Stop email tracking with Apple and DuckDuckGo tools

I subscribe to many newsletters. I read most of them too. But the creator doesn’t know that because he disabled the tracker that detects and notifies the sender when a subscriber opens an email. I don’t want anyone to know what I read, when I read it, how many times I read it, what device I read it on, or where I was when I read it. how about you

Oh, did you know that the sender of an email can learn everything about you just by clicking and opening it? It happens a lot, especially with newsletters and marketing emails. But trackers are not limited to them. Anyone can sneak a tracker into your email. Services that do this are plentiful and free. If you’re the type of person who turns off read receipts for text messages and DMs, this probably isn’t good news.

It’s creepy to think that your email reading habits will be tracked, but that’s not the only reason you should consider taking a few extra steps to protect your email. Your email address has become her one of the best persistent identifiers. Data brokers and marketers match what you did with that address in one place with what you used that address in another. It allows you to build a more comprehensive profile of your online (and offline) life than ever before. It may be okay for the store to give you the address to receive the email, and it may be okay for the store to know if you opened the email. You, too, may not fare so well with many other companies that are not related to knowing it.

There is also a security element. Email is leaked in data breaches all the time, and there are many things hackers can do with your email address. Especially since email addresses often double as logins. If a company doesn’t have your real email address, you have one less thing to worry about if (or when, really) they’ll release information if they get hacked.

Luckily, there are ways to better protect your email privacy. New Service Dropped: Privacy-First Search Engine His provider, DuckDuckGo, has launched an email protection service after a year of beta testing. Apple, Firefox, and Proton have similar products, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Here are some services and methods to make your email more private, and why you should consider using them. These aren’t the only companies that offer these services, but each has a reputation for protecting user privacy. In some cases, that’s their mission.

spoof your email address

One of the best ways to protect your email privacy is also one of the most obvious. Don’t give out your email address in the first place. But email addresses are precious, and companies do everything they can to get them. If you want to order something, you may need to enter your email address. Or, in exchange, dangle a nice juicy discount right in front of you.

One solution is to use a service that provides alias email addresses. This will redirect the message to the selected inbox. That way you get all your emails (and coupons) in your real inbox without the sender knowing your real address.

Perhaps the most well-known example is Apple’s “Hide My Email” feature. I’ve used this, so I can say it works as promised. Get unlimited aliases and use different aliases everywhere. But like all Apples, it works much better within the Apple ecosystem than it does outside. If you’re logged into your iCloud account, if you’re using an Apple device, if you’re using Apple’s Safari browser, or if you’re signed in with Apple, as an option in your email prompt[メールを非表示]pops up. Creating and entering a fake email address is as easy as entering your real email address.

But if you’re using non-Apple products and services, this process can be very time consuming and cumbersome. Another disadvantage is the cost. Requires an iCloud+ account. It starts at 99 cents per month and includes other features like expanded cloud storage. So while Hide My Email is a great feature for some, it may not be the best option for everyone.

DuckDuckGo’s email protection, on the other hand, is free. You can also install the DuckDuckGo extension for most web browsers. It’s available from DuckDuckGo’s site or from your browser’s extension store (the notable exception being Safari, which DuckDuckGo says is in development). Then, just like Hide My Mail, it will automatically pop up as an option every time you get an email prompt. You can get as many aliases as you want. Setup is easy. It also has some features that will be explained later.

There is also Firefox Relay with free and paid options. The free version only offers 5 aliases, while the paid version allows unlimited addresses. It’s 99 cents per month, but Firefox says this price range is only available for a limited time. Also, the browser extensions needed to easily use Relay with Mail Prompt are not available in all browsers. Finally, you must have or create a Firefox Account to use it. While this is easy, it’s also an extra step you don’t want to take when signing up for a service to ensure your data isn’t leaked when setting up your account.

Finally, Proton, best known for its encrypted email service, now offers the ability to create an alias email address with its paid Proton Mail plans starting at $3.99 per month. However, the cheapest option only offers 10 aliases, which isn’t enough if you plan to use a different email for everything.

If you don’t want to bother with an alias service, you can always create your own alternate account with your email provider and write it down for anything you don’t want to give out your real email address. For. This reduces the amount of spam that reaches your physical inbox, but if you use that one email address in enough places and enough times, it will identify you as much as your actual email address. increase.

block those trackers

Whether you provide your real e-mail address or use an alias, you may not want the e-mail sender to know if or when you read your message. They can learn a lot about you just by that. This tracking is done through tiny little images (basically pixels) embedded in your email. When you open an email, a call is made to the server where the image is hosted, telling the tracking service that you opened the email, how many times you opened it, when you opened it, and what device you used. Opening it may also open your IP address (many email providers block this, for example Gmail routes image requests through their servers and masks your IP address) .

Some companies that provide email aliases also offer tracker blocking services. Apple last year released Mail Privacy Protection, a tracker blocking feature, in iOS15. Fortunately, Mail Privacy Protection is free and easy to enable. You will either be prompted to turn it on the first time you open Mail, or you can find it in your settings. The bad news is that it only works with Apple’s Mail app.

Proton’s email service has tracker protection enabled by default and is available in both free and paid tiers. It will tell you which trackers you have blocked and who sent them, giving you the chance to spy on companies spying on you, but tracker protection is only available on his Proton’s website. Proton says it will soon support a mobile app.

DuckDuckGo’s email protection service is not tied to any particular company or operating system. Detect and filter out trackers before they reach your (real) inbox. It also removes trackers from links with emails and lets you know if your emails contain trackers and who they are from. said about 85% of the emails that passed through the new service during its beta stage contained trackers.

Free and Premium tiers of Firefox Relay also remove trackers. Note that both DuckDuckGo and Firefox options only remove trackers from emails that pass through them. That is, emails sent via alias emails created by that service. It does not remove trackers from emails sent directly to your real email address.

Finally, you can always go the DIY route by going to your email settings and making sure you choose not to download images automatically.[設定]You can do this by going to > Universal > image > Check before displaying an external image. The downside of this method is that your email looks like a sea of ​​broken image icons. Because not only will you block trackers, but you will also block all externally hosted images, even if they are completely harmless.

A final note: While these services and technologies certainly protect your privacy to some extent, nothing is foolproof. If you have identifying information attached to your alias email address (perhaps you used it to set up an account and use your real name to order something delivered to your physical address), your data It is not difficult for brokers to match it. back to you Tracker blockers are effective, but there’s always the chance that marketers and the tracking services they use will come up with other ways to track you through your email. And start over the whole process of finding a way to block those trackers.