Glossary · Email & infrastructure
Email open tracking
Email open tracking records when a recipient views a message, typically via an embedded tracking pixel that silently reports back to the sender the moment the email client loads remote images.
The mechanism is a tracking pixel: a tiny invisible image with a per-recipient URL, inserted into the message body. When the recipient’s email client renders the message and fetches remote images, that request tells the sender the exact time the message was opened, along with the recipient’s approximate location and client software — all without the recipient clicking anything or being asked.
Open tracking is unreliable by nature — many clients block remote images by default, which undercounts opens — but it is also a persistent surveillance mechanism layered onto what recipients generally expect to be a private exchange. For transactional email specifically (password resets, receipts, verification codes), there is no legitimate product need to know whether or when the recipient opened it; the message either reaches the inbox or it doesn’t.
Ciphera Relay includes no tracking pixels and no open or click monitoring of any kind — a message sent through Relay is not instrumented, by design, not just by default configuration.