7 ms·
PixelBlock – Stop people from tracking your email opens
- hackread 11y agoyeah well what about google tracking emails itself.
- esMazer 11y agois a given if you are using gmail. If anyone doesn't want google, microsoft, yahoo tracking email.. you better get your own mail server.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- zz1 11y agoOr pay one, e.g. Gandi: https://www.gandi.net/ https://www.gandi.net/
- yellowapple 11y agoAnd now you're back to square one due to draconian French surveillance laws. Running your mail server on a VPS is not a very good solution, particularly when that VPS exists in a country that interpreted 1984 to be an instruction manual rather than a cautionary tale.
- pearknob 11y agoquite useful, great job
- wodenokoto 11y agoWouldn't adblock/muBlock/etc. accomplish the same, while working cross browser?
- ramoq 11y agounfortunately not, adblock blocks ad related media only. This is one of the few tools that will intelligently block people from tracking your email views/opens
- mp3geek 11y ago* Easy privacy. EasyPrivacy is an optional supplementary subscription that completely removes all forms of tracking from the internet, including web bugs, tracking scripts and information collectors, thereby protecting your personal data.
- mp3geek 11y agoMy point being, if you care about privacy enough it would extend more than just your email. Thus using Adblock Plus (with Easylist + Easyprivacy + other subscriptions), would be more beneficial to the end user.
- ibejoeb 11y agoSource: https://github.com/ramoq/PixelBlock https://github.com/ramoq/PixelBlock
- ramoq 11y agoThanks for posting ibejoeb!
- ibejoeb 11y agoNeat tool, thanks. I wasn't going to install it because it required access to mail.google.com and googleusercontent.com, but since it's open I feel better about it. It might be helpful to others to mention that and link to it in the chrome store.
- nickphx 11y agogoogle already grabs the images via image proxy.. http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/images-now-showing.html http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/images-now-showing.htm...
- ibejoeb 11y agoUnique images still allow for read receipts. The proxy effectively prevents cookie setting, ip address determination and geolocation, and injection-type attacks.
- geofft 11y agoIf Google proxies and caches images at the time of receipt, instead of when you open the email, then you effectively don't have read receipts for Gmail users, because it looks like they all read the email immediately. Caching images immediately is probably an attractive engineering decision on its own merits. Whether spamming read receipts is good (because it makes them useless) or bad (because it makes people think the emails got read) is an interesting question.
- nine_k 11y agoBTW what is the point? I mean, one can legitimately want that they do not receive the tracking information. But are there any real security implications, like siphoning off any unauthorized data, facilitating spam, etc?
- dublinben 11y agoTracking an email open is enough of a security threat by itself.
- nine_k 11y agoBut this is not any email; it's usually a promo or info email, usually with a link to directly click, so I would willingly divulge the same details — if the email is legitimate. I could imagine that geolocating my IP might be undesirable at times. I wonder what are other potential security (not privacy) implications.
- ChrisLTD 11y agoIt's not just marketing emails. I have worked with people that track opens of their emails so they could decide how and when to follow-up with their contractors, clients, and prospective clients.
- maroonblazer 11y agoThe context for those is still marketing. I too don't understand what's to be gained from a tool like this. If the party collecting the data abuses it to spam you then you simply unsubscribe/block the emails altogether. And of course they know you know you can do this, which gives them incentive to not do that.
- bduerst 11y agoThat's because there is really isn't much to be obtained from this tool other than a sense of gaining control over your email.
- Paul_S 11y ago...or if you're using mutt you're laughing all the way to the plain-text version. On a serious note: just block remote content.
- bramgg 11y agoNo Chrome extension can know which images are being used to track email opens. If you want to disable that sort of tracking you should disable images/external resources completely. Otherwise you're just getting a false sense of security.
- rsync 11y agoI use (al)pine. Nobody has ever, in any way, received information about my email opens. I speed through email with keystrokes and zero mouse movement, and I can use email with ease on even the slowest of satellite or 2G network access. Finally - and this is my favorite part - since I use pine, and my engineers at rsync.net also use pine, not one single intra-company email has ever traversed the Internet. Ever. All intra-company email is simply a local copy operation on a single mail server.
- themodelplumber 11y agoThat's pretty neat to hear. I used to use Pine on the Seattle Community Network back in the early 1990s and have been thinking of trying it again. Have you documented your setup somewhere?
- StavrosK 11y ago> since I use pine, and my engineers at rsync.net also use pine, not one single intra-company email has ever traversed the Internet. Ever. What does the mail client have to do with this? I use Thunderbird with Gmail, and, since all of my contacts use Gmail, not one single email has ever traversed the Internet, ever. With TLS-enabled mail servers, this isn't very relevant a metric.
- zurn 11y agohttp://techcrunch.com/2013/12/12/gmail-open-rates/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/12/gmail-open-rates/ "[...] Google spokesperson I emailed said that’s not entirely correct. (The spokesperson declined to be quoted.) Instead, they said marketers who track open rates through images will still be able to do so — indeed, they suggested that the data might be more accurate now since open rates will count users who read the emails but don’t load the images." Sounds like Google made sure tracking works even when users attempt to evade it. But another quote in the same article still talks about pixels: "MailChimp can still detect the first request for the open-tracking pixel."
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nthcolumn 11y agoIsn't this redundant unless I accept images? I get:"Images are not displayed. Display images below - Always display images from webmaster@ibmverse.com" (for example).
- monk_e_boy 11y agoYou are correct, I'm 99% sure this is why blocking images is an option in email browsers.
- 69_years_and 11y agoI generally use Thunderbird and while I have not checked what it does in all cases, it generally flags when there is remote content and provides options regarding loading it. I'm happy with that. I know many folk of course use web based mail readers, and this is directed at them, but if its a big issue using a product like Thunderbird may be the way to.
- RRRA 11y agoI thought gmail recently preloaded images so you didn't need this? (I say this because the example shows gmail)
- angry_octet 11y agoI thought that too, but no. It seems it replaces the original link with a google url, which is basically a proxy address for that original url. It seems they may cache it, but don't preemptively download it when the mail is received. http://gmailblog.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/images-now-showing.html http://gmailblog.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/images-now-showing.... Obviously if they downloaded any image linked to an email send to gmail that could lead to a DOS, and be very wasteful in any case. So they wait until you actually open the email. But at least it obscures your IP unless you click on the links.