1321219 - Thunderbird ignores return receipt settings - always sends receipt

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[turbochris]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/54.0.2840.100 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

I have set return receipt settings to never send return receipts at both global and account level.

However Thunderbird always silently sends a return receipt if one is requested. 

To reproduce:
* Configure return receipts to never be sent
* Send an email to myself and request a return receipt
* When the email is received, mark it as read
* A return receipt is then sent automatically (and then received)

I have also tried the options to prompt for an action which are also ignored - no prompt, and return receipt automatically sent.

I am using Thunderbird 45.5.0 on Arch Linux, and have also tested with Thunderbird beta 50.0b3. I have also tried restarting in "safe" mode with add-ons disabled. I have checked in advanced config and the various settings are indeed set to false but seem to be ignored.

Apart from being annoying, this opens up privacy issues - I was alerted to this fact by a bounced return receipt from a spam email.



Actual results:

Return receipt settings are ignored and return receipt silently sent automatically.


Expected results:

Return receipt should not be sent, or the user should be prompted if that has been configured.

Comment 1

[Ben]

Just tested on mine, same issue happening here. Using Thunderbird 38.6.0 (Ubuntu).

Comment 2

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

I tried with current trunk, Daily TB 53. I followed the steps in comment #0 sending an e-mail to myself. No return receipt sent or received.

Comment 3

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to turbochris from comment #0)
> Thunderbird always silently sends a return receipt if one is requested. 

By what message header(s) relevant to "return receipt" sent by mail sender?
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_receipt

IIRC, some issues existed when multiple MDNs, both MDN&&RRT, single RRT, multiple RRTs, X-RRT/X-MDN during test phase, are sent by mail sender.

Comment 4

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to turbochris from comment #0)
> Apart from being annoying, this opens up privacy issues
> - I was alerted to this fact by a bounced return receipt from a spam email.

Whay can "Mail Delivery Notification" be "privacy issue"?
This is merely notification to mail sender of that "the mail has been saved in my Inbox of my mailer".
i.e. The mail successfully arrived to destination of the mail.
This is feature when many problems occurred in mail relaying among many SMTP servers due to unreliable network or unreliable SMTP servers or unreliable mail servers.
  After user sent an E-mail, user has to ask recipient "Is my E-mail delivered to you?" using Phone.
When network/servers are changed to reliable one, some users misunderstood that "Mail Delivery Notification" == "Evidence of that you read and understood the mail and that you accepted what written in the mail".

Nowadays, MDN may be a powerful tool for spam senders, because spam senders can know "your mail address is active address" by MDN :-)
But is this privacy issue?
If Thunderbird silently sends "return receipt" when X-Something-Relevant-To-Return-Receipt header, spam sender may know such issue in Thunderbird.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

https://mzl.la/2iiZFJs lists all the return receipt bugs touched in the past year.
I don't see a match

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Do you see this with version 52?

Comment 7

[turbochris]

Hello Wayne,

Yes I see the same behaviour with version 52.1.0, testing using the same procedure as in the first report.

Comment 8

[Matt]

Is the mail server one of those operated by a corporation that automatically sends the receipt regardless of the client settings?

Exchange Lotus and Groupwise all used to to my knowledge, but what I know is limited.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Ben do you stlil see this issue?

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Everyone here seems to be gone