I am considering using a service called readnotify.com

 http://www.readnotify.com/readnotify/faq.asp#SendWhat

Form the perspective of the Sender, what are the privacy and security
implications of the service.

1) Will my email be sold into spam slavery (or covering all the bases
will it be given away, traded, etc)?

2) Will my XP Pro SP2 w/ Office XP SP3 setup be compromised?  From
what I read, there is no *necessity* for me to install a "plug-in" if
I append certain suffixes to a target email address.

Scope is "ensured" receipt option:

I intend to use the option for "ensured" return receipt but it stores
the message on one of their Servers.  The intended target, situated
behind a firewall would fetch the email from that Server, triggering a
ReadNotify event notice and message to my email. They allow the event
notice to be sent to my email, or as a cell phone Text message.

3) If I choose the cell phone text route, will my cell phone number be compromised?

The following concerns are from the perspective of the target. 
Remember, I intend to use the "ensured" receipt option.

4) 
Will I compromise the security of the "commercial" target's firewall
protected LAN or desktop?  I think "ensured" receipt is less
instrusive because the "implant", if that is the term, resides on a
third-party server.  Please confirm.

5) Is their email privacy maintained (less important consideration as
they are technically a "commercial" enterprise)?

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Clarification of Question by grthumongous-ga on 01 May 2005 10:35 PDT

If there is another similar Notify service that a GA  Researcher is
intimately familiar with then that would be acceptable. Capisce?

1) According to their Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into the
Terms of Service, your e-mail address will not be disclosed to anyone
without your prior instruction unless such disclosures required by law
or is otherwise necessary to protect ReadNotify or personal safety of
Members or the public.  Therefore, they would be legally liable to you
if they disclosed your e-mail address to a third party without your
permission under most circumstances.  However, they do reserve the
right to change their Terms of Use at any time, so you would want to
keep an eye out for modifications.

"ReadNotify Privacy Statement" http://www.readnotify.com/readnotify/privacy.asp

"ReadNotify.com terms and conditions"
http://www.readnotify.com/readnotify/terms.asp


2) If you do not install any software or plug-ins, then your local
computer is unaffected by your usage of the service.

3) Your cell phone number should be included under the Privacy Policy
since it is effectively an e-mail address used to receive a text
message.

4) No.  There is no implant because the server will know when the
message has been accessed.  Based on my understanding, it would be no
different than if the recipient used a web-based mail service, which
can track whether or not a message is read or unread inherently.  You
just have access to the message status normally provided only to the
account holder.  However, the recipient's firewall may prevent the
user from accessing the message from the ReadNotify server, rendering
your message undeliverable.  I assume ReadNotify sends the target a
message with a hypertext link to the actual message text located on
their server.  If the recipient cannot use the hypertext link to get
to the server because of security on their side, then they cannot get
the message.  They also may not want to be bothered with getting your
message that way, which would also leave it undelivered.

5) ReadNotify's privacy policy says that they do not monitor e-mail
contents.  Certainly, they potentially could.  However, anyone on the
Internet whose system is used to transport your message can read it
already anyway unless it is encrypted, so it is arguably not
significantly less secure than it is already.  If you are concerned
about monitoring, encryption is the way to go whether you are using
the service or not.

Sincerely,

Wonko