Email Trackers vs Email Privacy

ATLANTA, Ga. - There is something attached to more than half of the emails in your inbox today and you likely have no idea.  Sixty percent of our emails have something attached to them called email trackers that tell the sender information about it.

Here's how it works. You get an email from, say, a retailer. When you open it, it triggers an email tracking mechanism that is embedded in a graphic someplace. You can't see it because it can fit into a single pixel. That's about the size of a period at the end of a sentence. It tells the sender all sorts of things like when it was opened, what device you used. It lets legitimate marketers know that the email about the blue dress was more popular than the mailer about the red dress. Or maybe it cues a salesperson to call you as you might be interested in the product.

But Bonnie Smyre, an internet security consultant with RAXIS, says people who want to steal your personal information use it, too.

"It lets non-legitimate people know this email account is active. This person just actually looked at this. Maybe they'll respond to more things. Maybe I'll call them and act like this is a crisis and their account is going to close. Now that this is on their mind they might give me some information."

So what can you do? A few things here When you get an email from a company or person you weren't expecting, think about it before you click. Is it a well-known retailer? Or does it look odd? Decide if it's worth the risk. Even opening it to unsubscribe allows the email tracker in.

Segregate your emails. Keep one for personal correspondence, one for work and one for bills and financial information. Then, open another account simply for shopping. That's where your riskier emails will come in and they will be separate from your more personal information.

Some email services will let you adjust your email settings so that images, where the data is embedded, don't automatically populate. If you use an email retrieval system like Apple Mail, you can also turn off your Wi-Fi when you open email messages.