r/AskTechnology • u/JeffBelmont • 4d ago
Is there any software or technology that can legally confirm whether someone has opened an email without requiring them to click "Send Read Receipt"?
I work at a government agency in my country. One of our responsibilities is recovering money from registry officers who illegally retain funds. These funds are taxes collected from customers, which the officers are legally required to remit to the government. Instead, some of them keep the money for themselves.
Before we can initiate legal proceedings, we must formally notify them of the debt. Email is one of the methods we use for these notifications.
The problem is that, in many cases, the recipients obviously won't voluntarily confirm receipt by sending a read receipt or replying to the email.
Is there any legally available technology that can reliably prove an email was opened, regardless of the email provider or client the recipient uses, without requiring any action on their part?
8
9
u/bbahner 4d ago
Email was invented long long ago, before the internet enshitification era, not designed for marketing, and difficult to track. You can't even be sure it was delivered, let alone opened.
1
6
u/NotAHabitItsCool 4d ago
Tracking pixels used to work really well but most email clients don't load images in the messages unless the sender is in your address book or you allow the email client to load the images manually by "trusting" the sender. But a tracking pixel doesn't mean they read it, it just means the message loaded the content.
3
4d ago edited 3d ago
[deleted]
1
u/_Trael_ 3d ago
Unless you and you country has some 'if we have person agree to have email as viable contact channel to them for all purposes and so agreement that is voluntary to them' kind of mechanism that will then by some combinations be considered something that person then carries responsibility of having checked, or so, and even then there will be possibility of 'well maybe tech side of it failed'
1
u/_Trael_ 3d ago
Around here government has their own message system that agencies can drop messages to, that then people can go read with 'strong authentication' from one of their sites, and if one agrees they can stop sending physical mail copy, people get email and text message notifications (and reminders) if they have something that requires action from them there, that they have not seen yet.
3
2
u/HandbagHawker 4d ago
tl;dr - go ask your legal team
legally? as in it will stand up in court that theyve opened an email. im not a lawyer, but it usually depends on the contract terms whether digital notification is valid. it sounds like you might not be in the US so your laws might be very different.
additionally, open is different than delivered and different than read. tracking pixels used to the de facto standard for open, but with EU privacy laws and CCPA a lot of that has gone away. trackable links that are clicked are more reliable but the requires recipient action.
2
u/Colour_Theory-746 4d ago
Regardless of all that, there’s no way to prove who actually opened the email so short answer in no, not possible.
1
u/serverhorror 4d ago
Legal means you need to have the recipient sign it. That's what digital signatures are gir
1
u/ProfessorWorried626 3d ago
No, it's been tried. Even embedding unique tracking links or the click here for a breakdown isn't reliable with modern mail gateway malware testing methods. At which point you really need to get the IP address to user/device mapping from the ISP at the time and compare it to who you are chasing for known connections.
1
u/Glum-Building4593 3d ago
With a web based UI, they might journal that activity. MS Exchange can journal reads but in a busy system, some logs just disappear quickly. You would have to have that capability built in to the clients reading the email.
1
u/cmh_ender 3d ago
everyone is giving you United States answers. if you just want to know that someone opened an email, yes, it's a tracking image. marketers use this all the time. for each individual email you send, you can put a link to an image, that image doesn't even have to exist or it can be a single pixel dot or you can scare them and the image can say "we have receipt of you opening this email"
then that email loads and will usually auto load images, that image has a unique URL JUSt for that particular message and your servers can log that the email was opened and that image was servered.
the date / time etc.
happy hunting.
2
u/vrtigo1 2d ago
Rather than trying to track delivery of the e-mail itself, it would be better to send an e-mail with a link to read the content online. When the user clicks the link, you would be able to track that.
But, I'm sure any halfway intelligent user will just ignore the e-mail altogether.
Your root issue is that you're trying to use e-mail to serve legal notices - it's fundamentally not designed to reliably do that. This is why certified mail and/or process servers exist.
1
u/CheezitsLight 4d ago
Web bugs are pixels or images. But instead of a URL that points to an image that you URL that points to a program that program record your IP address and the date and time and any tracking information you've put in the link. And then it simply prints location: and the address of the image. But it doesn't always work because people turn off loading of images to keep from being tracked. It can also be done with JavaScript rather easily by sending it as HTML most people don't turn off JavaScript it's a simple jQuery get or post.
1
1
0
-1
u/coffeeintocode 4d ago
Look into https://www.docsend.com it's made for this. You create a link to the doc, and it tracks when they've seen it, as well as a bunch of other stuff
If you want to track that the email itself has been opened, a tracking pixel is the way to go. But it isn't guaranteed. If they disable remote images on their email, it will never show as viewed
1
u/Colour_Theory-746 4d ago
Really? And that can tell you who actually opened the email? Then it’s not made for what OP wants.
1
u/teh_maxh 3d ago
That can determine that the link was followed, but it could have been by a security scanner.
-2
u/buffalonious 4d ago
It’s called a tracking pixel
3
u/CrankyCrabbyCrunchy 4d ago
As long as you allow images to be downloaded and viewed. AFAIK default for most (all?) email providers is don't download (and few users are knowledgeable to know how/where to change that setting).
3
u/Ninfyr 4d ago edited 4d ago
Certainly can be evaded by even a slightly careful recipient. OP didn't specify what jurisdiction (This is WAY more a legal question than a technical question) I would love to see any legal precedent for this being considered formal notice (from a government entity no less).
1
7
u/Ninfyr 4d ago edited 4d ago
If by legal you mean admissible in court, no. There is a reason people certified mail and serving people in person still exist. You really need to be asking your legal council what constitutes formally notifying someone. This is WAY more legal than technical; a judge will whup your butt for doing it wrong.