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How Email Open Tracking Quietly Took Over the Web (wired.com)
Brian Merchant, writing for Wired: There are some 269 billion emails sent and received daily. That's roughly 35 emails for every person on the planet, every day. Over 40 percent of those emails are tracked, according to a study published last June by OMC, an "email intelligence" company that also builds anti-tracking tools. The tech is pretty simple. Tracking clients embed a line of code in the body of an email -- usually in a 1x1 pixel image, so tiny it's invisible, but also in elements like hyperlinks and custom fonts. When a recipient opens the email, the tracking client recognizes that pixel has been downloaded, as well as where and on what device. Newsletter services, marketers, and advertisers have used the technique for years, to collect data about their open rates; major tech companies like Facebook and Twitter followed suit in their ongoing quest to profile and predict our behavior online. But lately, a surprising -- and growing -- number of tracked emails are being sent not from corporations, but acquaintances. "We have been in touch with users that were tracked by their spouses, business partners, competitors," says Florian Seroussi, the founder of OMC. "It's the wild, wild west out there." According to OMC's data, a full 19 percent of all "conversational" email is now tracked. That's one in five of the emails you get from your friends. And you probably never noticed.
just uncheck this in your email reader. done.
then if you need to see the images they embed, click the "load remote content" button in the viewing window when you open it.
I actually got a surprise recently, an email from a vendor saying "you haven't engaged with any of our recent emails, here's a 10% off coupon for your next purchase". Well, we know what they mean by "engaged", don't we? :)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Stop using a web client to read e-mail, and it isn't a problem.
And if you're an admin, configure your SMTP servers to mark e-mail containing links to trackers as potential malware.
There are still mail clients that don't disable loading images by default?
And they get used?
Then I guess the people using them don't mind being tracked. Where's the story?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And you probably never noticed.
This is Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters. We noticed. Hell it was probably one of us that first thought up the idea of using web bugs to track HTML formatted mail. We have all had it disabled in our mail readers since before you were born.
Wake the fuck up M'Smash and understand who your audience is.
They are definitely right. I haven't noticed the tracking. I don't open images in email, so I wouldn't notice that a 1x1 image was missing from an email. But then again, if my client reported unopened images and I didn't see a spot where an image ought to load, I would probably realize that whoever sent the email is attempting to track me.
Email clients have been set to not load remote content by default for over 15 years. Gmail caches remote content to its own servers making tracking bugs in emails mostly useless unless you click an outbound link with tracking data in the URL. Unless you've changed the default setting from "DON'T load remote stuff by default" then you've not been trackable for a really long time. Who needs anti-tracking services? All I have to do is not click on any links. This is an old story. I wonder if the Wired article is "sponsored content;" they are, after all, one of the companies that has complained a lot about ad blockers, so I know they're pretty hard up for dollarydoos.
My email client is configured to not allow remote connections when I read an email. Some emails are not readable without allowing the tracking stuff, so I don't read them. It is as simple as that. So far, not one important email has been unreadable with remote access disabled.
EOM
love is just extroverted narcissism
This is precisely why I don't allow my email reader to load any external resources (like images), and half of the reason why I don't allow my email to be interpreted through an HTML parser.
Could use a mail client that doesn't automatically load images and break the trackers. The article makes the assumption that all of this email is using some sort of service that does mail tracking (Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, etc.). I don't use mail clients that do tracking.
I got an email from him back in 1997 stating that he was testing his email tracking software and I was selected to help him test it if i forwarded on the message.
Where's my money Bill? Where?!?!?!
...your email client doesn't automatically download external links. Which is the default behavior of most clients these days.
Also make sure you disable automatic reply receipts.
Have gnu, will travel.
I read email with Mutt, no tracking. If it is HTML-only, it gets converted by Lynx, no includes, again no tracking. The whole problem would not exist without the insanity of misusing web-browsers to display emails.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
A lot of corporate employees are stuck with Outlook. It's pretty much a default application since everyone "needs" Office.
Still, Outlook can be configured to display text-only emails. The option is there, but I'd bet most organizations don't have the will to turn it off in spite of any objections---or whining, whatever you'd like to call it.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
We all know about the issues with users being tracked along with profiles being made and identities sold, but I can't be the only one who automatically distrusts someone who sells a product tells me how dangerous the world is without their product. It reads too much like paid advertising. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/marketing-campaign-invented-halitosis-180954082/)
Witness BitZtream getting pwned!... twice.....three times..... four times!
On the issue of plain-text vs HTML email, it is not a debate, it is a litmus test. If you send HTML email or insist or reading in that format, you simply don't know enough about email to use it responsibly. Sorry, I know that is harsh, but there is no good reason to send or read HTML email. Meanwhile, in addition to privacy issues, you have spam ones (tracking pixels let the spammers know you are a live email), the phishing ones (HTML obfuscates the true target of links or origin of images), and malware ones (HTML email will automatically load certain attachments that may contain executable code) all facilitated by HTML email.
Pretty simple. Don't use an email client that supports that bullshit, problem solved. :)
Listen, if you send HTML email, you are doing the equivalent of sneezing in your friends face.
This is exactly right. Unfortunately, people don't seem to care about the well-being of their friends and neighbors anymore. Look how many are willing to sell them out by mentioning them to and in Facebook.
People complain if you use plain text because the font hurts their eyes. They complain if you don't send them a screen shot or highlight/underline/bold what's important.
You need a better set of coworkers. I never send HTML email in business settings, and I've never once had anyone complain about it. BTW, you can still send screenshots (as well as any other attachments) with plain text email.
There are some 269 billion emails sent and received daily. That's roughly 35 emails for every person on the planet, every day.
I'm getting way more than my fair share, then. Because I receive upwards of 500-1000 spam emails every single day.
Eventually most adults figure this out when they get that one add that's waaaaay too close to creepy after searching for something like Preparation H or morning after pill. As for the rest, guess what, that third of the adult population actually wants those ads. They find those ads economically important and, more power to them. You will not change their minds.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
My editor and I use alpine - and we work reporting music. Yet, we have to open attached files only infrequently. Plain text works just fine virtually all the time, while eliminating many risks.
Security experts should now recomand using text mailers such as mutt, pine or ELM. Or at least GUI-based mailer that do not support HTML.
Unfortunately, I suspect I will not see that coming.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
Luckily my thunderbird defaults to text and even when I enable HTML images aren't loaded automatically.
When a recipient opens the email, the tracking client recognizes that pixel has been downloaded, as well as where and on what device.
Huh? I open hundreds of emails a day and my email client does not fetch embedded objects unless I specifically ask it to.