The pixel captures open data, including the time, date, and IP address, which we can use to locate roughly the town or city where the activity occurred. This information is used mainly for reporting purposes, but you can also use this for segmentation and follow up activity.

The tracking pixel only downloads if your contact downloads the image in the campaign. In some email clients, this is turned off by default, for example, Microsoft Outlook. Therefore, if they want, a contact can stop the tracking pixel by stopping their client from downloading images.

In reality, the tracking pixel is no different from any other image downloaded from any website on the internet. Any time you view an image on a website, the user's IP address and the date and time of the request is stored.

You can use tracking as long as you follow the law. The ICO's guidance and specific text from the law say that consent for any processing activity (such as tracking opens and clicks) should be informed. As part of this, you must clearly define the purposes of processing data to individuals when they sign up. How you do this varies considerably across businesses and industries.

We cannot provide specific legal advice, but an excellent example is for users to select a link that takes them to the signup form. Before the signup link, you can clearly describe the context and purpose of collecting this data to the user.

Once users reach the signup form, you can add another message to describe the processing activities related to your newsletter and also a link to your privacy policy.

Whereas this example relates to an email signup form, the same principle is true regardless of your method of communication.

We recommend that your signup disclaimers and privacy policies are reviewed to ensure that you address tracking in a transparent and compliant way.