Spy Pixels in Emails

[Martin WParticipant @martinw]

Even More Surveillance

[Martin WParticipant @martinw]

Found this article on the BBC news site earlier. It's worth a read if only to see who is looking at your data and responses.

Martin W

Edited By Martin W on 17/02/2021 10:19:43

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

Well known – if users are stupid enough to use web mail readers then this is what they can expect – exactly the same as the owners of this site attempt to place a facebook tracking pixel here.

The same trick of attempting to load from an external source is also used to attempt to load malware – I’ve also seen attempts to address the common addresses for your router and use the default password to reset the DNS provider address to force all traffic to pass through their system (luckily most mail systems block these tricks now)

Edited By Frances IoM on 17/02/2021 10:41:42

Edited By Frances IoM on 17/02/2021 10:42:16

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Always have your email on text only, no html

no exceptions

If you want to open a link in that mail then thats your choice

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

Ady1 that is exactly my scheme – for many near spam mail (eg had from from my local council – useful text less than 100 words but this ‘painted turd’ of a message required 70kB of associated junk due to various formating etc – as to tracking my approach is that all American companies treat customers as fodder for advertisers, many British companies follow this and hide any supposed agreement in the small print – don’t expect the UK government to do anything about it the companies are too powerful even tho they pay little or no tax.

Edited By Frances IoM on 17/02/2021 11:03:44

Edited By Frances IoM on 17/02/2021 11:09:50

[Paul LParticipant @paull58212]

This is an old method of seeing if an email has been opened / read.

A picture 1 x 1 pixel is linked in the email with a specific name eg 'Paull.jpg'. when the email is opened the picture is requested from the senders server, so if the sender monitors the requests then they can see that Paul L opened the email. Its a very crude way of tracking and easily overcome by setting ' do not download pictures' in your email client.

@ Frances, the owners of this site do not need to 'attempt to place a tracking pixel from facebook' on this site as there is a facebook icon, bottom right of the page, that, unless 3rd party cookies are disabled in your browser links directly back to facebook, same for twitter and pintrest.

Third party cookies are the primary way you are tracked around the internet and 3rd party adverts are one of the biggest infection vectors for malware. Apple has never allowed 3rd party cookies on there products, Google has indicated that they will also ban 3rd party cookies in the future.

There are other ways to track people such as Super Cookies and also Browser Fingerprinting but these can also be managed.

Clicking on link in emails is a serious problem and should be discouraged as should opening attachments.

Paul

Edited By Paul L on 17/02/2021 11:56:16

[VicParticipant @vic]

This may help some.

**LINK**

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

Paul – look at the HTML code – they attempt to plant a pixel if they find Javascript turned off – blatant attempt to track those who block other methods

[Paul LParticipant @paull58212]

Posted by Frances IoM on 17/02/2021 12:01:30:
Paul – look at the HTML code – they attempt to plant a pixel if they find Javascript turned off – blatant attempt to track those who block other methods

Ok so what would this pixel tell them? planting a pixel = inserting an image.

What the html code is doing is starting 'Facebook Tracking Pixel' (either with or without javascript)

Essentially, the Facebook Tracking Pixel is an analytics tool, a piece of code designed to be placed within a website in order to track users as they use a site with pixel enabled. As detailed by Facebook on their pixel site, the tool is triggered when someone visits a website and performs an action on that site. The pixel automatically reports the action, letting the site owner know that someone used their site after seeing an advertisement on Facebook.

The tracking pixel also allows for the customer to be reached again using a custom audience tool when setting up a new advertising campaign. In theory, the pixel is one of the many ways that Facebook allows advertisers of all sizes to get better at delivering ads to people who are more likely to click on the ad. The consumer benefits by seeing ads targeted to their interests though at the cost of some privacy online.

You can defeat this easily by configuring your browser. Firefox is specifically geared to help protect you from tracking. especially if you install the ublock origin, and duckduck go privacy extensions.

regards

Paul

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