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Good riddance. Anecdotal, but I noticed a definite change in the tone of sales emails I was getting after I turned off images in Gmail. When they could tell I

Good riddance. Anecdotal, but I noticed a definite change in the tone of sales emails I was getting after I turned off images in Gmail. When they could tell I was reading their garbage but not responding, there was a lot of "tell me why you aren't interested" and "just a fifteen-minute call, just fifteen minutes we swear" and "please just talk to me, why won't you talk to me?" They saw I was opening the emails—at this point, if I see something bold, I tap it without thinking—so they thought they had a chance, and they were really obnoxious. I finally switched off images. After they stopped being able to tell if I was seeing their stuff, they got a little less pushy; they couldn't be sure I'd gotten their first email, so they focused more on re-explaining their product than trying to guilt me into reacting to them. (I'm a little more understanding of people who use these to determine how much dead weight their mailing list has. Especially if you're an indie creator, you don't want to be paying for the 20% of people who might not be reading your newsletter. I don't mind a "please let us know if you're reading our newsletter" email as long as they're not obnoxious about it.)

stingraycharles 6y ago
It’s most likely drip marketing systems at work, and no human was ever involved. They are just systems that respond to certain triggers, such as “read 3 emails without answering”. So right now you’re hindering the algorithm of making these decisions, which leads to more generic emails. Consider it the email equivalent to blocking cookies. :)
phreeza 6y ago
I always thought gmail requests the images whether you open the email or not since they moved to the image proxy in 2015 or so.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I too recall hearing this, but email tracking definitely still works in Gmail, and Google, being the advertising and marketing king, has no incentive to upset their actual customers by defeating email tracking. (In fact, AMP4Email, a.k.a. "Dynamic Email", will probably make this even worse.) I suspect the thing we heard about means Gmail is messing up the IP address/location tracking aspect of a tracking pixel, but still loading it on email opens. The bargain of "we'll hide the user's IP, but still allow you to track their behavior" sounds like the devil's bargain I'm used to from them.
  - robin_reala 6y ago
    AMP4Email was the trigger that turned me from a paying customer to de-Googling my life, so I guess I can be thankful for that at least.
  - phreeza 6y ago
    Good to know, I disabled loading images now.
- eli 6y ago
  No, the proxy hides your IP, user agent, and cookies but it doesn't actually fetch the images until you open the message.
- chimeracoder 6y ago
  > I always thought gmail requests the images whether you open the email or not since they moved to the image proxy in 2015 or so. No. They request the image (through their proxies) the first time it's loaded. Only subsequent requests are loaded straight from the cache. That means that, if trackers send personalized tracking pixels (which literally all do), then they still know the first time you read the email. (The only thing that's changed is that they can't tell when you open it subsequent times, and they can't get location information and the like from your IP address). In exchange for taking location tracking away from marketing companies, they turned images on by default for Gmail users.
JoshTriplett 6y ago
I'd highly recommend https://www.emailprivacytester.com/ https://www.emailprivacytester.com/ as well; it does a good job of testing if your email client leaks information about whether an email has been read. That demanding, presumptuous tone in an email is indeed a fast way to generate annoyance. With or without read-tracking, it's a bad approach to sales. I received mail via an address obviously obtained via a scraper or purchased spam list, with a subject of "quick call on Friday?". When that bait failed to work, they then had the audacity to send a mail asking for reasons for the lack of response, with such options as "I'm busy, reach out again in a month", or "I'm not the right person, but I've CCed another contact", etc. Naturally, there was no option for "You're a spammer and in an ideal world you'd go out of business". Ironically, it was a company offering lead generation and sales, so the fact that they're spamming is a very clear sign that their services are highly suspect. When I have the time and inclination, I go through the email headers of such mails, and report them to their mailing list service (some of them are very good about removing spammers), their hosting provider, their domain name provider, their email provider (gmail never seems to act on spam reports, but perhaps others might not be), and anyone else who might be able to stop the spam.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Interesting service, apparently Apples Mail.app actually blocks all of its tricks.
- csilverman 6y ago
  This looks pretty useful. Thank you. And yeah, pretty much every such email I've received was from companies who seemed to pride themselves on their interpersonal services or abilities. Given that they managed to irritate me in under ten seconds, I did not have a whole lot of faith in their abilities.
- m463 6y ago
  I would also recommend little snitch (on mac). I use apple mail, and turn off remote images. HOWEVER it has a huge privacy hole. If I forward an email it loads all images. I found this out when I wanted to forward a phishing email to IT. ugh.
graeme 6y ago
> I'm a little more understanding of people who use these to determine how much dead weight their mailing list has. Especially if you're an indie creator, you don't want to be paying for the 20% of people who might not be reading your newsletter. I don't mind a "please let us know if you're reading our newsletter" email as long as they're not obnoxious about it. I semi regularly use the prune feature of my mailing list client to get rid of people who haven’t opened emails recently. I suppose this may be removing active subscribers? If so, is there another way to achieve this goal? (Removing non-active members helps reduce spam reports and helps with deliverability I think) (My niche is non technical so they probably use email app defaults for images)
- james-skemp 6y ago
  Likely depends on the service. About a month ago I got a 'still interested?' email that I could click on a link to say I was. Looks like they were using ConvertKit. Issues with email tracking has been a known issue for over a decade, so you would hope they would have that as part of their service. Might be worth using a test email to try it out.
monksy 6y ago
I got less emails from recruiters when I turned off image loading in gmail. It's gotten better. What I suspect that I've found is that recruiters are embeddeding tracking images to indicate if you've looked at the email or not.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
gerdesj 6y ago
I suspect I'm a few years older than you 8) I run many small (and a few quite bigger than small) email ingress/egress systems for several decades now. I also worry about a fair few mailbox stores. Email is quite old and was never designed to worry about things like security. It was designed to get a message from A -> B. Regardless of that, it is the Pony Express realised (says British bloke!)
taneq 6y ago
> When they could tell I was reading their garbage but not responding, there was a lot of "tell me why you aren't interested" [...] I absolutely HATE these. Yes, I saw your email two weeks ago. No, I didn't want to talk to you then. No, if you send me a second email (especially if it's a condescending attempt at a power move like 'I didn't see your response to my last email, please let me know when we can meet up') I will absolutely not ever want to talk to you or buy anything from you.
haskman 6y ago
Thanks! I just disabled external images in gmail after reading your comment.

