Everyone sends emails now: political parties, your book club, freelance journalists, the social networks you signed up for, your parents, that online store from which you bought just one item a decade ago and many, many more.
What do many of these email senders have in common? They want to know if the messages they send to you are being opened, and there are a variety of tools available to help them do just that – tools that are not that difficult to use.
A tracking pixel, embedded somewhere in the email, is how most people monitor whether an email is opened. After the tiny, hidden image of a pixel is loaded, it returns to the base. Its use in e-mails is now at “endemic” levels according to some experts.
Tracking pixels can report the times and dates when your associated email was opened, as well as the location of the device used and the email client involved. There is a lot of data to provide to third parties that you may not know much about.
Marketers and newsletter writers would say that this type of tracking is essential to understanding your audience and what they’re most interested in reading, as well as the type of return they’re getting from their advertising investment, but from the other hand, It may seem like an invasion of privacy, essentially having an eye hovering over your shoulder making a note every time you open and read a specific email, especially if you don’t know what’s going on.
You may not be able to do much about using these tracking pixels, but you can take steps to stop them from working and see what messages include them – to find out which people and companies are taking a particular interest in you, and you can choose who to allow and who not.
Stopping tracking emails
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Blocking images in an email client blocks tracking pixels.
(Outlook Mail via David Nield)
E-mails are usually tracked using the pixel method we mentioned, so the easiest way to prevent this is to prevent images from being loaded by default within the e-mail application of your choice. Your messages may end up looking less visually appealing, but it’s worth making a switch if you want that level of control.
In Gmail on the web, click the gear icon (top right), then View all configurations and In general: beside Images, select Ask before displaying external images. In Mail on macOS, choose Correspondence, Preferences, Seeing and uncheck Load remote content into messages. In the Outlook Mail program that comes with Windows 10, tap the gear icon at the bottom of the navigation panel and select Reading pane and make sure that both Download external images automatically the options are disabled.
You can find similar settings on your phone. In Gmail for Android or iOS, touch the menu button (top left), then settings, then your email account and Images. For Mail on iOS, open the main Settings app and choose Correspondence and turn off the Upload Remote Images option. In Outlook for Android and iOS, tap your profile picture (top left), then the gear icon and then your email account – you can then enable Lock external images option.
Other e-mail applications besides the ones we mentioned usually have similar options that you can use. You can still view images within emails in these applications, just an extra touch or click to do so. If the images are not loaded, any embedded tracking pixels will not be accessed and will not report that they have been opened.
Spotting Tracking Emails
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