Got an email from a bank saying my account has been put in a restricted state because they have been unable to reach me. Their emails reach me fine. They rarely send paper mail but when they do I can see that they have the correct address on file.
Then I looked closer at their email, examined the HTML, and found that they insert a tracker pixel in their messages. So if I were to use a graphical mail client with default configs, they would surreptitiously get a signal telling them my IP (thus whereabouts) and time of day every time I open my email from them. I use a text client so the tracker pixels get ignored.
Would a bank conclude from lack of tracker pixels signals that they are not reaching a customer, and then lock down their account?
I’m not going to call them and ask… fuck them for interrupting my day and making me dance. I don’t lick boots like that. I just wonder if anyone else who does not trigger tracker pixels has encountered this situation.
Apple’s mail client messes with tracking pixels and has for a few years now, but I have never seen had an issue from that. But I only use a handful of financial institutions so it might not be representative.
In Apple’s implementation, the tracking pixels are all fetched at the server level so every tracking pixels fires as soon as the email hits the server regardless of whether I ever open the email. This is a different take on breaking the tracking than what you are doing, so it might result in a different outcome.