4 ms·
This is a really upsidedown take. Spam was rampant prior to better safeguards around privacy, for one. It almost took down the internet iirc.
by dogman144 5y ago
This is a really upsidedown take. Spam was rampant prior to better safeguards around privacy, for one. It almost took down the internet iirc.
- pphysch 5y ago"Better safeguards around privacy"? How is Google or Cloudflare or NSA or whoever peeking at your incoming emails to determine what gets through good for "privacy"? That is upside down and backwards. Please explain.
- dogman144 5y agoE2e encryption to prevent that peaking didn't really debut until the 2000's, as that's right when the crypto wars ended. Spam was actively fought in 1990's, and then improved measurably into 2000. See projects like Hashcash in 1997, anti-spam tool. So your premise doensn't make sense with that timeline. Right when consumer privacy measurably improved via encryption availability and the end of related legal challenges is right around the time spam improved as well. Which is to say, there is no correlation that's logical b/t the two in my mind, but if anything the timeline invalidates privacy improvements -> worsening spam without more evidence.
- sdenton4 5y agoHtml enabled email can easily contain tracking. Even without JavaScript, you could insert an img tag pointing at a uniquely generated address and log the query... It becomes a question of who you trust more: the service you've chosen for handling your email (and spam protection), or the people sending spam emails. If you don't trust your provider, you should find another provider.
- SapporoChris 5y agoMost email clients have the option to not autoload images. I set my client to not autoload, it is easy enough to click to load an image if I think I want to see it. In most cases I do not!
- angry_octet 5y agoAnd Google auto downloads embedded images when they receive the email, they show you the cached version and there is no information provided to the sender.