Apple Putting a Stop to Email Tracking Pixels With Mail Privacy Protection in iOS 15 and macOS Monterey

[9927036]

If the email is parsed and loaded by Apple, won’t a sender still know their email has been received and the time it was shown to the user?

No. Read the article carefully.

 

[ignatius345]

My e-mail already doesn’t load remote images by default. If I can’t read an e-mail without images then it wasn’t important to begin with.

I have been using the same strategy, but there are times when I would just like the best of both worlds: viewing the whole email as intended and not letting it phone home.

I installed this a while back and it seems to work quite nicely:

MailTrackerBlocker for Mail on macOS

Email tracker, read receipt and spy pixel blocker extension/plugin for macOS Apple Mail

apparition47.github.io

 

[Yoms]

Just for that feature alone, I'll be downloading the public beta, no matter if there are still some annoying bugs elsewhere (can't be worse than Big Sur anyways).

 

[btbeme]

This really does virtually nothing to improve your privacy.

Tracking pixels are generally unique to the email. They don't care what IP address you open the email from - they care that they sent an email to an address, and it got opened. The person trying to snoop on you has still learned that yours is a valid email address that an actual human looks at and they've also learned what time that human looked at it.

Your IP is already randomly changing - your ISP changes it periodically, and if you're on a mobile device, you likely change between networks entirely periodically, meaning your IP is changing.

Apple seems to be offering something that's of zero value for $1/month, and what's worse is they're advertising it. It's basically snake oil.

Frankly, you couldn't be more off-base with this comment. Pixel-based deliveries and tracking are an enormous privacy hole that is easily and often exploited, hardly ever for the better. Simply knowing that an email address is legit is their most basic function - just like telemarketing relies on phones that are actually answered - but in this case a payload can be delivered without you actually "answering the phone." In their most simple function, trackers and payloads can cause you to become a target for much larger operations. In a more complex function, trackers can easily move from being obnoxious to becoming an entry point for much uglier parties.

Any way - ANY way - to slow down the onslaught of spam, phishing, malware, and the like is welcome news to me.

 

[9927036]

Seeing that there are over 2.8 Billion Facebook users who don't give a crap about being followed everywhere and being profiled, there's 2.8 billion people right there who couldn't care less about remote loaded email images revealing their IP address.

Every website on earth records the IP address of each visitor. It's standard stuff in web logs

Not true. Privacy focussed websites do not record IP addresses.

 

[6787872]

love it. thank you, apple.

 

[9927036]

Right but unless everyone on earth does that they are just going to keep spamming people who opened. Rather than it coming back unopened and giving up at some point.

It's really being misrepresented as spam/pixel tracking blocking when it's not if that is the idea to it.

I struggle to see how this is better than disabling remote images still which does both- no open data, no data at all since it was never read.

I get this may be a good middle ground for the average person not to fiddle with images, but they failed to explain the differences completely considering it was a big part of the tech nerdy privacy section in a developer conference of tech nerds.

Just use Hide My Email in Monterey. If someone is spamming you, delete that address. Problem solved.

 

[koruki]

something tells me Google's way of blocking IP address has its reasons rooted in totally different interests lol

pay us to know but you can't do it yourself anymore.

 

[hot-gril]

No. Read the article carefully.

It means the email server received it at least. That's what he was asking, and the answer is yes.

 

[jk1221]

Just use Hide My Email in Monterey. If someone is spamming you, delete that address. Problem solved.

You grossly underestimate the tenacity of targeted spamming; especially when owning a business. Not newsletters.

"This is my 4th time tryng to coordinate a call if you have not received my prior messages"after ignoring them 3 times already not downloading any images figuring they get the hint you don't want their company's services.

Now multiply that by a dozen or 2 daily.

iOS has no rules; have to log into each account online web interface to do that for each person. Gets tedious and not worth the time.

 

[simonscheurer]

Can someone clarify; if an invisible pixel is associated with my email address then what does it matter how many proxies it goes through? If that image is loaded they know it was my email address that did it. Is this literally just hiding my IP and nothing more?

No, the point is, that the invisible pixel is loaded in the background independent from when you read an e-mail (or whether you read it at all).

Thus as soon as an e-mail arrives in the inbox the client loads the resources. The tracking-pixel will still know that the message has arrived in your inbox (as the pixel will identify you), but as this is an automated process this is no more than knowing that the e-mail address is valid, and the inbox still active.

