How to Stop Your Emails from Being Tracked
How to stop your emails from being tracked – How to stop your emails from tracking you
Many services allow senders to track emails, including when they were opened, which links were visited, what device was used, and even the recipient’s present location. All of this is done without the reader’s permission.
As a result, I believe that emails should be private, and that email tracking is a sort of invasion of privacy. So I employ a set of techniques to track and stop email tracking as an antidote to this. If you share my sentiments, I can also assist you in avoiding email tracking. Here are various methods for determining whether or not your emails are being monitored, as well as how to turn off this function.
Do you realize that the sender of an email may see when and where you open it? They accomplish this by including a little bit of code in their marketing emails. This may not be an issue if you trust the firm, but nearly anybody can utilize this function nowadays. Learn how to disable email tracking in Gmail and Apple Mail by reading on.
What is the Process of Email Tracking?
Let’s take a look at how email tracking works before we get into the root of the matter. In most cases, there are two methods for tracking emails. Either an invisible trackable picture called pixel-beacon will be attached by the tracking program, or you will receive a link that you may click to view the email content.
The trackable pictures communicate with tracking software servers in the first approach to inform them of email interactions. In the case of a tracking link, the interface through which you read the email is also a tracker.
Manually Detect Emails | How to Stop Your Emails from Being Tracked
There are a variety of techniques to detect email monitoring or How to Stop Your Emails from Being Tracked; the answers to the most popular tracking methods are listed below:
Option 1 – Do not open the link
It’s never a good idea to open links inside an email, especially ones that go to the email’s content. If the email has a link to the email’s content, only click it when you’re sure it’s okay to notify the sender that you’ve read the message.
Links are never advised to be opened inside e-mails, particularly for links to see e-mail content. If the email contains a link to the content of the email, just click it if the sender is all right to let him know you read the message.
Option 2: Look for pictures from outside sources.
External pictures are not shown by default in any of the main email systems, including Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. All prominent email services such as Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo don’t show default external pictures. If there is a trackable picture in your email, your email provider will automatically ask if you want to access external photos or not. If you refuse this request, tracking for that email will be disabled.
Of course, there’s always the possibility that the email included an essential photograph instead. However, you’ll have to guess whether the picture in the email was a tracking image or a visible image.
Option 3: Look for email addresses from third parties.
You may check for tracking by looking for the email or website URL that most server side trackers deliver with the email.
Go to your email service’s settings and check for the Show Original Message option, that displays server-side data, to determine if your email is being monitored this way.
To view it in Gmail, for example, go to More > Show Original.
Press Ctrl + F and type.com to display all the addresses in the original message.
All of the email or website addresses stated there will be revealed as a result of this.
Whether you come across any other addresses than your email service, links in the message, or your own email address, look it up online to see if it leads to a tracking service.
Yesware, a prominent email tracking service, is showing that email is being tracked in the screenshot below.
You may also utilize the keyword track inside the original material using this technique. A tracking service’s address may or may not be included, but the words track or tracking should be present.
Automated Email Detection
The procedures listed above are effective, however they are not particularly dependable. As a result, I propose utilizing a more effective third-party app instead. Since its beginnings, I’ve been using Ugly Email for this reason. It’s a Chrome plugin that allows you to see Gmail’s monitored emails. Unfortunately, it is only available to Chrome and Gmail users.
Ugly Email has recently improved and now supports nearly all of the most common tracking providers. It can detect and stop email tracking, as well as identify the tracking provider utilized. It just displays a “eye” icon next to monitored emails once it has been installed.
Because Ugly Email disables trackers, you may open monitored emails without restriction. When tracking is turned off, you’ll get a notice. It can, in my experience, prevent a wide range of tracking methods. Ugly Email was able to detect and disable the trackers even when all of the preceding manual techniques failed for me.
Conclusion
I should also warn you that, in addition to analytics, fraudsters employ email tracking to carry out more effective phishing assaults. They can determine whether the email is active and then follow your activities in order to discover a weak area in which to defraud you.
Protecting yourself against tracked emails allows you to respond to communications at your leisure and maybe avoid frauds.