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There are many ways that emails can be used to violate the privacy of the recipient (Return-Receipt-To:, web bugs, iframes loaded from an external page, and other email tracking methods). It may be possible to configure your email client to prevent some or all of these tracking methods, but it requires a bit of knowledge. Is there any way to test my email client, to determine whether it has any privacy leaks that might allow someone sending me email to track me? |
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I found a web service to test your email client, to see whether it protects your privacy: https://emailprivacytester.com/ It automates the process of sending you an email that uses various tricks to try to track you, and then checks to see which of those succeed. It lists 37 different methods that it implements to try to determine whether you opened the email, track you, etc. It looks like a pretty reasonable approach. The author has found attacks and vulnerabilities in a number of email clients, which enable an email sender to violate the privacy of the recipient. His software implements these attacks. He describes some of these attacks on his blog: |
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It's not just your email client when you use email (browser, computer), so you should probably start with: a) searching within your specific email client to make sure it's not sending receipts b) checking your browser's privacy settings and make sure it's blocking cookies, (at least before going to your email) because the email client may request them, and then get information from your browser that way c) using a browser that does not support iframes Obviously there could be more ways that someone could track you, but unless you know of them specifically, using up-to-date browsers, email clients and operating systems is the most practical way of combating those attempts. |
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