I have just been telephoned by a sales person from a company called Shergroup. She started by explaining that I had recently opened an email from them, and was then about to try to sell me something.

I was surprised as I had not authorised the sending of a read receipt (I use Outlook as my mail client), and said so.

She explained that they had a system that could tell if I opened an email - and seemed rather surprised when I said that she had just guaranteed that I would delete unread any other emails from them (indeed I might put them on the blocked list at my ISP).

My first thought is how to stop this happening.

My second thought is that it is or may be an offence, in the UK, under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

What does the team think?