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Didn't most email providers kill these off years ago? I thought they just cached the images as soon as the email arrived, and showed you the cached version eac

Didn't most email providers kill these off years ago? I thought they just cached the images as soon as the email arrived, and showed you the cached version each time you opened the message.

AdriaanvRossum 6y ago
Nope, but here is how to block them [1] [1] https://mashable.com/article/how-to-block-email-pixel-tracking/ https://mashable.com/article/how-to-block-email-pixel-tracki...
- jrockway 6y ago
  I see. So they're just proxying the request for the image, instead of caching it. That prevents the tracking image from learning your IP, receiving cookies, etc. but still gives the tracker that binary "did they see it" signal. I guess I'm disabling images in email. I thought email providers would have closed this obvious privacy disaster... but nope.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Privacy-oriented email providers tend to block remote images by default[1]. Ad companies that provide free email services generally do not, because the users of tracking pixels are often their advertising customers. [1] Fastmail also has a "middle-ground" option to show remote images if it's from someone in your contacts, if you want a way to filter it dynamically a bit. I leave mine on a straight block, but if you really hate seeing "ugly" emails, it's a nice option.
robertlagrant 6y ago
That's a bad idea, because it shows spammers which email addresses are valid.
- jrockway 6y ago
  That already happens. When I ran my own email server, I didn't reject invalid addresses because that was the anti-spam advice at the time (whether or not it worked, I don't know; most of my email was still spam). But that doesn't appear to be what providers like Gmail are doing; they are happy to tell you that an address is invalid. It is somewhat important to human users for the mail server to tell you the address is invalid. (An example: many years ago I interviewed at Google. Some time during the process, my recruiter left. I found this out by sending them an email and getting a message about the address being invalid. I then complained on HN, someone followed up, and I worked there for many years!)

Didn't most email providers kill these off years ago? I thought they just cached the images as soon as the email arrived, and showed you the cached version each time you opened the message.

AdriaanvRossum 6y ago

Nope, but here is how to block them [1] [1] https://mashable.com/article/how-to-block-email-pixel-tracking/ https://mashable.com/article/how-to-block-email-pixel-tracki...

jrockway 6y ago
I see. So they're just proxying the request for the image, instead of caching it. That prevents the tracking image from learning your IP, receiving cookies, etc. but still gives the tracker that binary "did they see it" signal. I guess I'm disabling images in email. I thought email providers would have closed this obvious privacy disaster... but nope.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Privacy-oriented email providers tend to block remote images by default[1]. Ad companies that provide free email services generally do not, because the users of tracking pixels are often their advertising customers. [1] Fastmail also has a "middle-ground" option to show remote images if it's from someone in your contacts, if you want a way to filter it dynamically a bit. I leave mine on a straight block, but if you really hate seeing "ugly" emails, it's a nice option.

robertlagrant 6y ago

That's a bad idea, because it shows spammers which email addresses are valid.

jrockway 6y ago
That already happens. When I ran my own email server, I didn't reject invalid addresses because that was the anti-spam advice at the time (whether or not it worked, I don't know; most of my email was still spam). But that doesn't appear to be what providers like Gmail are doing; they are happy to tell you that an address is invalid. It is somewhat important to human users for the mail server to tell you the address is invalid. (An example: many years ago I interviewed at Google. Some time during the process, my recruiter left. I found this out by sending them an email and getting a message about the address being invalid. I then complained on HN, someone followed up, and I worked there for many years!)