How they track your emails

[Motorbiker]

Nicely put out. Enjoy and comment after.

A Clever Way to Tell Which of Your Emails Are Being Tracked | WIRED


Pixel tracking is a long-established practice, and there’s nothing remotely illegal or even particularly discouraged about it

[JamesNorth101]

This is why you need to disable images before opening emails

[Motorbiker]

How about importing several emails into one mailbox?

[JamesNorth101]

Thats fine, but images still need to be disabled

[jeffweico]

When you pull up a pixel that is being tracked (it can even be a whole image, it does not HAVE TO BE a pixel) it will show whatever IP address the request came from.

So, if you pulled emails from 10 accounts into one email account and viewed the image, odds are that the outcome would be that all 10 accounts are linked to each other.

GMAIL **SUPPOSEDLY** pulls all of the images onto its servers first eliminating this problem, but I have never wanted to test that.

[Motorbiker]

With images disabled, can you respond straight from gmail to a possible buyer?

[jeffweico]

Originally Posted by Motorbiker

With images disabled, can you respond straight from gmail to a possible buyer?

I would only respond from the email account that received the email. But in most cases with eBay, you have to use their messaging system anyway.

Unless I am misunderstanding something here...

[JamesNorth101]

Yes, but you need to to reply to the email directly, not click the yellow reply button.

You must also reply from the correct email account

[SilentHill]

Be careful with the yellow (Ebay) Reply button thats a link!


You should be fine replying from the correct email address.

[jeffweico]

I always just respond directly from the eBay or Amazon account. It eliminates any potential issues.

[rsot]

I also prefer responding only when I'm logged into the system - just to be safe

[Ayusaga]

Just disable images in your emails that are associated with your stealth accounts.

And as for replying to ebay messages directly through email, be careful too because ebay might check their messages headers when they receive emails and can log the IP that you send the email from.

[Haidukken]

Originally Posted by jeffweico

I always just respond directly from the eBay or Amazon account. It eliminates any potential issues.

This.

I mean, sometimes keeping things simple is the best way to do it.
I know that there are people who manage tens, if not hundreds, of accounts and every minute you can save is great- But for the guys who are starting out or who are not THAT big, just keep it simple. Forward you emails to one email so it's easier to see on your phone if something has sold or if someone has asked a question- Make a mental note of it.
Then when you do your daily stealthin, just try to remember that you have a question and you may as well log into that account and answer that question.

Simple and standard is good ground for steady stealthin'

[martyjump]

What about having all your stealth emails on your iphone and opening emails that way?

[bjammin]

I open all emails on my iPhone, but my images are still disabled on my email accounts. But I do not respond from my iPhone...that would cause a link. I only respond in ebay.

[Dmshark25]

Originally Posted by bjammin

I open all emails on my iPhone, but my images are still disabled on my email accounts. But I do not respond from my iPhone...that would cause a link. I only respond in ebay.

If your images are off, than you can reply to the message, but reply through gmail and not by clicking a reply link in the actual message context

For the iPhone it's the curved reply arrow on the top of your email

[pr0wake]

it will not cause a link as long as the emails are not forwarded to a main hub account

you can have countless email accounts signed in on one apple device… gmail may get a little pissed, but with images off and direct replying through email, no linking will result

[jdmswagserf]

Originally Posted by prowakeskater

it will not cause a link as long as the emails are not forwarded to a main hub account

you can have countless email accounts signed in on one apple device… gmail may get a little pissed, but with images off and direct replying through email, no linking will result

so, if i sign into each email account with images disabled on my iPhone email app or browser, they can't link anything right?

[martyjump]

I've been opening e-mails for a long time with the images on and I have accounts that are 2+ years old. Haven't had any linkage yet but maybe I should consider turning all my images off.

[Joer]

Sorry just want to make sure I trun off the images how do I do that in gmail and yahoo?

[jdmswagserf]

Originally Posted by Joer

Sorry just want to make sure I trun off the images how do I do that in gmail and yahoo?

while in your email looking at the inbox, there should be a settings icon, click it, then click settings.
after the page loads, scroll through the page and find where it says
"always ask before displaying images"
something along those lines, all emails are different.
click the "always ask before displaying images"
be sure to click save after you select it!

to verify it after, open an email from ebay/pp or any that usually has pictures and at the top it should say
"this email has images that are not shown"
again, something along those lines.
hope this helps

[mchgrt]

For Gmail, go to Settings -> Always load external images and disable that setting.