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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

#81

Post by EGreg »

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…

Are you saying Google will try to guess and reconstruct "Dear Marge" in the same font as "Dear John" instead of requesting both from the origin server?

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

#82

Post by seiji »

petercooper wrote: post #65
seiji wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no right to know what your users are doing after you send them a message. The privacy invading "tracking pixels" shouldn't exist in the first place.

Why shouldn't content providers be free to monitor usage if it's legal and easy to do? Would you next start to argue SaaS providers shouldn't have any Web server logs at all since it's a way of "tracking" users?

Web server logs are okay. Any javascript-based tracking and cross-site usage aggregation is not.

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

#83

Post by codeka »

ben0x539 wrote: post #56
slg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I am not sure where the original claim is coming from. It isn't that hard for Google to simply follow the links and compare the files as part of the caching process. So unless marketers start customizing the images in addition to the links, there isn't any reason why Google can't cache the images together. And even if marketers do start customizing images, hasn't Google gotten pretty good at comparing very simi…

I don't understand how that helps. If I send an email to user_x@gmail.com with an embedded image at http://example.com/my_spam_images/image_for_user_x.jpg and google makes a request to that, I know the mail has been delivered and the user in question exists and is seeing my ads, because a request for image_for_user_x.jpg showed up in my logs. Now, when user_y also receives my spam and I get a request for image_for_us…

Similar to how they detect spam by comparing similar emails (eg, same sender, largely the same content, etc). So the first maybe 1,000 or so see the spam in their inbox, but after enough people report it, everybody else gets it in their spam folder.

So they could learn that for all these emails with largely the same content, this one image has a slightly different URL, but the image is always the same (or similar). So as with spam, the marketers might see the first few "opens", but once Google learns that they all similar anyway, the won't see any more.

Now, I don't know if that's what they are doing, but its certainly possible.

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

#84

Post by badman_ting »

YourSexyMama wrote: post #61

So there is something I'm not seeing this being discussed anywhere. What about the idea of only storing one image for any and all recipients? Yes I know that the file name is changed based on recipient to try and track the users viewing of the image. But a simple md5sum of the file will indicate that it is potentially the same file as others being cached. Google would only need to store the references and the one fil…

But this only addresses the storage side. A request must still be issued for each unique URL in order to de-dupe.

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

#85

Post by EGreg »

slg wrote: post #34
trevyn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google has no way to know that all of those point to the same image. Try again. :)

Yeah, I am not sure where the original claim is coming from. It isn't that hard for Google to simply follow the links and compare the files as part of the caching process. So unless marketers start customizing the images in addition to the links, there isn't any reason why Google can't cache the images together. And even if marketers do start customizing images, hasn't Google gotten pretty good at comparing very simi…

Waiy are you saying Google will try to guess and reconstruct "Dear Marge" in the same font as "Dear John" instead of requesting both from the origin server? What if the image they didn't download includes a picture of a baby instead?

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

#86

Post by jaxn »

Nacraile wrote: post #62
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.)

What if google just immediately fetches images for all received messages, regardless of deliverability? They can dedupe wherever possible, but the sender still ends up with no information about whether the message was delivered, much less read.

AND it could create a dis-incentive to load up an email with unique images since as soon as you send the email out all of those gmail addresses are coming right back at your server to request the images.

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

#87

Post by warfangle »

mml wrote: post #5
kevrone wrote: post #2

Holy crap. If I'm reading this right, this basically destroys all pixel tracking, so no more email open stats, no nothing.

Yup. I'd really hate to be in the bulk email business today. Perhaps google will sell them back the data they used to create themselves.

The future of marketing is forming cohesive communities with your customers, anyways, not spamming the shit out of them.

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

#88

Post by j_s »

MrClean wrote: post #55
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…

Consider this @codeflo: 1. Google may cache all images in all emails sent to gmail.com instantly and regardless of the existence of the address. This would remove the possibility for marketers to check user timestamp, remove user data from request and hide user email existence. 2. Google does _not_ need to save each image from each unique URL separately, all they need to do is fetch each image and check against an al…

Also, no more cookies that were set when loading those images

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

#89

Post by logicallee »

jlgaddis wrote: post #80
logicallee wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

and presumably bounce it in other cases? I mean this could be a way of ensuring that certain addresses exist without needing to be able to receive the bounced mail if they don't. But how is that an interesting or useful vector?

If Google does this with every mail regardless of the inbox it goes to (spam etc) then it doesn't tell you any more information than you learn from not receiving a bounce. However, I could imagine a scenario where the bounce address is wrong anyway (spoof) - is this really that useful for anything?

I mean, presumably most combinations of common first and last name plus two digits go to a registered mailbox. How does being sure that it is registered (but knowing nothing else) without having to be in a position to receive the bounce, mean a compromise?

I'm open to the possibility that it does - but I'm not seeing it.

EDIT: another possible area of concern is that you can get Google to visit an address just by sending mail to johnsmith@gmail.com and calling the link an image. But can't you already do the same thing with the Google bot by including a link causing it to probably visit? This could be more instantaneous and hide the actual referring source of the visit behind an email, but I don't really see how this can be used for anything. For example if an extremely malformed server performs actions on the basis of a simple http GET then I guess you could craft that command into an image url, send it to any gmail address, and then Google will do your dirty work of actually visiting that link. But, really, is this a vector that is dangerous for anything? Don't URL's already get random Google traffic?

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

#90

Post by EGreg »

300bps wrote: post #78
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 t…

There is ONE way: fetch every single image right away regardless of whether the email is even valid. And then don't store the cached version if there is no valid email. Otherwise store it and display to the user.

Since every result will be a positive - false or not - no information is revealed to the marketer AND the images are displayed.

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