A new way of validating email?

I found out recently how email providers check an email has been opened. They use a 'tracking pixel.' I was also quite impressed at the recent spout of Google games that pair the mobile and the desktop.

So I came up with the following idea to make email validation a bit less painful for the end user:

* Send out a validation email. Display a message that tells them to open the email in another window/their phone in a modal that blocks the rest of the page

* Send out an email with a tracking pixel that detects when it has been opened.

* When the user opens the email, the modal window will see that it has been opened, say thanks and slide away.

Obviously it is easier to just include a link (and you should as a fallback) but I thought this might be a neater solution for applications where maybe the user has been using a trial and they don't want to loose their progress. I have a prototype up at:

https://github.com/andyhmltn/email-registration