--- title: Why Newsletter Open Rates Are Inflated by Bots | SendHQ description: Apple Mail Privacy Protection and link scanners load images and follow links on their own. How that inflates open and click rates, and what SendHQ filters out. canonical: https://sendhq.cc/guides/newsletter-open-rate-bots last-updated: 2026-11-06 author: Dhrumil Barot author_bio: Dhrumil is an email marketing expert. Dhrumil built SendHQ so developers and AI agents can send, receive and track email without fighting deliverability on their own. published: 2026-11-06 updated: 2026-11-06 --- # Why Newsletter Open Rates Are Inflated by Bots By [Dhrumil Barot](https://sendhq.cc/about.md#founder), Founder Apple Mail Privacy Protection and link scanners load images and follow links on their own. How that inflates open and click rates, and what SendHQ filters out. Newsletter open rates count image loads, not readers. Apple Mail Privacy Protection loads images on its own, and company security filters fetch and follow links before anyone sees them, so many platforms report opens and clicks that no person made. This guide explains where the false numbers come from, how SendHQ separates them from human activity, and how to read open rates that leave the bots out. Published November 6, 2026 ยท Updated November 6, 2026 ## Key takeaways - An open is an image load. Anything that loads the images in an email registers an open, whether or not a person read it. - Apple Mail Privacy Protection loads the images in messages on its own, so readers who never look can still show up as opens. - Corporate security filters fetch the links in incoming mail to check them, which makes click rates look higher too. - SendHQ marks Apple's prefetches, known scanners, datacenter traffic, clicks within 5 seconds of sending and requests with no user agent as machine activity, and leaves them out of every rate. - Filtered open rates come out lower and undercount Apple Mail readers who do read. Use opens to compare one issue with the next, and clicks to judge what readers did. ## How an open is counted Every newsletter platform counts opens the same way. Each email carries a tiny image with a unique address, and when that image is loaded, the platform records an open for that reader. Clicks work in a similar way: each link points at the platform first, which records the click and redirects to the real page. Neither one proves a person read anything. They prove that something requested the image or followed the link. For years that something was nearly always the reader's mail app. Now a large share of it is software acting on the reader's behalf. ## Where the false opens come from - **Apple Mail Privacy Protection.** When it is on, Apple fetches remote images through its own servers, including the tracking image, so a message can register an open even if the reader never sees it. - **Security scanners.** Company mail filters such as Proofpoint, Mimecast, Barracuda and Microsoft Safe Links inspect incoming messages, and some load images while they do it. - **Servers in hosting networks.** Automated checks run from cloud and datacenter networks, where few people read their email. ## Where the false clicks come from Clicks are a firmer signal than opens, but they are not clean either. A link scanner follows the links in a message before it reaches the inbox, to check where they lead. Those requests arrive within seconds of the email being sent, often from datacenter networks, and often with a user agent that names the scanner. Left in, they show readers clicking links they never saw, and they make every link in an issue look equally popular. ## What SendHQ filters out SendHQ checks every open and click on arrival. Anything that matches one of the rules below is stored, counted separately as machine activity in the report, and left out of the rates. | Signal | Applies to | Why it is treated as a machine | | --- | --- | --- | | Apple Mail Privacy Protection prefetch | Opens | Apple loads the image whether or not the reader opens the message | | Scanner or tool user agent | Opens and clicks | The request names a security product, link previewer, crawler or HTTP library | | Datacenter network | Opens and clicks | The request comes from a hosting provider. Gmail's image proxy is allowed for opens, because it fetches images for real readers | | Click within 5 seconds of sending | Clicks | Faster than a person can open an email and choose a link | | No user agent, or a HEAD request | Opens and clicks | Mail apps and browsers send a user agent and fetch the full page | A click also counts as an open, because the reader had to open the email to click, and images are often blocked. Tracked links are signed, so they cannot be reused as an open redirect. You can see the reports in more detail on the [open and click reports](https://sendhq.cc/newsletter/analytics.md) page. ## What filtering cannot fix Removing machine opens means Apple Mail readers who do read are mostly not counted as opens either, unless they click. Readers who block images never register an open at all. So a filtered open rate is lower than the number of people who read, and lower than the rate an unfiltered platform shows for the same list. That is fine as long as you use it as a relative measure. Compare one issue with the last few, which is what the SendHQ report does with your average over the previous five issues. Judge content by clicks, and judge list health by bounces, complaints and unsubscribes, which do not depend on images. ## Why this matters for list cleanup Any tool that removes "inactive" readers is only as good as its idea of activity. If machine opens count, nobody ever looks inactive. If they are filtered, some real Apple Mail readers look inactive. That is why SendHQ's [list cleanup](https://sendhq.cc/newsletter/list-cleanup.md) asks quiet readers whether they want to stay before it stops sending to them, and the [guide to cleaning a newsletter list](https://sendhq.cc/guides/newsletter-list-cleanup.md) explains the reasoning. ## Moving from another platform If your open rate drops after you move a list to SendHQ, compare clicks instead. A lower open rate on the same list usually means the old platform counted prefetches and scanner loads. Click rates should be close, and if they are lower too, look at the content and the audience before the counting. Starter is $19 a month for 50,000 emails and Scale is $39 a month for 200,000, with no charge per subscriber. See [SendHQ for newsletters](https://sendhq.cc/newsletter.md). ## Sources and dates Apple's and Google's pages were read on the published date. SendHQ details describe the product as of the updated date above. - [Use Mail Privacy Protection on iPhone (Apple Support)](https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/use-mail-privacy-protection-iphf084865c7/ios) - [SendHQ open and click reports](https://sendhq.cc/newsletter/analytics.md) - [SendHQ for newsletters](https://sendhq.cc/newsletter.md) ## Questions teams ask **Why is my newsletter open rate so high?** Often because Apple Mail Privacy Protection and security scanners load the tracking image without a person reading the email. Platforms that count those loads report higher open rates than readers produced. **Does SendHQ count Apple Mail opens?** SendHQ leaves Apple Mail Privacy Protection prefetches out of the open rate. An Apple Mail reader who clicks is counted, because a click also counts as an open. **Are clicks affected by bots too?** Yes. Security filters follow links to check them. SendHQ treats clicks from known scanners, datacenter networks, requests with no user agent and clicks within 5 seconds of sending as machine activity. **Should I still look at open rates?** Yes, as a relative measure. Compare an issue with your recent issues, and use clicks, bounces, complaints and unsubscribes to judge content and list health. ## Continue learning - [Email API: Send, Receive, and Track Transactional Email](https://sendhq.cc/guides/email-api.md): Understand what an email API does, how sending and inbound receiving work, and what to evaluate before choosing one. - [Transactional Email API Guide](https://sendhq.cc/guides/transactional-email-api.md): A practical guide to sending passwords, receipts, alerts, and other product-triggered email reliably. - [How to Send Email with an API](https://sendhq.cc/guides/send-email-with-api.md): A step-by-step approach to authenticated API email sending, testing, and production safety. - [How to Receive Email with an API](https://sendhq.cc/guides/receive-email-with-api.md): Route inbound mail to your application, parse it safely, and make it useful in a product workflow. - [Email Domain Verification: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC](https://sendhq.cc/guides/email-domain-verification.md): What domain verification is, why it matters, and how SPF, DKIM, and DMARC work together.