Why delivery and read confirmation are tracked separately

MailProof deliberately treats delivery and opening as two different things, because they prove two different things — and one is far more reliable than the other.

Delivery is recorded from the SMTP handshake with the recipient's mail server. When the certificate shows the message as delivered and confirmed, that is a hard record: the recipient's own system accepted the message at a stated time. It does not depend on the recipient doing anything.

Opening (the read confirmation) is detected when the recipient opens the message, but only where their email client permits it. Many clients and privacy settings block the mechanism that signals an open. Because of that, MailProof is explicit that the absence of a read event does not mean the email was not read — it may simply mean the recipient's client blocked the signal.

The practical takeaway: rely on the delivered/confirmed record as your proof. Treat a read confirmation as a useful bonus when it appears, not as the thing that makes or breaks your evidence. Keeping the two separate is what lets the certificate stay honest about what it can and cannot prove.