How to Prevent Emails From Tracking You in Apple Mail

[MacRumors]

Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature is designed to allow users to opt out of the surreptitious tracking that third-party apps have traditionally relied on for ad targeting purposes. But tracking can go on in your email inbox, too.

Unsolicited marketing emails will sometimes know whether you've opened their email, and if so, when you did so. They can even know where you were at the time, thanks to tracking methods employed by marketing platforms like MailChimp.

The way they track is very discreet and kind of creepy. Embedded in the email will be a tracking pixel, often hidden within a signature image or a link. When the message is opened in your email client, code within the pixel silently sends this information back to the company.

Some email account providers attempt to limit this sort of tracking by routing images through proxy servers, for example, which hides your location. But there's actually a simple way of preventing tracking pixels altogether, and that's by disabling the automatic loading of images in your email client.

The following steps show you how to disable automatic image loading in Apple Mail for macOS, and below them, you'll find instructions to do the same in iOS.

1. Launch Apple Mail.
2. Select Mail -> Preferences from the menu bar.
   
   
   
   Click the Viewing tab.
   Uncheck the box next to Load remote content in messages.
   
   

If you're using Mail for iPhone or iPad, you can find the same setting in the Settings app. Tap Mail, look under "Messages," and turn off the toggle next to Load Remote Images.

Article Link: How to Prevent Emails From Tracking You in Apple Mail

 

[jonblatho]

There’s an even better way for macOS that blocks trackers while still allowing you to view images.

 

[Blkant]

I’ll take articles like this over Memoji news or wristband showcases any day. It would be nice if we could filter a lot of the later articles out for a more Mac|iPhone|privacy (or just less fluff) focused experience.

 

[trigf]

I enabled this last year when an Audi dealership insisted that they replied to me but really hadn't. The sales rep sent a screenshot of every interaction I had with their messages and it creeped me out.

This is also how marketing firms track their reach, so even more reason to enable this.

 

[iamdmann]

Gruber linked to a utility for this a while back on daringfireball.net. I’ve been using it in apple mail and it’s been completely unobtrusive.

Apple Mail and Hidden Tracking Images

Apple should offer defenses against email tracking just as robust as Safari’s defenses against web tracking.

daringfireball.net

edit: jonblatho linked above to what I thought I learned about via daring fireball.

 

[TheDailyApple]

There’s an even better way for macOS that blocks trackers while still allowing you to view images.

I’ll check this out when I have time. I’ve gotten tired of how hard some emails can be to read without all the images.

 

[0920730]

Is there a way to selectively allow certain companies/domains that are deemed safe? Or is it all or nothing?

 

[GreenPixel]

Or just get a pi-hole and get your entire network covered. Then get another Pi and host a VPN on it and remote in to your own protected network from whatever other internet access points you use.

 

[aarond12]

You can enable that in iOS too. Word of warning: Emails from Amazon don't appear correctly with remote content blocked.

A Pi-Hole, like Green Pixel just mentioned, is great for network-wide blocking. I use a service called NextDNS.io and it does the same thing without having to manage the Pi-Hole.

 

[CarlJ]

The way they track is very discreet and kind of creepy. Embedded in the email will be a tracking pixel, often hidden within a signature image or a link. When the message is opened in your email client, code within the pixel silently sends this information back to the company.

WTF? Tracking images are creepy, but let's not pretend they're magical, because they're not. You get an email. It's full of HTML, because nobody does plain text email any more (sigh). Because it's HTML, it can specify images to load. One of them is an image on the sender's server (eh, probably all of them are images on the sender's server - that's how the web works). The act of requesting that image from the remote server leaves a log entry in the remote server (which is how the web has always worked). If they gave the pixel image a name that's unique to you (not your name, just a random number they've associated with you), then they can infer, because that image was requested from the server, that you requested it (by opening the email), and they know when, because the server logs when it fulfills requests, and by looking the requesting IP address up in a geolocation database, they can get an approximate location. But you make it sound like the pixel image itself is actively transmitting information - it's not - there's no "code within the pixel", it's just an image.

 

[robertcoogan]

There’s an even better way for macOS that blocks trackers while still allowing you to view images.

This doesn't work. There doesn't seem to be an option in Apple Mail anymore to manage plug-ins.

 

[Apple_Robert]

There’s an even better way for macOS that blocks trackers while still allowing you to view images.

How is that better than making sure a single toggle is off?

 

[JosephAW]

I used a unique email address for each service I sign up for that way if I start getting spam I can block that email address.

