Most people don't know what "email monitoring" is, and many times they fall victim to hacking and datawhen they open their Gmail message or the app they use.
All those annoying email piling up in your inbox aren't just aimed at promoting products. They also track whether you've opened the email, when you opened it, and where you were at the time, by embedding software .
Just type “email tracking” into your search engine and you will see many applications appear.
There are various methods used to track email. For example, one of the simplest is through a redirect link. Let’s say you click on a link you found in an email that leads to a product page. The link is coded to be trackable. Before it takes you to the article, it goes to another server along with a variety of data, such as what browser you are using or what application you clicked the link from.
However, while it's easy enough to spot a link, there are other ways to track emails that aren't as obvious. The method we'll look at below is pixel tracking .
How it works? A single tracking pixel is embedded in the email, usually hidden within an image or link. When the email is opened, the code in the pixel sends the information back to the company's server.
There have been some attempts to limit the amount of information that can be transferred this way. For example, since 2014, Google has been serving all images through its own proxy servers, which could hide your location from some email tracking apps.
Extensions like Ugly Mail and PixelBlock have been developed to block trackers in Chrome and Firefox, and there are also alternative browsers that emphasize privacy, such as Brave and Tor Browser.
But there's one simple step that will help you avoid many trackers: stop automatically loading images from email . Images are where most of these pixels are hidden. You won't be able to avoid all the trackers that might be hidden in your email this way, but you will stop many of them.
Disable automatic image capture on a computer
- Click the settings icon in the upper right corner.
- Click on "Show all settings".
- Go to the "General" tab (the first one), scroll down to the "Images" option.
- Select "Ask before showing external images".
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Save changes".
Keep in mind that in addition to limiting email tracking, it will also disable dynamic feature Gmail's, which makes messages more interactive.
Disable automatic image capture on mobile
- Go into the Gmail app and select the three-line icon in the top left corner.
- Scroll down and select "Settings".
- Select the email account you want.
- Scroll down and select "Images".
- Select "Ask before showing external images".
Gmail's dynamic feature is also disabled.
