If you send marketing emails to recipients located in Italy, recent guidance issued by the Italian Data Protection Authority (“Garante Privacy”) may affect how tracking pixels and email engagement tracking should be managed.The guidance aligns with a broader European regulatory trend already highlighted by other authorities such as the French CNIL, especially regarding transparency, consent collection, and user control over tracking technologies in emails.
In recent weeks, the topic of tracking in emails has returned to the spotlight. After the recommendations published by the CNIL (the French Data Protection Authority), the Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante) has also adopted new Guidelines on the use of tracking pixels in emails, with the goal of strengthening transparency and user control.
This is not an isolated intervention, but part of a broader European path. Supervisory authorities are progressively clarifying that even tools taken for granted in the email marketing sector - such as pixels - must be reconsidered in light of data protection rules. And this is highly relevant to anyone using email as a communication channel.
What are these pixels
To truly understand what is changing, it helps to start from the basics. Tracking pixels are tiny, invisible graphic elements - generally very small images - embedded within emails. When the recipient opens the message and downloads the images, the pixel is loaded from a remote server and allows the sender to collect certain information.
This mechanism makes it possible, for example, to know whether and when an email was opened, whether and which clicks were made in the body of the communication, and also to capture technical data such as the IP address or the type of device used. In the most common practice, these pixels are often uniquely associated with the individual recipient, enabling precise and personalized behavior tracking.
And it is precisely this characteristic - that they are tools capable of collecting information attributable to the user - that makes them relevant from a privacy standpoint.
The Garante's intervention and the key points of the measure
The Guidelines are consistent with developments at the European level, in particular the CNIL's indications. The aim is to clarify unambiguously how these technologies must be used in compliance with the law.
The central point is that tracking pixels can no longer be considered purely technical elements. The Garante qualifies them as true tracking tools, akin in logic and function to cookies or other similar technologies and, as such, subject to data protection regulations.
This qualification has very concrete operational consequences. The most important is that, in most cases, the use of tracking pixels requires prior, freely given, specific, and informed consent. It is therefore no longer sustainable to have tracking active by default and to inform the user only in generic terms.
It becomes necessary instead to be transparent and clearly explain whether emails are tracked, what data are collected, and for what purposes. And this transparency must be accompanied by real control. Users must be able to choose and, above all, change their mind at any time, with simple and accessible revocation mechanisms.
For companies, this translates into concrete work on multiple levels: updating privacy notices, reviewing consent collection flows and, often, evaluating and adjusting the technical configurations of the platforms used.
When consent is not required
Privacy regulations provide certain exceptions to the general rule of consent for the use of such tools, in the presence of which pixels can be used without constraints. In all other cases - for example, when the pixel is used for individual profiling, campaign personalization based on open rates, or the creation of commercial profiles -prior consent is mandatory and cannot be circumvented.
From this perspective, the measure is very interesting because it provides a list of practical cases in which these exceptions may apply.
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Aggregated and anonymized statistics
If the goal is to measure, for example, the overall open rate of a campaign without distinguishing individual user behaviors, the tracking can be considered lawful. The data collected, however, must be truly anonymized. In practical terms, this means using non-personalized pixels (the same for all recipients) and adopting techniques that prevent tracing back to the individual, such as anonymizing IP addresses and other technical data.
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Security and authentication
When tracking is used to ensure that an online operation is actually completed by the user - for example, in account activation emails, password reset messages, or handling sensitive requests - the use of the pixel can be justified without consent. The underlying rationale is that the tracking is not used for profiling, but to protect the user and ensure the proper functioning of the requested service.
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Mandatory or public-interest communications
Finally, the Garante considers mandatory communications or those of particular relevance to the recipient. Think, for example, of security notices, contractual updates, anti-fraud communications, or institutional messages driven by a public interest. In these cases, the interest in protecting the user or the sender's legal obligation may justify the sending and related tracking even without consent, precisely because these are necessary communications or directly benefit the recipient.
Privacy by design and by default: what changes for platforms
Alongside these more operational aspects, the measure also addresses structural topics, aimed in particular at providers of email marketing technologies and reiterating once again the importance of the principles of privacy by design and by default. Compliance with privacy regulations cannot be delegated solely to those who use these tools, but must be built into the very design of the platforms.
In practice, this means that email marketing solutions must avoid default configurations that automatically activate tracking without an appropriate legal basis. At the same time, they must offer flexible, granular options that make it easy to adapt the platform's behavior to users' choices and different usage contexts.
Finally, the Garante - aware of the complexity of any adjustments needed to align these tools with the Guidelines- grants the addressees of the measure (providers, users, etc.) a 6-month period from the document's publication to comply.
And magnews?
In this scenario, there is good news: magnews does not need to wait all that time to be compliant.
The platform has long been designed to support granular consent management, in line with the Garante's requirements. This means being able to differentiate purposes, transparently manage user preferences, and maintain precise control over the tracking technologies used.
In particular, email tracking via pixels can be enabled or disabled even at the individual user level, allowing you to honor individual choices without compromising overall operations.
If you would like to explore these aspects in more detail, get in touch with your magnews representative today!