Email marked as read without me opening them

H-D-72 wrote:

Yesterday, my gas engineer sent me an email and whilst I was still in the room he said my email had been read and had sent him a read receipt.

It was still unread on my phone.

I don’t know if someone is reading my emails.

Can this happen and, if so, how can I stop it?

If you are running Microsoft Exchange Server, or some other mail providers such as the organizational or school mail hosting provided by Google (but not gmail generally), yes, that can be configured for read receipts for local Exchange Server or Google mail server system users. Check either the IT organization administering the mail server.

Approximately no one provides read receipts for any mail transferring outside of an organization's own internal network, as that would be immensely and immensely abused by spammers.

How you shut off read receipts varies by the particular tools you are using. If this is organizational-internal mail, check with the IT group administering the mail activity.

H-D-72 wrote:

I use Hotmail. I don’t know what the gas engineer uses. I was just concerned when he said the email he sent to me had been read when I was standing in front of him and clearly had not read his email.

It’s not called a read receipt, but various organizations do (try to) use embedded image links to track access.

Apple iCloud Mail also has a privacy feature in this area too, if the gas engineer is trying to track access using embedded links:

• Legal - Mail Privacy Protection & Privacy- Apple

What Hotmail does with read receipts and when, you’d have to ask Microsoft.

As for what happened here, you’ll have to ask your gas engineer.

Apple does not have read receipts on emails. Are you using an Outlook account by chance or some other email provider?