What is Read Receipt?
Also called seen receipt, delivery receipt, message status.
A read receipt is a signal reporting that a recipient's client has displayed a message, usually shown as a status marker beside it. Platforms typically distinguish several states, such as sent, delivered to the device, and read. The read state indicates rendering on screen, which is not the same as a person having taken in the content.
Messaging platforms implement receipts as status updates flowing back along the same connection as messages, with each state carrying a timestamp. Group conversations complicate the model, since a message may be read by some members and not others, and platforms differ in whether they show per-member detail. Many allow receipts to be turned off, in which case the sender simply sees delivery status.
Email has no comparable reliable mechanism. Message disposition notifications require the recipient's client to cooperate and are commonly ignored, while tracking pixels are blocked or prefetched by privacy features and mail proxies, producing both false negatives and false positives. Treating an email open as a fact rather than a weak signal is a persistent source of bad conclusions.
The distinction between delivered and read matters for automation. Delivery confirms the transport worked and is a legitimate input to retry logic. Read is a behavioral signal and a poor trigger for escalation, since people frequently open a message on a lock screen or preview pane without engaging with it, and receipts are often disabled entirely.
Receipts also carry social weight. Visible read status creates an expectation of prompt response, which is why the feature is controversial in workplace settings and optional on most consumer platforms. Systems that surface read state internally should be careful about presenting it as evidence of attention or responsiveness.
Key points
- Distinct states: sent, delivered, and read
- Read means rendered on screen, not comprehended
- Email open tracking is unreliable in both directions
- Delivery status is a safer automation trigger than read
- Many platforms let users disable receipts entirely
In practice
An assistant sends an appointment reminder over a messaging platform. The transport confirms delivery within a second, and the read marker never appears because the recipient has receipts disabled. The follow-up rule is written against delivery rather than read, so it waits the full configured window before sending a single reminder, instead of escalating early on the assumption that the message was ignored.