Pesky Pixels

I had an email from a bank the other day telling me that there was an important message in my account inbox. For some reason I read the email more attentively than I usually do (their messages are rarely if ever actually important) and noticed that somewhere in the small print they confessed to embedding an invisible pixel in the email. So they could check that I'd opened it apparently. I was a bit foxed about how a pixel could do that, but after a bit of thought I realised that if the 'null' pixel had to be downloaded from their server, it would tell them that I'd opened the email and probably when and from what IP address.

Well, OK, I suppose that if they need legal proof that I'd received their communication it's fair enough. Though I doubt it would stand up in court - sometimes I come home and find the dog watching inappropriate content on the TV. She just likes to snuggle up with the remote. Maybe she gets to the computer as well....

It all seems a bit sneaky though. Why make the pixels invisible unless you're intending to deceive? I think I may go back to PINE.

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 11/02/2022 01:16:57

Edited By Robin Graham on 11/02/2022 01:18:14

They are on to Alpine now...

That's a common spammers' technique

Ah, thanks, I'll look. I'm so old that I remember ELM - the recursive Pine Is Not Elm isn't true apparently. I'm such a dinosaur that I still use vi for text editing!

Robin.

Know thine enemy : **LINK**

https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/what-is-tracking-pixel/

MichaelG.

Thanks for replies. After some searching I found out how to turn off execution of javascript in my email client (Thunderbird) which should stop this stuff without sacrificing plain HTML formatting. So maybe I don't need to go back to (Al)pine.

Michael - thanks for the link to digitalmarketer.  Interesting reading. But you've set me off on a new quest now - I had thought that the phrase 'know thine enemy' must be biblical in origin, but it seems that goes back to ~500 BC in the Art of War by Sun Tzu. There must be a digitised translation on the internet somewhere...

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 12/02/2022 00:50:47

I couldn't find that setting in Thunderbird, how did you do it ? Is it a global preference, or is it per account ?

Edited By Bob Unitt 1 on 12/02/2022 14:55:22

Bob not completely sure but I think that setting is in the 'config editor' which is under the advanced tab

H

Hi Bob. Go to the Thunderbird menu (three lines thing at the right), select 'View;'then 'Message body As'. You should see three options - 'Original HTML' , 'Simple HTML' and 'Plain Text'. My understanding (so far!) is that if you select 'Simple HTML' you get HTML formatting but Javascript is disabled.

It's a global preference within a user account on your computer - if I look at my wife's email (same account; different email name) when I am logged on as me I see my preferences, if I were to log in as her on our local computer I would see hers because Thunderbird would look at a different configuration file in her filespace. I hope! Local Thunderbird settings just filter the content according to our instructions and have little influence on what the email provider sends down the wire.

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 14/02/2022 02:59:23

Edited By Robin Graham on 14/02/2022 03:02:20

Hi all, the 'hidden pixel' is an embedded image. As such, javascript has nothing to do with it (and no email client should be executing javascript under any circumstances as default!)

The setting you want to look at is the one loading embedded images which is always good to disable.