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This is better for user privacy. Marketers will have to find another less invasive way.
This is another one of hose "better for privacy" changes that google implements to keep all of your private data in their hands while not sharing it with others unless money is involved.
Do they have gmail passwords so only they can advertise on my email?
This is better for user privacy. Marketers will have to find another less invasive way.
"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... 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.
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 ad…
I wonder how that works - pre-emptively fetch content that appears in a large number of emails sent to a large number of customers?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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... 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.
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.
www.example.com/banner.png?userid=1
www.example.com/banner.png?userid=2
www.example.com/banner.png?userid=3
www.example.com/userid/1/banner.png
www.example.com/userid/2/banner.png
www.example.com/userid/3/banner.png
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 distingu…
It is a usability feature.
I can attest that my own mother has no idea why the pictures in her emails don't show up. If this keeps her privacy (or at least what shreds of it remain) and makes it easier, then I don't have a problem with it.
Personally, spam is a thing of the past. Between using multiple email addresses that forward to a few main ones, to spam assassin and Gmail's spam filtering, I haven't seen a spam in years. Even if I did, I highly doubt it would get me to open it.
That leaves promotional emails, which, if I'm opening, I already have an interest in and might as well just see the images. It saves me a click. Rare would be the case where I'm interested in an email enough to open it, but not enough to see the images it contains (which often make reading it a more pleasant experience in the case of headers, gradients, and the like).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 distingu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 distingu…
Get hash of image file, serve cached version of fetched version if hash matches.