You may not realize it but many companies are making money by just tracking and reading your personal and business emails. Google was one of the companies that was accused of reading your personal emails. There are companies that make money by just tracking your emails, including Yesware, Postmark, Streak and MailChimp. If you use Google Chrome browser and Gmail, there is some help to determine which emails are being tracked.
The Ugly Email too is a Chrome extension that marks your emails that are being tracked. Currently, Ugly Email detects tracking pixels from Streak, Yesware, Mandrill, MailChimp, Postmark and Bananatag. Ugly Email is actively working on adding more.
“Google and other companies may be reading and tracking your personal emails”
Once you install it (Ugly Email is a Gmail extension to your Chrome browser) it starts to work right away. When you go to your Gmail inbox, you will see the Ugly Email "eye" icon next to each email that is being tracked.
I just downloaded and installed the Ugly Email extension and opened Gmail in Chrome to see what I find. Two of my most important business emails are marked by the “evil eye”. I can't believe someone is tracking my important business emails.
SubashPosted Sep 15, 2016, 7:49 AM
Thank you sir
Gowtham RajamanickamPosted Apr 21, 2015, 2:46 AM
informative
Mahesh ChandPosted Mar 22, 2015, 12:08 AM
Yes we know that Google has been doing that but I didn't know other non-Google companies are doing that as well.
Sam HobbsPosted Mar 21, 2015, 4:42 PM
As Afzaal said, it has been done for many years. Web sites can track us by putting a fake image in messages but it does not work if we do not display the image. That is why all major email clients (online and desktop) offer the option to not show images in messages. I do not remember if Gmail changed that. I assume if they did then they have a way to disable "tracking pixels". When Gmail was new it was called "creepy" because Google processes the messages but Google claims it does nothing more than what other services do. If web sites such as Yesware, Postmark, Streak and MailChimp are able to read the text of our messages then that is huge news but I see nothing saying that Ugly Email is detecting that so I doubt that is true.
Sam HobbsPosted Mar 21, 2015, 4:20 PM
It is called "tracking pixels" and if "you turn off images in emails tracking pixels won't work"; see: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/03/20/ugly-email-highlights-trackers-on-gmail-but-do-you-really-need-it/
Afzaal Ahmad ZeeshanPosted Mar 21, 2015, 2:35 PM
It has been shared quite a while ago that Google scans the emails to provide you advertisements... Microsoft has used this a lot to engage users toward Outlook.