Every holiday season, inboxes across the United States fill up quickly. Messages arrive in bursts, subject lines get increasingly urgent, and it becomes harder to manage the constant flow of promotions. This, to most people, is just the way things are. Totally normal.

Under the hood of these promotional campaigns, however, is something far more creepy.

Most marketing emails contain hidden trackers that report when you open a message, what device you use, and whether you click. Brands then use this information to decide when to email you next and how often. During the holiday shopping season, this system intensifies, creating a predictable surge in volume and what is essentially surveillance of your online activity and habits.

To measure this more clearly, Proton created Spam Watch: The U.S. Inbox Overload + Hidden Tracker Report, a controlled analysis of how 50 of the largest major U.S. retail brands behaved in the weeks leading up to and during the busiest shopping period of the year.

Read the full report here:

Proton Mail Spam Watch 2025 – The U.S. Inbox Overload + Hidden Tracker Report(neues Fenster)Download

How Spam Watch works

We set up a dedicated Proton Mail test inbox — trackers.us@proton.me — and subscribed it to 50 major U.S. retail brands. For each email received, we recorded:

  • Sender
  • Subject line
  • Date and time
  • Number of trackers detected
  • Daily and weekly sending patterns
  • Repetitive or high-frequency sends

We were able to measure this data, because Proton Mail is built to identify these hidden trackers in several ways, including:

  • Remote content blocking
  • Invisible pixel protection
  • Link cleaning (which removes tracking parameters while preserving functionality)

These tools gave us a transparent, consistent way to measure both email volume and email tracking during the holiday season.

When we measured it

We analyzed messages across three specific timeframes:

1. Pre–Black Friday period (baseline): Nov 4 → Nov 27.

Typical seasonal sending before holiday promotions intensify.

2. Holiday shopping period (Black Friday through Cyber Monday): Nov 28 → Dec 1

Historically the highest-volume period of the year for retail email.

3. Full analysis period: Nov 4 → Dec 1

All findings and rankings in this report are based on this complete window.

These windows help us measure both the baseline and the seasonal spike in sending and tracking.

What we found

This year’s data confirms a clear turning point in digital marketing:

  • 80% of major U.S. retailers embedded trackers in 100% of their marketing emails.
  • Inbox volume surged 93% during the holiday peak.
  • Home and décor brands were the most aggressive overall.
  • Lingerie and intimates brands packed the most trackers into each message.
  • Department stores led the charge in sheer frequency.

Inbox overload isn’t a personal organization problem.
It’s an engineered outcome.

Which brands were the worst offenders?

When you multiply the average daily emails by the average tracker count, these brands come out on top as the worst of the worst. This single score captures both how often a brand emails you and how densely each email is packed with trackers.

  1. CB2– Score: 27.39 (13.00 trackers/email × 2.11 emails/day)
  2. Anthropologie– Score: 24.31 (12.90 trackers/email × 1.88 emails/day)
  3. Victoria’s Secret– Score: 21.75 (13.84 trackers/email × 1.57 emails/day)
  4. VS Pink– Score: 16.00 (14.00 trackers/email × 1.14 emails/day)
  5. Crate & Barrel – Score: 15.71 (7.86 trackers/email × 2.00 emails/day)
  6. kate spade– Score: 12.00 (5.51 trackers/email × 2.18 emails/day)
  7. Pottery Barn– Score: 11.25 (5.00 trackers/email × 2.25 emails/day)
  8. DICK’S Sporting Goods– Score: 9.82 (3.31 trackers/email × 2.96 emails/day)
  9. Lowe’s– Score: 9.73 (4.42 trackers/email × 2.20 emails/day)
  10. Urban Outfitters– Score: 9.00 (4.00 trackers/email × 2.25 emails/day)
  11. J. Crew– Score: 8.16 (8.50 trackers/email × 0.96 emails/day)
  12. Aerie– Score: 7.71 (9.00 trackers/email × 0.86 emails/day)
  13. Ulta Beauty– Score: 6.50 (12.00 trackers/email × 0.54 emails/day)
  14. NORDSTROM– Score: 6.00 (2.90 trackers/email × 2.07 emails/day)
  15. JCPenney– Score: 5.89 (3.00 trackers/email × 1.96 emails/day)

Which brands sent the most email?

Some retailers emailed occasionally. Others emailed constantly — multiple times a day, every day. These brands represent the highest daily frequency across the full study window — the ones constantly vying for attention.

