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Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

arstechnica.com

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Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#71

Post by logicallee »

codeflo wrote: post #12

> E-mail marketers will no longer be able to get any information from images—they will see a single request from Google, which will then be used to send the image out to all Gmail users. Unless you click on a link, marketers will have no idea the e-mail has been seen. Absurdly wrong, marketers already use a unique image URL for each email recipient, and Google has no way to know that all of those point to the same im…

There is a simple way around that. You are saying that the fact that Google retrieves images means that the mail was delivered. But this is only true if Google retrieves images only from delivered mail.

If Google retrieves every image in every mail sent to @gmail.com, @googlemail.com etc, then the only thing the retrieve tells you is that you spelled "gmail.com" correctly - nothing about whether there is a mailbox there or whether it was delivered.

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#72

Post by pramodliv1 »

surrealize wrote: post #39
codeflo wrote: post #12

> E-mail marketers will no longer be able to get any information from images—they will see a single request from Google, which will then be used to send the image out to all Gmail users. Unless you click on a link, marketers will have no idea the e-mail has been seen. Absurdly wrong, marketers already use a unique image URL for each email recipient, and Google has no way to know that all of those point to the same im…

Google could retrieve and cache a random sample of the images and hash them. Then they could note which image links go to the same images. And they could identify image links by noting that a bunch of emails have the same structure except for one image link that's different for every recipient. So I think they actually could take a pretty good stab a deduping images with unique tracking URLs. It might not be perfect,…

What if the images are slightly modified for each user? A mixture of image processing and hashing can be used for deduping though.

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#73

Post by codeflo »

surrealize wrote: post #57
codeflo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy: Make the "Dear " part of the email an image. Boom, deduplication fooled. (Also, they don't currently seem to do anything like you're suggesting.)

With google's machine learning brain trust, I think they could still do a pretty good job deduping. Maybe not perfect, but I'd bet on them to win an arms race. Edit: ah, codeflo and EGreg are right. I was just thinking about the task of determining that the images serve the same role in each message (which I'm sure google could do a good job of). But (as they point out) in the "Dear " case they'll still have to show…

There's a huge difference between something that they might do, in theory, at some point, using vaguely magic machine learning technology, and what that they are currently doing, right now, to address the privacy concerns over a change that they already rolled out to millions of users.

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#74

Post by javiercr »

It seems Gmail was already caching the images in emails (before today's change to display them by default).

Read Mailchimp's post (December 6th):

"Image caching still lowers our ability to track repeat opens, but turning those images on means we’ll be more accurate when tracking unique opens. At least, theoretically it should work that way"

http://blog.mailchimp.com/how-gmails-image-caching-affects-o...

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#75

Post by jlgaddis »

jessaustin wrote: post #58
untog wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hasn't Google gotten pretty good at comparing very similar files? Sure, but they'd have to download the file first. At which point the tracking has succeeded.

...the tracking has succeeded. Succeeded in what, confirming that Google is still in operation? Please note that Google doesn't even have to confirm the receiving email address is valid in order to get the image.

I just checked and Google rejects an e-mail after the RCPT TO: stage if the recipient address doesn't exist so they would not receive the message content.

    $ telnet gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com 25
    Trying 74.125.142.26...
    Connected to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    220 mx.google.com ESMTP nh2si25383829icc.26 - gsmtp
    EHLO myhostname.mydomain.com
    250-mx.google.com at your service, [my.ip.was.here]
    250-SIZE 35882577
    250-8BITMIME
    250-STARTTLS
    250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
    250 CHUNKING
    MAIL FROM: 
    250 2.1.0 OK nh2si25383829icc.26 - gsmtp
    RCPT TO: 
    550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try
    550-5.1.1 double-checking the recipient's email address for typos or
    550-5.1.1 unnecessary spaces. Learn more at
    550 5.1.1 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?answer=6596 nh2si25383829icc.26 - gsmtp

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#76

Post by badman_ting »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #16

So instead of my work mailing lists having accurate stats via ye olde tracking pixel, now only google does, which they will sell to their own chosen marketers and clients paying google's rate. This isn't the privacy and common-sense win you think it is.

