Up to two thirds of marketing Emails sent in the UK contain an "invisible pixel" tracker, BBC cals it endemic.

[Master Disaster]

The BBC commissioned an internet messaging service to analyse its traffic looking for trackers and found that up to 2 out of 3 emails sent to customers in the UK now contains an "invisible pixel". These emails are coming from some of the UKs biggest brands with a notable exception being "big tech" firms.

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The use of "invisible" tracking tech in emails is now "endemic", according to a messaging service that analysed its traffic at the BBC's request.

 

Hey's review indicated that two-thirds of emails sent to its users' personal accounts contained a "spy pixel", even after excluding for spam.

 

Its makers said that many of the largest brands used email pixels, with the exception of the "big tech" firms.

The list of what these trackers can do is pretty worrying and an industry veteran has called it "a grotesque invasion of privacy"

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Emails pixels can be used to log:

• if and when an email is opened
• how many times it is opened
• what device or devices are involved
• the user's rough physical location, deduced from their internet protocol (IP) address - in some cases making it possible to see the street the recipient is on

 

This information can then be used to determine the impact of a specific email campaign, as well as to feed into more detailed customer profiles.

 

Hey's co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson says they amount to a "grotesque invasion of privacy".

An invisible pixel is a GIF or PNG image that can be as small as 1x1 pixels and can be coloured to match its background making it totally invisible to the user. The user also doesn't have to click the pixel to activate the tracker, simply opening the email is enough.

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Tracking pixels are typically a .GIF or .PNG file that is as small as 1x1 pixels, which is inserted into the header, footer or body of an email.

 

Since they often show the colour of the content below, they can be impossible to spot with the naked eye even if you know where to look.

 

Recipients do not need to click on a link or do anything to activate them beyond open an email they are embedded in.

 

British Airways, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Sainsbury's, Tesco, HSBC, Marks & Spencer, Asos and Unilever are among UK brands Hey detected to be using them.

 

But their use was much more widespread despite many members of the public being unaware of it, said Mr Hansson.

 

"It's not like there's a flag saying 'this email includes a spy pixel' in most email software," he added.

Some email clients have plugins which will stop them from working or you can just stop your email client from automatically opening pictures.

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Alternatively, users can install free plug-ins into other email programs to strip out many pixel trackers. Other options are to simply set their software to block all images by default, or to view emails as plain text.

 

"On average, every Hey customer receives 24 emails per day that attempt to spy on them," Mr Hansson said.

 

"The top 10% of users receive more than 50.

 

"We're processing over one million emails a day and we're just a tiny service compared to the likes of Gmail, but that's north of 600,000 spying attempts blocked every day."

Source - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56071437

 

Gonna be honest and say, until today I'd never heard of this at all and I like to keep up to date on this type of stuff. Luckily I use Thunderbird which is set to not open images automatically OOTB, I guess now I know why.

[Eigenvektor]

14 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Gonna be honest and say, until today I'd never heard of this at all and I like to keep up to date on this type of stuff. Luckily I use Thunderbird which is set to not open images automatically OOTB, I guess now I know why.

Tracking pixels have been common practice for ages. Which is exactly why you can set e.g. Thunderbird to not load images by default and/or block online content in emails. Or if you want to go even more extreme, set it to display plain text content only.

[Murasaki]

Most popular email services block images anyway so away with ye 1px transparency

[porina]

Tracking pixels I think originated around the start of the commercial web era. Older people may remember when many web pages would include a visit counter, and it kinda followed on from there. Personally I do have images off by default in my e-mails. Most of the time it is just cosmetic so you don't miss anything.

[camieabz]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

• if and when an email is opened
• how many times it is opened
• what device or devices are involved
• the user's rough physical location, deduced from their internet protocol (IP) address - in some cases making it possible to see the street the recipient is on

All easily solved by not opening junk mail. As for IP trackers, unless you're sharing with the world where you are (intentionally), the odds are your location will show up as the ISP's gateway, or at some network node miles from where you live. If e-mails are being used to track locations for 'vulnerable people' (i.e. their physical location for criminal intent), it would be easier to just pick a street of pensioners, rather than mess with e-mails. Either works, and neither assesses physical security or police presence.

 

That's why some folk prefer to be anon online. It's no big conspiracy of weird people. It's common sense.

[Middcore]

Tracking pixels have been around for years and years, I don't know why this is news.

[X-System]

1 hour ago, Middcore said:

Tracking pixels have been around for years and years, I don't know why this is news.

But lot of people don't know this method of tracking pixels. Even I didn't know that. When I shared this information at my friends, they say they didn't know that.

[Fasterthannothing]

In other news water is wet! Obviously marketing companies track you

[Drama Lama]

On 2/17/2021 at 1:25 PM, camieabz said:

As for IP trackers, unless you're sharing with the world where you are (intentionally), the odds are your location will show up as the ISP's gateway, or at some network node miles from where you live.

but that can still be used to know in which city or district you live

 

On 2/17/2021 at 1:25 PM, camieabz said:

location will show up as the ISP's gateway, or at some network node miles from where you live

what if you have a static IP?

[camieabz]

That shouldn't matter. I have a static IP, and Google maps think I'm 500 miles from where I really am. It's all down to whether you share your location in websites and search engines.