Many, if not all, mass e-mailing/newsletter services (mailchimp, etc.) rewrite your e-mail's links to some god-awful, long, URL that is used for tracking purposes.

This service would, upon initial opening of an e-mail, check a central server to see if anyone else has received said images and links, and re-write them to remove tracking info. Cos who likes to be tracked?
-- slater, Sep 15 2012

I definitely dont liked to be tracked, that's why my browser constantly loads random pages in the background. But i Can't say one way or the other as I didnt know that urls were lengthened, nor whether there is a central server to compare the urls to. I'll take your word for it.
-- leinypoo13, Sep 16 2012



random, halfbakery