
Hey.com is onto something with its tracking-pixel blocker - gingerlime
https://blog.gingerlime.com/2020/hey-com-is-onto-something-with-its-tracking-pixel-blocker/
======
xnx
Gmail's handling of tracking pixels might be even better, it automatically
downloads and caches all images in a email. This has a few benefits: 1)
Renders any gmail "open rate" analytics useless 2) Makes the email load faster
in your email client since images are coming from Google's fast cache
[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/12/gmail...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/12/gmail-blows-up-e-mail-marketing-by-caching-all-images-on-
google-servers/)

~~~
lostmsu
If that happens even outside the web interface that just means now Google has
that data instead of the sender.

~~~
berbec
Hey, amazing thing. A Google "customer added value" is actually data-mining in
disguise.

------
saaaaaam
There’s a certain irony that Basecamp’s own CRM product expounds the benefits
of tracking email opens and clicks.

“The simplest system available to send an email to a group of contacts. Track
opens and clicks and stay top-of-mind.“

[https://highrisehq.com/features/](https://highrisehq.com/features/)

~~~
drewbug01
From the main website, which I presume you have seen:

> As of August 20, 2018, we're no longer accepting new signups for Highrise

[https://highrisehq.com/](https://highrisehq.com/)

Not sure that’s valid grounds for criticism. Basecamp never ends support for
products, but this one is otherwise sunset.

~~~
saaaaaam
Yup. But they still support the feature and sold people on that benefit. So
whether the product is still accepting new sign ups is neither here nor there.
They are part of the “problem” that they are railing against.

------
gav
Whether or not you agree with email tracking, the language feels a bit like
propaganda:

"YOU'RE PROTECTED. WE BLOCKED A SPY TRACKER IN THIS THREAD"

"A spy tracker" seems a bit dramatic and it's far from a neutral description.
What about just:

"This email contained a tracking image allowing the sender to see if you've
opened it, we've blocked that for you."

The main use of this feature is to track open rates so that marketers can
improve their marketing efforts. Block them if you disagree, but there's no
reason to make it sound so nefarious.

~~~
Nextgrid
It is nefarious if it’s ran by an ad-tech or marketing company. They also
collect much more information than just the fact that the email has been
opened. IP addresses & user-agents are collected as well.

~~~
jeffbee
Doesn’t gmail already kill this tracking? They proxy and cache all tracking
images, so you don’t get originating ip or geo, I thought.

~~~
xnx
You're right: [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/12/gmail...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/12/gmail-blows-up-e-mail-marketing-by-caching-all-images-on-
google-servers/) Though it might be possible for marketers to still track
individual email opens? [https://redant.com.au/how-we-do/cache-busting-gmail-
new-imag...](https://redant.com.au/how-we-do/cache-busting-gmail-new-image-
caching/)

------
everdrive
Possibly a dumb question, but does blocking remote images not prevent this?

~~~
ldoughty
Not a dumb question, but not a good answer because it's too abstract (a
general concept, but not tied to a particular piece of software/client -- is
this a browser, or an email client?)...

The short answer is: Stopping tracking objects requires the request to be
stopped before any DNS or HTTP request takes place against that object... and
must not be circumvented by other software/addons that then allow it...

For instance, if you block images, but you have another addon/software (e.g.
those "website accelerators" that do virtually nothing) that preloads images..
well.. how do the two addons interact? If anything sends that request, you've
notified the tracking website.

Why DNS too? If I were an evil company, I'd have both DNS and HTTP checks. If
you block images but still for some reason checked the DNS address, I might be
able to extract some useful info because you hit
uniqueTrackingUUID.example.com, despite not sending the HTTP request.

So, in short, blocking remote images _should_ help, but there's a lot more
evil ways to track you... it could even be a url-loaded font (that actually
doesn't exist, because it's your UUID for tracking)... or a script... In
theory, if you block remote images, your software _hopefully_ blocks other
stuff, but that depends on the implementation...

~~~
Nextgrid
I use a good old “boring” email client like Mac Mail and to the best of my
knowledge it doesn’t attempt DNS resolution either.

Maybe in-browser clients are different but then it’s more of a problem with
that particular implementation than the concept of blocking remote content
itself.

Regarding website accelerators, is that really still a thing? Never heard of
those.

~~~
ldoughty
I don't know Mac mail. As for website acceleration, there's many forms..
there's still software people try to push that basically installs add-ons into
browsers... Then there's simply add-ons you can download, which could easily
do anything.

For mail clients, it comes down to implementation there as well, but it's less
likely a major vendor would add tracking protection checkboxes, then fail on
them too badly..... Less likely... And they usually don't have add-ons of the
like that would be a problem.

------
alanfranz
One small issue: email has no delivery notification system. Once upon a time
there was one (mdn) but gmail effectively killed it.

Sometimes (important notifications) I need to understand whether the email was
delivered to the recipient and it was read.

What am I to do? Yes, marketers do piggyback the feature. But it's still
useful.

Give me a voluntary receipt system, THEN kill tracking pixels.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Could you include a link in the email requesting confirmation of receipt by
clicking on it?

~~~
maps7
This is really the only way to 100% know if your email was received. It needs
agreement from the recipient though to click the button. If it's beneficial
for them then I think they would.

------
captn3m0
What I find worse is link tracking, since it can’t be as easily bypasses. I
have a paid subscription to a newsletter and the publisher said they can’t
disable link tracking because SendGrid only offers it as an account wide
setting - I checked, it is.

This is the kind of stupidity that makes me hate marketing.

~~~
sha90
Can you explain what is worse about link tracking? If you're explicitly making
a request to a remote service, how would you expect it to not be tracked?

~~~
captn3m0
1\. The link becomes unreadable

2\. The link now goes to a marketing.newsletter.com instead of
example.com/original-story, which gives me a better signal of the quality of
the citation. Wouldn't you hate it if every wikipedia citation went to bit.ly
instead?

3\. My "intent" is to read the information behind the original link, if I
can't do that without being tracked by a the sender of the email - I'm less
likely to click the link.

4\. Email isn't meant to be tracked! Clicking on a link in an email I got
should not notify the sender, in any way whatsover. If this is true for my
personal emails, why is it not true for company emails?

------
NicoJuicy
If you are interested in a newsletter, i'm advising you to not block them.

You are really screwing with readable metrics, not only for marketing. But for
people who do A-Z for their newsletter.

~~~
eloisant
The vast majority of people will stick using Gmail, so aggregated metrics
won't be skewed that much.

However I definitely wants to mess with the fine tracking like Intercom does
for example, where they can pull out data about a specific client and see what
communication he read or didn't read, how long he stayed on it, etc

