11
votes
Is there a way to make sure sent e-mails are opened?
A few years ago I decided to ditch Gmail and started using Disroot as my e-mail provider. It was recommended by privacytools.io.
I realized that at least one e-mail I sent went to spam and now every time I send an e-mail I get paranoid if it will reach its destination. Is there a way to know if the e-mails I send are opened?
I've thought about switching to a more mainstream e-mail provider like ProtonMail but I already have so many accounts linked to Disroot that make switching dreadful. As a matter of fact I still have over 100 accounts that are using my Gmail address because it's so time intensive and not a priority to do the switch. Hopefully in the password-less future this kind of problem will cease to exist.
Have you considered just asking in plain language "please reply to confirm receipt of this message"? That's what I do when it's particularly important to know.
Thanks. Seems like the best solution.
I'll preface this by saying that I personally really dislike what I'm about to suggest, I think it's somewhat sneaky, and somewhat privacy violating for the other party, but it is honestly fairly common now.
What people do is use tracker pixels. You embed an invisible 1x1 image with a unique URL; when someone opens the email, they'll load the pixel as part of the email, which sends a GET request to the URL, which then alerts you that they have opened the email. A janky way to basically get read receipts for emails (of course, this won't work with people who have image loading disabled and/or counter-pixel addons).
Of course, there are plenty of browser addons and services which do all that for you.
I'm not aware of a single client, browser or otherwise, which loads external resources in email by default. Gmail definitely does not. Tracking pixels will (thankfully!) not be a reliable way to track message delivery.
Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure most clients do have images enabled, since it's not a great experience for users given how many images are in emails these days (sometimes, it's all image - even the text is in images).
I'm pretty sure web gmail does by default. I had to manually disable it for my main account, and for my tertiary gmail accounts (my old uni email, for instance), images load and I definitely didn't manually enable that.
The mail app on macOS also loads images by default, it was loading images on my email until I manually turned it off again.
Looking at some emails with images in my gmail, it looks like you don't get served the original image. They are all hosted on Google's own CDN.
Doing a quick search, I find this / snip1 / snip2 which confirms it.
In other words, you don't get tracked from the images.
That's only if Google loads them when the email is received and permanently caches them. Pixel tracking still works even if proxied if the images are fetched by anyone upon an email being opened.
Interesting, I thought it was a CDN that automatically cached everything but looks like it's just a proxy and doesn't prevent tracking when the email was opened.
Huh—apparently you're right. I checked a random gmail account I haven't touched the settings on, and it indeed defaults to loading external images.
Well that's fucking atrocious.
Anyway, it's still not reliable, because people may (and absolutely should) disable that setting (though clearly it will be less unreliable than it should be).
Google mirrors images on their own servers so as soon as the email hits gmail, google downloads it. Then when you open the email, you get the copy from googles servers. That way they still can't track if the email was opened but you get images loading by default.
Gmail, by default, doesn't show remote/linked images - but you can easily change, they prompt on every message with them to enable for this sender, or always
I'm sure I'm the only one left with that option turned on. 🙂
The other thing that can happen with this is false positives where some email scanner at your mail provider follows links to check if they redirect to malicious stuff so they can quarantine emails that link to malware. I don't know how common that is, but have heard of such things happening.
Other people answered your question pretty well.
I highly recommend you switch to your own domain. I use Firstname@firstnamelastname.com. You can then use that email with most email providers. In the past, I have used gmail, proton mail, and mail fence. I never once had to change any accounts. I now use fastmail (and would highly recommend it). I don’t know if disroot supports custom domains, but it is worth trying.
Seconding the own domain thing. It costs money but it give you so much control. You can freely switch between email providers without issue. I was hosting my own email for a while but I just switched to fastmail which was a seamless transition.
My understanding is you aren't able to do this.
The closest is the use of something like a tracking pixel. You embed a unique image/resource you host in every email you send, then check if that resource has been requested.
If it has been requested the person you sent the email to has opened the email. If it hasn't you're not able to tell if you went to spam, you were left unread, or the recipient blocked requesting that resource.
There's also good old-fashioned read receipt. But generally speaking the recipient has to opt-in on them.
That being said, most email clients block both of these techniques by default for obvious privacy reasons.
Of the two, I would recommend using read reciept. It's the more 'honest' way to know, and typically most email clients will ask the user if they want to notify you the first time they get one.
Where do I setup read receipts? E-mail client? E-mail provider?
It's your client. Here's instructions for thunderbird
I don't think the email protocol has support for read receipts.
Some proprietary email clients/servers like Outlook and Exchange have support for read receipts, but only within their own ecosystem. A message you send from Outlook through Exchange to a Yahoo Mail user will not include the request for a read receipt. Even if that were an option though, there are lots of jerks like me, who decline read receipts by default.
There is also the more sneaky option of embedding an image with a URL that contains an identifier with a unique ID. This is how advertisers sending spam track who opens their emails. But this is becoming less and less effective as more email clients block loading external assets by default.