EU Privacy Regulations (France & Italy): Email Open Tracking

France’s independent data protection and privacy regulator, the CNIL, and Italy's similar counterpart, Garante, enforce data privacy laws, handle complaints, and regulate how organizations collect and use personal data.

Recently, they have proposed recommendations and new guidance on how email tracking should work for opens under EU privacy laws.  Let’s get into what those proposals are, how it could affect measurement of engagement, and what you can do in Drip today.

What Are the Proposed Regulations?

In order to track a subscriber’s opens, an invisible tracking pixel is placed in all marketing emails. When someone opens that email, the tracking pixel loads and reveals information about their device, like their IP address and email client. Given that process and its collection of information, France and Italy have determined this should require the same kind of consent as website cookies. Therefore, this tracking method should be a process that subscribers provide explicit consent to, with the option to opt out at any time.

A couple of highlights to keep in mind:

• This guidance applies to open tracking (pixels). 
  • Click tracking is not affected. Links in your emails will continue to work and report like they always have.
• These requirements apply to subscribers located in France and Italy for now.
  • However, the possibility of expanding to a broader EU adoption is very likely.
• France and Italy each set their own deadlines and specifics, and the requirements differ a bit between the two countries.
  • Official English translation: Recommendation on Tracking Pixels in Emails from CNIL
  • Italy’s recommendation does not seem to have an official English translation published as of 8/17/26. Will update once released.

What Does This Mean for My Account?

Currently, these regulations are relevant to any subscribers in your list from France or Italy.  Should you primarily market to people outside of those countries, then your setup is unlikely to require any major changes. However, we recommend that you consult with your legal counsel to assess your company's risk.

What Can I Do at Drip?

You can fully shut off open tracking for your account(s) upon request. 

If you need to remove tracking pixels for all emails to meet these requirements, please reach out to  support@drip.com, and we can disable it for any of your accounts.

Considerations before turning off open tracking:

• Disabling open tracking applies to your entire account and applies to all subscribers and all sends going forward.
• As your account will no longer receive Open events, this will affect:
  • Open metrics in Email Metrics/Campaign Dashboards
  • Segments/Saved Segments utilizing any Email Activity filters related to opens
  • Workflows that rely on open activity for Decisions, Goals, Triggers
• Click tracking is unaffected and remains available for your reporting, segments, and workflows.

What’s Next for Drip?

While removing open tracking account-wide is a mandatory first step, we recognize that a diverse subscriber list may require a more tailored approach.

Understanding that businesses will want something more nuanced and flexible, we're currently looking into additional features and tools that will help our customers better manage these changes.

Here’s what we currently are working on:

Subscriber-level consent:

Rather than an all-or-nothing approach to open tracking, this allows for individuals to either consent to or opt out of tracking. The idea is to add “tracking preference” to profiles similar to how SMS consent works in Drip today. That way, consent can be honored dynamically per subscriber

Option for existing subscribers to manage their open tracking preference:

By providing a way for subscribers to control their open tracking preferences, it allows them to opt out of open tracking without having to unsubscribe from your emails entirely.

Open tracking consent collection and management:

• Onsite/Drip Forms: Allows for the ability to add a consent box to collect open tracking preferences for emails.
• API integration: Allows for consent collection/management via outside methods to integrate and be stored in your Drip account. 

We'll continue to provide updates on these additional features for open tracking management. If you have any questions, contact support through our in-app chat widget or email support@drip.com

Next Steps

1. Review where your subscribers are based, and what portion of said list is based in either France or Italy
2. Consult your legal counsel about how these regulations impact your business and consent requirements
3. If you need to disable open tracking immediately, contact our support team as soon as possible
4. Stay tuned for more granular options to roll out in the future