get IP address and email id when receiver open the email - php

Question

I am using php mail() function. but i want that when receiver open email, his/her IP address and email id will save in my db table.
my mail function codes are-
<?php
require("phpmailer/class.phpmailer.php");
$mail = new PHPMailer();
// ---------- adjust these lines ---------------------------------------
$mail->Username = "mymail#gmail.com"; // your GMail user name
$mail->Password = "";
$mail->AddAddress("$userid"); // recipients email
$mail->FromName = "Nikhil Garg"; // readable name
$mail->Subject = "Newletter Subscription";
$mail->Body = "$usermsg";
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------
$mail->SMTPSecure = "ssl";
$mail->Host='smtp.gmail.com';
$mail->Port = 465;
$mail->IsSMTP(); // use SMTP
$mail->SMTPKeepAlive = true;
$mail->Mailer = "smtp";
$mail->CharSet = 'utf-8';
$mail->SMTPDebug = 0;
$mail->SMTPAuth = true; // turn on SMTP authentication
$mail->From = $mail->Username;
if(!$mail->Send())
echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
else
echo "Message has been sent";
}
?>
They are working well. but i don't understand how to get receiver IP address and email Id when they open this email.
Actually i have more then 5000 email list and i want to sort them by city, state, country. with ip address, i can do that. if you know any other way please suggest
my goal is simple and genuine. I just want to know their country so that i will send emails according their country occasions for better selling results. for sending emails to more then 5000 users and ask them for details is not right way.

Answer 1

Make the email HTML formatted
Include a reference to an image on your server in it
Add a unique identifier to the query string for that image
Have your server record the time, query string id, and request source ip for requests to it
Note that:
You must familiarise yourself with the relevant privacy laws that you'll be interacting with by doing this (noting that you'll almost certainly be operating internationally)
This won't work if the user doesn't load the images in the email (and most email clients don't load images by default so that this sort of tracking won't be successful)
Adding this sort of tracking id will weight your email towards SPAM in some spam filters
Some of your customers will be upset/offended by you doing this
You will get the same id from multiple people if someone forwards the email

Answer 2

What you are looking for is called a web beacon, you can use it as far as you give a link back to your privacy policy and in your privacy policy you have to specify about it.
How it works
Basically, a 1x1 image is placed in the email, which is requested from your server where you can get the ip address..
Drawback
Many mail clients do not load images automatically, so it can't give you accurate stats
*code
in your mail place an image:
<img src="http://example.com/file.php" />
In file.php:
//get ip address
//43byte 1x1 transparent pixel gif
echo base64_decode("R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAAAAACH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==");

Answer 3

I have done this, and it works! the problem is that gmail loads the info from their own servers, so, every time a user opens the email, the recorded IP comes from Gmail servers, so it shows a Google IP address instead of the recipient IP, so it can be done with link tracking, as the recipient clicks the link and it opens a new tab, so you can capture the correct IP

Answer 4

You can't with normal mail.
You send the message (text) away, and have NO control over what the user does afterwards. Now I have NO idea what a mail id is, but there are several tricks to get the user's IP, tough I agree with above users that it's not really nice.
You can put the mailcontent on your server. If the user is trusting/dumb enough to click, you can open a link (with an id) and get the info from the loaded webpage
You can add images, is the user loads those (not default!) you get some information
etc. But for sending plain mail like this: no chance.

Answer 5

In all honesty, I don't think this is possible at all.
There is a "read receipt" system built into some email clients which can send automatic notification to the sender when an email is opened, but it's optional - the recipient may have disabled it, or may be using email software that doesn't support it.
But in any case, that doesn't include the user's IP address in the notification.
If you send HTML mails, you could include an embedded graphic in the message which would load from your server. But most email clients block external graphics for security reasons (ie precisely to avoid sharing their IP address and other details with an unknown sender).
You can't use Javascript because it also doesn't work in emails for security reasons.
Regardless, whatever you do will be entirely dependent on the capabilities of the recipient's email system and their settings. You have no control over that, and most user's settings will probably block whatever you try to do.
In short, you're not going to get what you want.
Simple answer: Just ask the users for the information you need, rather than trying to steal it from them. Maybe you should have town and country fields as part of the form that your users fill in to sign up to your mailing list.

Answer 6

Agreed with #Daniel that it might not be legal to do so.
However, if I believe that your intentions are harmless, I'd suggest to use a hashed URL for an Image, unique per each e-mail sent. This URL points to a PHP file that matches it in a DB and marks the e-mail instance as delivered and read once the image is loaded.
Of course, the reader must have accepted to load the images from your e-mails. Otherwise, it won't work.

Answer 7

We can host tracking code in our c panel and generate one image link. Whenever image load into the email body it triggers the code and we can collect email id, ip address and time in csv file.