  1. LOFT– Score: 3.62 (101 emails / 28 days)
  2. Macy’s– Score: 3.52 (98 emails / 28 days)
  3. Neiman Marcus– Score: 3.32 (92 emails / 28 days)
  4. DICK’S Sporting Goods– Score: 2.96 (82 emails / 28 days)
  5. Ann Taylor– Score: 2.88 (80 emails / 28 days)
  6. Aeropostale– Score: 2.59 (72 emails / 28 days)
  7. Bergdorf Goodman– Score: 2.50 (70 emails / 28 days)
  8. Pottery Barn– Score: 2.25 (63 emails / 28 days / 11.25 Daily Tracker Load)
  9. Urban Outfitters – Score: 2.25 (63 emails / 28 days / 9.00 Daily Tracker Load)
  10. Lowe’s– Score: 2.20 (61 emails / 28 days)

Which brands embedded the most trackers?

Many brands didn’t send high volumes. But when they did email, they packed each message with an unusually large number of trackers — sometimes more than a dozen in a single email. These brands represent the highest “surveillance intensity,” measured by average trackers per email.

  1. VS Pink– 14.00 trackers per email
  2. Victoria’s Secret – 13.84 trackers per email
  3. CB2– 13.00 trackers per email
  4. Anthropologie– 12.90 trackers per email
  5. Ulta Beauty– 12.00 trackers per email
  6. Aerie– 9.00 trackers per email
  7. J. Crew– 8.50 trackers per email
  8. Crate & Barrel – 7.86 trackers per email
  9. REI– 6.83 trackers per email
  10. kate spade– 5.51 trackers per email

Which brands flooded inboxes the most?

These retailers produced the biggest single-day spikes — the moments when inboxes felt truly chaotic. This metric captures peak overwhelm: the maximum number of emails a brand sent in a single day during the holiday rush.

The Inbox Flooders

  1. Macy’s– (Peak: 7 | Daily Avg: 3.14) | Peak Date: Nov 29 (Saturday of Holiday Weekend)
  2. LOFT– (Peak: 6 | Daily Avg: 3.36) | Peak Date: Nov 28 (Black Friday) & Nov 30 (Sunday)
  3. Bass Pro Shops– (Peak: 6 | Daily Avg: 1.75) | Peak Date: Nov 28 (Black Friday)
  4. Saks OFF 5TH– (Peak: 6 | Daily Avg: 1.61) } Peak Date: Nov 30 (Sunday)
  5. Ann Taylor– (Peak: 5 | Daily Avg: 2.68) | Peak Date: Nov 28 (Black Friday)
  6. Pottery Barn– (Peak: 5 | Daily Avg: 2.25) | Peak Date: Dec 1 (Cyber Monday)
  7. kate spade– (Peak: 5 | Daily Avg: 2.18) | Peak Date: Nov 18
  8. NORDSTROM– (Peak: 5 | Daily Avg: 2.07) | Peak Date: Nov 29 (Saturday)
  9. Anthropologie– (Peak: 5 | Daily Avg: 1.75) | Peak Dates: Nov 25 – Dec 1 (a week straight)
  10. Gap– (Peak: 5 | Daily Avg: 1.54) | Peak Date: Nov 26 (Day before Thanksgiving)

What else we discovered

While the metrics above capture the core consumer-facing insights, our deeper analysis revealed several patterns:

Home décor and luxury home brands were the “double threats”

They combined high send volume with high tracker density. CB2, Crate & Barrel, and Pottery Barn ranked among the most invasive senders overall.

Lingerie and intimates brands topped the tracking charts

VS Pink, Victoria’s Secret, and Aerie averaged 9–14 trackers per message — the highest in the study.

Department stores dominated high-frequency sending

Macy’s and LOFT regularly sent 3–4 messages per day, every day.

Some big retailers stood out for doing the right thing

H&M, TJ Maxx, Burlington, Bass Pro Shops, and New Balance sent zero emails with trackers — proof that surveillance isn’t necessary to run a modern retail email program.

No major U.S. retailer met the “Proton Gold Standard”

None satisfied both conditions of:

  • Zero trackers
  • Low volume (< 0.5 emails/day)

Privacy-respecting email marketing is possible — but almost no one is doing it.

Proton Mail blocks hidden tracking by default

The findings from Spam Watch 2025 highlight a simple truth: Inbox overload is driven by widespread tracking and high-volume sending, not by personal disorganization.

Proton Mail reduces this problem at the source:

  • Tracker blocking stops invisible pixels from loading
  • Remote content control prevents image-based tracking
  • Link cleaning strips tracking parameters
  • Smart filtering helps keep promotions contained
  • Privacy by default keeps inbox behavior private

These protections limit the data marketers rely on, resulting in fewer trackers and fewer unnecessary follow-up emails.

A more private, manageable inbox is possible

Spam Watch helps make the hidden layer of email marketing visible. By measuring how brands behave during the holiday shopping season, we can show why inboxes feel overwhelming — and how privacy-first tools change that experience.

Proton Mail aims to give people what the data shows they need: a better inbox and fewer companies tracking their every move online for profit.

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