Comment by buro9 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by buro9 | Hacker News Reader

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> Now, an open question is if Google will make that request when the email is actually opened, which would allow marketers to determine if and when the email was read by the user, or if Google will make the request as soon as the email is received. The latter would enhance users' privacy at the cost of bandwidth for Google, but early tests indicate that they don't actually do that, waiting for the user to click the email to make the request.

I've just tested this.

The image was retrieved when I viewed the email in Gmail.

The tracking info basically comes back as "anonymous" and viewed from an unknown location.

The image was retrieved twice even though I only viewed the email once.

Currently I'd say that seeing the image being viewed is still valuable. I'm sure Google could move to proactively fetching the images in future destroying even that value.

The image is cached (via browser headers), but isn't aggressively cached (via reverse proxy). Fresh views on different browsers or a later session would still result in a request for the image back to the source server... registering the view again.

My personal view on all of this is that this is a bit Microsoft... you know, convenience and features over security and privacy.

For me, this "feature" leaks data about what I view to 3rd parties where today I block all images and do not leak that info.

Wait, do I understand you correctly that Google fetched the image even before you requested that images be displayed in the email? That seems like a boon to marketers, not a bane.

A dialog popped up when I logged into email, and before I'd seen this thread.

That dialog was much along the lines of "We'll now show you images in your email automatically." with a big "OK" button.

I don't recall whether there was a less prominent "No, thanks" as I was only logging on to reply to one question really quickly.

I suspect this is a UX anti-pattern. I've gone back into my settings and changed it back to "Don't display images".

The alternative to "OK" is "Settings," with a link that just dumps you into the main settings view… leaving you to find the Images section to change it back. Quite an opt-in.

Otoh, this makes it harder for email marketers and generally other people to see if I'm reading their mail.

+1

"Want to see if your users are opening their emails? Pay to display your message in gmail's promotions tab."

Now google has the data, and they almost defaulted the option for everyone. That gives them a big boost in data receives which they could use for marketing "(hey guys you remember you got × amount of image loads, we made your images get loaded by × more users now if you want the data we got it right here for the right price.)"

If you go to the trouble to figure out how to disable the "auto-load images" setting, then they're just as blocked as before.

If you accept the new default, it's far easier for them to track you, because Google will kindly be loading their tracking images on your behalf when you open the email, every time.

According to the announcement, if you've already selected the option to ask before displaying external content, when this feature rolls out to your account it will also default to set the new setting to ask before displaying external images.

Good info, cheers for that!

> I suspect this is a UX anti-pattern. I've gone back into my settings and changed it back

Gmail has done this enough times around already for to me become a UX anti-pattern in itself.

It's weird to look back to the days people were begging for invites and Gmail was the best game in town. These days the few times I'm forced to use GMail it almost makes me rage.

The "normal users" I know which are forced to cope with Gmail are constantly and consistenly confused, asking me where things they used to know have gone, and why Google is ruining Gmail.

Glad I migrated to something better, somewhere where I know for a fact that I am the customer, not the product.

To what did you migrate?

I moved to fastmail which I found wildly refreshing. In the same sense I found Gmail refreshing when it first was launched.

Once you try using fastmail, you will be surprised by how incredibly lightweight it is. When you first get used to that, trying to use Gmail feels like wrestling a horribly bloated pig. The UX has just become terrible.

As for fastmail or other options... I was very keen on being able to host things 100% myself, preferably using FOSS, because of privacy concerns and being in control of my own data.

After trying out various FOSS (and non-FOSS) solutions I decided none of them were good enough/polished enough for my needs.

In that regard fastmail is a compromise for me compared to what I ultimately want, but it's a compromise I'm more than happy with.

The way I read the comment, I think you are correct about it being a boon and not a bane. However, it is because the request was timed at the same time as the message read, not the other way around.

It seems the commenter functionally tested an external URL being requested by Gmail, and found that the request was coincident with when the commenter opened the email. This essentially "leaks" that you've opened the email as the image URL could be unique to your email message.

This is correct. This makes unique open counts much more reliable as it guarantees that the tracking image will be fetched. Before this change, one could never be certain how many people actually opened their email in gmail because some percentage of recipients would block images which naturally blocks loading the tracking image. Typically the tracking image is unique to each individual email sent.

But if Google always fetches the images, then there's no way for the marketers to know if the email was actually opened or not.

Apparently Google does not always fetch the images.

But even if they did, this is still more information leakage than the old default (don't load images).

Spammers who email via botnets and the like, with false return addresses, doesn't get bouncebacks to clean their lists.

But if you (or Google, on your behalf) give them a hand by reliably loading their tracking image, that flags your email as a valid one.

If you weren't actually reading the email, that's still a false positive I don't think you'd benefit by giving.

An alternative could be to let the user decide if Gmail should prefetch images from a sender or not.

Email from familiar senders would have images prefetched (thus avoiding leaks of user data).

And DDOSing concerns would be reduced because those emails would not be from a familiar source.

There is no advantage of prefetching images from familiar senders. It's not about faster image loading.

The ideal thing would be to just prefetch all the images sent to existing and non existing accounts. This way there is absolutely no way for a spammer to tell whether an email is existing or not.

> There is no advantage of prefetching images from familiar senders.

The advantages I had in mind were:

1. No leak of user IP address, cookies, etc

2. No leak of timing information (when user opened the email).

It will however leak that the email address is valid, which might be a fine compromise with a selected subset of senders.

Sorry, I wasn't precise. I was responding to the suggestion to only proxy for familiar senders. But, assuming that you can correctly identify who is familiar and who's not (there is scam detection as well), the benefit is minimal.

There is bigger benefit of doing this proxy for non-familiar emails.

Google could prevent leaking if email address is valid by simply prefetching images even when email is sent on non existent accounts.

Sounds like a great way to verify an email address to me. Send an email with a tracking image and if you get a hit, presuming they pre-fetch, you know it's a valid email.

> For me, this "feature" leaks data about what I view to 3rd parties where today I block all images and do not leak that info.

But that option to not see images is still there, and if you've defaulted it to off you still wont see images. Unless I misread the blog post.

> Convenience and features over security and privacy

I don't understand. It probably has to do with the Zeitgeist.

The images were originally blocked because of security and privacy concerns.

Rendering of images is potentially insecure because of bugs in the browsers. By proxying the images, Google as an webmail provider, screens you from your browser bugs. Solved.

Rendering of images is a privacy concern because of tracking. By fetching the images from another place, the attacker cannot know your location, your OS, language setting, etc... Solved.

Rendering the image allow checking when and if the email is ever opened, which can be useful in marketing^Wspam primarily because they can understand whether an email is active/exists or not. Not Solved.

The latter however is a general problem. There are many other ways to know whether an email account exists or not. Many mail servers respond with bounce emails anyway. They won't bounce on detected spam, but that's not the point; this feature is an additional barrier for image tracking for content that has passed through the spam filter already.

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