Security Email Please Open Email Subject Header Request Question

I received an email from Best Buy with the subject header visible before opening that said, "Please open to continue getting Best Buy offers."

After opening the email it said Thanks for checking in You'll continue getting exclusive email offers.

Does this mean that there was something about this email that when I opened it it called home? Or was that info already in the email whether I opened it or not. It's like Schrödinger's cat : )

I believe I know that some emails when opened do in fact call home alerting the sender that the email was opened. How do I prevent emails from doing this? TIA

Just don’t open them. They probably sent it with a read receipt

phaedruspress said:

How do I prevent emails from doing this?

As Bree mentioned, it's the images in the email that you've allowed the email client to open that are phoning home to their servers. I noticed in some of your other posts you used Gmail. Here's a link to turn on/off email images: Other email clients have similar settings.

Turn images on or off in Gmail - Computer - Gmail Help

zebal said:

In addition to what Bree said about tracking pixel, most such scenarios can be prevented by adjusting mail settings trough web interface, most email providers let you specify to not auto load email content.

According to your screenshot this content was already loaded (or you loaded it manually or via settings).
This is usually the case with "big" email providers such as google, yahoo etc. these providers may let tracking pixels pass trough regardless of your settings. (I don't have a proof except my own XP btw.)

>According to your screenshot this content was already loaded

Yeah this is what confused me which is why I jokingly mentioned Schrödinger's cat. I believe that the message to me imbedded in the picture was always sitting in the email whether I clicked it on or not telling me that Thanks for checking in etc. you'll continue to receive updates.

>This is usually the case with "big" email providers such as google, yahoo etc. these providers may let tracking pixels pass trough regardless of your settings

Since I already have that setting turned off in GMAIL do not display images that image was going to come through anyway. The only other possibility is could I have somehow at some point given email from BestBuy permission to display images in their emails? If so I do not believe I know how to individually turn off that feature to not display images from a particular sender. I just know about the global setting and of course the opportunity once an email is opened to choose whether or not I want to display the images for that particular email.

I get them on occasion. Usually newsletters from like what you posted. Best Buy, Walmart, CVS. If I don't open any emails from them in a long time they send ones asking to open/confirm, so they know I still use the email, and they can keep sending them.