You think every email provider crawls links in your email and the inspects the destinations to protect you from spam?
That is patently not true, otherwise you would be dealing with utter chaos as you interacted with the internet. If, as the OP claims, Gmail actually _is_ doing this, then that is worrying but it's not the general case.
Google pre-loads and caches images, which many people consider problematic, but they're not pre-fetching URLs.
Refer to these two incredibly recent posts to understand why:
That is patently not true, otherwise you would be dealing with utter chaos as you interacted with the internet. If, as the OP claims, Gmail actually _is_ doing this, then that is worrying but it's not the general case.
Google pre-loads and caches images, which many people consider problematic, but they're not pre-fetching URLs.
Refer to these two incredibly recent posts to understand why:
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28192269 - How to prevent email spoofing, using an unholy combination of silly standards
2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28194477 - Email Authenticity 101: DKIM, Dmarc, and SPF