
With the New Gmail, People Will Know When You Open That Message - mxfh
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/12/gmail-spying-explained
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rblatz
This is literally the exact opposite of what is happening. Google is
downloading the images when they receive the message and then proxying the
images.

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eco
Yeah. The author of this article apparently didn't read the GMail announcement
carefully enough. Email marketers can no longer track when email is opened on
GMail accounts because every single image is opened whether the user reads the
email or not.

Edit: Some other discussions about this on HN suggest it only fetches the
email if the user opens the email so I guess the jury is still out.

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cookingrobot
There's a lot of confusion around what they're really doing. Either:

1) they're caching the images when they're sent. This seems to be what Google
and Ars are saying, and it's what makes sense.

2) they're loading the image when the email is opened. This would be a privacy
disaster, and is what Wired is saying, and from various comments people claim
to have confirmed this by testing with their own servers.

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hamiltonkibbe
They already did. Now they know less about who opened the email.

