Email tracking#Email marketing and tracking
{{For|Wikipedia's email tracking system|Wikipedia:OTRS}}
Email tracking or email tracker is a method for monitoring whether the email message is read by the intended recipient.{{Cite journal |last1=Englehardt |first1=Steven |last2=Han |first2=Jeffrey |last3=Narayanan |first3=Arvind |year=2018 |title=I never signed up for this! Privacy implications of email tracking |journal=Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies |volume=2018 |issue=1 |pages=109–126|doi=10.1515/popets-2018-0006 |s2cid=41532115 |doi-access=free }} Most tracking technologies use some form of digitally time-stamped record to reveal the exact time and date when an email is received or opened, as well as the IP address of the recipient.
Email tracking is useful when the sender wants to know whether the intended recipient actually received the email or clicked the links.{{cite web|last=Gordon|first=Whitson|title=How to Track the Emails You Send (and Avoid Being Tracked Yourself)|date=6 February 2013 |url=http://lifehacker.com/5981928/bananatag-tracks-your-outgoing-email-tells-you-which-messages-were-opened|publisher=Lifehacker|access-date=24 March 2014}} However, due to the nature of the technology, email tracking cannot be considered an absolutely accurate indicator that a message was opened or read by the recipient.
Most email marketing software provides tracking features, sometimes in aggregate (e.g., click-through rate), and sometimes on an individual basis.
Read-receipts
Some email applications, such as Microsoft Office Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird, employ a read-receipt tracking mechanism. The sender selects the receipt request option prior to sending the message, and then upon sending, each recipient has the option of notifying the sender that the message was received or read by the recipient.{{cite web |title=Understanding read receipts in Outlook |url=https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/request-read-and-delivery-receipts-3d9caae2-3bc3-4bb0-a8d5-42f9423c0a7c |website=Microsoft Support |access-date=23 June 2025}}
However, requesting a receipt does not guarantee that one will be received, for several reasons. Not all email applications or services support sending read receipts, and users can usually disable the functionality if they so wish. Those that do support it are not necessarily compatible with or capable of recognizing requests from a different email service or application.{{cite web |title=Why Read Receipts Don’t Always Work |url=https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/email-read-receipts-dont-always-work/ |website=MakeUseOf |date=14 August 2018 |access-date=23 June 2025}} Generally, read receipts are only useful within an organization where all mail users are using the same email service and application.
Depending on the recipient's mail client and settings, they may be forced to click a notification button before they can move on with their work. Even though it is an opt-in process, a recipient might consider it inconvenient, discourteous, or invasive.
Read receipts are sent back to the sender's "inbox" as email messages, but the location may be changed depending on the software used and its configuration. Additional technical information, such as the sender's details, the email software they use, the IP addresses of the sender, and their email server is commonly available inside the headers of the read receipt.
The technical term for these is "MDN - Message Disposition Notifications",{{cite web |author1=T. Hansen |author2=A. Melnikov |title=RFC 8098 - Message Disposition Notification |url=https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8098#section-2 |website=IETF Data Tracker |publisher=Internet Engineering Task Force |date=February 2017}} and they are requested by inserting one or more of the following lines into the email headers: "X-Confirm-Reading-To:"; "Disposition-Notification-To:"; or "Return-Receipt-To:".
Several email tracking services also feature real-time notifications, producing an on-screen pop-up whenever the sender's email has been opened.{{cite web |title=Email Tracking Notifications |url=https://www.mailtrack.io/blog/email-tracking-notifications |website=Mailtrack |access-date=23 June 2025}}
Return-receipts
{{main|Return receipt}}
Another kind of receipt can be requested, which is called a DSN (delivery status notification), which is a request to the recipient's email server to send the sender a notification about the delivery of an email that the sender has just sent. The notification takes the form of an email, and will indicate whether the delivery succeeded, failed, or got delayed, and it will warn the sender if any email server involved was unable to give the sender a receipt.{{cite web |title=Understanding DSN Messages |url=https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/mail-flow-delivery-status-notification-dsn |website=Microsoft Learn |access-date=23 June 2025}}
Email marketing and tracking
Some email marketing tools include tracking as a feature. Such email tracking is usually accomplished using standard web tracking devices known as cookies and web beacons. When an email message is sent, if it is a graphical HTML message (not a plain text message), the email marketing system may embed a tiny, invisible tracking image (a single-pixel gif, sometimes called a web beacon) within the content of the message. When the recipient opens the message, the tracking image is referenced. When they click a link or open an attachment, another tracking code is activated. These response events accumulate over time in a database, enabling the email marketing software to report metrics such as open-rate and click-through rate.{{cite web |title=What Is Email Tracking and How Does It Work? |url=https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/email-tracking/ |website=Campaign Monitor |access-date=23 June 2025}}
Email tracking services may also offer collations of tracked data, allowing users to analyze the statistics of their email performance.
Privacy issues
Email tracking is used by individuals and businesses including email marketers, help desks, spammers, and phishers to verify that emails are actually read by recipients, that email addresses are valid, and that the content of emails has made it past spam filters.{{Cite conference |last1=Xu |first1=Haitao |last2=Hao |first2=Shuai |last3=Sari |first3=Alparslan |last4=Wang |first4=Haining |title=Privacy Risk Assessment on Email Tracking |book-title=Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM) |publisher=IEEE |year=2018 |pages=2519–2527 |doi=10.1109/INFOCOM.2018.8486432}}
About 24.7% of all emails track their recipients, but fewer than half of users are aware of being tracked.{{cite journal |last1=Englehardt |first1=Steven |last2=Han |first2=Jeffrey |last3=Narayanan |first3=Arvind |date=2018 |title=I never signed up for this! Privacy implications of email tracking |journal=Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies |volume=2018 |issue=1 |pages=109–126 |doi=10.1515/popets-2018-0006 |doi-access=free}}
Common data that can be accessed from email tracking includes, but is not limited to, the IP address, client device properties (desktop or mobile, browser type and version), and a date/time stamp of when the email was read.{{cite web |title=How Email Trackers Work and How to Block Them |url=https://proton.me/blog/email-tracking |website=ProtonMail Blog |access-date=23 June 2025}}
HP email tracking scandal
In the U.S. Congressional Inquiry investigating the HP pretexting scandal, it was revealed that HP security used an email tracking service called ReadNotify.com to investigate boardroom leaks.{{cite web|last1=Evers|first1=Joris|title=How HP bugged e-mail|publisher=CNET|access-date=6 April 2016|date=29 September 2006|url=http://www.cnet.com/news/how-hp-bugged-e-mail/}}
The California attorney general's office has said that this practice was not part of the pretexting charges.
HP said they consider email tracking to be legitimate and will continue using it.{{cite web|title=Web Bugs Trained to Track Your E-Mail |url=https://www.paminga.com/blog/web-bugs-trained-to-track-your-e-mail/ |website=Paminga |access-date=23 June 2025}}