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This is exactly what you see on a daily basis in your spam 's how they can test your email address and if you open/downlaod the image, they know they can sell your email or dump a ton of spam at you. So if the end user has enabled the images in the email browser, you know if they opened it One sleazy way to know if someone opened an email is to have the src of an img tag be processed by a server side script, that was passed a uniqueId Since the sending a return receipt / read receipt is an option, there's no guarantee that you'll get responses for the emails you send out. It would probably be easier to create an application which reads the mailbox and if the email address or a certain unique id in the message or body exists, you can have the application update the database for the row that is referenced by that unique value/ email it was sent from. So there is no wat to do what you are asking from within SQL anymore. Was removed when sp_send_dbmail was introduced
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The ability to READ emails ( the read receipt IS an email)
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You'll have to create something in code or in CLR
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