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> 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 a
by 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 agogmail already bounces email to nonexistant addresses.
- thedufer 13y agoBy "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 agoIt 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 agoThat'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.