Will recipients know that my email is tracked?
Yes. Every email that HawkOpen tracks ends with the notice “This message contains HawkOpen tracking elements.” and the link “Do not track my activity”, with which the recipient refuses tracking by your company. HawkOpen tracks a recipient only when a consent of that person for your company is recorded.
How can a recipient turn off HawkOpen tracking?
Through the link “Do not track my activity” at the end of a tracked email. Opening it is enough: it refuses tracking by the company that sent the email at once, deletes what was measured about the address before and tells the sender; the page that opens confirms it, and only the recipient can give consent again there. To refuse tracking by every HawkOpen sender at once, the recipient uses the HawkOpen privacy page.
Is email open tracking legal?
This information is general and concerns the features of HawkOpen (TriStiX S.L.). It is not individual legal advice or an assessment of whether a specific campaign or document complies with the law. Customers make their own decisions about their activities and, where needed, consult a qualified specialist. This does not limit any rights they have under mandatory law. Last reviewed: November 11, 2026.
It depends on the country, the purpose and the recipient’s consent, and HawkOpen cannot decide it for you. The data protection authorities of Spain and France say that a tracking pixel in an email generally needs the recipient’s prior consent, with only narrow exceptions.
Can I exclude some recipients or countries from tracking?
Yes. In your settings you can list addresses, whole domains and countries that HawkOpen never tracks. Emails to them are sent without a tracking pixel or tracked links.
A country is matched by the country ending of the address, such as .de or .fr. Addresses on generic endings such as .com cannot be matched to a country this way, so add them as addresses or domains.
These rules can only switch tracking off, never on, and a recipient’s own refusal always applies as well.
Where rules that require consent apply, tracking may start only after that consent has been obtained. The link in the message lets the recipient withdraw consent later.
Related questions: How can a recipient turn off HawkOpen tracking?
Can a sender see if I opened their email?
Only if the sender used a tracking tool, and even then they see that an image in the email was loaded or a link was clicked, not that you read it. Apple Mail, mail provider proxies and security scanners can load that image without you.
What does the HawkOpen tracking notice at the bottom of an email say?
It says “This message contains HawkOpen tracking elements.” followed by the link “Do not track my activity”. HawkOpen adds it at the end of every email that carries a tracking pixel or tracked links, which it does only for a recipient whose consent for the sending company is recorded.
Is email tracking a scam or an invasion of privacy?
It is not a scam, but it does collect data about the recipient, which is why HawkOpen tells them. Tracking records that an image was loaded or a link was clicked; HawkOpen tracks a recipient only with a recorded consent for the sending company, shows the result as an estimate, adds a notice to every tracked email and lets the recipient refuse tracking.
Do I have to tell recipients that I track their emails?
This information is general and concerns the features of HawkOpen (TriStiX S.L.). It is not individual legal advice or an assessment of whether a specific campaign or document complies with the law. Customers make their own decisions about their activities and, where needed, consult a qualified specialist. This does not limit any rights they have under mandatory law. Last reviewed: November 11, 2026.
With HawkOpen the recipient is always told: every tracked email ends with a notice and a link to turn tracking off, and it cannot be removed. Whether informing is enough is a separate question: the Spanish and French data protection authorities say a tracking pixel generally also needs the recipient’s prior consent.
Is secret email tracking ethical for lawyers and other professionals?
This information is general and concerns the features of HawkOpen (TriStiX S.L.). It is not individual legal advice or an assessment of whether a specific campaign or document complies with the law. Customers make their own decisions about their activities and, where needed, consult a qualified specialist. This does not limit any rights they have under mandatory law. Last reviewed: November 13, 2026.
HawkOpen does not offer hidden tracking. A recipient without a recorded consent gets an email with no tracking pixel and no individually tracked links, and a tracked email ends with a notice that cannot be removed. A notice does not by itself make tracking permissible, and some professional rules require the other side’s prior informed consent.
Can I remove, hide or change the HawkOpen tracking notice, and why not?
This information is general and concerns the features of HawkOpen (TriStiX S.L.). It is not individual legal advice or an assessment of whether a specific campaign or document complies with the law. Customers make their own decisions about their activities and, where needed, consult a qualified specialist. This does not limit any rights they have under mandatory law. Last reviewed: November 13, 2026.
No. No setting, plan or option removes or edits the notice in an email that carries a tracking pixel or tracked links. The notice informs the recipient; it is not consent, and removing it or never showing it would not make the measurement permissible.
In HawkOpen’s consent-based model only recipients whose consent is recorded are tracked; everyone else gets an ordinary email without a pixel, tracked links or notice. If you do not want the notice, send the email without tracking: switch off opens and links for that email or campaign.
