Apple Takes the Battle With Google and Facebook to Your Inbox
Increasing privacy is good for users, but it also helps the iPhone maker fend off rivals.
Wielding influence over your inbox has long been the preserve of Google, whose Gmail service has been relegating messages to tabs labeled “promotions” and “social”—a sort of purgatory between the hell of your spam folder and the heaven of your main inbox—since 2013. Now Apple Inc. is getting in on the act. At its annual developer conference in early June, it unveiled tools intended to give users of its mail app greater control over what data to share. But in protecting the user, Apple is inevitably serving its own interests, too.
Most newsletters or marketing emails that you receive include images that aren’t embedded in the message, but are instead hosted remotely on another server. Opening the email pings the server to download the graphic. In doing so, it also tells the sender the time you opened the message, your approximate location, and the device you’re using, for instance. Brands and publishers use that data to gauge the effectiveness of their content.