

Gmail’s Recent Image Handling Changes - coupdegrace
http://blog.movableink.com/gmails-recent-image-handling-changes-the-impact-and-resolution/?utm_source=Movable+Ink+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0a07fae09d-December_2013_newsletter12_11_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_87cc366eea-0a07fae09d-324220977

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anonypotamus
This is better for user privacy. Marketers will have to find another less
invasive way.

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mapgrep
"In some cases, senders may be able to know whether an individual has opened a
message with unique image links"

[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?p=display_imag...](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?p=display_images&rd=1)

This is an inherent flaw with auto-displayed mail images loaded on demand.
They are easily rigged to act as read receipts.

Hard to see how that's a privacy enhancement.

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anonsumus
Well, you have the option to turn it off. They could also be serving the
images cached which wouldn't indicate anything to the sender, and they are
just adding this caveat to be extra cautions. Not to mention that marketing
stuff has its specific tab in gmail.

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ryanthejuggler
Tracking images in emails are uncacheable specifically because they need to be
traceable. For a set of users, you'd send out the same email, but use a
different image for each:

    
    
        www.example.com/banner.png?userid=1
        www.example.com/banner.png?userid=2
        www.example.com/banner.png?userid=3
    

and so on. How would you propose caching that? You can't simply ignore the GET
parameters since many web services use those to distinguish between different
files. And anyways you could even get around that by using URLs like

    
    
        www.example.com/userid/1/banner.png
        www.example.com/userid/2/banner.png
        www.example.com/userid/3/banner.png
    

While I do applaud the decision to route all images through Google servers to
hide the user's location, I'm disappointed that images are enabled by default.

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toomuchtodo
Get hash of image file, serve cached version of fetched version if hash
matches.

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ryanthejuggler
The point isn't that the image be shown in the browser, it's that it is
requested from the email sender's server. That's how email tracking works. If
you're still making the request then this approach doesn't work. (Unless I'm
missing something?)

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gabriel34
I believe if you want my location and a confirmation I've read your email you
should ask me, not shadily collect information

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skwirl
We've noticed this with Microsoft's e-mail services already with some
confirmation e-mails that display items from the customer's order. In fact, we
think they might be loading the images despite the customer not opening the
e-mail, as the rendering service gets hammered from Microsoft IP addresses
early in the morning every day, and we know they are from e-mails sent to
hotmail.com/outlook.com/live.com/etc e-mail addresses.

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Pxtl
I wonder how that works - pre-emptively fetch content that appears in a large
number of emails sent to a large number of customers?

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sharmanaetor
If the reader loads the images, Google / Microsoft will need to load the image
at least that first time before they can cache it

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wrongc0ntinent
This is MailChimp's blog entry on the changes: [http://blog.mailchimp.com/how-
gmails-image-caching-affects-o...](http://blog.mailchimp.com/how-gmails-image-
caching-affects-open-tracking/)

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spb
Good.

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lurkinggrue
This is a good thing.

