The days of asking for read receipts are long gone. If you have been on the Internet for a long time, you may remember e-mail pop-ups asking for consent to inform the sender that you opened the email. They still exist to some extent today, but other, more sophisticated tracking methods have since replaced.
One of the first things many people do when they pick up a new phone and start texting is to turn off read receipts. No one likes it when someone thinks they are ignoring them and that “R” has gone so far as to end the relationship. Most people want to be answered immediately after reading them.
You may never have realized this, but the same effect exists in email, except that it is much more difficult for the average user to “turn it off”.
In this article, let’s talk about the aggressive ways that people track when you open their emails and how you can protect yourself from doing so.
What is the email tracking pixel?
What is an email tracking pixel?
The average email reader doesn’t realize just how powerful an invisible image really is. Just by uploading a 1 × 1 single pixel image you are giving so much information about your machine.
When you upload this image, the server hosting it can put all sorts of information about your device into the database, such as your IP address, location, browser, etc.
You can also pass other variables, such as the email address you are reading from (depending on the address it was sent to) and the time when the email was viewed.
Email senders can embed a transparent image in the body of the email they send you without you even knowing it is happening. Not fair, right? The good news is that you don’t have to fall victim to this kind of privacy breach.
How can I prevent someone from knowing when I opened their email?
How can I prevent someone from knowing when I opened their email?
There are options that make it easy for anyone to track email openings, like MailTracker, but large companies often use an enterprise or in-house solution. If that weren’t the case, it would be easy to just add certain domains to your online privacy settings so that images from them are never downloaded.
However, there is a broader solution: disable the display of images in all emails. This option is available in almost all modern email clients except Windows 10 Mail, including the web and mobile interface of Gmail.
To find this setting in Gmail, click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the Gmail web app, and then click Settings.
You will be taken to the Gmail settings. On the General tab, by default, you should see a label for the Pictures option. Here, make sure that Ask before displaying external images is selected. If it is not, select it and click the “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the page.
Now, every time you view an email, images are blocked by default. This will prevent the tracking pixels from receiving any information from you. You’d be surprised how many text-only emails contain small images inside.
An added bonus is that you can still display images in an email on a one-time basis or by whitelisting the full sender’s address, as shown in the two links below the “Images are not displayed” line. This avoids the annoyance of constantly confirming image displays from trusted senders.
If you’re an iPhone or iPad user and use the Gmail app, you’re out of luck. For now, all images will be displayed and there is no way to turn it off. However, Android users of Gmail applications have this option, so we hope it will eventually appear on Apple devices.
You can gain confidence and start allowing images from senders you are not so familiar with and find that when you do, no visible images appear. Strange, isn’t it? You are probably being tracked!
One of the many disadvantages of the Windows 10 Mail app is that it doesn’t support this feature. Windows appears to have taken a “less is more” approach in its most recent email client by ditching Outlook.
Even if you’ve set up Gmail in Windows 10 Mail with image blocking via the Gmail web app, it still won’t help. Windows 10 Mail also doesn’t support requests for read receipts for sent emails.
No matter which email client you choose to block images, you will be a safer and more private email reader. Many advertisers use tracking pixels to collect statistics about their ad campaigns, but they can be used for much more nefarious purposes. It is best not to expose yourself to this possibility from untrustworthy senders.
Always dismiss read receipts and block images from email senders you don’t trust. Following these two rules will make you the most secretive email reader you can be!
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