A study by Proton Mail reveals that 50% of emails contain web beacons. Thus, nearly 166 billion emails containing these infiltrators are sent and received every day.
In order to convince you to opt for its encrypted Proton Mail, the company Proton publishes the results of one of its studies on the quantity of trackers present in e-mails. According to this survey, these are full of pixel tags: more than 50% are infected.
166 billion emails sent daily contain web beacons
Proton presents his analysis as one of the ” largest studies done on the phenomenon of email trackers “. The company counted, anonymously, the number of trackers blocked by its encrypted email and showed that around 50% of emails contained them. Proton fills in a “ sample of 177 million blocked trackers “.
From this observation, the company extrapolates that based on the 333.2 billion emails sent and received every day around the world (according to data from Statistics), nearly 166 billion emails contain web beacons.
Call them web beacons, web beacons or transparent images
At this stage of reading, you may be wondering what these famous beacons are. No, it’s not the title of Chris Columbus’ next movie starring PAC-MAN and 007.
Web beacons, also called web beacons or transparent images, are more prosaically online tracking agents that take the form of a transparent image comprising a single pixel: they are therefore invisible.
When a user opens a page or email containing a web beacon, these trackers secretly collect information including location, device and usage data. They would therefore be widely used to track the behavior of Internet users according to the study, in particular in newsletters and marketing emails.
Facing the bad guys, Super Proton Mail
The parade against its undercover agents? Proton Mail, by and from Proton. The company argues that its end-to-end encrypted messaging offers the best protection against trackers, including on iOS now. Proton has indeed ported its enhanced tracking protection feature, in place on the web version of Proton Mail since January 2022, to iOS.
Andy Yen, founder and CEO of Proton, summarizes: “ Web beacons are a very intrusive way for marketing companies to collect ever more personal information about users without their consent. It’s like constantly having someone over your shoulder watching your every move as you open and read an email, noting what type of device you’re using, your internet provider, and even your location. . This type of surveillance is unacceptable, especially at the scale of
which this happens, and when users are generally unaware of it. At Proton, our mission has always been to create a better internet where privacy is the rule. That’s why, in addition to providing an end-to-end encrypted email service, we’re also rolling out enhanced protection against email trackers. “.
Other advantages of Proton Mail highlighted by the brand include the pre-loading of images on Proton servers as soon as the email is received in order to avoid the sharing of data concerning the opening time, the hiding of IP addresses, or even end-to-end zero access encryption, in order to guarantee a level of confidentiality “ much higher than Google services, whose business model is based on monitoring and advertising “.
Many spies
Beyond the necessarily oriented communication of Proton, the use of beacon pixels has indeed been on the rise for several years.
In February 2021, a BBC report already pointed to this phenomenon. At the time, the investigation carried out by Hey revealed that two-thirds of emails contained a tracking pixel. The 50% reported by Proton is therefore a completely plausible estimate.
Following the revelations of widespread spying on our communications by various governments and companies, secure email services give everyone the opportunity to communicate securely.
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Source: Proton press release, BBC
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