Images Now Showing in Gmail
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Images Now Showing in Gmail
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Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#2How does this affect invisible pixels (for analytics)?
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#3How does this affect invisible pixels (for analytics)?
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#4I hate to be "that guy", but does this mean Google is storing every one of our pics on their proxy servers? For how long do they store them, and what is their data retention policy?
Also, remembering that Google has no obligation to protect non-American users, does that give the NSA access to them, to run things like facial recognition, etc?
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#5Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#6Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#7I'm curious if this will help spammers. AFAIK, loading a tracking pixel helps validate an email address as active (since, by design, bounce messages probably wouldn't make it back to the spammer), even if the recipient didn't otherwise respond to the message. AFAIK, "Validated" email address lists are worth more than unchecked lists and if Google is preloading images for valid accounts, then that seems to make validation even easier for spammers.
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Badly: http://blog.movableink.com/gmails-recent-image-handling-chan...
To clarify, it's bad for marketing people, but good for users desiring privacy.
To an extent - it seems that google indirectly confirms that emails are received (even though additional data is lost).
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#9I kinda like this. More often than not, I never click the "Display Images" link because I know doing so will essentially feed information back to the people who sent the email (the fact that I opened it, my geoIP location, browser, etc). I've been fine with a slightly degraded and less pretty email experience in order to give me some extra privacy and keep my information out of marketer's systems.
With this I guess I can see emails with all the images and other goodies without that worry. Works for me.
On the other hand... There's a good chance Google is caching all this now. But seeing as they're running the mail system I don't feel like it's too major of an intrusion beyond what they already have.
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#10This is a step in the right direction. However, please understand that it doesn't really make a difference in forms of real privacy Googlers!
The e-mail spam/list creators are a different kind of adversary than, for example, web trackers.
They will do something like this: http www theirimageserver com/images/img53.jpg?to=you@email.com (Obviously they will obfuscate and use some kind of hash instead of cleartext e-mail to disguise their tracking ways).
Regardless of whether some.google.ip loads it, or your.home.ip loads it, it won't change the fact that you@email.com loaded it and your email is very active, not just active in that it didn't bounce, but active in that you actually read it.
Once again, it's a step in the right direction though, and I'm looking forward to seeing greater innovations from Google in the privacy space, because I'm confident that there are Googlers who understand that privacy is not a feature nor a PR thing... it's the difference between the preservation of humanity and society versus not.