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Almondsetat • yesterday at 6:59 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

I mean, they still work in some way. If you use tracking pixels to see if an email was read, I agree with you that this break the functionality. But if you just want to see if the email exists, then the fact that google fetches them (and triggers the parametric URL) still tells you something

Replies

bummy_commenter • yesterday at 7:12 PM

It would be better if google also fetched tracking pixels in emails sent to addresses that do not exist.

renewiltord • yesterday at 10:12 PM

So, why use a tracking pixel for that? Just send an email. e.g.

    $ head -n 100 /dev/random | md5sum
    a6cc1b7c09ccb122cb066c89e16b3140  -
And that yields an instantaneous error message https://i.imgur.com/twHhIU3.png that reads "Address not found. Your message to [email protected] was not delivered because the address could not be found".