Your emails are constantly being spied on

The three emails include two small cookies, which allow the sender to know the recipient’s reaction. This is it BBC In a survey conducted withApplication Sending message Hey. To sites The web And for ad tracking, we’re talking about a “cookie” and for emails, it’s a ” Pixel spy .

Why this word? Because it is a For the snippet It is invisible to the recipient and is hidden in the message to track the applications of internet users. “Physically”, it takes the shape of a pixel in a pixel image, which is often undetectable because it is transparent. This is a bit the same functionality as a cookie, at this point, there is no alert, and the sender’s goal is to know when the message will open, from which type of device, and even from where to collect the cookieAddress IP.

A cookie that monitors your habits

This is apparently a blatant violation of personal data, and according to Hayne co-founder David Heinmeyer Hanson, the average Internet user receives about 20 emails a day with a pixel tag. For 10% of users, this will increase to 50 messages per day. His study is based on about a million messages a day on his company’s servers, and the culprits are mostly business sites and marketing companies. The same Facebook It uses this system on its social network to target ads.

If we do not find this type of cookie in a relative or coworker’s email, it will be hidden in emails containing the subject Door In advertisements or sales. As soon as the pixel appears in the message, like any link or image, the sender is notified that the pixel is stored on their server, and viewing the message uploads the imageComputer Of the recipient.

For now, there are no complaints against this type of practice, but on the other hand, it can be defended against Refuses to display images in an email. By default, Gmail blocks displaying images in considered emails Spam, But can do this for its entire inbox. In the parameters, you must access the “General” tab Check the “Ask for confirmation before displaying external images” box.

An option to prevent spying

We see the same option Mail on iOS But even in Outlook, The Software Sending message Microsoft, This is not a problem when you receive emails mainly with text. However, when there are images, it prompts you to enable the display option, so take the risk of being “discovered”.

This practice is not the same as allowing online couriers to “read” emails received to display content-based ads. Even if they are just bots, they can access the content of the messages for advertising purposes. At this point, a simple point-scale picture can do almost the same thing.