PHP - Check if Email Opened

[username]

Hi all, so I am trying to confirm whether an email recipient has opened an email. I believe the only way to do this is by including a clear image i.e. 1px x 1px in the HTML email, and writing to a database remotely. Such as...

<img src="http://www.test.com/check.php?id=123&campaign=456" />

The issue with this is not all mail clients automatically download images, and this is dependent upon the user displaying all content. Is there another way to do this using email logs, or any other method which is 100% accurate?

Thanks in advance.

[Anyango]

imho, you will not be able to get 100% or even 90% accuracy with any method available. You can setup an MTA and can implement many different measures but none of them is going to accurately track how many emails were opened. I might be wrong though but that is my experience.

[dreamcatcher]

The other problem you have is that not everyone allows HTML emails. As Anyango mentioned, its virtually impossible to make this accurate.

dc

[jatar_k]

for reference, it's called a bug, usually a web bug, there are resources around about them.

[Jonesy]

I read email using `alpine` (ne `pine`).
None of the external references embedded in my incoming email are "tickled" by my reading the message.

Spammers use that email technique to verify that the email addy is
a valid and active address.