An Instant Expert Guide To Streak

New email tool Streak tells you when messages you send are read by the recipient, but could it be abused by spammers? Here we explain all.

WHAT IS IT?
Streak (www.streak.com) is a new extension for Chrome and Safari browsers. It's billed as a 'customer relationship management tool' and is intended to work with Gmail. But one of its features - the ability to track sent emails - is already proving controversial.

WHAT KIND OF TRACKING?
Tracking notifies an email's sender that a message has been opened, but with Streak they can see where an email was opened, too. It doesn't matter if the recipient has the Streak plug-in installed; the service will work regardless. It's like a read-receipt feature that recipients have no control over - or knowledge of.

WHAT'S THE POINT?
Streak is primarily aimed at marketing and customer-support teams. Companies can use tracking to confirm that their emails are being opened rather than deleted without being read. Unfortunately, tracking is also handy for spammers: if an email is opened, then the sender knows the address is active, paving the way for more spam and marketing messages.

CAN I USE STREAK?
Yes. All you have to do is go to the Streak website and click the 'Install for Gmail' button. Once you've added the extension to your browser, you'll be redirected to Gmail and asked to grant Streak access to your account.

HOW MUCH ACCESS, EXACTLY?
When you install Streak, it asks for permission to view and manage your mail, view basic information about your account, manage your calendar, view and manage files in Google Drive, and manage your contacts. It wouldn't be as effective a service if it didn't have this access, and the company promises it won't sell your details and takes user privacy seriously.

WHY WOULD I WANT IT?
As well as tracking, Streak adds a host of extra features to Gmail such as being able to schedule emails to send later. You can share part of your in box with others and use a spreadsheet to keep track of customer details if you run a company. Streak also gives users the ability to group emails, files, contacts and information into what are called boxes, which can be placed into 'pipelines' (collections of boxes). Because some of its features will also appeal to ordinary users, Streak says that it is "flexible enough to be useful for everything from a personal to-do list to project management".

HOW DOES STREAK'S TRACKING WORK?
When a message is sent, it inserts a tiny, single-pixel image that is invisible to the recipient. When the email is read, a request is made to the server to download the image. The IP address of the recipient is then revealed and passed to the email sender.

WHY IS IT PROVING CONTROVERSIAL?
Streak's critics say it's a form of rt spying. The recipient doesn't know that the email is being tracked and is completely unaware that, upon opening, a message is being sent back informing the email's composer of this event. It also means that spammers can covertly find out where you are and target you accordingly. But there is a personal issue at stake for individual users: what if a recipient just ignores your email? Or worse, what if the recipient later says he or she didn't receive your initial email? That's going to breed a bit of resentment.

BUT COULD IT BE USEFUL?
Of course. We all send emails that don't receive replies, leaving us to wonder whether or not they have been read and ignored, or just never opened. At its least sinister, tracking lets you know that an email that doesn't necessarily need a reply has been safely received and read, so you don't have to worry about it any more.

HOW DO THE NOTIFICATIONS APPEAR?
Emails contain a small box in the top-right corner that displays information about their total number of views and the number of unique viewers. You're not always told the identity of the person who has opened an email (although presumably you'd know this unless you were spamming them), but you will be told that it has been opened. You can get Desktop notifications, too.

DOES THE TRACKING WORK?
Yes. When we tested it, we were told exactly when the email was opened, that it was viewed on a Windows PC and that it was opened by the recipient in London. We also looked at the email on an iPhone and a Mac, and it identified those devices, too. However, in the latter case it was less accurate at pinpointing the location and claimed the message was viewed in a town 30 miles away.

CAN TRACKING BE TURNED OFF?
Yes. When Streak is installed, it adds -a group of settings to Google Mail and one of these is the ability to turn the tracking of emails off.

CAN I BE TRACKED BY THESE SERVICES?
lf you can see that someone has opened your email and ignored it, then it goes without saying that other people could install Streak to discover when you're ignoring them. Once again, you have no way of knowing that the email you've received is being tracked.

CAN I PREVENT MYSELF BEING TRACKED?
Yes. You can stop images from being M automatically loaded in your email client. To do this in Gmail, click the cog icon in the top-right corner, choose Settings and, on the General tab, select 'Ask before displaying external images'. You can also block the IP address or host name that Streak uses for tracking your email. You can do this by blacklisting it via your router (you'll need instructions for how your specific router works) or using a web-filtering tool such as AdBlockPlus. A post in the AdBlockPlus forum (https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=21242) suggests blocking 173.194.70.141, mailfoogae.appspot.com and appspot.com.

HAVEN'T I SEEN THIS KIND OF THING BEFORE?
Yes, there are other services that let you track emails from Outlook and Gmail. BlackBerry's messaging service BBM also has a read-receipt feature, and if you send an iMessage from an iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch or Mac, you'll be told when it's been delivered and read. In fact, many email servers, especially work-based ones, send read-receipts, but most of them let the recipient know and ask if it is okay to confirm that the email has arrived.

HOW ARE TRACKED EMAILS MANAGED?
As well as keeping a tally of who's viewed the email within the sent message itself, you can also see the information in your browser. Click Recently Viewed in the Sent Mail folder to see which of your emails have recently been read by recipients, in date order.

HOW MUCH DOES STREAK COST?
Streak is currently in beta and is free, but the company says premium-pricing plans will be introduced at some stage. A free option will be retained, but probably with fewer features.