When we tell companies about ourselves, we give away details about others, too. This annoys me so much I've often been tempted to block communication with people on gmail as I don't want google hoovering up my personal discussions and relationships.
Unfortunately, it would probably kill a good third of my email, much of it work-related, so I have to live with my privacy being invaded because others don't care or don't understand.
In this article, Mike Davidson criticises the classic "Build first, ask questions later" methods of Silicon Valley. Specifically here, the much-hyped Superhuman email client that lets you track opens.
If you do anything, make sure you use an email client that disables images by default. That should prevent most of these unethical invasions of privacy.
With the ever-increasing use of HTML email, senders can embed images into their emails. These can then be loaded from a remote web server or attached directly to email. When images are remote, they can be tagged by the sender to know who, exactly, opened the message and when. Giving them, in effect, a return-receipt capability that can't be disabled by the recipient. Here's a safe demonstration of this concept. Luckily, I loathe HTML email so I have it disabled anyway.
