Email tracking has become an often-overlooked aspect of our online interactions. While it can be useful for marketers, it raises important questions about privacy and consent.
You may be unaware that your behavior is tracked by emails, including:
- What you click on.
- When, and how many times, you open the email.
- The device you open it on.
- Your location.
- Potentially other data as well.
This silent tracking almost certainly exposes your personal details without your explicit knowledge or consent. So, let’s review some basic steps you can take to safeguard your email activity.
Understanding tracking links in emails
So, things that seemed oddly coincidental — like seeing the products you clicked on in emails more prominently promoted — it probably wasn’t coincidence. Your data was fed back to the sender and carefully analyzed. But how did they do it?
What exactly are tracking links?
Tracking links are more than simple hyperlinks. They contain hidden codes, known as identifiers, that are unique to each recipient. These identifiers are embedded within the links and work quietly in the background. When you click on one, the kind of information we mentioned above is immediately pinged back to the sender.
Marketers rely on tracking links like these to better understand their audience. They analyze the information to evaluate the success of their campaigns, tailor future emails, and deliver more personalized advertisements. While this may seem like an efficient way to enhance your experience as a recipient, it can also raise privacy concerns.
What’s the impact on you?
Data collected through tracking links can reveal a great deal more about you than it might first appear. As if location and device type aren’t bad enough, you might also be inadvertently revealing your preferences, browsing habits, and even patterns of behavior.
This information is often stored and even shared with third parties, contributing to detailed profiles that are used to target you with specific ads. Although this practice is common, many don’t realize the data is harvested from their own inbox. If you’re like me, you might feel slightly irritated that this data was given without your consent.
But you can protect yourself! In fact, robust protection tools are not difficult to put in place…
How can you stay protected?
It’s a good idea to start with your email provider. Make sure you have a service set up to safeguard your privacy and offer a more secure email experience.
You should be able to block tracking attempts and ensure that your clicks remain private, and your inbox is a space where you can interact freely without the worry of being monitored. This should also happen without compromising on functionality.
Automatic tracking removal
The best email providers will have tracking protection and removal as an automatic feature. It identifies and removes tracking components before you interact with an email, meaning the sender can’t collect any data about your activity.
Advertisers won’t know when you’ve clicked on a link or which links you interact with, keeping your email interactions private. If you’re purchasing email from scratch, you should always look for this type of feature during your decision making.
If you’re concerned about your current provider, you should be able to see where tracking links have been addressed. Take a look at the following illustration from Spacemail’s business email:
- A purple shield icon appears next to all emails.
- The number beside the shield shows the total count where tracking links were cleaned.
- When you hover over the icon, a tooltip displays the message: “Links cleaned from tracking:” followed by the number of links cleaned.
Seamless usability
These cleaned links shouldn’t interrupt your email experience. It’s a tool that simply removes the tracking element from within the link. It doesn’t stop the link from being clickable, so you can interact with emails just as you normally would, safe in the knowledge your privacy is protected.
Your next steps to privacy
Understanding the importance of tracking protection is just the first step. Ensuring your privacy online and staying email-safe in the digital age is now a major priority for businesses and individuals alike.
More importantly, make sure you choose an email provider that puts security first, so you’re confident that your privacy is protected with every click you make.
Your privacy is important — take the first step towards securing your email today.
Frequently asked questions
Tracking Protection is a feature in Spacemail designed to protect your privacy by blocking hidden tracking elements in email links.
When you open an email, marketers often embed tracking codes within the links to monitor your interactions, such as which links you click or your location. Spacemail automatically identifies and removes these tracking elements before they can gather any data about your activity, ensuring your email interactions remain private and secure.
You’ll see a purple shield icon next to all emails, followed by the number of links that were cleaned, so you always know when your privacy is being safeguarded.
To ensure comprehensive protection, we rely on our proprietary link detection list and regularly updated open-source block lists.
No, Tracking Protection won’t affect the functionality of email links. While it removes tracking components to keep your data private, the links will still work as intended.
You can click and interact with the links just like you normally would, without any disruptions or noticeable changes.
Spacemail blocks known tracking parameters that it identifies. However, some companies use their own tracking parameters, which can make detection more challenging.
If you think we’ve missed some tracking parameters, feel free to inform the Support team.
Comments (2)
Adam
Feb 5, 2025
Olha Nesen. Spacemail Product Operations Specialist
Feb 11, 2025