---
title: "Tracking"
description: "What became of the mail this mailbox sent."
url: "https://openemail.uk/docs/mcp/tools/tracking"
area: "MCP server"
category: "Tools"
---

# Tracking

What became of the mail this mailbox sent.

## Tracking tools

| Tool | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| getEmailTracking | Whether one message was opened, by whom, how often, and which links were followed. Takes a thread id, an RFC Message-ID or a tracking id. |
| getFileDownloads | The files sent as download links on a thread: filename, size, how many times each was downloaded, when the last download was, and whether the link is still live. Takes a thread id. |
| listTrackedEmails | Messages sent with tracking on, newest first, filtered by whether they were opened or clicked. |
| getEngagementStats | Open and click rates over a window, with the top links, the clients, and how many fetches were filtered out. |

> These see only mail sent with tracking on, which is on unless it was turned off for the address the mail was sent from or for All addresses. `getEmailTracking` says "nothing tracked for that message" rather than reporting zero opens. The phrases "nobody opened it" and "we were not recording" are different answers, and a tool that gives the first for the second lies about the recipient.

> `getFileDownloads` counts people, not scanners or link previewers, and it never names who downloaded a file, because a download link is one URL for every recipient of the message. Files attached inside a message are not listed, since nothing is recorded when those are opened, so an empty answer means "no download links on this thread" and not "nobody opened the attachment".

> Every rate is over TRACKED messages, never over all sent mail. A mailbox that tracks one message in ten has an open rate for those ten; dividing by everything it ever sent produces a number that falls each time somebody sends an untracked reply, which is not a fact about how their mail is read.

> The counts leave out scanners and privacy proxies, and each report states how many were excluded. Opens seen through Gmail’s image proxy do count, because a person displayed the message, but the proxy caches, so a count through Gmail is a floor rather than a total.