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0 pointslondons_explore1mo ago0 comments

Gmails prefetch is terrible for privacy because it honors http cache headers, which means tracking companies simply use a "no-cache, must-revalidate" header to defeat it.

0 comments

hedora1mo ago

That sounds like a feature, not a bug, given where Google’s revenue comes from.

direwolf201mo ago

Google's revenue comes from Google's ads, not other people's ads, and they already know when you open your emails. They should block remote loading, to ensure their ad platform works better than other people's.

RobotToaster1mo ago

Which is completely stupid since images in an email should never change.

iamacyborg1mo ago

Why shouldn't they? There's plenty of scenarios where you might want to swap images after a period of time has elapsed, or to fix a mistake.

londons_exploreOP1mo ago

The ability to swap images but not text seems arbitrary.

You could imagine a system more like the notification tray on iOS/Android where at any time a notification can appear, be edited, timeout, or be deleted.

Your email inbox could be like that. The email saying "Your parcel has been dispatched" could be edited to say "Your parcel has been delivered".

When you refund something you've bought, the original purchase receipt could be crossed out or hidden. When you get invited to a wedding but then the wedding is cancelled, the original invite could be deleted, etc.

afavour1mo ago

It's counter to the principle of what e-mail is. It's supposed to be static. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

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Tagbert1mo ago

specifically to prevent this kind of tracking

hvb21mo ago

I know of an invoicing system that updates the image when it's paid. Seems pretty useful to me.

And yes, that means that an image with an amount is publicly accessible, so what, there's no information about the invoice in there as that's in the text of the email.

SiempreViernes1mo ago

Bet they send a separate mail when you paid though, in which case updating the picture is not much more than a means for them to hide errors.

I subscribed to the daily headlines from a newspaper, they delivered them as a remote picture in the mail. Only it was always the same remote picture each day, just updated. So if you didn't open the mail each day too bad: you snooze you loose, those past headlines are gone.

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