Uh... clever? I had to scroll back up and double-check the date to make sure this article wasn't 10 years old.

Is the author not aware that for the last decade or so every email program/service in the world prompts the user to load images to purposely thwart image tracking?

This is where I usually jump in and mention a web app I wrote:

https://emailprivacytester.com/

Sends an email to you which checks to see how much stuff your email client is leaking. Turns out some email clients load remote content even before you click "Load Remote Images"

Any email client that permits this to happen automatically is user hostile. I really hope that Gmail doesn't do this by default.

But I use mutt, so I'm not worried. If I really have to read an HTML-only email, I have mutt configured to pass the HTML to links for rendering, but in a way that links runs confined and without access to the Internet (or anything else) in order to do so[1].

It's been a few years now, and I don't feel I've really missed anything by going back to a text-mode email client. By being able to optionally render HTML as text, I can still read the occasional HTML-only email that I need to (for example: order confirmations). The rest of the time, plain text works just fine.

[1] http://www.justgohome.co.uk/blog/2014/02/mailcap-html-apparm...

Isn't Gmail serving image from it's own proxies acting as a protection against this kind of snooping?

In my understanding, opening the image loads the image from Google servers so it never hits the tracking website...

Am I right?

It's not a clever way, it's primitive, and does not monitor many advertising agencies (just 3 of them).

The clever way would be to discover ALL advertisers AND prevent spying on our emails.

I've always had these assumptions:

If you open an html email, you are being tracked.

If you click on a link in an email, you are being tracked (plain text / html)

Is there any email clients someone can recommend that force plain text in multipart emails? Or convert html emails to be viewed as plain text if the email isn't multipart?

I just installed he extension and it seemed to give a few false alarms. One email chain with just a few acquaintances mailing back and forth was flagged.

"Ugly" "sneaky" "disturbing" "unsettling". The article's author made quite an effort to present a a long-established (and relatively harmless) practice as a horrible thing. What is funny in the era of really disturbing practices in invading our privacy.

It's "Yesware" - sloppy. This has been done for years and years such that it's pretty much common practice with any service that sends email now. And any half-decent mail client asks you before loading external resources. I guess it'd be nice if they specified why it matters.

as much as i'd like another "don't be evil" "debate" gmail shouldn't work like that.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.ie/2013/12/images-now-showing.html

correct me if I'm wrong, but the tagging support page is for "creative pages" with doubleclick, not emails:

https://support.google.com/dfp_premium/answer/1347585?hl=en

EDIT: ok well, turns out i'm wrong and here's how to turn off automatic image loading

http://now.avg.com/disable-gmail-automatic-image-load/

> Specifically, they know when you’ve opened an email sent by one of their clients, where you are, what sort of device you’re on, and whether you’ve clicked a link, all without your awareness or consent.

No they don't, I don't do HTML mail.

Weird. HTML message viewing in claws-mail refuses outright to load external images without an explicit request from the user. I have no idea why anybody would want or implement behavior different than that...?

the simplest (and also spartan) way to protect yourself is to set your email reader to not show pictures. so you read your emails without pictures and then you explicitly allow pictures for those emails you trust (from family, friends, etc.)

"every action IS a reaction"

Let me save you the trouble of even using the tool:

Yep, every email sent from a company to you for marketing purposes has a beacon and link tracking.

If you're alarmed by this, you should also know that every website you visit can track your IP, your OS and version, and your browser and version.