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How Gmail's Image Caching Affects Tracking, short form: * Loading images is now enabled by default rather than disabled by default, meaning that a larger porti

by aiiane 13y ago

How Gmail's Image Caching Affects Tracking, short form: * Loading images is now enabled by default rather than disabled by default, meaning that a larger portion of emails will be tracked, because it's more likely tracking images will be loaded. * Images are now loaded through a proxy, which means that all tracking images will no longer provide information like cookies, IP associated with the account, etc - the only information they'll provide is "this specific email was viewed by someone, somewhere." There is still an option to disable loading images by default. Toggling that option still results in images being loaded through a proxy, so the second item above still applies. As far as privacy goes, the potential level of privacy has increased (the proxy now allows you to load images if you desire without leaking IP etc.). The average level of privacy from the change is a mixed bag - more basic tracking (open tracking) will occur due to the change of default, but with the trade off that more advanced tracking (e.g. tracking IPs, setting cookies for correlation with non-email site visits a.k.a. remarketing) will no longer be possible. There is no net change to how hard it is to verify whether an address is a valid GMail address - that's already possible by simply talking to a Google mail server.

chimeracoder 13y ago
> As far as privacy goes, the potential level of privacy has increased (the proxy now allows you to load images if you desire without leaking IP etc.). The average level of privacy from the change is a mixed bag - more basic tracking (open tracking) will occur due to the change of default, but with the trade off that more advanced tracking (e.g. tracking IPs, setting cookies for correlation with non-email site visits a.k.a. remarketing) will no longer be possible. > There is no net change to how hard it is to verify whether an address is a valid GMail address - that's already possible by simply talking to a Google mail server. Thank you. I read through an unhealthy number of comments on the various threads about this (my train was delayed, and I'd finished the book I brought). Very few people actually seemed to get the key takeaways (your last two paragraphs) correct.
- eli 13y ago
  I think the problem is that Ars Technica was the first big site to cover it and they did a pretty poor job. The headline was "Gmail blows up e-mail marketing...", which is pure hyperbole and confused a lot of people (myself included) about what was going on. Here's a nice technical blog post from someone who actually knows what they're talking about: emailexpert.org/gmail-breaks-email-marketing-again/
wodenokoto 13y ago
> * Images are now loaded through a proxy, which means that all tracking images will no longer provide information like cookies, IP associated with the account, etc - the only information they'll provide is "this specific email was viewed by someone, somewhere." No, if you know who you are mailing, you can add their ID to the link of your tracking image, so you know exactly who opened the mail. <img src="www.tracking.com/image.gif?user_id&other_tracking_info" >
- bad_user 13y ago
  You've got no guarantee about when that image will be loaded by their proxy, making statistics next to useless. Google could prefetch those images. Even if the initial tests seem to indicate against this, they can change this on a whim, or they could prefetch with a delay, or they could prefetch only a percentage of those images, depending on ever-changing heuristics. The only useful info advertisers would get from this is that the email was sent to a Gmail account. Even if they don't prefetch, they can detect duplicates, especially from links coming from domains known to generate tracking pixels and there's nobody else that could do this better than Google. They can also get rid of images that aren't visible to the user (e.g. transparent or white or light gray pixels, or images that are too small to be a part of the content). Tricks like generating images with unique content only work for images with actual content to show. And it significantly raises the cost of email campaigns too, just as with spam. I don't have spam hitting my Inbox these days and that's not because spam has become impossible. Light spam (e.g. promotions from companies you've got a relationship with) have been moved in the Promotions tab. And I can't remember the last time I've seen real spam hitting my Inbox. All in all, I'm happy that they are introducing this feature. It's better for regular folks or for me - you know, the kind of people that always click Show Images, because promotional messages are hard to read otherwise (on purpose). I do hope they provide the option to turn it off. Google is pretty bad at providing choices these days.
  - taeric 13y ago
    If you are sending a marketing email to a person, an easy image that has unique data is their name. :) And I didn't even think hard on this. Pretty much any content that could have been easily done as text is easily done as a "dynamic" image. Now, they can detect duplicates, but only after they have gotten the contents. Unless I am mistaken on anything. (highly possible.)
deleted 13y ago
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by aiiane 13y ago

chimeracoder 13y ago

> As far as privacy goes, the potential level of privacy has increased (the proxy now allows you to load images if you desire without leaking IP etc.). The average level of privacy from the change is a mixed bag - more basic tracking (open tracking) will occur due to the change of default, but with the trade off that more advanced tracking (e.g. tracking IPs, setting cookies for correlation with non-email site visits a.k.a. remarketing) will no longer be possible. > There is no net change to how hard it is to verify whether an address is a valid GMail address - that's already possible by simply talking to a Google mail server. Thank you. I read through an unhealthy number of comments on the various threads about this (my train was delayed, and I'd finished the book I brought). Very few people actually seemed to get the key takeaways (your last two paragraphs) correct.

eli 13y ago
I think the problem is that Ars Technica was the first big site to cover it and they did a pretty poor job. The headline was "Gmail blows up e-mail marketing...", which is pure hyperbole and confused a lot of people (myself included) about what was going on. Here's a nice technical blog post from someone who actually knows what they're talking about: emailexpert.org/gmail-breaks-email-marketing-again/

wodenokoto 13y ago

> * Images are now loaded through a proxy, which means that all tracking images will no longer provide information like cookies, IP associated with the account, etc - the only information they'll provide is "this specific email was viewed by someone, somewhere." No, if you know who you are mailing, you can add their ID to the link of your tracking image, so you know exactly who opened the mail. <img src="www.tracking.com/image.gif?user_id&other_tracking_info" >

bad_user 13y ago
You've got no guarantee about when that image will be loaded by their proxy, making statistics next to useless. Google could prefetch those images. Even if the initial tests seem to indicate against this, they can change this on a whim, or they could prefetch with a delay, or they could prefetch only a percentage of those images, depending on ever-changing heuristics. The only useful info advertisers would get from this is that the email was sent to a Gmail account. Even if they don't prefetch, they can detect duplicates, especially from links coming from domains known to generate tracking pixels and there's nobody else that could do this better than Google. They can also get rid of images that aren't visible to the user (e.g. transparent or white or light gray pixels, or images that are too small to be a part of the content). Tricks like generating images with unique content only work for images with actual content to show. And it significantly raises the cost of email campaigns too, just as with spam. I don't have spam hitting my Inbox these days and that's not because spam has become impossible. Light spam (e.g. promotions from companies you've got a relationship with) have been moved in the Promotions tab. And I can't remember the last time I've seen real spam hitting my Inbox. All in all, I'm happy that they are introducing this feature. It's better for regular folks or for me - you know, the kind of people that always click Show Images, because promotional messages are hard to read otherwise (on purpose). I do hope they provide the option to turn it off. Google is pretty bad at providing choices these days.
- taeric 13y ago
  If you are sending a marketing email to a person, an easy image that has unique data is their name. :) And I didn't even think hard on this. Pretty much any content that could have been easily done as text is easily done as a "dynamic" image. Now, they can detect duplicates, but only after they have gotten the contents. Unless I am mistaken on anything. (highly possible.)

deleted 13y ago

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