Alert for Email Tracking Services

According to an opinion from the Article 29 EU Working Party on Data Protection, services that track whether an email has been opened will breach EU data protection laws unless the recipient has given unambiguous consent to the service.

The EU Working Party singled out the "Did they read it?" service as an example of a new type of service. For avoidance of doubt, this is not the 'read receipt' service with which users of popular email software like Microsoft Outlook will be familiar, which gives an external email recipient the opportunity to accept or refuse the sender's request for an acknowledgement that the email has been read.

Instead, the service at didtheyreadit.com, from Florida-based Rampell Software, LLC, offers no opportunity to accept or refuse the tracking. It also provides additional details to senders: the date and time when the email was opened, where, for how long, and whether the email was forwarded or not.