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Images Now Showing in Gmail

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Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail

#71

Post by anonsumus »

seanalltogether wrote: post #46
anonsumus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you quite understand the changes here, no "read receipts" are sent, any analytics sent only point to the Google proxy processing the images, no individual recipients nor their actions are revealed. See how marketers are scrambling to adjust to this change: a.) Gmail is now requesting all images from proxy servers (googleusercontent.com), which incorrectly situates users in its headquarters in Mountain V…

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

It will if the images are cached.

Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail

#72

Post by prezjordan »

antr wrote: post #66

"Google’s own secure proxy servers" will that mean that people who track me opening their email with 1px images won't be able to track that? I hope this is the case...

Sure looks like it. I wonder how analytics companies feel about this. It's important to know how many people are opening your emails.

Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail

#73

Post by antr »

prezjordan wrote: post #72
antr wrote: post #66

"Google’s own secure proxy servers" will that mean that people who track me opening their email with 1px images won't be able to track that? I hope this is the case...

Sure looks like it. I wonder how analytics companies feel about this. It's important to know how many people are opening your emails.

I guess the compromise is giving the user the option to choose: (i) I would like to be tracked, (ii) I don't want to be tracked. I genuinly dislike people who send me personal/work emails with tracking mechanisms...

Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail

#74

Post by maxerickson »

swedegeek wrote: post #70
maxerickson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't verified email addresses a relic of the past? Does anybody actually get anything other than nonsense spam anymore?

That feels a bit like the "I have nothing to hide argument." Should we just accept that probably spammers no longer send address verifying emails, and tacitly approve this change helping them out if they do? Ultimately, the default should be to let people decide for themselves to opt in to something like this. Forcing this with some pretty big head scratching holes in the benefits seems rather evil.

Looking at the preference, it isn't auto loading images in 'suspicious' messages (the help text more or less says this).

So trusted messages are now leaking read receipts.

Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail

#75

Post by taggartbg »

Does 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...

Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail

#76

Post by Wilya »

mtrimpe wrote: post #67
Wilya wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass-email senders probably would put a unique identifier in the image url (different for all users), so Google will open each image, because it can't know before loading them that it's the same image.

Or they could retrieve every image sent to a gmail address immediately, regardless of whether you viewed it or not. That would essentially render open statistics meaningless and would let Google cripple another industry after the promotions tab and 'not provided.' I really hope they don't because it's such valuable information when creating email copy...

I agree they could do it, but people upthread are suggesting that Google doesn't do that, and only loads the image when you open the message.

Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail

#77

Post by tehwebguy »

macspoofing wrote: post #56
tehwebguy wrote: post #38

Protect me from images? That is not why I used this feature. I used it so that images like /verifyRealEmail.php?email=$myaddress wouldn't work.

If the gmail proxy caches every image that is sent to a gmail address, then this bad for spammers, and good for everyone else. That's one less mechanism to verify valid (or active) email address.

I wonder if Google will access an image URL in an email sent to a nonexistent address

Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail

#78

Post by mratzloff »

mtrimpe wrote: post #68
yajoe wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also weird that they didn't explain the how behind this line: > Instead of serving images directly from their original external host servers, Gmail will now serve all images through Google’s own secure proxy servers. In most cases, the unique identifiers are embedded in the URLs themselves, so simply serving through a proxy is ineffective. Should I blindly trust that you, Google, did the right thing? Edit: looks…

They'll probably retrieve and cache every image as soon as the email is received which would effectively render open statistics meaningless for GMail addresses.

They don't, and it doesn't. See the post by @danielnr.

Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail

#79

Post by Wilya »

seanalltogether wrote: post #46
anonsumus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you quite understand the changes here, no "read receipts" are sent, any analytics sent only point to the Google proxy processing the images, no individual recipients nor their actions are revealed. See how marketers are scrambling to adjust to this change: a.) Gmail is now requesting all images from proxy servers (googleusercontent.com), which incorrectly situates users in its headquarters in Mountain V…

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

Even if Gmail loads tells the marketer that you have opened the message (as people are pointing out, it's a bit unclear), there are still some advantages.

It protects you from the guys at marketer tracking your user-agent, your ip address (which gives a rough geo-ip), the number of times you opened the email, etc. It's unclear to me whether the images could set cookies before (they probably did), but even without that, they could just use etag-tricks, or stuff like that, to track you cross-sites.

Marketers might now know when you open the message, but proxying the image prevents them from getting more precise information.

(No idea exactly how much of this and more Google does, obviously, but they put themselves in position to do it)

Re: Images Now Showing in Gmail

#80

Post by mratzloff »

twoodfin wrote: post #30
cantfindmypass wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can this possibly do anything but enable tracking? They can just embed hmac(secret, your_email).png.

Tracking is currently only useful insofar as receiving a URL request for the image indicates that someone opened the email, as well as providing whatever metadata is available via the request, through geo-locating the request IP or what-have-you. This change makes all of that impossible: Google will (presumably) always request your image URL, whether the user opens the email or not, and the request will come from Goo…

> Google will (presumably) always request your image URL

Why presumably?

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