Any idea what this is about? I doubt Proton has that many trackers, so I was thinking maybe the individual emails? But those would just be triggering when I click on links, which I thought Proton stripped anyways, and I wouldn’t think /e/os would attribute those to Proton either.
They are trackers embedded into emails and images. Not from proton itself.
And it looks like part of that might be with how proton strips known trackers to remove some parameters.
Also worth noting that Proton opens any images or other elements server-side, so senders can only “track” Proton servers.
Right, you don’t have to interact with an email to have trackers. Just opening it is enough, and trackers can be embedded in images or other elements.
I don’t know much about Proton, but it may have features to prevent loading those elements.
I use Thunderbird, which optionally blocks those elements, and can work with Proton on some devices.
I’m running /e/os on my tablet and phone, the phone has Proton mail on it for 2 years. The tablet has zero trackers and the phone 3, both are the same ProtonMail account. Interesting is that the phone’s listed trackers are from other apps that where allowed to access mail, like my watch app. I wonder if messages that where allowed to download blocked content are loading pixel trackers and e/os is seeing that as a tracker on the app but the real source is the message.
Hmmm, I havent noticed that before. I will have to check
I dont have an answer but perhaps relevant context: google analytics is by far the most used solution by marketeers, a lot of newsletters have code embedded so the sender can see if it the email is opened and if so what links are clicked. Opening an email is enough to pull the tracker though, since that is the action that makes the code start running. I would say it is much more likely the trackers are from the emails, but since i’m not a developers I don’t know how much analytic software like this is used by them. Also I don’t know how effective proton is at stripping them. You could consider using a forwarding service, but that can be a hassle too. I use addy.io, and also have good experience with duckduckgo’s service. If you have a paid plan from proton i believe they offer this service too, but maybe it isn’t more effective at blocking trackers than what you have now. They did acquire or merged with SimpleLogin, but don’t know how much of their service is already implemented in the regular email service.
Ah yeah I completely forgot about “magic pixels” and image based trackers. I was just considering special links. That make sense. Still I do recall hearing Proton saying they block those things, but maybe /e/os doesn’t realise they are being blocked somehow.
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What’s the disturbing news?
Not something I follow closely, but to give a synopsis as I remember it:
One of the execs (I think it was the CEO?) made a pro republican post (on twitter?) celebrating Trump’s presidential victory in ~Dec 2024. Seems like he spouted on about how republicans are the party of privacy and such.
The post got a LOT of backlash and was taken down, but the same guy is still running the show. With the general gloom about republicans running the US, a lot of the privacy minded types have grown bearish on Proton overall.
This bearishness has been compounded by Proton focusing on new products (specifically an AI- chat bot and Proton Wallet) over perfecting old ones (making Proton docs usable, improving Linux support, etc).
I don’t think there’s been any other motion on Proton losing it’s privacy first ethos, it seems like its mostly a gloomy outlook on the direction the company seems to be going / seems to want to go.
Ah ok gotcha, thanks! I still use proton for a couple of accounts that I don’t use often, I mostly use migadu now, but it’s still good to know what’s going on. Thanks!
Care to elaborate?
