Doesn't gmail's preloading defeat the read receipts? It makes it so every tracking pixel sent to gmail gets loaded (and not by your IP), thereby making it meaningless.

This was true briefly in 2013. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/gmail... But they got so much pushback they effectively disabled it. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/dear-... (It's still cached, but not in a privacy-preserving way.)

It's still more privacy-preserving than not preloading them at all, right? Whoever is serving the images doesn't get your IP addresses, cookies, etc.

Not saying Google is virtuous here -- it only serves to enforce their advertising monopoly -- but I don't see how the image caching in itself is a bad thing.

Ok, that's probably true. Still works as a read receipt though.

But they don't.

> Doesn't gmail's preloading defeat the read receipts? It makes it so every tracking pixel sent to gmail gets loaded (and not by your IP), thereby making it meaningless.

According to some articles I've read, the marketers can still name the images unique per user.

So when Google's caches query for it, they still know it's you.

I will keep "always load images" off as usual in Gmail.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/dear-...

If Google fetches the images when the mail is delivered (not when it is opened), all the sender learns is that the mail arrived (but not whether the user actually looked at it).

I'm not sure if that's the case though.

I thought gmail preloads only when the e-mail is opened. I thought it was basically just a proxy.

Doesn't automatic loading render those read receipts meaningless?

Gmail only loads the images when you load the message. It's been that way since late 2013. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/dear-...

For those confused by this comment, they were referring to automatic loading of images when you open mail.