Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
Tracking services exist which claim to be able to tell you whether or not someone has opened your email. They're only half right.
Has anyone tried www.---.com? It's a free email tracking service. How good and reliable is it? Is it safe to use?
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That's actually a comment that was posted to one of my articles on whether or not you could tell if email has been opened or read by the recipient.
The short answer is that there's really only one email tracking technique currently in use, and it only works maybe half the time. In other words, it's not all that helpful.
Let me explain how it works, and you'll see what I mean.
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When I mention email tracking, most folks think of the "Return Receipt" option that some mail programs display. The intent of that function was exactly what you might expect: an automated email back indicating that the email you sent had been opened.
It doesn't work.
The reason it doesn't work is simple: it requires the cooperation of the email program being used to read the email. Because of abuse by spammers and others, almost all email programs now either completely ignore Return Receipt requests or require that you enable the feature before Return Receipts are acted on. And no one turns it on.
With "Return Receipt" rendered pretty much useless, the technique used today is to include an image - often an invisible image - that is fetched from a web page when the email is displayed. Then, using the web server logs on which those images are hosted, the sender can see who's opened and displayed their email.
There are two very large problems with this technique:
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It works only with HTML or "Rich text" email.
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It works only if users have "display images" enabled.
That last point is particularly telling. Most email programs now default to not displaying images in email. The recipient has to enable it, often by adding the sender's email address to the list of "trusted" senders.
But if the image is not displayed, then the email cannot be tracked. It's just that simple.
Put another way:
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If your email is plain text, there's no way to automatically track whether it's been opened or read. Period.
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If your email is in HTML, then only those recipients who've enabled images can be tracked. The rest appear to have never opened your email, even though they may have.
There are many tracking services out there that gloss over this fact. They'll claim lots of success, but it all boils down to this: you cannot tell with any certainty that someone hasn't read your email. They may have opened it and read it without images turned on, defeating any tracking ability.
And even if you do get notification for those folks with images turned on, all that tells you is that the email was displayed - it does not tell you that the email was actually read.
The only truly accurate way to track whether your email is being read is simply to note whether the recipient acted on it by telling you, by replying, by clicking a link in the email or by doing something else that can only be attributed to having read that email.
Article C3165 - October 1, 2007
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
I have been using a service from time to time, I have tested it. I use it mostly when I am sending important Email to my daughters that "you've got money". I have called them on the phone and asked them not to open it till I send it. I have sent both with a notice to them that it will send back to me and a silent notification, all worked like they were suppose too.... however Leo is correct, 1) they have HTML mail, 2) images will open in their mail. The Ip address locate was very close, with in 5 miles, that's pretty good, butttt there is still no proof that a person has actually read it! All they did was click on it, I do use it sometimes to figure out if my mail is being read in one city or another, this sometimes helps when dealing with Ebay and the person claims they are in one city but their Ip keeps showing up very far from that city, but the best way to know where they are is to insist on a phone call.... you call them and only on Land Line, the area code will then have to be correct.
Posted by: Ken at October 5, 2010 9:43 AMI used to use MSGTAG, which still seems to be around on http://www.msgtag.com/home/
Posted by: David at October 5, 2010 11:53 AMI had the free version, which also depended on the recepient having images downloaded by default but, as has been said, e-mail clients, in the main, don't do that these days. I don't know how their new, paid-for version works (if differently). Perhaps someone could enlighten me. I see they are still showing the free version, despite my receiving numerous mails from them saying that it would not work any more and pushing to upgrade. Odd
Re previous: October 5, 2010 11:53 AM
Posted by: David at October 5, 2010 12:31 PMJust experimented with MSTAG again and the free version does still work, providing images ("remote content" in Thunderbird) are downloaded. Sent a mail to myself and
got a notification back that it had been opened. Seems that the developers were a little economical with the truth when they inferred that it would no longer work and I needed to upgrade! Because their servers are still working, I would guess the "latest" paid-for version still depends on an image being opened but perhaps someone can put me straight on that.
The hideous irony in all of this -- d*mn to the spammers! -- is that there is a perfectly legitimate and valid need for the "Read Receipt" (what Leo calls the "Return Receipt", perhaps confusing it with the US Postal Service postcard item of that name) functionality that was originally built into E-Mail. By flooding us with unwanted Spam and clogging the E-Mail system with useless traffic, they have rendered the Receipt system not only useless to us, but (what is far worse) a weapon to be used by the spammers themselves! Grrrrr!
Posted by: Glenn P. at October 5, 2010 9:10 PMI've tried MailTracking and it's free version works for me. Check it out @ http://www.mailtracking.com/
I did some notes about it on my blog: http://wp.me/p8C1e-1we
21-Dec-2010
Posted by: jun tariman at December 21, 2010 12:32 AM