We recently noticed inflated open rates across campaigns, and upon a detailed examination, we found that Gmail has been triggering false opens on emails since May of 2018.

Specifically, Gmail has been triggering opens via a bot as soon as an email is received by a Gmail user, and Gmail triggers the open from one of many Google IP addresses with this specific User Agent: By analyzing all the IP addresses that downloaded our open tracking pixel with this specific User Agent, we are confident that all the opens from this User Agent are false opens.