There is though no information whether you have actually read the e-mail and when you did this. So no time information, has-read-information and a limited location information.

I thought the same thing as you did: What's the point if the tracking-pixel identifies me uniquely anyway. The smart solution is not trying to remove the pixel but always loading it independent from user behaviour. So there is no more feedback, whether the user even deemed the message interesting enough to read it.

As soon as the resources are loaded, they will be kept in the background. Thus, if you read the mail several times, still the pixel is retrieved only once when the loading is done.

This really does virtually nothing to improve your privacy.

Tracking pixels are generally unique to the email. They don't care what IP address you open the email from - they care that they sent an email to an address, and it got opened. The person trying to snoop on you has still learned that yours is a valid email address that an actual human looks at and they've also learned what time that human looked at it.

Your IP is already randomly changing - your ISP changes it periodically, and if you're on a mobile device, you likely change between networks entirely periodically, meaning your IP is changing.

Apple seems to be offering something that's of zero value for $1/month, and what's worse is they're advertising it. It's basically snake oil.

It does - see my comment above. They do know that's it a valid e-mail address (you typically already get bounces when sending though), but not anymore that "an actual human looks at". That's the entire point of background loading as soon as the message arrives. The sender does not know that you - as a person - did look at it and when. He just knows that the mail-client automatically retrieved the image.

 

[LiquidJay]

This really does virtually nothing to improve your privacy.

Tracking pixels are generally unique to the email. They don't care what IP address you open the email from - they care that they sent an email to an address, and it got opened. The person trying to snoop on you has still learned that yours is a valid email address that an actual human looks at and they've also learned what time that human looked at it.

Your IP is already randomly changing - your ISP changes it periodically, and if you're on a mobile device, you likely change between networks entirely periodically, meaning your IP is changing.

Apple seems to be offering something that's of zero value for $1/month, and what's worse is they're advertising it. It's basically snake oil.

I used to be on the other end of this ... sending the tracked emails. Here is the point Apple highlights:

"(Mail activity)... can be used to build a profile of your behavior and learn your location."

I would say that this is "protection of privacy" wouldn't you? Mind you, most people don't know this is happening behind the scenes"

 

[hagar]

If the email is parsed and loaded by Apple, won’t a sender still know their email has been received and the time it was shown to the user?

No. Not the date/time.

 

[rpmurray]

99% of my emails on Apple mail have zero images.

You must not get emails like I do from people who cram images into their signature and throw in a couple of links for good measure.

 

[9927036]

You grossly underestimate the tenacity of targeted spamming; especially when owning a business. Not newsletters.

"This is my 4th time tryng to coordinate a call if you have not received my prior messages"after ignoring them 3 times already not downloading any images figuring they get the hint you don't want their company's services.

Now multiply that by a dozen or 2 daily.

iOS has no rules; have to log into each account online web interface to do that for each person. Gets tedious and not worth the time.

I'm not sure what you are saying. If a spammer only knows a Hide my Email address and you delete it, you will get no spam. Some of us have been doing this for years.

 

[jk1221]

No, the point is, that the invisible pixel is loaded in the background independent from when you read an e-mail (or whether you read it at all).

Thus as soon as an e-mail arrives in the inbox the client loads the resources. The tracking-pixel will still know that the message has arrived in your inbox (as the pixel will identify you), but as this is an automated process this is no more than knowing that the e-mail address is valid, and the inbox still active.

There is though no information whether you have actually read the e-mail and when you did this. So no time information, has-read-information and a limited location information.

I thought the same thing as you did: What's the point if the tracking-pixel identifies me uniquely anyway. The smart solution is not trying to remove the pixel but always loading it independent from user behaviour. So there is no more feedback, whether the user even deemed the message interesting enough to read it.

As soon as the resources are loaded, they will be kept in the background. Thus, if you read the mail several times, still the pixel is retrieved only once when the loading is done.



It does - see my comment above. They do know that's it a valid e-mail address (you typically already get bounces when sending though), but not anymore that "an actual human looks at". That's the entire point of background loading as soon as the message arrives. The sender does not know that you - as a person - did look at it and when. He just knows that the mail-client automatically retrieved the image.

To clarify, in 6ish months once it's out and installed on enough devices so that the blanket of opens tricks them. Until then it's going to look like a regular open.

Privacy yes, but the flag of being opened will be there like anyone clicking it. So I dont know if that a great idea right ow in beta at least or not.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Not true. Privacy focussed websites do not record IP addresses.

