Configure Exchange to ignore requests for read receipts on certain mailbox

Question

We have an Exchange (2010) mailbox that is automatically monitored by a windows service, this service connects to the mailbox periodically using Exchange Web Services 1.1 and imports the emails into SQL - it then deletes the messages from the mailbox.

This all works fine, however, if someone emails this address with a "Request Read Receipt" - exchange is firing a "This message was deleted without being read" message back to the sender - this is quite embarrassing (and misleading) - short of modifying our service to somehow "read" the message prior to deletion - is there any way to configure exchange (via powershell or whatever) to ignore requests for a read receipt?

Solution

I think you're looking for the MessageTrackingReadStatusEnabled property of the mailbox. If you set this parameter to $false, the read status won't be displayed to senders who view delivery reports for messages they send to this user.

To change the parameter run this:

Set-Mailbox -Identity "alias" -MessageTrackingReadStatusEnabled $False

To see the full list of parameter settings and what they do, go here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/a0d413b9-d949-4df6-ba96-ac0906dedae2(EXCHG.141).aspx