Mastodawn

Thunderbird: Free Your Inbox May 9, 2023

By default, #Thunderbird automatically blocks images in your emails from being displayed -- because many of those images may contain tracking code.

(Sometimes these images are tiny "tracking pixels" you may not even see).

Take your protection one step further by installing #uBlock Origin to block all kinds of unwanted content in your RSS feeds -- it's now an official Thunderbird Add-on: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/ublock-origin/

#Privacy #Email

(EDITED FOR CLARITY)

uBlock Origin

Finally, an efficient blocker. Easy on CPU and memory. uBlock Origin (uBO) is a CPU and memory-efficient wide-spectrum content blocker that blocks ads, trackers, coin miners, popups, annoying anti-blockers, etc. in your feeds.

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John Dal May 9, 2023

@thunderbird why would any image viewing software treat bytes in an image stream as code and then execute it? Really, I'm asking how do "tracking pixels" work?

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Leonardo

@JohnDal @thunderbird they are not: usally tracking pixels are embedded as white/transparent images by 1x1 size embedded in HTML mail body using an <img> tag, and therefore they are loaded via a remote URL. Now, this URL is usually associated with a tracking code of some sort; let's say the message contains something like this: <img src="https://my.tracking.com/whitepixels/tracking.png?messageCode=UNIQUEID"> : everytime an email client loads the message, it can request the image from the remote source, therefore exposing informations about the user and effectively tracking the message.