How To Block Email Tracking In Airmail For Mac

Aimed at the professional email user, Mailspring boasts mail merge, reminders, and the option to schedule mail—all available in a pro edition. With the free version, you get a clean, highly productive, and expandable email program that includes functions like link and open tracking, quick reply templates, and an 'undo send' feature. In the Mail app on your Mac, select a message from the sender you want to block. Move the pointer next to their name in the message header, click the arrow, then choose Block Contact. The Blocked icon appears next to the sender’s name in the message list and a banner is added to their messages to indicate they’re blocked.

Safari User Guide

Some websites use third-party content providers. You can stop third-party content providers from tracking you across websites to advertise products and services.

  1. In the Safari app on your Mac, choose Safari > Preferences, then click Privacy.

  2. Select “Prevent cross-site tracking.”

    Unless you visit and interact with the third-party content provider as a first-party website, their cookies and website data are deleted.

    Social media sites often put Share, Like, or Comment buttons on other websites. These buttons can be used to track your web browsing—even if you don’t use them. Safari blocks that tracking. If you still want to use the buttons, you’ll be asked for your permission to allow the site to see your activities on the other websites.

For a Privacy Report that shows a list of known trackers who’ve been blocked from tracking you, see See who was blocked from tracking you.

Note: Every time you visit a website, it gathers data about your device—such as your system configuration—and uses that data to show you a webpage that works well on your device. Some companies use this data to try to uniquely identify your device—known as fingerprinting. To prevent this, whenever you visit a webpage, Safari presents a simplified version of your system configuration. Your Mac looks more like everyone else’s Mac, which dramatically reduces the ability of trackers to uniquely identify your device.

See alsoManage cookies and website data in Safari on MacUse Private Browsing in Safari on Mac

Here's something you might want to think about next time you check your email: chances are, at least some of your messages are being tracked.

From how many times you open a message, the time of day, and even what city you're in, the very act of reading an email can send a surprising amount of data back to the sender, even if you never respond.

How To Block Email Tracking In Airmail For Mac

That unsettling fact was recently thrust back into the spotlight thanks to a much-hyped email startup called Superhuman. The $30/month invite-only email software beloved by Silicon Valley VCs and 'inbox zero' adherents is so hyped, there's currently a waiting list more than 180,000 people long, according to The New York Times.

Then Mike Davidson, a VP at design platform Invision, pointed out that the email app had originally enabled its users to track who is opening their emails by default. The feature, which Superhuman dubbed 'read receipts,' allows message senders to see exactly when their messages are opened, what kind of device recipients are using, and where they are. And unlike, say, iMessage read receipts, which are opt-in, Superhuman's feature is enabled by default.

Mac

Davidson, who was previously VP of design at Twitter, penned a lengthy critique of Superhuman's 'spying' on his personal blog, saying Superhuman 'has mistaken taking advantage of people for good design.'

In response to criticism from Davidson and others, Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra said the company would update its software so “read receipts” would no longer be enabled by default and location information would be removed.

But the fact is, Superhuman is far from from the only company quietly surveilling your email habits. Though it's relatively unheard of for an email platform to offer this level of tracking by default, it's astonishingly easy to embed tracking software into emails.

What is pixel tracking?

Most email-tracking programs use something called pixel tracking. Here's how email marketing company SendGrid explains its version of the feature:

Open Tracking adds an invisible, one pixel image at the end of the email which can track email opens. If the email recipient has images enabled on their email client and a request to SendGrid’s server for the invisible image is executed, then an open event is logged.

So when one of these 'invisible' images is added into an email, the person who sent it is able to keep track of how often you open the message. It's also common to track whether or not you click on any links in the email.

Marketers love these kinds of tools for obvious reasons, but there are a ton of similar tools out there that anyone can start using. But just because it's commonplace doesn't make it any less creepy or less of a massive privacy invasion.

And while you might expect these tactics from email marketers, there's something even more troubling when you consider the implications of people using these in their personal lives. As Davidson outlines in his blog post, email tracking could in some cases pose a safety risk to people who don't realize they are being tracked just by opening their inbox.

How To Block Email Tracking In Airmail For Mac Free

Luckily, there are a few ways to block this type of tracking without ignoring your emails entirely.

Image blocking is your friend

One of the most straightforward ways to prevent email tracking software from working is to block images from displaying by default. This is a setting you can enable in just about every email service., though you should note that it means loading images in your email will require an extra click.

In Gmail, click on the settings gear to open up your email preferences. From the 'general' tab, scroll down to images and check the box that says 'Ask before displaying external images.' Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click 'save changes.'

If you use a non-Gmail email provider, you should be able to find a similar setting. Just look for something that says something like 'ask before displaying external images.'

It's also important to note that if you use a third-party email client like Outlook or Apple's Mail app to check your email, you'll need to enable this setting in that email app as well. Again, you can typically do this in the app's settings.

How To Block Email Tracking In Airmail For Mac Osx

In Apple's Mail app for iOS, you can disable images by going to the main Settings app, selecting 'Mail,' and scrolling down to 'load remote images.' (Instructions for disabling images in the MacOS Mail app can be found here.)

Track the trackers

If fiddling with your email settings is too inconvenient, or you're extra curious about who might be keeping tabs on how often you're reading your emails, there's another option available as well. There are a number of browser extensions that will also block the tracking pixels while alerting you to which emails contain trackers.

How To Block Email Tracking In Airmail For Mac Free

How

PixelBlock is a simple Chrome extension that blocks images from loading and displays a red eye at the tope of messages when it detects a tracker.

Similarly, Trocker, which is available for Chrome and Firefox, will show you pixel trackers and identify links that are being tracked.

And Chrome extension Ugly Email, alerts you to the presence of possible trackers in your inbox before you even open a message.

How To Block Email Tracking In Airmail For Mac Os

Even with extensions, some trackers may still be able to slip through, but they tend to be pretty adept at identifying the most obvious offenders. Using these is also a pretty eye-opening look at just how commonplace email tracking is.