That sounds like nonsense to me. I'm pretty sure even Duck Duck Go stores IP addresses. The default configuration of any web server is going to be logging IP addresses. It's not about snooping or spying on users - it's a basic security measure for the website itself. Your website is getting hit with a Denial of Service attack. Where's it coming from? Identify the IP address and stop accepting traffic from it.

If you're not going to look at IP addresses, then it means your only other options are to scale up your server so it can handle all the bogus requests (so you're going to be paying for the infrastructure just to handle costly illegitimate requests... why?) or it means you bring down your service for everyone (so the attackers won - they wanted to bring you offline, and you caved.)

I'm sure some websites are so huge that they just handle the bogus requests... Google, Facebook, or Amazon might be confident that by virtue of the fact that they have billions of users and there's only billions of people worldwide, they can't possibly be hit with more traffic then they can handle - they could handle every device on the planet hitting them at once and they'd be okay. But somebody like DuckDuckGo is only 1% the size of Google. They can't just brush an attack off the way those internet giants might. (Although maybe they can... Fastly or somebody like that might offer whatever DDG needs to withstand an attack. But I suspect Fastly is storing your IP address, too.)

 

[jk1221]

I'm not sure what you are saying. If a spammer only knows a Hide my Email address and you delete it, you will get no spam. Some of us have been doing this for years.

Dont pay for iCloud so not a feature. Nor use iCloud mail; not even an option since it doesnt support any domain business email.

So not sure what you are saying that is specific to my reply about targeted business email spam.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

I used to be on the other end of this ... sending the tracked emails. Here is the point Apple highlights:

"(Mail activity)... can be used to build a profile of your behavior and learn your location."

I would say that this is "protection of privacy" wouldn't you? Mind you, most people don't know this is happening behind the scenes"

I'll admit the concept is a bit creepy, but who cares about my location?

It seems like only local businesses are going to pay for location data... aren't those the businesses that are supposed to be struggling that we're all supposed to be helping out?

I mean, stalkers too, but... are stalkers that sophisticated? It seems to me that "sophisticated criminal" is generally an oxymoron.

 

[9927036]

Dont pay for iCloud so not a feature. Nor use iCloud mail; not even an option since it doesnt support any domain business email.

So not sure what you are saying that is specific to my reply about targeted business email spam.

OK. Then use a mail service that allows a large number of aliases. Use the aliases per customer and you will get no spam. People have been doing this for years.

 

[Apple_Robert]

The private relay feature is good, but there are downsides. For example, some ISPs (not all sell your info on) use DNS to help keep children secure online, by preventing certain sites from being accessed should the parents wish. Also, should someone attempt to access some illegal content, would Apple stop access to that site? If so, how do Apple decide what sites people can and can’t access? Would be very similar to the control on the App Store. How do we know Apple or the third party won’t start policing or shaping traffic to certain sites. All of a sudden websites or users may need to start paying extra to access sites at faster speeds. For me too much control. Finally, no matter what Apple says, there will be a negative effect on speeds, and what happens if there is an outage? All of a sudden all Apple users will have no access!

For me, better security is worth a slight hit in speed.

 

[TimFL1]

Dont pay for iCloud so not a feature. Nor use iCloud mail; not even an option since it doesnt support any domain business email.

So not sure what you are saying that is specific to my reply about targeted business email spam.

It supports custom domains now with iOS 15.

————

I turned this off on my test device and instead left the protect IP and block remote content on. I have no problem with clicking „load remote images“ for a mail that I want to read, been doing this for years now to prevent abuse.

 

[MacClueless]

The person trying to snoop on you has still learned that yours is a valid email address that an actual human looks at and they've also learned what time that human looked at it.

They know it’s a valid email anyway if it doesn’t bounce, they don’t know if anyone actually looked at since the proxy would open everything, and the time the proxy opens it wouldn’t be the same as the time the recipient does.

 

[Premium1]

Now if they could make the email client work properly. How much longer must we have to manually refresh to see the newly arrived email when the email app badge indicates we have new email?

Agree. That's the reason I stopped using it. Like what apple does with it, but when it only works 30% of the time its a pain. Don't have those issues with any other mail apps either.

 

[Tagbert]

This is only for Apple's in-house Mail app right? If so I suppose I'll switch back to it from Outlook. Outlook is so good though.

Outlook already has the option to block images which presumably blocks the tracking pixel images too. I don't recall if this is on by default but it's easy to enable. I only download images on specific emails where I determine it is work it to see the images.