Prove that email was delivered?

K

krogen

[H]ard|Gawd
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About a year ago I sent an important email. Fast-forward to today, it turns out the other party has no recollection of receiving it.

Now, I don't care if it was opened or not, or if it went to spam. All I care about is delivery.

I sent this email through Gmail using one of my email aliases. I never received a bounce or anything like that. How can I know if this email was delivered? Is it possible?

I would appreciate any RFC references or other specifications.
 
Short answer is you can't.

The only "proof" you can produce is that you sent the email if it still exists in your "Sent Mail". With personal Gmail accounts, you have no access for logs to confirm delivery. Even with Google Business accounts, logs are only kept for about 30 days.

There are RFCs for things like "read receipts" and the like, but that would have required you to request it when sending the email and the recipient always has the option to ignore them thus defeating read receipts. Not to mention that not all email systems follow every single RFC out there.
 
2nd on the can't prove from your end. Return Receipt requires that the receiving server honor it and many don't as it both confirms to senders that the account is valid(bad for anti spam efforts) and that the target of the email is out of the office(bad for security). Emails can go missing in transit due to routing screw ups and other things. Even if the email makes it to the recipient's server, no guarantee that it will make their account, much less their inbox. A lot of systems will drop, not bounce, emails detected as spam or from a blacklisted source and the target will never know the email existed. Then the target's mailbox may block as spam and may or may not let the target know, depending on configuration.

You might be able to contact the mail admin of the target and see if they can search their logs and backups for the email. If the target is using a service like Gmail or lawsuits are involved, good luck with that.
 
3rd on that you cant prove it on your end. Like Dead Parrot said, most systems will drop emails detected as spam from BL sources. I know since thats what I do at my company. Even before the email is routed through the system, we check the domain and IP address to see if its been listed for sending SPAM and if it has the email is automatically dropped. A lot of free email services (Gmail,Hotmail,Yahoo,etc..) get flagged quite often since they are the most abused systems since anyone can create an account. As for the logs, we only keeps 2 months worth of logs at my company. Keeping much more than that bogs the system down. Only way to prove it sent ( not necessarily delivered as ) is by having it in your Sent Folder. Viewing the headers of the sent email do not have any status codes if it was delivered/dropped/bounced either.
 
Not a year+ later. Mail servers (at least exchange) log ridiculous amounts of data. I doubt anyone is keeping logs from that long ago. When you send important emails like that, you should always set it to request received/read receipt. That way you get a response returned to you once their email server receives the email, and also when the email is opened (Although they can choose to not send the read when they open it).
 
This is why having your own email server is important--because you can look at the logs and retain them however you want.

If this is something that can be subpoenaed via discovery in a court case, you may still get the information if it's part of a legal proceeding. But you'll have to go through attorneys.
 
Bingo on the last statement. If you sent it to an individual with a free email account, consider it lost. If you sent it to a corporation, SamirD is on the right track. Before going through the discovery phase those, I'd ask for any email or record retention policies they have. If they have one and it says all emails are deleted after 30, 60, 90, etc....days then there may be no recourse. If they have a longer retention, or no retention policy then you may be able to subpoena it. May being the key word as it depends if they can recover / retrieve it and you may have to go to litigation to get it.

IMO, it boils down to how much it is worth to you and do you have the funds to try and get it.
 
Not possible in a way that would work on even the most common platforms, especially if the receiving party doesn't "want" to get it. Big places or things under regulation may have logs on the other end but good luck with that. Even then if they really don't "want" to get it they can claim all sorts of IT problems and usually get away with it.

Source: proving similar at work multiple times, unfortunately for the lying/"forgetful" parties we have realllllly good logs for several years back ;)

FWIW a printout of the full email from your end and an affidavit may not be worthless in a legal dispute, in a 50/50 kind of decision it could be the one thing to tip it your way.
 
Aluminum said:
Not possible in a way that would work on even the most common platforms, especially if the receiving party doesn't "want" to get it. Big places or things under regulation may have logs on the other end but good luck with that. Even then if they really don't "want" to get it they can claim all sorts of IT problems and usually get away with it.

Source: proving similar at work multiple times, unfortunately for the lying/"forgetful" parties we have realllllly good logs for several years back ;)

FWIW a printout of the full email from your end and an affidavit may not be worthless in a legal dispute, in a 50/50 kind of decision it could be the one thing to tip it your way.
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Great additional insight! Didn't know the printout and affidavit could carry weight. :cool:
 
Sounds like you should cease doing business with said entity. There isn't much you can do.

Ever since we went to this system of email me don't write me and text me don't call me in the business world, everything went to shit. I can't stand email or texting but everybody is too fucking lazy to just communicate with each other in person or over the phone anymore.
 
tangoseal said:
Ever since we went to this system of email me don't write me and text me don't call me in the business world, everything went to shit. I can't stand email or texting but everybody is too fucking lazy to just communicate with each other in person or over the phone anymore.
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From my experience, if you really need something done in a timely manner, it still is done via phone and in person. The next down the ladder seems to be text and then fax, and then email tying with regular mail, unless it's registered or certified--then it's up there with phone and in person.
 
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