Forum

Email Web Bug / Tracking Beacon (GMAIL Related)
 

I've heard some conflicting information regarding these web bugs / tracking beacons in emails. I primarily use GMAIL for everything, so I've been looking into how this specific provider treats these tracking beacons just in case..

Someone preformed a test of how these tracking beacons are treated through a URL tag..
https://filippo.io/how-the-new-gmail...-mean-for-you/
Looks like it's treated from the GOOGLE PROXY SERVER itself being the identifier.

And I just noticed on this page regarding GMAIL, it says the following:
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?hl=en

* Senders can’t use image loading to get information like your IP address or location.
* Senders can’t set or read cookies in your browser.
* Gmail checks your images for known viruses or malware.

In some cases, senders may be able to know whether an individual has opened a message with unique image links. Of course, I do not click any links.
I try to use Thunderbird for all my accounts. Unfortunately, there were some cases where I had to login manually through my browser and check a few emails that may have been on.
I'd hate to know that I fudged up on this.. I think it is unlikely they got my IP, but if there's something I'm missing, let me know.

As I can understand it, marketers can tell whether an email was opened or not (it will show as opened from GOOGLE's PROXY IP), but not the IP address or cookies of the individual machine.
Maybe I'm being uber paranoid, but am I wrong to assume that even with the images displayed by default and turned on that this is safe?