How to Turn Off Email Tracking, and When You Should

Two questions hide behind this one: how to stop tracking the emails you send, and how to stop being tracked in the emails you receive. Both are worth answering.

Table of contents

Stopping tracking on what you send

If you use an extension, the answer depends on how it was designed. Tools that track everything by default require you to remember to disable it each time, which means it will be on when you did not intend it.

The safer arrangement is the reverse: tracking off by default, enabled deliberately per message. In the mailcheck extension there is a setting for exactly this, so the compose window opens with the toggle off and you switch it on for the few emails where timing matters.

To stop entirely: disconnect the extension, which clears the key stored locally, or remove it from the browser. Emails already sent keep their invisible image, so opens on old messages may still be recorded. If you want that data gone, delete the tracked emails from your dashboard, or ask for your account to be deleted.

When you should turn it off

There are situations where tracking is simply the wrong instinct:

• Personal correspondence. Measuring when a friend or a family member reads you is not a business signal, it is surveillance with better branding.
• Sensitive exchanges. Legal matters, human resources, health, anything where the recipient would reasonably object to being measured.
• After a no. Once someone has declined, tracking further messages tells you nothing you should be acting on.
• Newsletters and bulk sends. Use a sending platform with proper consent handling and unsubscribe links, not a one-to-one tracker.
• Anything you could not explain in one sentence. If you cannot say why this specific message needed measuring, it did not.

Stopping being tracked in what you receive

Most tracking depends on your client loading remote images. Turning that off blocks the majority of it:

• Gmail: Settings, then Images, then "Ask before displaying external images".
• Apple Mail: Mail Privacy Protection loads images through Apple's proxy, which does not stop the request but decouples it from you and hides your address and timing.
• Outlook: external images are blocked by default in many configurations, and the setting is under trust centre options.
• Thunderbird and most desktop clients: remote content blocking is a standard preference.
• Browsers: Brave and similar privacy-first browsers block many tracking requests at the network level.

The trade-off is that legitimate images stop loading too, and you click to display them when you want them.

What this means for anyone doing the tracking

Every year, a larger share of recipients blocks or proxies images. That is the honest context for anyone relying on open data: the signal is weakening, and a missing open says less about interest than it did five years ago.

Which is an argument for using tracking narrowly, on messages where it genuinely changes what you do next, rather than as a permanent measurement of everyone you write to.

How to tell whether an email you received is tracked

There is no notification, but the evidence is usually in the message source. Most clients let you view the raw HTML: in Gmail it is under "Show original", in Apple Mail under View then Message then Raw Source.

What to look for is an image tag with a width and height of one pixel, or a style that reduces it to nothing, pointing at a domain that has no obvious reason to be there. Tracking domains often contain words like open, track, pixel, or a long random identifier in the path.

A second clue is link rewriting. If the links in the message point at a redirect domain rather than at the destination you would expect, the sender is measuring clicks as well.

None of this is hidden or illegal. It is simply not announced, which is why knowing how to look is useful if it matters to you.

What blocking images actually costs you

Blocking remote images is the effective defence, and it is worth being honest about the trade-off. Newsletters lose their layout. Legitimate product emails, invoices and shipping notifications often display awkwardly. Logos and signatures disappear.

Most clients handle this with a per-message override: images stay blocked by default, and a single click displays them for the message in front of you. That click is also a decision, which is the point: you choose which senders get the signal.

Tracking in a team, and the conversation to have

If several people in an organisation use tracking, the question stops being individual. Two rules keep it healthy.

The first is that tracking should be a per-message decision, not an account-wide default. A tool that tracks everything by default removes the judgement, and judgement is the only thing standing between legitimate use and systematic surveillance of your correspondents.

The second is that the data should have a retention limit and a way to delete a specific recipient's history. If someone you write to asks what you hold about them, the answer needs to be findable and actionable.

Deleting the data you already collected

Turning tracking off stops new events. It does not remove what is already recorded, and emails already sent still contain their pixel, so opens on old messages continue to be logged.

To stop that as well, delete the tracked emails from your dashboard, which removes the association between the identifier and the message, or ask for your account to be deleted entirely. Under the GDPR you can also ask a provider to delete data relating to a specific recipient, and a tool worth using can do that without deleting everything else.

Conclusion

Turning tracking off, in both directions, is a setting. Knowing when to turn it off is judgement. The second matters more, and the tools that make the deliberate choice easy are the ones you can keep using without discomfort.

Frequently asked questions

How do I stop being tracked in emails I receive?

Block remote images in your client. In Gmail, set images to ask before displaying. Most desktop clients block remote content by default or offer the setting directly.

Does turning tracking off delete the data already collected?

No. It stops new events, but emails already sent keep their pixel and old opens may still be recorded. Delete the tracked emails from your dashboard if you want the history gone.

Is it obvious to a recipient that an email is tracked?

Not at a glance. It is visible in the message source, as a one-pixel image pointing at an unfamiliar domain, and rewritten links are visible when hovering.

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