ProtonMail now blocks and removes standard email trackers

ProtonMail will now block and remove email trackers by default, as well as disguise a user’s IP address and geolocation with a generic IP and geolocation. ProtonMail will also warn users if companies hide email trackers in marketing emails.

You can read that on the ProtonMail blog. The feature makes it impossible for advertisers who reach you via email to build an advertising profile, Proton writes. E-mail trackers are used in, for example, newsletters or advertising e-mails from companies and provide information about when an e-mail was opened, how often it was opened, on which device the e-mail was opened and in some cases the IP address and geolocation of sent to the recipient. This information is shared with the sender without permission, says ProtonMail. Therefore, it is going to actively block these email trackers. The email trackers are virtually invisible, as they are often only as large as a single pixel. That is why they are also called tracking pixels.

When an email is opened, such pixels are blocked by default. Users will receive a notification at the top of the mail client. Here you can see how many email trackers have been blocked and who these trackers come from. The trackers are removed by ProtonMail by default.

At the same time, ProtonMail downloads images in remote emails, and the sender will send a generic IP address and geolocation, instead of that of the recipient. In this way, the recipient’s personal information is disguised. Proton indicates that it cannot view emails itself, but that the hyperlinks of images are checked on the side of the user, so that all images are loaded via a Proton proxy. This means that ProtonMail is still end-to-end encrypted, the company says on the support page.

If they want, users can turn off the two options themselves via the settings menu, under the Privacy tab. The features are enabled by default, but the user can choose not to block email tracking, or allow remote content to be loaded without prompting. The two can be turned off independently, if the user wishes.