Perhaps you’ve received an email that asks you to display images, but then there are no images in the email. Perhaps you’ve wondered what that’s all about. It’s quite possible that the sender was using a tracking pixel to determine if you’re opening their emails. A tracking pixel is a tiny transparent image inserted into an email that is invisible to the naked eye. When an email with a tracking pixel is opened, the image pings the server it originated from and relays information like time, location, and the device you’re using. Tracking pixels are not illegal; they are quite commonly used in email newsletters.
But while you might expect Williams Sonoma or Amazon to be sending you emails with tracking pixels, you might NOT be expecting them from a PR person sending you a direct email. Bananatag offers tracking services for individual emails (as opposed to email newsletters), and it advertises itself as a tool for sales/marketing pros, students, job hunters, and lawyers:
Email tracking takes the guesswork out of sending emails and gives you confidence that your message has been received and acted upon. Whether you’re a professional in sales and marketing, or you’re a student, job hunter, or lawyer who needs to know that your recipients received your important communications, email tracking through Bananatag provides that valuable information.
Bananatag currently lets you send 5 trackable emails per day for free, with plans that can be purchased to send more. Other similar tools include Yesware and Streak. Users of these services can track if you open your email from them, as well as when and where you opened the email, and what device you used to view it.
Certainly such applications are useful, but you may find them creepy as well. The easiest way to avoid being tracked is to reject that message asking to display images in your email client (Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.).
Another option, if you’re a Google lover using Chrome and Gmail, is to use Ugly Email. It’s a Chrome extension that makes your inbox look like this:
Ugly Email safely “sniffs” through the emails in your inbox and exposes the emails that are being tracked. Every tracked email is marked with the “evil eye” icon you see above, so you can easily identify them. According to the programmers who developed Ugly Eye, it does not store, save, or transmit any data from your Gmail account or computer. All the action takes place locally on your computer.
Say you’re a Chrome and Gmail user and you’d rather just block tracking pixels altogether. Fortunately, there’s an extension for that too, PixelBlock. PixelBlock displays a ‘red eye’ when it finds and blocks a tracking attempt inside of an email you’re reading. Like Ugly Email, PixelBlock says it does not store/save or transmit any data from Gmail or your computer in any form.
If browser extensions, tracking pixels, or email marketing make your head spin, I.T. Roadmap is here to help; just email us to get started.