stingraycharles 6y ago

It’s most likely drip marketing systems at work, and no human was ever involved. They are just systems that respond to certain triggers, such as “read 3 emails without answering”. So right now you’re hindering the algorithm of making these decisions, which leads to more generic emails. Consider it the email equivalent to blocking cookies. :)

phreeza 6y ago

I always thought gmail requests the images whether you open the email or not since they moved to the image proxy in 2015 or so.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I too recall hearing this, but email tracking definitely still works in Gmail, and Google, being the advertising and marketing king, has no incentive to upset their actual customers by defeating email tracking. (In fact, AMP4Email, a.k.a. "Dynamic Email", will probably make this even worse.) I suspect the thing we heard about means Gmail is messing up the IP address/location tracking aspect of a tracking pixel, but still loading it on email opens. The bargain of "we'll hide the user's IP, but still allow you to track their behavior" sounds like the devil's bargain I'm used to from them.
- robin_reala 6y ago
  AMP4Email was the trigger that turned me from a paying customer to de-Googling my life, so I guess I can be thankful for that at least.
- phreeza 6y ago
  Good to know, I disabled loading images now.
eli 6y ago
No, the proxy hides your IP, user agent, and cookies but it doesn't actually fetch the images until you open the message.
chimeracoder 6y ago
> I always thought gmail requests the images whether you open the email or not since they moved to the image proxy in 2015 or so. No. They request the image (through their proxies) the first time it's loaded. Only subsequent requests are loaded straight from the cache. That means that, if trackers send personalized tracking pixels (which literally all do), then they still know the first time you read the email. (The only thing that's changed is that they can't tell when you open it subsequent times, and they can't get location information and the like from your IP address). In exchange for taking location tracking away from marketing companies, they turned images on by default for Gmail users.