 

[robertcoogan]

The aforementioned plug-ins don't seem to be installable as there isn't an option to manage plug-ins in Apple Mail anymore.

I don't want to block images in Apple Mail - so this is already a hassle as it will disable some features in emails I want to keep visible/usable. I am still using Little Snitch to do the heavy lifting in this department, it seems to work fine, and I'm used to the pop-ups.

 

[now i see it]

Web bugs/ tracking pixels have been used with email ever since email was invented. Everyone uses them. They're ubiquitous and not harmful.
Articles have been written about using web bugs at least since 1993. They're low tech.
Whether a spammer knows you've opened up their spam mail or not isn't very revealing. If so, so what.

 

[sniffies]

What if I always want to load images but prevent tracking?

Can't do that.

Hey.com can.

 

[ghostface147]

I stopped using Apple Mail. Sometimes emails that get through normally end up in junk. That's fine, I just tap on it and move it to inbox. The issue I have is that it never shows junk when using an Outlook.com account. Exchange junk? No problem. Gmail? No problem. Just Outlook.com accounts. This is specific to iOS 14 as I never had this issue in previous iOS versions.

Now I just use the actual Outlook app and I'm not a fan of it. It's very isolated in a way. When the junk mail issue is reported to Apple, nothing comes of it. Such is life.

 

[Chinch07]

I enabled this last year when an Audi dealership insisted that they replied to me but really hadn't. The sales rep sent a screenshot of every interaction I had with their messages and it creeped me out.

This is also how marketing firms track their reach, so even more reason to enable this.

I’ve worked at a marketing firm for 6 years now and could not be more of an advocate for less tracking. It’s creepy what we do

 

[Apple_Robert]

Gruber linked to a utility for this a while back on daringfireball.net. I’ve been using it in apple mail and it’s been completely unobtrusive.

Apple Mail and Hidden Tracking Images

Apple should offer defenses against email tracking just as robust as Safari’s defenses against web tracking.

daringfireball.net

Paying $99 a year for email from Hey is not financially prudent, especially for your average consumer, even if it has tracker blocking built in.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

This doesn't work. There doesn't seem to be an option in Apple Mail anymore to manage plug-ins.

Works fine for me, and I just installed it a few minutes ago via brew on Big Sur. It's already showing what trackers it is blocking without blocking any of the images.

 

[nwcs]

I’ve had load remote images turned off for years. That plus running a pi-hole or something like Adblock is pretty good at keeping the tracking largely away.

 

[robertcoogan]

Now I just use the actual Outlook app and I'm not a fan of it. It's very isolated in a way. When the junk mail issue is reported to Apple, nothing comes of it. Such is life.

I'm not a big fan of Apple Mail either, but Outlook is seems more cumbersome when it comes to dealing with iCloud accounts. And in order to view iCloud calendar appointments in Outlook, you have to first to publish each calendar in iCloud (make it public) in order for Outlook to be able to import it.

But I understand the attraction to Outlook. I would love it if Apple would come out with an all-in-one that had mail, calendar, and contacts all in one app.

Have you tried Thunderbird? TBSync does a great job of keeping my iCloud, Google, and Yahoo accounts all synced.

 

[Mick-Mac]

I used a unique email address for each service I sign up for that way if I start getting spam I can block that email address.

The vast majority of users out there tearing their hair out over the 10:1 spam vs real emails they get would have no idea how to do this. There needs to be a vastly better and easier way to do this (including jail sentences, huge fines, public floggings, sterilization, or any/all of the usual Medieval tortures for spammers). I would gladly live in a world where each email or text I sent cost me a small fee if it meant spammers couldn't afford to do what they do.

 

[centauratlas]

Gruber linked to a utility for this a while back on daringfireball.net. I’ve been using it in apple mail and it’s been completely unobtrusive.

Apple Mail and Hidden Tracking Images

Apple should offer defenses against email tracking just as robust as Safari’s defenses against web tracking.

daringfireball.net

That is a useful link, but what he talks about is a subscription. Apple should just include this type of blocking in Mail by default.

 

[iamdmann]

Paying $99 a year for email from Hey is not financially prudent, especially for your average consumer, even if it has tracker blocking built in.

I totally agree and didn’t realize that I didn’t link to a description of the utility that you posted, which was what I had in mind when I linked to Gruber. I installed mailtrackerblocker after reading the daring fireball piece, but it was only after reading your comment that I went back and saw that was what initially led me to mailtrackerblocker, but did not link to it. Thank you for catching that!