What is Apple Mail Privacy Protection?
Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) is technology that Apple Mail uses to obscure the identity of the recipient by loading images through a proxy server. While you may know a contact’s email address and potentially name, MPP will prevent you from seeing what IP address they use to access the internet and whether they are actually engaging with your messages.
Apple MPP will typically open a message the instant it was delivered to the inbox, thus prior to the user actually opening the message. If the subscriber then opens the message themselves a few hours later, the image requests still come through the MPP proxy, thus still looking like an MPP open. There are ways to determine an actual open when there otherwise would only be MPP events:
If the recipient clicks on any links in the email, our systems will update the open as Non-MPP so that it is included in your true open rate calculation.
If the subscriber opens the message on their desktop in say Gmail or Outlook, it will register as a Non-MPP open.
This update rolled out on February 27, 2026. The exact date when MPP detection/reporting begins may vary.
To help email marketers understand true engagement, Listrak introduced a metric to exclude MPP-originated opens and updated certain features so they no longer treat MPP opens as engagement behaviors.
💡 MPP metrics are email-only and are shown at the message level.
MPP Metrics
The platform automatically shows both the existing open metrics and the Non-MPP open metrics side-by-side to support comparison. The following dashboards include two additional columns or metrics:
Opens (Non-MPP) - Unique contact opens excluding opens flagged as Apple MPP.
Open % (Non-MPP) - Percent of opens (excluding MPP) as a portion of delivered emails.
Dashboards Impacted
Message Activity
Message History
Transactional Message Activity
Conversation Analytics
Conversation Activity
Performance Summary
Journey Hub Messages
Additional Metric Definitions
Opens - Unique contact opens (includes Apple MPP opens when detected).
Open % - Percent of opens as a portion of delivered emails.
Unique contact opens - each contact is counted once per message for opens.
Where you’ll see it in reporting
How the data is processed
MPP filtering is handled at ingestion so the Non-MPP columns are derived from the open totals minus MPP-flagged opens.
Historical behavior
Opens logged prior to March 1, 2026 remain unchanged.
Existing Last Opened Date values based on historical activity will persist until a new non-MPP open occurs and updates the field.
What doesn’t change
Historical open engagement remain stored/visible as they were.
Historical reporting for Opens / Open % remains unchanged.
For time ranges prior to MPP detection being applied, Opens (Non-MPP) and Open % (Non-MPP) may mirror the existing open metrics.
Downstream feature changes
MPP opens no longer count as engagement.
Going forward, open activity flagged as MPP-originated will not update or trigger the following:
Last Opened Date (contact profile / segmentation fields)
Before: Any open activity could update Last Opened Date.
After (starting March 1, 2026): Only non-MPP opens will update Last Opened Date.
MPP opens are excluded only when the open activity is flagged as MPP-originated.
An open in another email client by a contact already recorded as an MPP open in Apple Mail will be recorded as a new open activity and reported as Non-MPP numbers.
If a portion of your opens were driven by Apple MPP, Open % (Non-MPP) your open rate will be lower because it excludes opens that may not represent true recipient engagement.
Segmentation based on opens
Criteria like Has Opened X Email will exclude MPP opens going forward.
Expect audiences that rely on opened activity, to decline gradually over time as MPP opens stop qualifying contacts.
Any segmentation or automation relying on opens (e.g., Has Opened X Email, or resend to non-openers) will be affected going forward because MPP opens no longer qualify as opens in those systems.
Open Metrics
Use Open % (Non-MPP) when you want the best estimate of true engagement.
Keep using Open % when you want continuity with historical reporting and benchmarks.
Send Time Optimization (STO)
MPP opens will not contribute to STO learning and optimization going forward because they are not a reliable source of real engagement.
Multi-pass resend to non-openers
Contacts who only registered an MPP open may now be treated as non-openers (because that MPP open is excluded), and may become eligible for resend logic depending on your setup.
Predictive models based on open likelihood
Predictive modeling that uses open activity as input will exclude MPP opens going forward.