JoshTriplett 6y ago

I'd highly recommend https://www.emailprivacytester.com/ https://www.emailprivacytester.com/ as well; it does a good job of testing if your email client leaks information about whether an email has been read. That demanding, presumptuous tone in an email is indeed a fast way to generate annoyance. With or without read-tracking, it's a bad approach to sales. I received mail via an address obviously obtained via a scraper or purchased spam list, with a subject of "quick call on Friday?". When that bait failed to work, they then had the audacity to send a mail asking for reasons for the lack of response, with such options as "I'm busy, reach out again in a month", or "I'm not the right person, but I've CCed another contact", etc. Naturally, there was no option for "You're a spammer and in an ideal world you'd go out of business". Ironically, it was a company offering lead generation and sales, so the fact that they're spamming is a very clear sign that their services are highly suspect. When I have the time and inclination, I go through the email headers of such mails, and report them to their mailing list service (some of them are very good about removing spammers), their hosting provider, their domain name provider, their email provider (gmail never seems to act on spam reports, but perhaps others might not be), and anyone else who might be able to stop the spam.

tinus_hn 6y ago
Interesting service, apparently Apples Mail.app actually blocks all of its tricks.
csilverman 6y ago
This looks pretty useful. Thank you. And yeah, pretty much every such email I've received was from companies who seemed to pride themselves on their interpersonal services or abilities. Given that they managed to irritate me in under ten seconds, I did not have a whole lot of faith in their abilities.
m463 6y ago
I would also recommend little snitch (on mac). I use apple mail, and turn off remote images. HOWEVER it has a huge privacy hole. If I forward an email it loads all images. I found this out when I wanted to forward a phishing email to IT. ugh.

graeme 6y ago

> I'm a little more understanding of people who use these to determine how much dead weight their mailing list has. Especially if you're an indie creator, you don't want to be paying for the 20% of people who might not be reading your newsletter. I don't mind a "please let us know if you're reading our newsletter" email as long as they're not obnoxious about it. I semi regularly use the prune feature of my mailing list client to get rid of people who haven’t opened emails recently. I suppose this may be removing active subscribers? If so, is there another way to achieve this goal? (Removing non-active members helps reduce spam reports and helps with deliverability I think) (My niche is non technical so they probably use email app defaults for images)

james-skemp 6y ago
Likely depends on the service. About a month ago I got a 'still interested?' email that I could click on a link to say I was. Looks like they were using ConvertKit. Issues with email tracking has been a known issue for over a decade, so you would hope they would have that as part of their service. Might be worth using a test email to try it out.

monksy 6y ago

I got less emails from recruiters when I turned off image loading in gmail. It's gotten better. What I suspect that I've found is that recruiters are embeddeding tracking images to indicate if you've looked at the email or not.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

gerdesj 6y ago

I suspect I'm a few years older than you 8) I run many small (and a few quite bigger than small) email ingress/egress systems for several decades now. I also worry about a fair few mailbox stores. Email is quite old and was never designed to worry about things like security. It was designed to get a message from A -> B. Regardless of that, it is the Pony Express realised (says British bloke!)

taneq 6y ago

> When they could tell I was reading their garbage but not responding, there was a lot of "tell me why you aren't interested" [...] I absolutely HATE these. Yes, I saw your email two weeks ago. No, I didn't want to talk to you then. No, if you send me a second email (especially if it's a condescending attempt at a power move like 'I didn't see your response to my last email, please let me know when we can meet up') I will absolutely not ever want to talk to you or buy anything from you.

haskman 6y ago

Thanks! I just disabled external images in gmail after reading your comment.