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Comment by stingraycharles | Hacker News Reader

They don’t anonimize it, they just request it from the backend. They still request the exact same URL, so you can carefully track email opens on a person-by-person basis, you just cannot track IP addresses and/or set tracking cookies or whatnot.

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The wording[1] also suggests they request the images even if you haven't opened the email, which obfuscates whether you've opened the email or not. With other services like gmail the images are only requested when you open the email, so it's possible to infer whether you opened the email or not based on whether the image was loaded.

[1] https://twitter.com/rjonesy/status/1401993816001978375/photo...

Gmail and similar providers proxy all image URLs they receive at the time they receive the email, so you can't tell when a user later opens the email. That said there might be bugs to make your images un-cacheable such that Gmail still loads them later, directly or indirectly, when you open an email.

Compare this with Apple Mail which proxies emails from a different, presumably non-Google IP address and which does so only when an email is downloaded in the background. So while you can't track IP address, yes, and you never could set cookies that I'm aware of without clicking a link first, this means you can still track "downloads" of your email to a local client, just not "opens" - and if your Mail app already downloaded images when the email was downloaded, then it's possible it won't even change that - you might not have been tracking opens this whole time... maybe.

>Gmail and similar providers proxy all image URLs they receive at the time they receive the email, so you can't tell when a user later opens the email.

I searched around and found some articles that makes the same claim[1], but in my own testing that doesn't seem to be the case (ie. I had to click on the email before image would start loading).

[1] https://sendloop.com/articles/the-effect-of-gmail-image-prox...

I did the same test (although some years ago) and gmail didn't request the images until the email was opened. Caching the images lazily also means that Google can save a ton in network bandwidth / storage for all those emails that are never opened (which is probably most emails the handle)

This is not correct. They load the URLs at the moment you open the e-mail. You are still trackable. It's just that they open it on backend, so they don't get your IP, but they still know that you opened it.

Gmail’s proxy only requests and caches the image when the user does. It does not hide anything other than the user’s IP address.

The UserAgent header is masked as well: something like

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:11.0) Gecko Firefox/11.0 (via ggpht.com GoogleImageProxy)

Will Apple do it differently?

Right, exactly the same way Apple Mail will work.

No, you’re missing the difference. Gmail requests the embedded resources when you open the email. So it’s still possible to track open rates through it, even if the proxy obscures your IP address. Apple Mail requests the embedded resources without you opening the email, so you cannot use it for tracking open rates.

A lot of people assumed this is what Gmail did, but it wasn’t actually the case.

This is why I find it hard to trust Apple products - if Apple funnels the request through their servers Apple also now has access to this data. Now, your personal data / metadata is available with more people than before. But you are supposed to believe this is all to protect you. /s

(And no, I don't trust Apple not to associate this data with a user's Apple ID and datamine it in the future - if your country has lax privacy laws Apple will exploit it till the law says otherwise.)

Edit:

Here's another perspective - now, even if I don't use Apple's iCloud backup or email services, Apple has found another clever way to learn about some of the marketing emails I receive. That information is very valuable.

> if your country has lax privacy laws Apple will exploit it till the law says otherwise

Given the wretched state of privacy laws in the U.S. that seems an uncharitable position. Apple has far more business motivation to treat its customers well in that regard than to try to squeeze money out of their data.

Although you’d think they’d have motivation to treat developers better than demanding a 30% cut, so there’s that.

If Apple re-uses iCloud Private Relay for this feature, which they might or might not be doing, then there are actually two entities involved and Apple presumably knows what user made the request but not what URL was requested: https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/10/how-apple-icloud-...

Typically they have an off switch for things that are considered sensitive data, and when they don't they seem inclined to course correct. If they don't have an off switch in the WWDC developer betas, that would be a bug for everyone to report via Feedback Assistant.

This is absolutely correct. Because you can connect Apple Mail to non-Apple servers, they are missing out on a lot of telemetry that Gmail gets by default (because it already goes through Gmail's servers.) This gives them an excuse to proxy non-Apple email. (on another note, it sure seems like most of Apple's moves are dual-purpose now, and I don't think that was the case in the days of Jobs.)

However, I'd like to see the Privacy Policy (if it's available and in plain English) for this feature before concluding that they're not immediately discarding this data (or even just where I get my mail from, which is also very useful information to further lock me in.)

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