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As far as I have searched, there are many third-party email tracking systems; and many of them are in the form of add-ons for gmail.

I have tested two of them, and they work fine when the recipients are using gmail or yahoo web clients. But when they use MUAs (Mail User Agents) like Outlook or Thunderbird, a warning message is shown that a "remote content is blocked", and as a result, no delivery report is sent. They can open the emails without any notifications.

Is there a way to track emails undetectably, so no one can detect that emails are being tracked?

I should mention that I am only concerned about the mail being read, not gathering data.

RonJohn
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JetSonic
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    Mozilla may block the tracker in Gmail; see [Content Blocking](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/content-blocking) in Mozilla support. My guess is, you did not test Gmail under the configuration. Some stuff stops working as expected with Content Blockers, like reading articles online. I often get an [incorrect] message stating "Enable ads, please" when I really blocked a tracker. That is the price we pay to stop unscrupulous miscreants who attempt to abuse users. – jww Jun 28 '19 at 06:10
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    Many client developers would consider the existence of such a mechanism as a serious bug and work to prevent it. – pjc50 Jun 28 '19 at 08:25
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    Why do you want to do this? – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jun 28 '19 at 14:27
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    You can track if a mail is delivered (and when) e.g. if you own the SMTP. If the mail is a link to a page you own, well it can be _tracked_ in the meaning that if you own the server you can know when that content was requested (and from which IP)... So indirectly you know it was read. – Hastur Jun 28 '19 at 15:29
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    The "undetectably" part is the problem. You should not be attempting to trick or deceive your users. Such behavior is why software has to work so hard to prevent such malicious activity. If you really want to know if somebody read your email, "ask" them, whether manually or with automated tools. The fact you are trying to do it in a clandestine manner is what puts you in opposition to end users and the software that is designed for them. If you remove that requirement, you may have better options. – DKing Jun 28 '19 at 15:30
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    The main motivation I can think of for wanting to do this undetectably is if someone is a spammer. They want to find out which emails on their mailing list are actually going to a recipient, and they want it to be automatic and undetectable because their interests are inimical to those of the recipient. –  Jun 28 '19 at 18:18
  • Why should a read confirmation from the recipients be illegal or intrusive? Many instant messaging applications show read status for the massages by default. If someone don't like this feature, he can disable it, and it will disabled for his sent messages also. Knowing that your sent mail is read or not, is the sender right. The recipient should reply, or even acknowledge that the mail has recieved: whether he want to answer or not. – JetSonic Jun 29 '19 at 14:00
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    It is worth noting that Outlook supports email tracking natively (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/add-and-request-read-receipts-and-delivery-notifications-a34bf70a-4c2c-4461-b2a1-12e4a7a92141). It isn't "undetectable", but it does the advantage that when the reader opens the message, instead of being told about "unknown content" that could read their social media passwords and suck blood from their firstborn babies, they will be told that they got a read receipt and know exactly what it is. – TheHans255 Jun 30 '19 at 07:04
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    @SdHosseini This simply isnt the case, if you instead wrote paper letters and mailed them to these users you would not know if they had recieved them (save for a service like requiring a signature, but even that isnt reliable as a secretary could sign for it but it could still get lost after that, plus the user would know you had done so.) there is no implicit right to know if an email reached its destination any more than there is for a letter. (Its an extra service, optional and the recipient knows you used it) – Vality Jun 30 '19 at 17:37
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    Deeply unethical question. – iono Jun 30 '19 at 21:46
  • @iono True, but most of us are, in the end, slaves to our product manager's wishes. – John Red Dec 25 '20 at 07:44

3 Answers3

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Is there a way to track emails, so no one can detect that emails are being tracked?

No.

If email is tracked it must communicate that information somewhere and therefore must leave a footprint of some kind.

You can use such tricks as a unique image (i.e. the image is only in the email to one recipient ever) and watching the web server to see if the image is accessed, but this will only work if the user loads the images in email, which doesn't always happen, which you've experienced with thunderbird. How much content is loaded is decided by a users settings and so isn't something you can control.

Some companies will provide a link in an email 'can't read this email? click here to view online' which is basically the same thing, but instead of a image online they present the entire emails content again, under the guise of 'helping you' when in fact it's all about tracking you.

Shadovv
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DavidPostill
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Short answer: No.

Longer answer:
The feature to load remote content only after the user allowed it, is mostly implemented to protect your privacy. Of course there are effects like less data usage and maybe some people do not want to have so many images in an e-mail, but the main reason for this feature is data protection.
When there would be a way around this (a feature for you as sender and person who wants to track the e-mail), this would be a bug in the protection feature and the mail program developer would hopefully fix it as soon as possible.

So what you're asking for is a hack or exploit, that allows you to circumvent security measures in the client software. There may be answers for specific softwares, but all of them would be security bugs in the software and may get closed sooner or later.

Another remark:

Is there a way to track emails undetectably, so no one can detect that emails are being tracked?

Don't you think, that this behaviour is kind of sneaky? It may even violate GDPR. If you want delivery reports, just ask the user for it.

There is even a feature in the e-mail standard for it, that should be GDPR compliant, because the standard says, that e-mail software should ask the user before sending the report. If you want an unified UI across different mail programs, add a link "Please click here, to confirm that you received the message".

allo
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If you are a blogger or website owner/operator and you are trying to find out which of your emails people open most often, (yes, to those with super suspicious minds, it IS a thing & so tracking emails does have a purpose other than just being the way some nefarious hacker stalks people!), and you think you're missing some data point, try sending a more personal email and asking the people. You'd be surprised how many respond too just basic humanity. Anyway, sorry I wasn't more help. Hope you figure it out.

ZeroChaos
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