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Ever since I enabled Dark Mode on Mac I started seeing so many 1x1 white tracking pixels on recruiter emails. Now I’ve disabled loading images by default in my
by annexrichmond 7y ago
Ever since I enabled Dark Mode on Mac I started seeing so many 1x1 white tracking pixels on recruiter emails. Now I’ve disabled loading images by default in my email client.
- oneeyedpigeon 7y agoI think I assumed 'tracking pixel' was just a metaphor — you mean they're literally serving 1x1 images? Why not 0x0 images? Why not a single transparent pixel?
- ojagodzinski 7y agoBecause no one thought that the background would change or something like dark-mode would appear ;) 1x1 image was "good enough".
- oneeyedpigeon 7y agoI remember learning ~20 years ago to always set `background-color: #fff` since, in those days of Netscape, a user could easily customise their browser's default background color. It was very useful to have someone on the dev team who was weird enough to have done just that! :)
- garaetjjte 7y agoWell, you still can.. (browser.display.background_color in Firefox)
- oneeyedpigeon 7y agoSure, but that's why I said "easily" - iirc, it was more an end-user feature than a power-user one.
- C4stor 7y agoAll of tracking pixels I've worked with come with a css attribute "hidden", so they don't actually show except in some edge cases.
- tatersolid 7y agoHuh... I thought browsers didn’t fetch hidden images. Or is that only if the image or its parent elements are "display: none"?
- C4stor 7y agoI don't _think_ either case it true.
- Supermancho 7y agoThe pixels are transparent. Gif was the earliest format that supported this. 0x0 pixels arent a valid image, iirc.
- bhauer 7y agoI know it's possible to load remote images in emails, but I don't think I've heard of anyone doing so until now.
- daphneokeefe 7y agoI use a browser extension on Chrome called PixelBlock to (hopefully) kill those email tracking pixels. The extension displays a small icon on emails where blocking occurred. This is the description supplied for the extension: "PixelBlock is a Gmail extension that blocks people from tracking when you open their emails."
- onreact 7y agoYeah, but this is about the Internet as a whole not just Gmail IMHO. You need more than that extension to block it then. I use Privacy Badger by the EFF. They block all kinds of tracking. Also using Firefox will prevent Browser fingerprinting and such.
- oyebenny 7y agoWait, so it's a literal pixel?
- m463 7y agoeveryone should do this. On mac turn off: Mail -> Preferences -> Viewing -> Load Remote Content in Messages Without it, viewing a spam or phishing email will confirm your email address. Viewing other emails will confirm that you viewed it, when you viewed it, how many times you viewed it, etc. sigh, what a cesspool.
- Breza 7y agoThe "how many times" isn't always true. I work with email a lot at my job and email image caching is getting more aggressive.