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This proxying actually rolled out on December 3rd to most gmail.com users. We, Streak, happenned to launch an email tracking feature on the same day (http://www

This proxying actually rolled out on December 3rd to most gmail.com users. We, Streak, happenned to launch an email tracking feature on the same day (http://www.streak.com/email-tracking-in-gmail http://www.streak.com/email-tracking-in-gmail). Here's what we've learned: - the proxying of requests only happens when a user is viewing the mail inside Gmail (i.e. gmail does not actually affect the message body, its just proxying at render time) - gmail only caches in the image for a few minutes. So for email marketers, if your recipient views the email then views it again a few hours later, the marketer will see two requests for the image - there is basically no personally identifiable information in the request that Google's proxy sends to the server hosting the image. So from that perspective this is actually a boost in privacy than the previous state of the world. None of the headers, cache controls, cookies, ip addresses, referrers or user agents are passed to the original image server - obviously you can encode some ID into the image URL itself but all that lets you do is identify the email address of the user that opened the email. But you already had their email address because you sent them an email - so again, no PII gets disclosed - it is true that marketers will see a more accurate count of opens (because displaying images is on by default) - there seems to be several ways to get gmail's proxy to NOT cache the image and simply proxy the request every time the user opens the emails

thedufer 13y ago
> obviously you can encode some ID into the image URL itself but all that lets you do is identify the email address of the user that opened the email. But you already had their email address because you sent them an email - so again, no PII gets disclosed All that lets you do is...confirm that the email address exists. Until this change, that was a very difficult thing to do; now, its equivalent to getting a message through a spam filter. This is going to help spammers _a lot_.
- lallysingh 13y ago
  gmail already bounces email to nonexistant addresses.
  - thedufer 13y ago
    By "exists" I really meant "is actively used". There are probably millions of gmail addresses that "exist" but no one ever reads (I personally own over a dozen).
- alooPotato 13y ago
  It wasn't very difficult to do - in our testing, approx 60% of emails we sent out had images requested for them meaning users clicked on the display images link. May be us nerds dont do it but regular users seem more likely to.
  - thedufer 13y ago
    That's assuming that people are just as likely to allow images from a message that kinda looks like spam as they are from a message that's from a person/service they know.
timdorr 13y ago
> there seems to be several ways to get gmail's proxy to NOT cache the image and simply proxy the request every time the user opens the emails What are those ways?
PavlovsCat 13y ago
> all that lets you do is identify the email address of the user that opened the email. But you already had their email address because you sent them an email You just have an email address. Once that image is downloaded, you know it's active the sky basically falls down.
stephenhuey 13y ago
Thanks for the information! So if you want to display a dynamic image containing real-time information when the recipient opens the email, it will still work since Gmail only caches the image for a short time, right?
- alooPotato 13y ago
  Depends what you want to base the dynamic information on. If you want it to be time based, I.e the current t stock price then that should still be possible. But say you want it to be based on user location, like the weather in the users location then that won't work because you won't have the users original IP address so you won't be able to roughly detect their location.
chimeracoder 13y ago
> - obviously you can encode some ID into the image URL itself but all that lets you do is identify the email address of the user that opened the email. But you already had their email address because you sent them an email - so again, no PII gets disclosed This functions as a read receipt (like the tracking pixels). The image might be cached later, but since it is initially loaded the first time an email with it is is opened, this means that implementing read receipts on all outgoing emails is as simple as making the URL for each image unique to the user. Thus, the marketer knows: 1) That the email was opened 2) When the email was opened along with whatever information they already have about the user. This is a HUGE privacy implication. Even if "no [further] PII gets disclosed", it discloses a lot of information that is both sensitive and easy for marketers to join with existing identifying information.
- mason55 13y ago
  > I would not say that "no PII gets disclosed". And I would say you don't know what PII means. You might consider this to be a violation of privacy but you're not disclosing any PII that the sender didn't already have. And in fact it's decreasing the amount of PII that's being disclosed because you're not longer sending any browser information when the image is loaded.
  - username223 13y ago
    It's disclosing that the spammer (or "marketer") has a valid address. Since I only load images in email from people I trust, there is no way this can increase my privacy.

thedufer 13y ago

> obviously you can encode some ID into the image URL itself but all that lets you do is identify the email address of the user that opened the email. But you already had their email address because you sent them an email - so again, no PII gets disclosed All that lets you do is...confirm that the email address exists. Until this change, that was a very difficult thing to do; now, its equivalent to getting a message through a spam filter. This is going to help spammers _a lot_.

lallysingh 13y ago
gmail already bounces email to nonexistant addresses.
- thedufer 13y ago
  By "exists" I really meant "is actively used". There are probably millions of gmail addresses that "exist" but no one ever reads (I personally own over a dozen).
alooPotato 13y ago
It wasn't very difficult to do - in our testing, approx 60% of emails we sent out had images requested for them meaning users clicked on the display images link. May be us nerds dont do it but regular users seem more likely to.
- thedufer 13y ago
  That's assuming that people are just as likely to allow images from a message that kinda looks like spam as they are from a message that's from a person/service they know.

timdorr 13y ago

> there seems to be several ways to get gmail's proxy to NOT cache the image and simply proxy the request every time the user opens the emails What are those ways?

PavlovsCat 13y ago

> all that lets you do is identify the email address of the user that opened the email. But you already had their email address because you sent them an email You just have an email address. Once that image is downloaded, you know it's active the sky basically falls down.

stephenhuey 13y ago

Thanks for the information! So if you want to display a dynamic image containing real-time information when the recipient opens the email, it will still work since Gmail only caches the image for a short time, right?

alooPotato 13y ago
Depends what you want to base the dynamic information on. If you want it to be time based, I.e the current t stock price then that should still be possible. But say you want it to be based on user location, like the weather in the users location then that won't work because you won't have the users original IP address so you won't be able to roughly detect their location.

chimeracoder 13y ago

> - obviously you can encode some ID into the image URL itself but all that lets you do is identify the email address of the user that opened the email. But you already had their email address because you sent them an email - so again, no PII gets disclosed This functions as a read receipt (like the tracking pixels). The image might be cached later, but since it is initially loaded the first time an email with it is is opened, this means that implementing read receipts on all outgoing emails is as simple as making the URL for each image unique to the user. Thus, the marketer knows: 1) That the email was opened 2) When the email was opened along with whatever information they already have about the user. This is a HUGE privacy implication. Even if "no [further] PII gets disclosed", it discloses a lot of information that is both sensitive and easy for marketers to join with existing identifying information.

mason55 13y ago
> I would not say that "no PII gets disclosed". And I would say you don't know what PII means. You might consider this to be a violation of privacy but you're not disclosing any PII that the sender didn't already have. And in fact it's decreasing the amount of PII that's being disclosed because you're not longer sending any browser information when the image is loaded.
- username223 13y ago
  It's disclosing that the spammer (or "marketer") has a valid address. Since I only load images in email from people I trust, there is no way this can increase my privacy.