GMX Read Receipts: Does GMX Mail Track Your Email?

A GMX read receipt is a request, and GMX's own help center says the person on the other end can ignore it. GMX calls the feature Lesebestätigung. It sits behind the Options button in the webmail composer and behind the three dot menu in the Android app. The same company, 1&1 Mail & Media, runs mail.com, where the option is reserved for paying customers. Read receipts are the polite half of email tracking. Tracking pixels are the other half, and GMX's documentation has your browser load them unless you change one setting. We read GMX's German and English help pages and its privacy notice on October 9, 2026, and quote the German with translations.

Key Takeaways

• GMX's help page on sending options says a recipient "kann eine von Ihnen angeforderte Lesebestätigung allerdings auch ignorieren" (can also ignore a read receipt you requested), and mail.com limits the option to Premium customers.
• GMX's External Content setting is a box labeled "Externe Inhalte in E-Mails deaktivieren" (deactivate external content in emails), and GMX's help text describes it as the way to switch off automatic loading.
• GMX states that remote images let a sender check "ob Sie die jeweilige E-Mail geöffnet haben" (whether you opened the email), and we found no GMX page describing an image proxy.
• The GMX privacy notice says that, with your consent, incoming mail from commercial senders is analyzed "zur Bildung eines Interessenprofils" (to build an interest profile) for advertising.
• trustedDialog, the sender seal program in GMX inboxes, lets participating companies see aggregated metrics such as open rate, according to the same privacy notice.

Does GMX Have Read Receipts?

Yes, GMX has read receipts in its webmail and its Android app, including on free accounts. GMX's Optionen beim Mailversand help page lists the read receipt next to priority, confidential and vCard. You find these options "wenn Sie oberhalb des Textfelds auf Optionen klicken" (when you click Options above the text field). Here is where each GMX product puts it:

• GMX webmail (gmx.net and gmx.com): compose a message, click Options, tick Lesebestätigung (Read Receipt on the English site).
• GMX app for Android: GMX's Android compose guide says to tap the three dot icon and "setzen Sie den Haken rechts neben Lesebestätigung" (tick the box next to Lesebestätigung). PCtipp walked through the same steps on October 10, 2023, using GMX Mail version 7.35 on Android 13.
• GMX app for iOS: GMX's iOS compose page covers recipients, Cc, Bcc, attachments and formatting. It does not mention a read receipt, and we found no other iOS help page that does.
• mail.com: the mail.com sending options page states: "The 'Read Receipt' sending option is only available to Premium customers."

Notice the Android wording. GMX pitches the box as a way to be sure, "vor allem bei geschäftlichen E-Mails" (especially with business email), that your message gets read. The receipt cannot promise that. Technically it is a Disposition-Notification-To header, and RFC 8098, the IETF standard from February 2017, calls it "merely a request" that recipients' mail programs "are always free to silently ignore."

Can You Refuse a GMX Read Receipt?

Yes, you can always refuse a GMX read receipt, and GMX says so in two languages. The German page: "Der Empfänger kann eine von Ihnen angeforderte Lesebestätigung allerdings auch ignorieren." (The recipient can, however, also ignore a read receipt you requested.) The English GMX.com sending options page is blunter: "Please note that the recipient can decline to send read receipts" and "There is no way to force a recipient to send a read receipt."

GMX's help center does not show what a GMX user sees when a receipt request arrives. GIGA, in a July 31, 2024 guide, describes the recipient being asked to click a confirmation when opening the message, adding: "Das geschieht jedoch komplett auf freiwilliger Basis." (This happens on a completely voluntary basis.) We did not open a GMX account to test the prompt.

If you write from GMX to a personal Gmail address, expect silence. Google's read receipt help page says: "Read receipts are only available to work or school accounts. They don't work with personal Gmail (@gmail.com) accounts." For how other providers handle the same header, see our reviews of Outlook read receipts and AOL Mail read receipts. Yandex Mail goes further and offers no read receipt at all, only a delivery report, as our Yandex Mail read receipts review explains.

Does GMX Block Tracking Pixels?

Only after you switch on the "Externe Inhalte in E-Mails deaktivieren" box; GMX's help pages present blocking as a change you make. The Externe Inhalte help page explains the mechanism plainly: "Die E-Mail enthält lediglich eine Anweisung an Ihren Browser, das Element nachzuladen. Dieses Vorgehen ermöglicht es dem Absender, zu prüfen, ob Sie die jeweilige E-Mail geöffnet haben." (The email only contains an instruction to your browser to load the element. This lets the sender check whether you opened the email.)

