Everyone sends emails now: political parties, your book club, freelance journalists, the social media you subscribed to, your parents, that online store you only bought an article from 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 you are open, and there are several tools available to help them do so, tools that are not that difficult to use.
A tracking pixel, embedded somewhere in the email, is how most people control whether an email is opened. When the small one-pixel hidden image is loaded, it returns to the base. According to some experts, its use through emails reaches “endemic” levels.
Tracking pixels can report the times and dates the associated email was opened, as well as the location of the device used and the email client involved. It’s a lot of data to return to a third party that you may not know much about.
Marketing specialists and newsletter writers would say that this type of tracking is essential to understanding your audience and what they are most interested in reading, as well as the type of return they get from their advertising dollars, but from the other end. , it can feel like an invasion of privacy to essentially have a hovering eye over your shoulder taking 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 prevent them from working and see what messages include them, so you know which people and companies are interested in you, and you can choose to whom to allow and to whom not.
Stop tracking emails
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Blocking images in an email client blocks tracking pixels.
(Outlook Mail via David Nield)
Emails are typically tracked using the pixel method we mentioned, so the easiest way to stop them is to prevent the images from being loaded by default into the email application of your choice. Your posts may seem less visually appealing, but it’s worth it if you want that level of control.
In Gmail on the web, click the cogwheel icon (top right), then click See all settings i General: Next Images, select Ask before displaying external images. In Mail on macOS, choose e-mail, Preferences, Visualization and uncheck Upload remote content to messages. In the Outlook Mail program that comes with Windows 10, tap the gear icon at the bottom of the navigation pane, then select Reading board and make sure both Automatically download external images options are disabled.
You can find similar settings on your phone. In Gmail for Android or iOS, tap the menu button (top left), then click Configuration, then your email account and Images. For Mail on iOS, open the Main Settings app and choose e-mail and turn it off Upload remote images option. In Outlook for Android and iOS, tap your profile photo (top left), then the gear icon, and then tap your email account; Blocks external images option.
Other email applications, apart from the ones we mentioned, usually have similar options that you can use. It is still possible to view images within emails in these applications, just tap or click to do so. If images are not loaded, the embedded tracking pixels will not be accessed or reported to have been opened.
Tracking emails location
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