In the Mailtrack case (PS/00328/2022, upheld in RR/00541/2023) Spain’s data protection authority looked, among other things, at how recipients were informed, and information that could be removed was one element of its assessment.
Where rules that require consent apply, tracking may start only after that consent has been obtained. The link in the message lets the recipient withdraw consent later.
Related questions: Will recipients know that my email is tracked? · What does the HawkOpen tracking notice at the bottom of an email say? · Does the notice in the email make my tracking GDPR compliant?
What does a recipient see after clicking the link in the tracking notice?
A page of the company that sent the email. Opened through the link “Do not track my activity”, it refuses tracking by that company at once, deletes what was measured before and offers the button “I agree after all”; opened through “Do not send me messages”, it changes nothing until the recipient chooses a button: “Do not track my activity” or “Do not send me messages”, which stops further mail from that company. From there a link leads to the HawkOpen privacy page, which covers every sender.
On the privacy page the recipient confirms the address with an 8-digit code, valid for 10 minutes. Then they can choose “Do not track me” for every sender or undo that choice, download the tracking data about their address once per code, and request its erasure. Here too, opening the page changes nothing by itself; only the buttons do.
Both pages are in English, Polish, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, and the answer to a code request is the same whether HawkOpen holds data about the address or not.
Where rules that require consent apply, tracking may start only after that consent has been obtained. The link in the message lets the recipient withdraw consent later.
Related questions: How can a recipient turn off HawkOpen tracking? · How can a recipient see the tracking data about them or have it erased?
How can a recipient see the tracking data about them or have it erased?
On the HawkOpen privacy page for recipients, linked from the page behind the links at the end of a HawkOpen email, after confirming the address with an 8-digit code sent to it. The recipient can download, once per code, a file with the data about that address, or request erasure; erasure is then carried out for every HawkOpen sender that holds data about the address, and further sending to it is stopped.
The file lists the deliveries to the address with their recorded events, signature records, document access and the tracking choice. Erasure removes, for each sender, the deliveries to the address and their events, queued sends, document access, signature records, contacts, list entries and bounce records.
What stays: a coded fingerprint of the address (not the address itself), which keeps further sending from every sender stopped, and the tracking choice. HawkOpen does not publish how long backup copies are kept, and the request is processed in the background, so it is not instant. Choosing “Do not track me” on the same page, without erasure, deletes the earlier tracking data about the address in every company.
Where rules that require consent apply, tracking may start only after that consent has been obtained. The link in the message lets the recipient withdraw consent later.
Related questions: What does a recipient see after clicking the link in the tracking notice? · As a sender, how do I handle a data deletion request from a recipient?
What does the sender see after a recipient turns tracking off?
The recipient is marked as having refused tracking, and your company is told, also through a webhook event if you use webhooks. You can keep writing to them as usual: HawkOpen sends your emails to that address without a tracking pixel, without tracked links and without the notice.
A refusal through the link “Do not track my activity” takes effect as soon as the recipient opens it and applies to your company until the recipient gives consent again on the same page: no one in the company can switch it back, measuring also stops in emails sent before, and what was measured about the address before is deleted. A “Do not track me” on the HawkOpen privacy page works the same way for every HawkOpen sender, but the recipient can undo it later. Refusing tracking is not unsubscribing: the person still receives your emails.
Where rules that require consent apply, tracking may start only after that consent has been obtained. The link in the message lets the recipient withdraw consent later.
Related questions: How can a recipient turn off HawkOpen tracking? · Is consent to tracking separate from consent to a newsletter?
What can a sender see if I use Apple Mail Privacy Protection?
Mostly that Apple loaded the images in advance through its own servers, not when or whether you read the email. HawkOpen classifies such a load as an Apple privacy proxy, not as human activity.
Mail Privacy Protection hides image loads, not link clicks: if you click a tracked link, the sender can still see the click. HawkOpen never presents an image load as proof that someone read an email.
Related questions: What is Apple Mail Privacy Protection? · Can a sender see if I opened their email?
How does HawkOpen choose the language of the notice, and why was it wrong?
HawkOpen guesses the language from common words and letters in the text of your email and picks English, Polish, German, Spanish, French, Italian or Portuguese. When it is unsure it uses English; an email in another language, or one that mixes languages, may get English or a language that shares common words.
Very short emails give too little text to guess, so they get English. A few full sentences in your language make a correct guess more likely.
Related questions: What does the HawkOpen tracking notice at the bottom of an email say?
Is the tracking notice also added to plain-text emails?
