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I don’t think you quite understand the changes here, no "read receipts" are sent, any analytics sent only point to the Google proxy processing the images, no in
by anonsumus 13y ago
I don’t think you quite understand the changes here, no "read receipts" are sent, any analytics sent only point to the Google proxy processing the images, no individual recipients nor their actions are revealed.
See how marketers are scrambling to adjust to this change:
a.) Gmail is now requesting all images from proxy servers (googleusercontent.com), which incorrectly situates users in its headquarters in Mountain View, California when images are downloaded. This impacts the ability to geo-target image content for those Gmail users who are affected by the changes. (Note: Local Maps using zip codes appended as query parameters are unaffected.)
b.) Gmail is stripping the user-agent headers from the client request, which eliminates the ability to determine the Gmail user’s device and target image content appropriately.
c.) Gmail is removing the cache-control headers from the responses, which forces the user’s images to be stored in their browser’s cache for up to a day. This only impacts live image content if a Gmail user re-opens the email after the first open.
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http://blog.movableink.com/gmails-recent-image-handling-changes-the-impact-and-resolution/ http://blog.movableink.com/gmails-recent-image-handling-chan...
Basically their only avenue for now is mobile email which will soon follow in adopting this method.
- finnh 13y agoOP was using "read receipts" colloquially, to include "tracking images with a unique code embedded in them". And, as such, OP's claims are exactly correct. The only way this would not be true is if GMail pulled every image in every email, even if it's not read by the recipient. Given GMail's usage of the term "proxy server" in their blog post, as well as the tests by the OP and others on this thread, this appears not to be the case.
- anonsumus 13y agoGmail seems to be proxying the images through: https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/ https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/ and my understating the polling happens when Google receives the email not when it's opened.
- seanalltogether 13y agoI don't understand how a proxy will protect me from an image loaded as http://marketer.com/4b3403665fea6.jpg http://marketer.com/4b3403665fea6.jpg where that hash is used to link to my email address
- dragonwriter 13y ago> I don't understand how a proxy will protect me from an image loaded as It will protect you from it being as a read receipt if (and I'm not sure if this is the case, though it should be trivial to test by sending email with images served from a site you control to an email you control without opening it) Google requests the image once it has received the email.
- thedufer 13y agoIf you read other comments, a number of people have done the trivial test and confirmed that images aren't requested until you open the email.
- staticfish 13y agoWow this is really dreadful.
- dingaling 13y agoNow it will seem to the sender that 100% of e-mails sent to Gmail recipients have been opened, rendering actual measurement impossible. A unique ID is useless if all unique IDs are requested all the time. I'm sure they built-in rate-limiting to prevent DDOSing the sender's image server...