Just because it's through a proxy doesn't mean identifying information can't be embedded in the URL.... This is used as a "customer read email" callback.
Images Now Showing in Gmail
121–130 of 141 posts
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> obviously you can encode some ID into the image URL itself but all that lets you do is identify the email address of the user that opened the email. But you already had their email address because you sent them an email - so again, no PII gets disclosed All that lets you do is...confirm that the email address exists. Until this change, that was a very difficult thing to do; now, its equivalent to getting a message…
gmail already bounces email to nonexistant addresses.
By "exists" I really meant "is actively used". There are probably millions of gmail addresses that "exist" but no one ever reads (I personally own over a dozen).
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#123[deleted]
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
That has got to be a neat trick. If a Google server does the fetch, how would you detect opens other than theirs?
Uniquely name at least one image per outgoing email where the image name is tied to a recipient ie a316f002a5d080a613dce89a4ad8f9a9.gif uniquely identifies myemail@gmail.com. If google doesn't fetch the image until you open the email you can also determine open time. If they request and cache all images at the time the email is received regardless of its having been opened then this doesn't work.
Thanks, the next question is if gmail sees a bunch of emails from the same sender with these hash-named images, I wonder whether they will squash them.
How this plays out will be interesting to watch.
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#125In some cases, senders may be able to know whether an individual has opened a message with unique image links.
From https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?p=display_imag...
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#126I 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?
Another commenter above noted that the cache duration is on the order of "a few minutes". If the email is opened a second time later on in the day, Google's cache hits the server again.
(Of course, this doesn't rule out the possibility that Google is actually holding onto each version they cache. I imagine it's not actually worth it for them to do so.)
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Email open" tracking just got a lot more reliable for all mass email & marketing automation vendors. On the flip side, those same solutions can no longer set a persistent cookie with the image, so persistent tracking based on the initial email open will stop working.
> "Email open" tracking just got a lot more reliable for all mass email & marketing automation vendors. No, it didn't. If you had chosen the option to ask before displaying external content -- which existed and applied to non-image content and, without which selection, email-open tracking by external non-image content was already reliable -- then the new setting to ask before displaying external images is selected fo…
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Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand how a proxy will protect me from an image loaded as http://marketer.com/4b3403665fea6.jpg where that hash is used to link to my email address
Now it will seem to the sender that 100% of e-mails sent to Gmail recipients have been opened, rendering actual measurement impossible. A unique ID is useless if all unique IDs are requested all the time. I'm sure they built-in rate-limiting to prevent DDOSing the sender's image server...
Apparently not. First, only messages read in gmail.com and Gmail mobile clients (not any other email clients). And apparently the image is not requested from the sender until the message is opened. Finally, apparently any querystring parameters will continue to function as usual.
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#129How does this affect invisible pixels (for analytics)?
Badly: http://blog.movableink.com/gmails-recent-image-handling-chan...
It doesn't sound that bad. First, apparently only affecting 2-5% of mail. Secondly, everything works the same except for the absence of useragent and cache control headers (which aren't that helpful anyhow for analytics, especially when you're still getting those on 90%+ of your messages).
Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail
#130Does this mean that every image will be saved onto Google's proxy server at the time that Google receives it, or at the time that the user opens it? I don't want to lose the ability to track email opens to gmail users through Mandrill/SendGrid/whatever...
I sure want you to lose that ability.
It's crazy that email clients ever provided that vulnerability in the first place.