Is Your Email Tracking Pixel Ready for 29 October?

The Italian Garante's guidelines on tracking pixels in emails (adopted 17 April 2026) become enforceable on 29 October 2026 — 16 days out. Individual-level open-tracking now needs prior consent, and every pixel needs advance disclosure. Some advisers cite 28 October; confirm against the Garante's provvedimento.

The Garante treats an email tracking pixel as access to information on the recipient's device, so Article 122 of the Italian Privacy Code (the ePrivacy rule) applies. Pixels used for individual-level open-tracking — to optimise campaigns, adjust content or frequency, or build commercial profiles — need prior consent. Disclosure in advance is required for every pixel, whatever the purpose or sender; a layered notice is acceptable.

Not everything needs consent. Aggregate, anonymised open-rate counting with identical non-individualised pixels, authentication-security measures, and mandatory service messages (phishing alerts, contractual changes, breach notices, deadline reminders) are exempt. Consent can sit inside one neutral promotional consent, but withdrawal must be easy and granular, and refusing tracking must not degrade the service.

This reaches any organisation, and its email-service providers, sending to recipients in Italy. It is also the first time most marketing teams will have to separate their email streams into 'consent-required' and 'exempt'.

EU Digital Omnibus: Council still has no mandate. Coreper met on 7 October without a vote, and no agreed position had been reported as of 13 October. The latest Council text (doc 13886/26, 2 October) would cut the cookie re-prompt wait after a refusal from six months to four and leaves out the browser-level consent signal (Art. 88b). Nothing is adopted — stage options, don't re-engineer cookie flows yet.

EDPB fining guidelines open for comment until 13 November. Guidelines 04/2026 set a five-step methodology for choosing between fines and other corrective powers. If your fine-exposure models rest on national practice, review the draft and consider commenting.