GMail will now always show images by default | Hacker News Reader

GMail will now always show images by default

gmailblog.blogspot.com

18 pointsendergen19 comments

From the submitter title: > (Tracking always?)

Looks like submitter missed this in the post:

Of course, those who prefer to authorize image display on a per message basis can choose the option “Ask before displaying external images” under the General tab in Settings. That option will also be the default for users who previously selected “Ask before displaying external content”.

Probably worth updating the HN title to reflect this.

Finally found a thorough answer on how open tracking will be affected by the new changes.

Here's MailChimp's analysis: http://blog.mailchimp.com/how-gmails-image-caching-affects-o...

I wonder if Google is going to add an Analytics component for Gmail or provide some user-agent lists. Email is hard enough to test and get working well; for the Gmail segment you won't know what browser versions to prioritise testing in now.

Pretty effectively spoils Litmus and others though.

Looks like gmail proxies the images via https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/. I don't see an issue, gmail is already tracking me, but the sender can't track me.

Does the fetch happen immediately when Google receives the email? Or does it occur the first time the user opens the email?

If the latter, sender image tracking will be alive and well.

Yes they can. All I need to do is

    <img src="image.jpg?userid=123456"/>

and I can tell whether you opened it or not. Google could strip out query strings in their proxy, but I'm not sure that's a good idea.

Presumably Google would cache the image on receipt, not on open. If that is the case, then the sender has no way of knowing if you actually opened the email (unless you do so from a desktop IMAP/POP client).

I dont understand the (Tracking always?) part of the title.

One of the reasons email clients often don't load images by default is because when an image is loaded the server it's pulled from can track that it was loaded, and thus infer that the email has been opened.

By loading images automatically, this tracking will again be possible. However, Google may be getting around this by loading all images on receipt by the Gmail servers and then caching them as the blog mentions. That way a sender will only be able to track that the email made it to Google, not whether the end user actually viewed it or not.

The downside, for me, is that I very consciously enable tracking this way for mailings where I want my reads tracked.

When you actually want to be marketed to, it makes it easier for the sender to tailor their content -- and I do for some markets want to get the tailored stream.

Agreed, that seems like pushing FUD down everyones throat.

Why not leave comments to comment section and use original post titles instead.

I wasn't trying to spread FUD. Was looking for clarification. But fair enough, there is an issue with link baiting on HN. The conversation.

I've now modified the title to not include the (Tracking always!?) text at the end.

This part of the title was an editorial addition by the submitter. No doubt he his thinking of the use of images in email to signal that the message has been displayed (loading the image sends a request to the server, which can be logged). However, the submitter didn't read the article that he submitted, in which Google explains that they are storing copies of the images on their own servers precisely to disable these forms of tracking.

They don't explicitly say it disables tracking at all. They say:

    Simple: your messages are more safe and secure, your images are checked for known viruses or malware...

Unless I missed something. I read it twice. Can anyone point to text that says otherwise.

I'm the poster, didn't mean to be provocative. The blog post didn't explain how the secure proxy works. Normally email marketing uses a tracking image that has a unique url to detect which users open an email. I'm wondering what the behavior is for that now.

Is all email open tracking broken now? Good thing for users, not so good for email marketing campaigns/tools.

Was hoping some gmail devs would comment here. The blog entry didn't have comments enabled.

see: http://blog.movableink.com/gmails-recent-image-handling-chan...

Definitely looks like some tricks can be blocked. But no mention of how it'd affect the classic technique of having a single pixel image with a unique URL (Per user) so that you can track opens.

I'm assuming at this point that that would still work. But as mentioned in the Movable Ink article all sorts of other tracking and image request headers are lost.

Not necessarily 100% a good thing for users. We don't know whether the images are pulled and cached by Google when the email hits their servers (which would cause 100% open rate from the perspective of the marketers) or wether it happens when the user opens it for the first time (in which case they can still track openings).

If it is the latter, users can still be tracked. If the former, legitimate uses that help users will now be blocked. Github, for example, uses a tracking dot to mark a notification as read if you read it via email, which means you don't get double notified on the Github UI and via email.

A common marketing tactic is to include a link to a small, transparent image in the email they send. The URL is personalized to each recipient, and so they can check their server logs to see who opened their email and when.

It's unclear if this technique will work against the new GMail approach; maybe Google will always fetch all images as soon as the mail arrives, which would immediately ruin any signal.

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