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Should return receipts be end to end encrypted as well

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I have two email addresses - on different email providers for testing purposes.

lets call these two email addresses alice at disroot dot org and bob at zohomail dot com (not my real email addresses)

Both email accounts are set up on the same machine with mozilla thunderbird. Both accounts have a valid gnu pg keys, created with mozilla thunderbird. Both accounts have open pgp enabled, and default to enabling encryption on new messages by default. Since both accounts are on the same thunderbird installation (and profile and yada yada), I have access to both public keys. When I send an email from one account to another, everything works fine. Replies are automatically encrypted as well. However, as far as I can tell, return receipts are NOT encrypted.

It is my guess that the return receipt is NOT encrypted because I am able to read the plain text message of the receipt in the zohomail web interface which I didn't give my keys. Snippet:

-- Note: This Return Receipt only acknowledges that the message was displayed on the recipient's computer. There is no guarantee that the recipient has read or understood the message contents. Reporting-UA: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.14.0 --

Is this intentional?

I have two email addresses - on different email providers for testing purposes. lets call these two email addresses alice at disroot dot org and bob at zohomail dot com (not my real email addresses) Both email accounts are set up on the same machine with mozilla thunderbird. Both accounts have a valid gnu pg keys, created with mozilla thunderbird. Both accounts have open pgp enabled, and default to enabling encryption on new messages by default. Since both accounts are on the same thunderbird installation (and profile and yada yada), I have access to both public keys. When I send an email from one account to another, everything works fine. Replies are automatically encrypted as well. However, as far as I can tell, return receipts are NOT encrypted. It is my guess that the return receipt is NOT encrypted because I am able to read the plain text message of the receipt in the zohomail web interface which I didn't give my keys. Snippet: -- Note: This Return Receipt only acknowledges that the message was displayed on the recipient's computer. There is no guarantee that the recipient has read or understood the message contents. Reporting-UA: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.14.0 -- Is this intentional?

All Replies (1)

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Hello! I understand your concern about return receipts not being encrypted in Thunderbird. You're right; return receipts are generally not encrypted, as they are more about acknowledging message display rather than content understanding. It's not necessarily intentional; it's more about the nature of return receipts themselves.