That is GMX describing a tracking pixel in its own words. The page then says you can decide "ob externe Inhalte eingehender E-Mails automatisch beim Öffnen geladen werden sollen" (whether external content in incoming mail should load automatically on opening) and gives steps only for turning automatic loading off. It never states the factory default in one sentence. Litmus did, in a February 2016 guide: "Both GMX and WEB.DE display images by default in the inbox." That is ten years old, so check your own settings. Our WEB.DE read receipts review found the same external content wording on the sister service.

What the help pages add:

• Spam folder: "Bei E-Mails, die sich im Spam-Ordner befinden, werden externe Inhalte prinzipiell nicht angezeigt." (External content is never shown for mail in the spam folder.)
• Webmail only: "Diese Einstellung gilt nur für die Anzeige von externen Inhalten beim Postfach-Zugriff über den Webbrowser." (This setting only applies when you use the mailbox in a web browser.)
• Android app: a separate Externe Inhalte verwalten page gives the app its own switch, under Settings, your address, Externe Inhalte.
• iOS app: the iOS settings pages list no external content switch. The closest is "HTML anzeigen" (show HTML), a toggle between HTML and plain text. GMX does not say whether plain text mode stops remote images.
• Image proxy: none documented. GMX's wording has your browser fetch the element itself, and no GMX or mail.com page we read mentions a proxy.

We also looked for the "Tracking-Schutz" feature some articles attribute to GMX and WEB.DE. We found no GMX help page, press release or privacy clause using that name. The nearest historical data point is old: in October 2013, teltarif reported a c't test in which "Alle Tracking-Versuche blockten die Android-Mail-Apps von Google, GMX und Web.de ab," while the iOS versions of GMX and Web.de could be tracked. Both apps have changed many times since.

Does GMX Itself Track What You Read?

GMX adds no pixel to your outgoing mail that we could find, but its free tier runs on advertising, and the GMX privacy notice describes several consent based ways your mailbox feeds that business. It opens with the model: "Wir betreiben unser Angebot mit einem sogenannten Consent or Pay Modell." (We run our service on a so called consent or pay model.) You either pay for a subscription without ad tracking, which GMX calls „TrackFree“, or you consent to ad tracking and personalized ads.

• Inbox sorting: the Intelligentes Postfach (smart inbox) sorts mail into Newsletter, Bestellungen (orders), Social and Verträge (contracts). The notice adds: "Im Rahmen des Intelligenten Postfachs werden alle E-Mails für eine Volltextsuche indexiert." (All emails are indexed for full text search.)
• Ad profiling: under "Personalisierte Werbung und Inhalte," the notice says: "Auf Grundlage deiner Einwilligung werden eingehende E-Mails und angehängte Dokumente ausschließlich kommerzieller Anbieter zur Bildung eines Interessenprofils analysiert." (With your consent, incoming emails and attachments from commercial senders only are analyzed to build an interest profile.) The smart inbox setup page lists this, parcel tracking and manual quality review as separate optional consents.
• Human review: with the Manuelle Qualitätsoptimierung consent, emails "können in Einzelfällen durch einen Mitarbeiter manuell geprüft werden" (can in individual cases be checked manually by an employee).
• GMX's own newsletter: GMX Magazin arrives weekly, and "FreeMail Kunden können das GMX Magazin nicht abbestellen" (FreeMail customers cannot unsubscribe from GMX Magazin). With consent, GMX collects "Nutzungsdaten (beispielsweise Öffnungsraten)" (usage data, for example open rates) on it. The notice does not name the measurement method or a hostname, so neither do we.
• Links: clicking an external link sends you through a dereferrer page. GMX's dangerous links page says parts of the URL "werden ... über eine verschlüsselte Abfrage mit dieser Sperrliste abgeglichen" (are checked against a blocklist through an encrypted query). In February 2021 the Kuketz blog documented the host as deref-gmx.net and questioned how long GMX keeps those URLs. That hostname still resolved on October 9, 2026, while a nonsense subdomain under it returned NXDOMAIN, so it is not a wildcard. We could not connect to it over HTTPS from our test machine.

