This pixel tracking demo shows how easy it is to make a creepy surveillance tool

'The Superhuman controversy from earlier this month, in which a former
Silicon Valley exec blew the lid off a series of controversial email
surveillance tools offered by the up-and-coming startup, has prompted
a bit of soul searching among those in the tech industry. But in
twisted fashion, the public blasting of a company like Superhuman has
been the tech equivalent of opening Pandora’s Box, unearthing all
sorts of free and easily available tools that have done this for years
and can be employed by anyone with just the tiniest shred of tech
savvy.

For instance, an open source, Python-based web tool called
Supertracker has popped up on Github, courtesy of Delian Asparouhov,
an investor with the venture capital firm Founder’s Fund. It lets
anyone create their own tracking pixel, coyly disguised as either a
transparent image, an image of the pokémon pikachu, or a not-so-subtle
magnifying glass.

Creating it is as easy as inputting a user name, picking a tracking
pixel image, and hitting the enter key. From there, you can save the
image, paste it in the body of any email, and send it off. Whoever
opens it will have the when and even the where transmitted back to
you. Of course, you can do similar styles of tracking with any number
of available Superhuman competitors and browser extensions. But
Asparouhov’s tool has the added benefit of walking you through the
process step by step and laying out just how simple it is to siphon
away this kind of sensitive info with a few simple lines of code. (He
also outlines some good defenses against this type of surveillance.) '

-- source: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/19/20700843

Cheers, Peter
-- 
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
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