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I don't understand how that helps. If I send an email to user_x@gmail.com with an embedded image at http://example.com/my_spam_images/image_for_user_x.jpg http:

I don't understand how that helps. If I send an email to user_x@gmail.com with an embedded image at http://example.com/my_spam_images/image_for_user_x.jpg http://example.com/my_spam_images/image_for_user_x.jpg and google makes a request to that, I know the mail has been delivered and the user in question exists and is seeing my ads, because a request for image_for_user_x.jpg showed up in my logs. Now, when user_y also receives my spam and I get a request for image_for_user_y.jpg and I just serve the same file, Google is probably gonna deduplicate them on their cache or cdn or w/e, but only after they've sent me the request and confirmed that someone read my email. I'm not trying to overload google's storage capability here (lol), I'm just interested in the information leak.

codeka 13y ago
Similar to how they detect spam by comparing similar emails (eg, same sender, largely the same content, etc). So the first maybe 1,000 or so see the spam in their inbox, but after enough people report it, everybody else gets it in their spam folder. So they could learn that for all these emails with largely the same content, this one image has a slightly different URL, but the image is always the same (or similar). So as with spam, the marketers might see the first few "opens", but once Google learns that they all similar anyway, the won't see any more. Now, I don't know if that's what they are doing, but its certainly possible.
leephillips 13y ago
"I know the mail has been delivered and the user in question exists and is seeing my ads" No, you just know that the email was delivered to the user's inbox. You don't know if the user looked at it or just trashed it.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Here's the social workaround to that: Send a few e-mail campaign with "time sensitive offers" with a timer that starts on retrieval off the image with a "oh, by the way, please not that for Gmail users it starts on delivery as Gmail loads the image right away". People love their e-mail offers. The type of users e-mail marketers want the most - namely the ones that responds to their offers very well - would be up in arms if Gmail makes them start missing out on offers.
- tjoff 13y ago
  That is way more information than they should ever get.

codeka 13y ago

Similar to how they detect spam by comparing similar emails (eg, same sender, largely the same content, etc). So the first maybe 1,000 or so see the spam in their inbox, but after enough people report it, everybody else gets it in their spam folder. So they could learn that for all these emails with largely the same content, this one image has a slightly different URL, but the image is always the same (or similar). So as with spam, the marketers might see the first few "opens", but once Google learns that they all similar anyway, the won't see any more. Now, I don't know if that's what they are doing, but its certainly possible.

leephillips 13y ago

"I know the mail has been delivered and the user in question exists and is seeing my ads" No, you just know that the email was delivered to the user's inbox. You don't know if the user looked at it or just trashed it.

vidarh 13y ago
Here's the social workaround to that: Send a few e-mail campaign with "time sensitive offers" with a timer that starts on retrieval off the image with a "oh, by the way, please not that for Gmail users it starts on delivery as Gmail loads the image right away". People love their e-mail offers. The type of users e-mail marketers want the most - namely the ones that responds to their offers very well - would be up in arms if Gmail makes them start missing out on offers.
tjoff 13y ago
That is way more information than they should ever get.