i’m getting a lot of emails from my bank and other services that make me aware that they use tracking pixels in emails. apparently they are obliged by the privacy regulator that is enforcing a recent EU directive. i didn’t even know that i was sending ip and client info simply by reading my emails in thunderbird or k9 on my mobile. is there a way to deactivate these? and is there a risk that by doing so the bank thinks the email is compromised or non existant. its incredibile to see how sophisticated data hoovering technology has become. the internet has become a real mess …
Damn me for clicking on “load external content” then. I thought i wasjust downloading images … ignorance is humanities biggest problem and surely mine …
Tracking pixels are just a 1x1 pixel ‘image’, the way they work is when your client loads the image URL it sends a requests to the server to do so, and the server logs the request and knows you’ve opened/viewed the email.
You were just downloading images. It’s just that one of those images was specific for that particular message, and the server logged your IP and who knows what else when you downloaded it.
That’s all tracking pixels are, and any image can be used to track you.
But from now on they’ll get shit 💪