Ugly Email highlights trackers on Gmail but do you really need it?
Many companies track emails, usually by adding small pixels or images to those emails which inform them when emails has been opened by recipients.
This is done for a number of reasons from tracking responses to getting detailed information about clients (IP, location..).
Ugly Email is a new extension for Chrome, a Firefox add-on is in the making according to the project homepage, that highlights emails that use tracking when you open your Gmail inbox.
Support is limited currently to several high-profile mailing list companies including MailChimp, Streak and Yesware.
When you open the Gmail website after installation all emails with supported tracking codes are highlighted with an eye-icon in the interface.
While that may be an eye-opener depending on the emails you receive, it is not a universal solution which is without doubt the biggest issue I have with the service.
The author of the extension promised to add more supported services in the future which will certainly help catch the most popular mail list services and email tracking services but there is an even simpler solution available for all Gmail users that does not require an extension to work and will block all trackers on the site.
If you turn off images in emails tracking pixels won't work. It is as simple as that. Load the Gmail settings and make sure "ask before displaying external images" is enabled on the site. This displays information on top of emails that (external) images are not displayed.
This may be inconvenient at times but it takes only a click to enable images for individual emails or permanently for select senders.
Gmail on top of this protects users from these types of tracking images according to Google by processing images internally before making them available.
It is interesting to note that senders may still be able to track emails by using unique image links as they can monitor access to those images on their side.
Google blocks only emails from some senders automatically on the site and only if it considers a message or sender suspicious. For others, images are displayed automatically even if you have selected to be asked before images are shown.
If you are using a client that supports the display of plain text emails for all mails received, you can enable that and get better protection from trackers.
In Thunderbird for example, you would select View > Message Body As > Plain Text to do so.
Ugly Email can be an eye opener, especially if you have never looked into the tracking matter before. It is not a catch-all solution on the other hand and if you are concerned about trackers, you may want to consider moving to another client that gives you full control over that.
You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!