How to Stop Superhuman (and Other Apps) From Tracking Your Email Opens

Superhuman7;s email tracking informed someone when you opened their email2;and from where. Even if Superhuman completely removed this feature in response to privacy pressure, other apps will still be able to track your email opens. Here7;s how to stop it.

While Superhuman has now removed location tracking, it still supports email open tracking. And other email tracking apps could let someone who emails you find out your geographical location, too.

How Can an App Track Email Opens?

Superhuman is using a feature that7;s existed for a long time. It embeds a tiny tracking pixel image in the emails it sends. When you open an email, your email client requests the image. The image is unique for each email, so Superhuman can see precisely when you opened the email and your general location, based on your IP address.

This isn7;t unique to Superhuman! While it7;s not normally part of a consumer email application, many email newsletters and other marketing emails have long used tracking pixels. They know how many people open each email2;and they can see which people on their mailing list open each email.

Despite all the furor, Superhuman is just using an existing email feature and exposing it a new way2;albeit one that seems creepier to many people. Superhuman has now disabled the open tracking feature by default, but any Superhuman user can enable it.

Even if Superhuman continues bowing to pressure and completely removes this feature, people will still be able to use other email tools2;from dedicated email applications to browser extensions that integrate with Gmail2;to track your email opens.