<story><title>Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/gmail-blows-up-e-mail-marketing-by-caching-all-images-on-google-servers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>necubi</author><text>There seems to be a lot of misinformation flying around. Here&amp;#x27;s [0] Google&amp;#x27;s support doc that clears up some of it.&lt;p&gt;The most important part is at the end:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In some cases, senders may be able to know whether an individual has opened a message with unique image links. As always, Gmail scans every message for suspicious content and if Gmail considers a sender or message potentially suspicious, images won’t be displayed and you’ll be asked whether you want to see the images.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So Google apparently does not see read receipts as a problem. The privacy and security protections are about preventing other information (like ip, browser headers, cookies) from leaking, rather than read notifications.&lt;p&gt;If you care about maintaining your privacy, I would recommend disabling the new functionality.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?hl=en&amp;amp;ctx=mail&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.google.com&amp;#x2F;mail&amp;#x2F;answer&amp;#x2F;145919?hl=en&amp;amp;ctx=mail&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Steuard</author><text>Wow, I&amp;#x27;m amazed by this. I was &lt;i&gt;convinced&lt;/i&gt; that Google wouldn&amp;#x27;t have rolled out this new feature unless they had a way to avoid this sort of tracking. Isn&amp;#x27;t this &lt;i&gt;exactly&lt;/i&gt; the privacy issue that led clients to adopt &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t display images automatically by default&amp;quot; in the first place?&lt;p&gt;(Why wouldn&amp;#x27;t they let users &lt;i&gt;combine&lt;/i&gt; this behavior with the old one? That is, don&amp;#x27;t display images by default, but if you choose to display them anyway, get the file from Google&amp;#x27;s proxy server.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/gmail-blows-up-e-mail-marketing-by-caching-all-images-on-google-servers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>necubi</author><text>There seems to be a lot of misinformation flying around. Here&amp;#x27;s [0] Google&amp;#x27;s support doc that clears up some of it.&lt;p&gt;The most important part is at the end:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In some cases, senders may be able to know whether an individual has opened a message with unique image links. As always, Gmail scans every message for suspicious content and if Gmail considers a sender or message potentially suspicious, images won’t be displayed and you’ll be asked whether you want to see the images.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So Google apparently does not see read receipts as a problem. The privacy and security protections are about preventing other information (like ip, browser headers, cookies) from leaking, rather than read notifications.&lt;p&gt;If you care about maintaining your privacy, I would recommend disabling the new functionality.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?hl=en&amp;amp;ctx=mail&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.google.com&amp;#x2F;mail&amp;#x2F;answer&amp;#x2F;145919?hl=en&amp;amp;ctx=mail&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cloudwalking</author><text>These two statements of yours seem at odds with each other:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The privacy and security protections are about preventing other information (like ip, browser headers, cookies) from leaking, rather than read notifications.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If you care about maintaining your privacy, I would recommend disabling the new functionality.&amp;quot;</text></comment>