Your emails are spying on you. Out of the gazillion emails that hit our inboxes every day, most of them have hidden trackers capable of informing the recipient when you open them, where you open them, how many times you’ve read them, and much more — a privacy nightmare many call “endemic.” Fortunately, there are ways you can protect yourself and your inbox…
What are email tracking pixels?
The email tracking pixel is a surprisingly simple concept that allows anyone to secretly gather loads of information on you as soon as you interact with their messages.When someone wants to track whether you’ve read their email, they embed a tiny 1 pixel by 1 pixel image inside it. Once you open the email, it pings the server where the image is stored and logs the interaction. Not only does the sender trace whether you have clicked their email and how many times it’s been clicked on, it can also tell your location by checking where that network ping was launched and which sort of device was used…
If email tracking pixels are invisible, how do you spot them? Most email clients like Gmail and Outlook don’t have a built-in mechanism for this, but you can turn to third-party tools.
For Gmail, we suggest a Chrome and Firefox extension called Ugly Email. It adds a little “eyeball” icon next to the emails that are loaded with tracking pixels and then blocks them from spying on you. Alternatively, if you’re a Yahoo or Outlook user, you can try Trocker, which similarly marks emails with trackers on their websites. ..
* The same method of embedded pixel is used to upload private TAX data to Facebook.
