I don’t know about you, but I hate it when businesses try to track whether I have opened their email or not. Would they come into my home to see if I opened their catalogue or mail? I think trackers in email should just be flat-out illegal, but since they are still a thing, Barbara Krasnoff has some things you can do to block companies from finding out if you have opened their email.
How does it work? A single tracking pixel is embedded into the email, usually (but not always) hidden within an image or a link. When the email is opened, code within the pixel sends the info back to the company’s server.
There have been some attempts to restrict the amount of information that can be transmitted this way. For example, since 2014, Google has served all images through its own proxy servers, which could hide your location from at least some tracking applications. And extensions such as Ugly Email and PixelBlock have been developed to block trackers on Chrome and Firefox.
Read more on The Verge.