HTML email "opens" not being tracked

Question

Update

This question has gotten off on the wrong foot. Let me pose the question as follows:

Let's say I wanted to show my StackOverflow "flair" badge in the signature of an email in Outlook. Obviously, I would want the image to be refreshed whenever I reply to an email or forward the email. Now, assuming the I (and others) have decided to allow images to be downloaded from me (who in this case we'll call a "trusted source") then they would see my flair badge refreshed on subsequent loads. If I copy and paste this badge into a new email then the image will not refresh on subsequent page loads because Outlook has embedded the image and severed the link to original image.

I completely understand everyone's comments about spam but this question is more about Outlook VML and manipulation of it. If the answer is always and forever "spam! Off with his head!" then that's fine. I get it but it seems to me that there may be situations where someone may not want the default behavior of Outlook to modify an email that it has already accepted.

Original Questions

We have an internal mail system that dynamically generates and sends HTML emails. We have a web beacon generated by an HTTP handler. The system works as expected: users recieve emails and we track opens as the web beacon is called.

The problem occurs when someone takes that same email that they just received (and we just tracked) and copies & pastes the content (including the web beacon) into a new email in Outlook. Outlook embeds all images instead of maintaining the URL back to the web beacon.

Is there a way to generate an image through an HTTP handler such that the src of the image is maintained when pasted in Outlook?

Answer 1

No. There is not; That's how Outlook works.

Not only that, your use of "web beacons" is the primary reason that I and many others have our e-mail clients configured not to load external images at all except from trusted senders.