PSA: Disable Automatic Remote Image Loading in Your Email Client
The issue of digital privacy and security will always be a moving target, because no matter how many bugs are squashed or patches get pushed, bad actors and greedy corporations will continue to scope out vulnerabilities that they can use to exploit people. It is more important than ever to do what you can to protect yourself.
Lately, a lot of attention has been given to a big privacy issue that affects pretty much all email users. The problem lies in the use of something called surveillance pixels, a type of nonconsensual technology where someone who sends you an email can put something in the message that will provide them with a shocking amount of strikingly private information about the email recipient, including the dates, times, and locations for each time they open the sender’s email. This became a hot topic a couple weeks ago after a shady company called Superhuman was exposed for utilizing surveillance pixels to provide their users with access to this data for every email they send. Superhuman isn’t the only company to do this however, companies like MailChimp and other mass marketing email providers do it as well (though I believe its use for business purposes doesn’t negate the fact that it is still a breach of privacy and should be condemned just as strongly), but Superhuman does seem to be the first to make it so easily available to non-business users.
Fortunately, there is a way you can protect yourself from this privacy violation, and you should. Most mail clients offer an option to disable automatic remote content or remote image loading. Adjusting this setting will prevent your device from downloading the surveillance pixels in these emails automatically so that senders won’t be able to use them to collect this data. If you have an iPhone or iPad and you use the Apple Mail app, go to the “Settings” app, tap “Mail,” and then toggle off the switch labeled “Load Remote Images.”
After learning of how companies use this technology to take advantage of users about a year ago, I decided to disable remote image loading on my own devices, and I’m glad I did. To be clear, there is a slight downside because this will prevent some other images in emails from loading, but it is easy to chose to load the images for any individual email with a single tap if you do want to see what was attached; just know that you could also be enabling a surveillance pixel in that email if you do chose to load the images. Overall though, this is definitely a setting you should adjust if you don’t want everyone who sends you email to be able to know exactly when, where, and how many times you open their messages.