How To Suppress POP3 Read Receipt Duplicate Mails in Exchange 2013

Many of us are still using POP3 clients for specific reason as it is easier in Exchange 2013. But most of us face the duplicate read receipt mails in Exchange 2013 with Outlook 2007/2010/2013 clients.

SYMPTOMS

Consider the following scenario:

• You receive an email message in a Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Service Pack 1 (SP1) or a later version environment.
• The sender requests a read receipt.
• Sender uses POP3 account in his Outlook 2010/2013
• You move this email message to a personal folder file (.pst) or you move the message to another folder in the mailbox
• You have settings Leave a copy of message on the server and delete after n number of days or Leave a copy of message is unchecked which move all messages from this folder to the Personal Folder file (.pst)
• In the .pst file, you permanently delete a moved message by pressing SHIFT + DEL. This message included a read receipt request.

In the above scenario, an unread report message is sent unexpectedly to the sender who requested the read receipt for the deleted message, even if the recipient has configured Outlook to not respond the read recipient. The non-read report message resembles the following:

Initially we had problem with the read receipt which comes twice like below.

Your message 
                         To: Ahmed
                         Subject: test - ganesh 3
                         Sent: Sunday, October 25, 2015 3:46:51 PM  
                       was read on Sunday, October 25, 2015 3:47:03 PM 
                      

Select all Open in new window

and  after user reads the message and acknowledges you will this read receipt.

Your message
                          To:  aelhamamy@gmx.com
                          Subject:  test - ganesh 3
                          Sent:  10/25/2015 3:46 PM
                      was read on 10/25/2015 3:47 PM. 
                      

Select all Open in new window

To suppress the POP3 /IMAP alerts I tried to use following commands.
 

Set-PopSettings  -SuppressReadReceipt  $true
                      Set-ImapSettings  -SuppressReadReceipt  $true
                      Set-RemoteDomain -identity * -DeliveryReportEnabled $False
                      

Select all Open in new window

I tried to suppress the alert using a PowerShell command which didn’t help. Instead of suppressing we got a replacement of second read receipt with the below as the users were downloading the mails from the mailbox and it empties the mailbox. 
 

Your message 
                         To: Ahmed 
                         Subject: test - ganesh 3
                         Sent: 10/25/2015 3:47 PM. (UTC+05:00) 
                      was deleted without being read on 10/25/2015 3:47 PM. (UTC+05:00) 
                      

Select all Open in new window

We tried with Rules to block the delivery receipts with subject and body words; that didn’t help as it is an internal mail acknowledgement that starts from the mailbox.

We tried also fixing individual mailbox level and that too didn’t resolve the problem.
 

get-casmailbox -resultsize unlimited | Set-CASMailbox  -PopUseProtocolDefaults $false -PopSuppressReadReceipt $true
                      

Select all Open in new window

Solution :

Here are the steps we took to fix the issue.

When I analyzed the header of both the mail read receipt and the deleted mail without been read receipt, I found a piece of information called  Report-type=disposition-notification in the email header of each Read/Delivery receipt. So I created rule with two conditions as follows.

The subject / body matches the Not Read: ‘or’  was deleted without being read and the message type is Read Receipt. I set the action to Delete the message without notifying anyone only if the conditions match.

Conclusion: This above rule solved as a workaround, many of us come around this kind of issue. This might help!