The most interesting line concerns senders. trustedDialog is the seal and logo program that verifies brands in GMX inboxes, and the notice says: "trustedDialog Kunden können gewisse Kennzahlen (z.B. Öffnungsrate) aggregiert einsehen (trustedDialog Insights)." (trustedDialog customers can see certain metrics, for example open rate, in aggregate.) GMX builds those numbers from usage data, on the basis of your consent. This is the same pattern we found in Microsoft's Viva Insights in our Outlook review: open statistics that come from the mailbox provider, with no pixel involved. Blocking images does not touch that channel. Withdrawing consent is the only lever the notice describes.

How to Turn Off GMX Read Receipts and Block Pixels

GMX documents no setting that answers read receipts automatically, so the receipt side needs nothing more than a decline when asked. The pixel and consent side takes a few clicks. Labels below are GMX's own.

GMX webmail (gmx.net, gmx.com) and mail.com

1. Click the icon with your initials in the top menu, then E-Mail-Einstellungen (on gmx.com and mail.com, Settings at the bottom left of the E-mail section).
2. Under Sicherheit (Security), open Externe Inhalte (External Content).
3. Tick "Externe Inhalte in E-Mails deaktivieren" ("Deactivate external content in e-mails" on the mail.com help page) and click Speichern (Save).
4. When you trust a message, click Alles anzeigen (Show all) above it to load its images once.

GMX app for Android

1. Tap the menu icon at the top left, then Einstellungen, then your email address.
2. Under Externe Inhalte, tap "Externe Inhalte in E-Mails deaktivieren."
3. To view one message's images, tap Externe Inhalte anzeigen below the sender name.

Consent and smart inbox

1. Review your choices in the consent layer the privacy notice links to. In the apps, the notice gives the path Menü, Info/Rechtliches, Datenschutz-Einstellungen, Widerrufen.
2. Check smart inbox consents under Einstellungen, Ordner, Intelligentes Postfach, where personalized ads and manual review appear as separate items.
3. Unsubscribe from optional GMX newsletters under Account verwalten, Datenschutz & Privatsphäre, Newsletter-Einstellungen. GMX Magazin stays on free accounts.

One gap remains: links. GMX's dereferrer page checks a link against a blocklist and then, per GMX, sends you on "zur gewünschten Webseite" (to the requested website). If the sender wrapped that link in a click tracking redirect, the redirect is the website you requested. Our Yahoo Mail review covers a provider facing the same limits.

How GMX Compares With Gmail and Outlook.com

GMX is the most generous of the three on read receipts and the least documented on image privacy. Each row below comes from the provider's own help pages, including Google's Gmail image help.

Even Google's protection has a limit. Google says "Senders can't use image loading to get information about your computer or location," then concedes: "Sometimes, senders may know whether you've opened an email that has an image." GMX makes the first promise nowhere, and its help page already grants the second: remote content lets a sender check whether you opened the email.

What This Means If You Also Use Gmail

Many people keep an old GMX address alive and read it through Gmail, and that route is changing. Google's Gmailify and POP notice says "Check mail from other accounts" with POP "will no longer be supported." The timeline: "After the first quarter of 2026, this feature no longer supports new users. Existing users can still use the feature until January 2027." Google's suggested replacement is automatic forwarding from the other provider, and GMX offers a ready made filter template to "Forward emails to another email account."

Once GMX mail lands in Gmail, Gmail's rules apply. Google says: "By default, when you get an email with an image, you'll see the image automatically." Your GMX external content switch does not travel with the message. GMX documents that a manually forwarded email with external content switched off arrives with "empty placeholder images," and says nothing about automatic forwarding rules. We did not test one.

This is where Gblock fits, and where it stops. Gblock is a Chrome extension for Gmail on desktop browsers. It blocks known tracking pixels while other images keep loading, and strips tracking from links. It does nothing inside GMX webmail, the GMX apps or mail.com. For the GMX side, the switches above are your tools. For the Gmail side, our Gmail tracking blocker comparison tests the options side by side.

The Quick Answer

Does GMX have read receipts? Yes, in webmail and the Android app, free of charge. Mail.com keeps them for Premium. Can you refuse a GMX read receipt? Always; GMX's help center says the recipient can ignore it. Does GMX track your email? We found no pixel that GMX adds to the mail you send. Senders bring their own, and GMX's help pages offer blocking only as a switch you turn on. GMX's privacy notice describes full text indexing of every email and, with your consent, ad profiling of commercial mail, so the consents behind its smart inbox and its ads deserve the same attention as the image setting.