HawkOpen adds the tracking pixel, the tracked links and the notice to the HTML version of an email, all in the same step. An email sent only as plain text cannot carry a tracking image.
If a recipient’s mail app shows only the plain-text part of an email, it also does not load the tracking image from the HTML part.
Where rules that require consent apply, tracking may start only after that consent has been obtained. The link in the message lets the recipient withdraw consent later.
Related questions: What does the HawkOpen tracking notice at the bottom of an email say? · What happens if the recipient blocks images?
Can an email signature track me, and does HawkOpen’s signature do that?
A signature can carry a tracking image or tracked links like any other part of an email. HawkOpen’s free signature generator works only in your browser and adds no tracking, and the short “Sent with HawkOpen” line that Free adds to emails with a chosen look is a plain link without a tracking image.
When an email sent with HawkOpen is tracked, the tracking comes from the pixel and links that HawkOpen adds, and the email then ends with the HawkOpen tracking notice.
Where rules that require consent apply, tracking may start only after that consent has been obtained. The link in the message lets the recipient withdraw consent later.
Related questions: How can I tell if an email I received is tracked? · What does the HawkOpen tracking notice at the bottom of an email say?
How can I report spam or abuse sent with HawkOpen?
Write to HawkOpen through the contact details on its Terms / Imprint page. HawkOpen’s terms forbid unsolicited bulk messaging and unlawful surveillance; there is no separate abuse form yet.
You can also act yourself: mark the email as spam in your mail app, stop further mail from that company through the link “Do not send me messages” at the end of every HawkOpen email, or refuse tracking by that company through the link “Do not track my activity” in the tracking notice. Requesting erasure on the recipient privacy page also stops further sending to your address from HawkOpen senders.
Where rules that require consent apply, tracking may start only after that consent has been obtained. The link in the message lets the recipient withdraw consent later.
Related questions: How can a recipient turn off HawkOpen tracking? · How do I stop emails from a sender that has no unsubscribe link?
How can I check who sent me an email tracked with HawkOpen?
The sender is the person or company in the email’s From field: HawkOpen sends through the sender’s own mailbox, not in its own name. The page behind the links “Do not track my activity” and “Do not send me messages” at the end of the email also names the company that sent it through HawkOpen. Opening “Do not track my activity” refuses tracking by that company at once; opening “Do not send me messages” changes nothing until the recipient chooses.
If you do not recognise the sender, check the address carefully before you click any link or open an attachment, or contact the company through a channel you already know.
Where rules that require consent apply, tracking may start only after that consent has been obtained. The link in the message lets the recipient withdraw consent later.
Related questions: What does the HawkOpen tracking notice at the bottom of an email say? · How can I report spam or abuse sent with HawkOpen?
As a sender, how do I handle a data deletion request from a recipient?
Point the person to the HawkOpen privacy page for recipients, linked from the page behind the links at the end of every HawkOpen email. After confirming their address there, they can request erasure, and HawkOpen carries it out in every sender account that holds data about the address, including yours.
After erasure HawkOpen stops further sending to that address from your account, and keeps only a coded fingerprint of the address needed for that. Data you keep outside HawkOpen, such as your own CRM or mailbox, is not touched, so handle it yourself.
Related questions: How can a recipient see the tracking data about them or have it erased?
How do I stop emails from a sender that has no unsubscribe link?
Reply and ask the sender to stop, or block the address or mark the email as spam in your mail app. An email sent through HawkOpen ends with the link “Do not send me messages”, which stops further mail from that company; you can also request erasure on the HawkOpen privacy page, which stops further sending to your address from every HawkOpen sender.
Emails sent from the HawkOpen dashboard and campaign emails also offer that link to your mail program as a one-click unsubscribe. Refusing tracking is different: it stops tracking but not the emails themselves.
Where rules that require consent apply, tracking may start only after that consent has been obtained. The link in the message lets the recipient withdraw consent later.
Related questions: Is it safe to click “unsubscribe” in an email? · How can I report spam or abuse sent with HawkOpen?
Is it safe to click “unsubscribe” in an email?
From a sender you know, usually yes. In an email sent through HawkOpen the link “Do not send me messages” first opens a page; nothing changes until you press the button, and then that company sends you no further messages through HawkOpen.
With an email you never asked for from an unknown sender, it is safer to mark it as spam than to click its links. Stopping messages is a different choice from refusing tracking; the same page offers both. The unsubscribe link in older HawkOpen campaign emails still opens a confirmation page that works the same way.
Related questions: How do I stop emails from a sender that has no unsubscribe link? · Is consent to tracking separate from consent to a newsletter?