How to Disable Email Spying on iPhone? Users often wonder how advertisements are displayed so accurately on the Internet. I just googled something or looked at an offer in the mail, and already all the banners are full of relevant goods or services.
But not everyone knows that in addition to search queries, many companies, marketing agencies or simply third-party companies track your activity by email. This is done using pixel-tracker that are embedded in emails.
The number of trackers in e-mail newsletters is sometimes incalculable.
Moreover, using this technology exclusively for advertising purposes is the most harmless. Tracking pixels can also collect more important information than what you decide to order as a gift to your loved ones. Let’s see how it works email trackinghow safe it is and how to turn it off.
Email – Tracking
Google tries to protect its users, but it doesn’t always work.
As I said above, email tracking is done using pixel-tracker. These are small images in GIF or PNG format, the size, as the name suggests, is one pixel. They are added to an email, when you open it and download all the images, the code inside the tracker collects all the information about when the email was opened, where and from what device.
In some cases, these trackers have received access to cookieswhich poses a much greater threat.
In such a situation, information is transmitted to the server to the sender about the sites visited by the owner of the box and, possibly, about what information he enters into it. The date and time of opening are not particularly dangerous.
It’s actually a mundane deliver-and-read report, which most of us are familiar with when working with corporate mailboxes. But the site data is already quite serious information that can be used for illegal purposes.
The sad thing is that such images cannot be seen with the eyes, even if you know where to look for them. They are embedded in both headers and the body of the letter. many owners courier services try to recognize and block these trackers on their own.
For instance, Google runs all images through its own servers to mask the user’s location and when the email was read. But, unfortunately, it is impossible to block everything.
Initially pixel trackers embedded in links, but recently users have stopped mindlessly moving to pages they don’t know. So now they are limited to images. Since these programs are mostly images, they can be processed quite efficiently. Simply turn off automatic media download and run it every time only for senders you know.
Of course, no one guarantees that even an online store that you have known for a long time will not trade with such programs. But it will be possible to reduce the amount of information transmitted to the outside.
How to Disable Email Spying on iPhone?
If you are using another email service, follow the same steps.
Consider disabling auto-loading of images using the example of one of the most popular email service in the world – Gmail. This can be done in several ways. It all depends on what device you have. The first and simplest is to go through web version of Gmail:
- Go to mail.google.com.
- In the upper right corner, click on the gear to access the settings.
- Select All Settings.
- In the “General” section, scroll down a bit to “Images”.
- Check the box “Ask me if I want to display images”.
Don’t forget to save your changes.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the “Save Changes” button.
Keep in mind that without saving the settings will not be applied and everything will work as before. Together with disable automatic loading of images dynamic email content will also be disabled. It includes various animations. They will only be downloaded after you choose to download all images in a particular email.
Similar settings can also be made via mobile appif that’s more convenient for you. For this you need:
- Open the Gmail app.
Disabling automatic downloads is much more convenient through the app.
- Click on the three bars in the upper left corner.
Parameters are hidden at the very bottom of the list.
- In the list that appears, scroll down and select “Settings”.
- Click on your account.
The settings almost completely repeat the web version.
- Go to the “Pictures” section.
Dynamic content is disabled with images.
- Select “Ask if I want to display images (will disable dynamic content)”.
If you trust the sender, feel free to upload photos.
- When you receive an email with the images you want to download, just click “Show Images”.
But it is also possible that you are not using the native gmail appand you’ve had enough regular mail” to which you added google account. In such a situation, you can also disable content loading. This will require:
- Open Settings.
Apple also cares about user privacy and provides its own settings.
- Go to the “Mail” section.
- Select “Privacy protection”.
This item works the same as the Gmail settings.
- Enable “Block all content from remote sources”.
In this case, you will also need to upload images with the help of an additional button click. Thanks to these actions, you will protect yourself a little from intrusions into your email and try to avoid the appearance of annoying pop-up advertisements. Unfortunately, it is impossible to completely exclude such things, but even in this form it is already not bad.
