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You can load images on an as-needed basis in mail. Generally, any email that is solely images and has no text is not going to be worth looking at. I can't see

You can load images on an as-needed basis in mail. Generally, any email that is solely images and has no text is not going to be worth looking at. I can't see how defining 'substantive' images could ever work. The other issue is that email clickable links are often unique and tracked, so images are unfortunately only part of the problem here.

gnicholas 9y ago
> I can't see how defining 'substantive' images could ever work. See Superhuman. They're using tracking pixels with no related images or links.
xoa 9y ago
>I can't see how defining 'substantive' images could ever work You can't? Seems pretty straight forward, so long as you remember first and foremost that 100% accuracy is completely unnecessary. The "load all images" option can still be there, so all that's needed is a solution that's good enough to suffice the majority of the time and shape norms and standard-case. That leaves lot of low hanging fruit. To start with are basic heuristics like that there is no need in email for 1x1 or 2x2 or 3x3 or whatever pixel images, or images where the pixels are entirely set to transparent. A lot of tracking stuff, particularly mass scale efforts tied to multiple parties beyond the sender, is pretty blatantly content free for even a totally dumb static rule set. Slightly more smarts could be used to discriminate based on simple sender trust heuristics, such as whether the email is cryptographically signed, they're in your contacts book, whether you've ever replied or clicked through, etc. Finally this could be another area where, just as they did here with cookies, Apple applied some basic ML to answer the "likely substantive" question. Again, remember that failing here doesn't necessarily matter because it can still be an improvement over the status quo.
- joosters 9y ago
  Sure, I agree that blocking pixel images and similar stuff like transparent images is an easy win, but the workaround for that would be for trackers to start supplying more substantive parts of the email appearance, such as company logos and so on.
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    Yeah, the question is what is the proportion of low-hanging fruit versus persistent actors. We didn't just give up on spam because "spammers will find a way around". And if we can eliminate a bunch of low-hanging fruit (e.g., from consumers who don't care enough about tracking to put a trackable company logo image in their signature), that's better than nothing.
    - lastyearman 9y ago
      Just cache all images in apple's servers (even if the user doesn't open the mail) by default and tracking is useless.
- eridius 9y ago
  The problem with detecting pixels is you generally have to load the image before you find out that it's only 1x1 or fully-transparent. And by then it's too late. Apple could probably use ML to try and guess ahead of time whether a URL is a tracking pixel, but they have to load at least some of them first to be able to figure that out.

gnicholas 9y ago

> I can't see how defining 'substantive' images could ever work. See Superhuman. They're using tracking pixels with no related images or links.

xoa 9y ago

>I can't see how defining 'substantive' images could ever work You can't? Seems pretty straight forward, so long as you remember first and foremost that 100% accuracy is completely unnecessary. The "load all images" option can still be there, so all that's needed is a solution that's good enough to suffice the majority of the time and shape norms and standard-case. That leaves lot of low hanging fruit. To start with are basic heuristics like that there is no need in email for 1x1 or 2x2 or 3x3 or whatever pixel images, or images where the pixels are entirely set to transparent. A lot of tracking stuff, particularly mass scale efforts tied to multiple parties beyond the sender, is pretty blatantly content free for even a totally dumb static rule set. Slightly more smarts could be used to discriminate based on simple sender trust heuristics, such as whether the email is cryptographically signed, they're in your contacts book, whether you've ever replied or clicked through, etc. Finally this could be another area where, just as they did here with cookies, Apple applied some basic ML to answer the "likely substantive" question. Again, remember that failing here doesn't necessarily matter because it can still be an improvement over the status quo.

joosters 9y ago
Sure, I agree that blocking pixel images and similar stuff like transparent images is an easy win, but the workaround for that would be for trackers to start supplying more substantive parts of the email appearance, such as company logos and so on.
- gnicholas 9y ago
  Yeah, the question is what is the proportion of low-hanging fruit versus persistent actors. We didn't just give up on spam because "spammers will find a way around". And if we can eliminate a bunch of low-hanging fruit (e.g., from consumers who don't care enough about tracking to put a trackable company logo image in their signature), that's better than nothing.
  - lastyearman 9y ago
    Just cache all images in apple's servers (even if the user doesn't open the mail) by default and tracking is useless.
eridius 9y ago
The problem with detecting pixels is you generally have to load the image before you find out that it's only 1x1 or fully-transparent. And by then it's too late. Apple could probably use ML to try and guess ahead of time whether a URL is a tracking pixel, but they have to load at least some of them first to be able to figure that out.