails, because the
emails are kept on remote email servers until the user deletes them. In
a world where we now check our email on web interfaces, email clients,
and on mobile phones, IMAP has become extremely popular. It isn’t
without its problems, though.
Because IMAP stores emails on a remote mail server, you’ll have a
limited mailbox size depending on the settings provided by the email
service. If you have huge numbers of emails you want to keep, you could
run into problems sending and receiving mail when your box is full.
Some users sidestep this problem by making local archived copies of
emails using their email client, and then deleting them from the remote
server.
Microsoft Exchange, MAPI, and Exchange ActiveSync
Microsoft began developing MAPI (sometimes called Messaging API) not
long after IMAP and POP were first developed, although it has uses
beyond simple email. Thoroughly comparing IMAP and POP to MAPI is
pretty technical, and out of scope for many readers of this article.
Simply put, MAPI is a way for applications and email clients to
communicate with Microsoft Exchange servers, and is capable of IMAP
style syncing of emails, contacts, calendars, and other features, all
tied into local email clients or applications. This function of syncing
emails is branded by Microsoft as “Exchange ActiveSync.” Depending on
what device, phone, or client you use, this same technology might be
called any of the three Microsoft products (Microsoft Exchange, MAPI,
or Exchange ActiveSync), but will offer the same cloud-based email
syncing as IMAP.
Because Exchange and MAPI are Microsoft products, only companies
that own their own Exchange mail servers or use Windows Live Hotmail
will be able to use Exchange. Many clients, including the default
Android mail client and iPhone, are Exchange ActiveSync capable, giving
Hotmail users IMAP style cloud-based email, despite Hotmail not
offering true IMAP functionality.
Other Email Protocols
Yes, there are other protocols for sending, recieving, and using email,
but most of us that are using plain old free webmail and mobile phones
will be using one of these three major ones. Since these three
technologies cover the needs of nearly all HTG readers, we won’t be
spending time today talking about the others. If you have any
experience using email protocols not listed here, we’re interested to
hear about it—feel free to discuss them in the comments.
In Short: Which Do I Use to Set Up My Email?
Depending on your personal style of communicating and whom you
prefer to get your email service from, you can pretty quickly narrow
down how you should use your email.
If you use check your email from a lot of devices, phones, or computers, set up your email clients to use IMAP.
If you use mostly webmail and want your phone or iPad to sync with your webmail, use IMAP, as well.
If you’re using one email client on one dedicated machine (say, in your office), you might be fine with POP3.
If you have a huge history of email, you may want to use POP3 to keep from running out of space on the remote email server.
If you use Hotmail or an Exchange Server Email, MAPI or Exchange
ActiveSync will give you similar cloud-based syncing, like IMAP.
If you don’t use Hotmail and you want email sync, use IMAP. If you do use it and want email sync, use MAPI/Exchange ActiveSync.
Hopefully that’s dispelled a lot of your questions regarding these
common ways we receive email data with our phones and computers. If
not, let us know in the comments section below or address your
questions to ericgoodnight@howtogeek.com. Image Credits: Blackberry Email by Ian Lamont, available under
Creative Commons. Mail by Pacdog, available under Creative Commons.
iPhone: The Home Screen by Pieter Ouwerkerk, available under creative
commons. Email? by Tama Leaver, available under Creative Commons. Some
screenshots and logos via Wikipedia, assumed fair use.
