Mail Privacy Protection

[adrianlondon]

I initially turned this on, but have now turned it off and have activated the two options underneath: "Hide IP Address" and "Block All Remote Content".

I'd like to know other's thoughts on which they're going to use. Here's mine:

Apple says this feature loads all images in the background before even opening an email, and hides the exact IP address (it still uses one from your approx. location). This means tracking images don't know how many times you've looked at their email, or whether you've even read it or not (they'll assume you have). I liked this idea.

So why did I turn it off? Well, as it downloads all remote content for every email, it also tells the sender that your email address is valid. That was the primary reason I always block remote images by default and have gone back to doing that. For emails from people/companies I trust I simply click the "download images" option which appears. The annoying thing about this is that they're not cached in either iOS or MacOS Mail, so each time I look at the email I have to download the images again if I need to see them.

Which option/s will you pick?

 

[TruBleu]

I initially turned this on, but have now turned it off and have activated the two options underneath: "Hide IP Address" and "Block All Remote Content".

I'd like to know other's thoughts on which they're going to use. Here's mine:

Apple says this feature loads all images in the background before even opening an email, and hides the exact IP address (it still uses one from your approx. location). This means tracking images don't know how many times you've looked at their email, or whether you've even read it or not (they'll assume you have). I liked this idea.

So why did I turn it off? Well, as it downloads all remote content for every email, it also tells the sender that your email address is valid. That was the primary reason I always block remote images by default and have gone back to doing that. For emails from people/companies I trust I simply click the "download images" option which appears. The annoying thing about this is that they're not cached in either iOS or MacOS Mail, so each time I look at the email I have to download the images again if I need to see them.

Which option/s will you pick?

I don’t think the tracking pixel should be part of an image.

From the article at https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/09/mail-privacy-protection-publishers/…
“A tracking pixel is a link to a tiny image – usually just a single pixel – embedded into an email. When the email is opened, Apple Mail (or other email app) fetches that image from a server. By using a unique link for each subscriber (usually tied to their email address), the publisher can tell when the email has been read because the unique image was downloaded.

For email newsletter publishers, that provides them with a vital metric called the Open Rate: How many people open the email. It is this metric that advertisers want to know when deciding which newsletters to sponsor.”

 

[Stephen.R]

Are you sure mail doesn’t cache the remote images it’s already fetched? I need to check that in big sur.

ill likely use the same options you’ve mentioned - I already disable auto loading remote content and mostly never enable it - even most legitimate emails I get don’t benefit much from extra images.

 

[TimFL1]

I don’t think the tracking pixel should be part of an image.

From the article at https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/09/mail-privacy-protection-publishers/…
“A tracking pixel is a link to a tiny image – usually just a single pixel – embedded into an email. When the email is opened, Apple Mail (or other email app) fetches that image from a server. By using a unique link for each subscriber (usually tied to their email address), the publisher can tell when the email has been read because the unique image was downloaded.

For email newsletter publishers, that provides them with a vital metric called the Open Rate: How many people open the email. It is this metric that advertisers want to know when deciding which newsletters to sponsor.”

This is why I‘m stumped at how this is an improvement over disabling remote image auto-loading. Advertisers don‘t care about your IP (well, not much at least)… they care about whether or not that embedded pixel is pulled from their server so they know the mail was delivered and downloaded.

No idea how Apple wants to prevent that from happening without stuff like ML detecting when a pixel is about to be loaded and blocking that.

 

[Stephen.R]

The email marketing platform a client of mine uses is a really ****** piece of tech and even it does geo lookups for subscribers. I’d imagine some use that data for targeted marketing.

 

[TruBleu]

This is why I‘m stumped at how this is an improvement over disabling remote image auto-loading. Advertisers don‘t care about your IP (well, not much at least)… they care about whether or not that embedded pixel is pulled from their server so they know the mail was delivered and downloaded.

No idea how Apple wants to prevent that from happening without stuff like ML detecting when a pixel is about to be loaded and blocking that.

Well, you have the ‘privacy protection’ toggle in Settings > Mails for hiding your IP address and preventing remote content from loading in the background.

 

[ecatomb]

iOS15 is out.

What is the best between "Mail Privacy Protection" and the "Block All Remote Content" ?
I like the 2nd one due to the tracking system...

 

[occamsrazor]

I am wondering about one thing:

"To prevent this behavior, Mail Privacy Protection hides your IP address and loads all remote content privately in the background,"

Does this mean that your iPhone is downloading all remote content in the background? Or that Apple servers are? When on a low bandwidth or expensive connection e.g. roaming, will having MPP switched on therefore increase data usage because it's downloading remote content that you may not have looked at anyway?