A while ago I had asked Dave Shepperd about having a MAIL program capa-
 bility of knowing whether a recipient has read an important message you have
 sent.  Apparently lots of other people across the country using VAXes have
 also asked for this feature.  No one can implement this feature because of
 the MAIL file protection system: only Digital Equipment can change its
 software.

      Unfortunately, Digital's official answer is:

      "The ability to inform a sender when a message is actually read
      is a very contentious issue, since many individuals would consider
      this to be an unacceptable invasion of privacy.  Thus, there are
      no plans to implement such a feature in VMS MAIL."

      On the other hand, Digital says they are "investigating producing" new
 MAIL software that would "probably" have message trace capability.  Sounds
 like a lot of vaporware.

      Dave told me the best he can offer you is the capability of seeing how
 many new unread mail messages that the recipient has.  You can check for
 such information on anyone on our DECnet.

      At the operating-system level, type the following:

                           $  MCR CHKMAIL username

 If the recipient is on another VAX, put the node name immediately ahead of
 the name with double colons, as in:

                         $  MCR CHKMAIL KIM::username

      The response at your terminal will be:

         "User JOHNDOE on node WHATEVERVAX has __ new mail messages."

 If the user has no unread MAIL messages, you will get no response on your
 terminal other than the usual $ prompt.

      The only fly in the ointment is CHKMAIL's inaccuracy: at the moment you
 use this command, the recipient may have already read your important message
 and may have just received some other new MAIL message(s).  The only guaran-
 tee of the user having read your message is when you get no response on your
 terminal.  Anyway, good luck using CHKMAIL.
                                                    Andrea