How to Stop Emails From Spying on You
Companies have been hiding read receipts in your emails for decades. Now everyone’s doing it. Here’s how to shut that down.
By Michael Grothaus
Make no mistake about it: Companies want to know everything you do online, whether it’s when you post to social media, or what subject you’re reading about on Wikipedia. Shadowy data brokers, big tech giants, your ISP, even your local car dealer can tap extensive data on you based on your digital footprint.
As tracking techniques get more advanced each year, so do the methods to thwart such attempts. There are literally dozens of browser extensions built to help protect users from tracking — and entire browsers themselves. But while it’s generally known by most people that our online activities — where and what we browse — are being tracked in some way, not many people realize that companies have been using a sneaky hidden trick for decades that allows them to snoop on your email activity.
This email tracking allows a company — or virtually anyone — to see when and where you’ve opened an email they’ve sent you, how long it took for you to read it, and how often you’ve returned to read the email again. They do this through a snooping trick called a tracking pixel.
