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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

#191

Post by Nacraile »

Silhouette wrote: post #161
Nacraile wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if google just immediately fetches images for all received messages, regardless of deliverability? I'm trying to work out whether this is more useful as a way to get Google to DoS themselves or as a way to get them to DoS arbitrary web sites of others. Either way, isn't this a gift to trouble-makers? Of course Google would probably develop an automated defence against such attacks quickly if they happened in pra…

I'm fairly sure sending an email is more expensive than sending a GET, so it should be more effective for an attacker to make the requests directly than trying to use this to get google to proxy an attack.

I also strongly suspect that google's crawling infrastructure is more than capable of fetching a bunch of images for every single message gmail receives.

But even if I'm wrong about the above, google is perfectly capable of throttling their fetching to mitigate. (The problem really ends up looking an awful lot like crawling the internet, which is an area that google seems to have a bit of experience)

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

#192

Post by waps »

3JPLW wrote: post #170
buro9 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dialog popped up when I logged into email, and before I'd seen this thread. That dialog was much along the lines of "We'll now show you images in your email automatically." with a big "OK" button. I don't recall whether there was a less prominent "No, thanks" as I was only logging on to reply to one question really quickly. I suspect this is a UX anti-pattern. I've gone back into my settings and changed it back to…

The alternative to "OK" is "Settings," with a link that just dumps you into the main settings view… leaving you to find the Images section to change it back. Quite an opt-in.

Otoh, this makes it harder for email marketers and generally other people to see if I'm reading their mail.

+1

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

#193

Post by FiloSottile »

bloaf wrote: post #190
FiloSottile wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, an open question is if Google will make that request when the email is actually opened, which would allow marketers to determine if and when the email was read by the user, or if Google will make the request as soon as the email is received. I reply to this question here. Sadly, a request is done each time and only when a user loads the image. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6898087 Which makes the Ars ar…

If google cached them as soon as they were received wouldn't they, in some cases, effectively perform a DoS attack on whatever was hosting the image? I.e. if a spammer sent out 1,000,000 emails w/ images they were hosting, they would immediately receive 1,000,000 requests for the image.

I think such a behavior is really easily spotted and filtered, if not already blocked by spam filters.

Google has the technology to do that, the question is whether they want to put in the investment of storage required to actually guarantee users privacy, of if they just want to spend the least amount they can get away with...

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

#194

Post by mvanveen »

curveship wrote: post #133
buro9 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, an open question is if Google will make that request when the email is actually opened, which would allow marketers to determine if and when the email was read by the user, or if Google will make the request as soon as the email is received. The latter would enhance users' privacy at the cost of bandwidth for Google, but early tests indicate that they don't actually do that, waiting for the user to click the e…

Wait, do I understand you correctly that Google fetched the image even before you requested that images be displayed in the email? That seems like a boon to marketers, not a bane.

The way I read the comment, I think you are correct about it being a boon and not a bane. However, it is because the request was timed at the same time as the message read, not the other way around.

It seems the commenter functionally tested an external URL being requested by Gmail, and found that the request was coincident with when the commenter opened the email. This essentially "leaks" that you've opened the email as the image URL could be unique to your email message.

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

#195

Post by Dylan16807 »

jfoster wrote: post #174
Dylan16807 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

robots.txt is for crawlers, it would not stop an email client from rendering the email on behalf of its user upon receipt.

So then what gives Google the legal right to fetch, store, and re-serve the images?

They're just acting as an email client. Alice sends email to Bob, Bob is granted rights to fetch and view images. Bob uses gmail, so he passes the rights onto google to do part of that serverside.

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

#197

Post by gdg92989 »

kllrnohj wrote: post #184
mattdeboard wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's an advertising company. Selling eyeballs -- or information on how to get more eyeballs -- is what they do.

> Selling eyeballs -- or information on how to get more eyeballs -- is what they do. Selling eyeballs: yes. Selling information: oh good lord no, so very, very no. That information is never ever leaving Google's servers.

Until the NSA gets to it.

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

#198

Post by dsaber »

PeterisP wrote: post #151

Excellent, I've always wanted e-mail clients to do it this way. You send me a mail - you've no business being able to track if/when/how I open the envelope, unless I explicitly wish to inform you.

I think it's the opposite. With Google's change, the sender can more accurately find out if you've opened the email, since a request to download the image will be made as soon as you open the email. However, what the sender doesn't get now is IP, location, and browser data.

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

#200

Post by mnutt »

raldi wrote: post #172
mnutt wrote: post #162

Some other technical aspects of this: GMail serves all images from a datacenter in Mountain View, CA, so if your email's images were served from multiple datacenters or a CDN, there is a good chance they will load more slowly, depending on your caching headers. They optimize images on the fly, which may introduce more latency. Their optimizer doesn't take into account whether the optimized image is smaller than the o…

> GMail serves all images from a datacenter in Mountain View, CA Citation needed.

A clarification: GMail's proxy is in two pieces; your email client connects to GMail's CDN, but in order to load content from the origin it passes through a pool of servers in Mountain View. My guess is that the transcoding servers are all located there.
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