Categories
Posts

Email Privacy Tester

Murphy’s law goes something like:

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

I get a similar feeling when it comes to tech today:

If it can be done, someone will do it.

Unfortunately that comes up more often for bad things that for good. My case in point today: email and privacy. Specifically some of the things that can be included in email messages that allow third parties to collect information.

To see what I mean, try out the Email Privacy Tester. It will send you an email that contains many of these tracking methods and will report to you which ones worked ( after you open the email ).

Most of the time I’m using the Gmail web interface for email, which with my current setup triggered zero trackers ( aside from the obvious point that it allows Google Alphabet to track me more ):

email-privacy-gmail

I tried this with Gmail on iOS, it also triggered zero trackers.

My current Apple Mail setup needs to be locked down more:

email-privacy-apple-mail

In 2016 you have to assume a more defensive position by default on these sorts of things.