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The email server does not need to load all the images at once. If it receives a billion emails, it can retrieve linked images a few per second per domain. Or on
by stubish 6y ago
The email server does not need to load all the images at once. If it receives a billion emails, it can retrieve linked images a few per second per domain. Or on demand if the email is opened. The email server does not even need to completely drain the queue and load all the images, just images from enough emails to bollocks up the results is enough. The end result is the same, in that the sender does not know if the email was read by a human or not.
- vidarh 6y ago> just images from enough emails to bollocks up the results is enough. A large enough proportion of opens either does not trigger an image retrieval or triggers one but the user won't read the message anyway, so open rates have always been approximate. The time of day, the news, the weather all distorts the data so much anyway that the only sensible use of the data is trends, so it'd take some effort to distort the data enough for it to be useless. Your best suggestion I think would be to rate limit it, with the caveat that if you want to immediately deliver messages you'd need to also open on demand, and e-mail opens are extremely spiky so you might struggle to smooth out the opens entirely, but it might be enough to make it useless enough for people to ignore the data.