Just dodged a tracker pixel (I think) -- thanks to a text-based mail client and Tor (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org to c/text_ui@lemmy.sdf.org

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Tracker pixels are surprisingly commonly used by legitimate senders.. your bank, your insurance company, any company you patronize. These assholes hide a 1-pixel image in HTML that tracks when you open your email and your IP (thus whereabouts).

I use a text-based mail client in part for this reason. But I got sloppy and opened an HTML attachment in a GUI browser without first inspecting the HTML. I inspected the code afterwards. Fuck me, I thought.. a tracker pixel. Then I visited just the hostname in my browser. Got a 403 Forbidden. I was happy to see that.

Can I assume these idiots shot themselves in the foot with a firewall Tor blanket block? Or would the anti-tor firewall be smart enough to make an exception for tracker pixel URLs?

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[-] Zachariah@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

As long as your graphical email client has the loading of remote images turned off, the tracking pixel won’t be visited.

Most/Many email software has this be default or can be enabled: Thunderbird, iOS Mail, FastMail app and website, etc.

Text-based email is cool though. My college had us using Pine back in the day.

[-] evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I suppose you could even say text-based clients are at a disadvantage because when we opt to render the HTML graphically, a full-blown browser is launched which is likely less hardened than something like whatever profile and engine Thunderbird embeds.

In my case I created a firejailed browser with --net=none so I could hit a certain key binding to launch the neutered browser to render an HTML attachment in a forced-offline context--- but I was too fucking lazy to dig up what keys I bound to that which is why I (almost?) got burnt.

this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024

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