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It's pretty easy for people who care to "turn off read receipts" by disabling images or blocking it through proxy/vpn/whatever.

What about non technical people who have no way of learning that they are being spied upon?

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Likewise, "turn off read receipts" and "disable images" seem like two different things.

My thesis is that if you care about being tracked enough that you'd want to turn it off, you're also technical enough to do it.

I may be wrong.

Go find a non technical person and ask them these two questions:

"Do you care if your ex-girl/boyfriend can tell every time you read an old email s/he sent you?"

"Have you disabled loading images by default in your email client?"

You will see that you are wrong.

EDIT: decided to listen to my own advice and conduct a (very non scientific obvs) twitter poll.

https://twitter.com/harryh/status/1146120438432616450

You're ignoring the vast majority of people who aren't aware that it's possible yet would care a great deal if they knew about it. In fact, that's the whole premise behind tracking pixels. It's victim blaming.

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