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Why are tracking pixels still even a thing. Wouldn't this all be solved is the top 3 mail providers would just decide to hit all embedded resources at the momen
by XiS 7y ago
Why are tracking pixels still even a thing. Wouldn't this all be solved is the top 3 mail providers would just decide to hit all embedded resources at the moment a message is received and proxy or even cache it after? This would render this method ineffective for the vast majority of receivers
- zamadatix 7y agoIn order to proxy/cache it they would have to rewrite https resources in user mail to point at their servers. Technically possible but a PR nightmare for little gain to them.
- orf 7y agoThey do this already. Similar to Github’s Cameo service for proxying readme images.
- zamadatix 7y agoWow, I just checked and yep there it is - google URL! I wonder if it caches automatically or only when read. If the latter I bet you could game the system by sending a tracking pixel with a unique source URL. Will have to stand up a test server and see what resource gets requested when.
- mike_d 7y agoIt varies by the reputation of the domain. Most images get hit once when the email is initially opened, and cached basically forever. If you send tons of tracking pixels to multiple users you'll eventually see the images being loaded and cached as soon as you deliver the message.
- Arbalest 7y agoI thought google started doing this years ago https://gmail.googleblog.com/2013/12/images-now-showing.html https://gmail.googleblog.com/2013/12/images-now-showing.html
- XiS 7y agoThey might be proxying it, but it still only gets hit once you open the mail as I can remember after sending myself a testmail a while back, embedding an image and watching the webserver logs.
- panarky 7y agoOnly if you enable images for the email. If you don't enable images, the tracking pixel is never retrieved.