Determining When I Read An E-mail
 

I have a need to determine when I actually opened an incoming e-mail several months ago. I have the e-mail in question in my MacBook (Leopard) Mail file and can easily see when it arrived in my Mail mailbox. The record at Cox (my actual service provider) is long gone.

Does anyone know if it is possible to determine when I first opened the e-mail and, if so, how do I do it? Other discussion groups seem unable to deal with this question, so I thought I'd give FlyerTalkers a try.

Thanks in advance.

Without an add on to track stuff like that I don't believe that's stored information by your mail system. So I think you are out of luck.

If the e-mail contained a Web bug and was opened recently (within the lifetime of a Web browser cache), there might be some indication in the cache of the exact time that the Web bugs were accessed. But months later? It's very unlikely unless the time is already noted in whichever email program you are using.

You might be able to use one of the forensic metadata tools to see what is stored in your file, but in my experience that value will be the last time you "read" the file, not the first time.

This is a popular set of free tools in my industry:

http://www.pinpointlabs.com/new/utilities.html

Thanks; I'll give it a try.