Devil you know.

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#77

Post by DannyBee »

ben0x539 wrote: post #64
jessaustin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...the tracking has succeeded. Succeeded in what, confirming that Google is still in operation? Please note that Google doesn't even have to confirm the receiving email address is valid in order to get the image.

"early tests indicate that they don't actually do that, waiting for the user to click the email to make the request."

It'd be nice to see these "early tests".

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#78

Post by 300bps »

codeflo wrote: post #12

> E-mail marketers will no longer be able to get any information from images—they will see a single request from Google, which will then be used to send the image out to all Gmail users. Unless you click on a link, marketers will have no idea the e-mail has been seen. Absurdly wrong, marketers already use a unique image URL for each email recipient, and Google has no way to know that all of those point to the same im…

As someone who co-invented email image bugs with a million other programmers over 15 years ago, you are absolutely correct. (for the curious, my reason for coming up with it was to tell when a customer who requested a car insurance quote from the company I worked at read their email which instantly initiated an outbound call to them).

The entire article is just plain wrong. For instance:

This move will allow Google to automatically display images, killing the "display all images" button in Gmail.

Go ahead and do that, Google and you'll bring Web bugs back completely. How about this:

1. Marketer embeds a "jpg" file whose filename consists of a GUID that matches back to a user.

2. When you load that "jpg" file, it gives you an image unique to that user - maybe an MD5 hash of their GUID filename or some other thing unique to them that holds no value.

This would uniquely identify that a user reads their email. How would Google stop this? They can't cache it for multiple users. Both the filename and contents are unique to the user. If you think they could otherwise detect it for this particular situation, I could think of 100 other ways to do this that would not be able to be tracked in the same way.

There's no way Google or any other email provider can legitimately automatically load email images and not open the door to web bugs. No way.

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#79

Post by justinator »

momokatte wrote: post #45
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #16

So instead of my work mailing lists having accurate stats via ye olde tracking pixel, now only google does, which they will sell to their own chosen marketers and clients paying google's rate. This isn't the privacy and common-sense win you think it is.

Your work mailing lists only have accurate stats if all of the recipients currently enable loading of images by default. I don't think you're being sincere in your concern.

"opens" for email messages have never been super accurate, since downloading images isn't on by default in more than just Gmail - your desktop mail client may have the same settings - who knows?

Because of this, any real interaction with an email message - where the user has to interact with the content, could then be counted as an, "open". If you get any other interaction with the message - say a user clicks a URL (that is also tracked), you just look and see if an, "open" was also recorded for this message, for this user - and, if not: record an open.

You'll still get instances when opens happen in messages, that aren't tracked, since no other interaction is done - there's that inaccuracy. But, if no other interaction is done, might as not count it as an open, anyways. Perhaps we should rename, "open" track as, "was this person, at all engaged, in the slightest?"

You can also then just give that a ranking: opened, clicked x amounts of links, followed through with a sale, DIDN'T unsubscribed - good rank!

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#80

Post by jlgaddis »

logicallee wrote: post #71
codeflo wrote: post #12

> E-mail marketers will no longer be able to get any information from images—they will see a single request from Google, which will then be used to send the image out to all Gmail users. Unless you click on a link, marketers will have no idea the e-mail has been seen. Absurdly wrong, marketers already use a unique image URL for each email recipient, and Google has no way to know that all of those point to the same im…

There is a simple way around that. You are saying that the fact that Google retrieves images means that the mail was delivered. But this is only true if Google retrieves images only from delivered mail. If Google retrieves every image in every mail sent to @gmail.com, @googlemail.com etc, then the only thing the retrieve tells you is that you spelled "gmail.com" correctly - nothing about whether there is a mailbox th…

> If Google retrieves every image in every mail sent to @gmail.com, @googlemail.com etc, ...

But they don't. If they retrieve the image, the account exists (they reject mail after the RCPT TO: stage for non-existant accounts).

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