Even though most messages now go through applications such as Whatsapp, emails are still the main communication tool in the workplace. While, however, with Whatsapp, Facebook and similar applications, it is always possible to receive a message reading confirmation, the same cannot be done with emails.
With all the spam that you receive via email, promotional messages, updates from Facebook or other social networks, etc., it is very easy that the recipient can lose an important email and the only way to know if it is read is by sending a message. Whatsapp, which could also be annoying.
For example, if I sent an email to a customer or a collaborator and I do not receive a reply, I should also consider the possibility that that message has never been read, because it has been lost in the Spam folder of your mail account or because the recipient has not he really opened it.
Conversely, this customer could invent, as an excuse for not replying, that my message never came and therefore had never been read.
The only way to get out of this vicious circle would be to obtain the read receipt or delivery report so that we know if the email has been received and opened .
The delivery report is a feature present in the Microsoft Outlook email client.
If you set up your email account in Outlook when composing an email, before sending it, you can press the Options button at the top to select the delivery confirmation request and the read receipt.
The first is the confirmation of when the email is received, the second instead notifies if the message is opened and read.
When the recipient downloads and reads the message, Outlook will receive the warning.
This method of obtaining confirmation of receipt and reading is however very weak because the recipient can refuse to send it.
the recipient of the message, in fact, can read the message, however blocking the sending of the delivery report, leaving the sender in uncertainty.
In addition, the recipient must also use Microsoft Outlook and not webmail such as Gmail or Outlook.com or Yahoo Mail or Librero etc.
In the offices of large companies, the read receipt is widely used and is always sent, because all employees obey the same internal regulations and use the same settings and the same program, and also because this is the only way to avoid problems of responsibility.
In other areas, however, it becomes practically unusable.
Who does not have Outlook, which always remains a paid program included in the Microsoft Office suite, can take advantage of the read confirmation feature of Mozilla Thunderbird, which works the same way.
In the new email writing mode, it is possible to activate the read confirmation from the options menu, where there is the notification of the delivery status and the return receipt .
Without using an email client and trying to overcome the limits of the read confirmation sent through a software, it is possible to use a very ingenious trick, already described in the guide to find out if someone reads the E-mails on my e-mail account .
In practice you go to insert a white and invisible image in the sent E-mail, which allows the sender to receive notification every time that image is displayed and, therefore, every time the mail has been opened.
With this system it is also possible to obtain reading statistics of that E-mail message, monitor infinite messages, all keeping hidden the fact that the Emails are controlled.
The only way to avoid being tracked by this system would be to disable the display of images, which few do.
Another way to find out if the recipient has received and read the messages received, for free, is the WhoReadMe service, a free service of
This online e-mail monitoring service is also based on the insertion of an invisible image which, when opened and displayed, sends the notification to the sender.
However WhoReadMe works differently: you need to associate your existing e-mail address, so as to provide the real e-mail address to reply to, but the message must be sent by Whoreadme.
Alternatively, monitored emails can be sent from any email client by adding the suffix " .Whoreadme.com " to the recipient's email address.
For example: .
Other free services that you can use to track the reception and reading of emails are online services based on extensions for Gmail to know if a sent Email is read, such as Mailtrack and Streak, which also have paid plans, but in their basic use they work also good for free.
Professional paid email tracking services are:
- BananaTag .
- Yesware .
If you are sending emails from your smartphone, it is interesting to note that an app like K9 Mail, one of the best email clients for Android even if not the easiest to use, allows you to send emails with read and receive confirmation, from the menu of the writing the message.
On iPhone, the confirmation of reading the emails sent by the Mail app already included by Apple can be received if you also install the iTrackmail application, which is based on the usual trick of inserting an image into the message.
Finally, it should be noted that none of the above methods can be truly foolproof.
This is because you cannot know how the email is opened and read, perhaps with the images disabled, perhaps on a browser that blocks any code.
