Can I know if a sent email is opened?

[NEWbrain1]

Is it possible, using Talk Talk email, to be able to tell if a recipient has opened an email?

Thanks.

[Gondola]

You're welcome.

[NEWbrain1]

Thanks for your help.

[Gondola]

I'll assume that the self-send test did not give you the expected banner message shown below?

The banner message "The sender would like to be notified when you have read this email" appears in TalkTalk Mail when there's an incoming mail message that has in the email header the line Disposition-Notification-To: <read receipt notification address>. This is what triggers the read receipt process.

However, that banner message did not appear for me when I did a self-send test which is why I requested you to test. So I repeated by sending a test message from one TalkTalk Mail account to another TalkTalk Mail account and that worked as I'd expected it should.

Sender requested a read receipt TalkTalk Mail

 And this is what the banner message looks like in BT Mail:

Sender requested a read receipt BT Mail

Other than not being able to test using just one TalkTalk Mail account for sending a Request for a read receipt I have demonstrated that the Request for a read receipt does work from a TalkTalk Mail account to a different TalkTalk Mail account and from a TalkTalk Mail account to a BT Mail account.

As you can see, the recipient does have the option of sending back or not sending back a read receipt. It's their choice. The sender of the mail would get no receipt if the recipient chose not to send a receipt or if the recipient mail service does not support read receipts. As previously stated, Yahoo Mail accounts and Gmail Personal email accounts do not support read receipts.  TalkTalk Mail, BT Mail and Google Workspace email accounts (when enabled) do support read receipts.

[NEWbrain1]

Hello. I have done the self-send test and three emails were sent and received.

[Gondola]

TalkTalk Mail supports Read receipts. Gmail will support Read receipts if that feature has been turned on by an administrator otherwise a standard personal Gmail account is just like Yahoo Mail and does not support Read receipts. Remember what I said up front that the recipient mail service has to support Read receipts.

If Gmail have taken a dislike to your messages then take that up with Gmail.  If Gmail are now blocking mail that requests a read receipt, perhaps because Gmail consider that it's akin to sending mail with tracking pixels then that's also a Gmail issue. It's nothing that TalkTalk have any control over.

Have you done the self send test without sending to Gmail just sending from and to the same TalkTalk mailbox? I'm asking because I would like to check that MDN's are functional for your TalkTalk mailbox.

Just as an additional check, sending to my own personal Gmail mailbox does still work. Mail is being delivered to the Gmail Inbox. So I have tested with the Request read receipt set and that mail is delivered to the Gmail Inbox also. Because my Gmail account is a personal account and not a workspace account then MDN's are not supported although the originating header from TalkTalk does still include the line:

Disposition-Notification-To: Community 

[NEWbrain1]

As I said before. I sent emails ticked and unticked to the same Gmail address and neither entered the Gmail inbox, something that has never happened before today's experiment. Nothing is showing in the Gmail spam box and emails from other addresses have arrived without any problem. 

It is a strange coincidence that I'm having problems when they didn't occur before I posed my question.

[Gondola]

If the inbound Gmail servers believe your mail is spam because recipients have marked it as spam and Gmail then chooses to drop the mail without any bounceback then that's something you'll need to take up with Gmail.

TalkTalk have no control over how recipient mail services deal with inbound mail. TalkTalk Mail is sent fully authenticated so ought to be delivered direct to an active Gmail Inbox. The new Gmail anti-spam policy is dumping a lot of mail into Spam folders.

How did your self-send test go when you selected the 'Request read receipt'? When you send to a recipient that actually gets the mail message and that responds with the return read receipt then you'll know to expect the Mail Delivery Notification.

[NEWbrain1]

Thanks. I did as you said and the emails were marked as sent. They were sent to a Gmail account but not received. There is nothing in the spam folder.

[Gondola]

When mail is successfully sent it will be copied into your Sent folder. So if that mail is there it's been sent. To what domain are you sending? Is it Gmail perhaps? Gmail are dumping a lot of mail into Spam folders so do check there.

Let me know what you find.

As for testing, always test by sending to the same mailbox you're sending from to make sure mail is sent without an error message appearing, is put into the Sent folder and then arrives in the Inbox. If that works then your mailbox is working. Now repeat but this time tick the Request read receipt box before sending so you know exactly what happens when mail with a Request read receipt arrives in the Inbox.

[NEWbrain1]

Thanks very much. I have tried sending an email to another account, firstly ticking the box 'request read receipt' and then unticking the same box. Surprisingly the account has not received either email. The receiving account has always received emails before.

[Gondola]

TalkTalk Mail supports Mail Delivery Notifications (MDN). 

You select Request read receipt via the compose actions menu prior to sending a mail message.

Request a read receipt

You can request a read receipt but that does not guarantee that the recipient will acknowledge that request or that the receiving mail service supports Mail Delivery Notifications (MDN).

For example, I can request a read receipt for mail sent to Yahoo! Mail but will never get any acknowledgement because Yahoo! Mail does not support MDN. BT Mail supports MDN and so long as the recipient agrees to send a receipt you'll receive that receipt.

You can test TalkTalk Mail supports MDN by sending yourself a mail message to see exactly what happens.