It’s no secret that online activities are tracked. One of the ways to do this is by sending useless emails which tend to reach our mailbox quite often. These emails use a number of secret methods to gain access to your information and how you interact with it. The latest versions of iOS 15 and macOS 12 aim to support these unsolicited emails with a feature called “Mail Privacy Protection”. If you want to use this feature and keep your web activity private, here’s how to turn on Message Privacy Protection on macOS Monterey.
Stop Emails From Tracking You on Mac Running macOS 12 Monterey
First, let’s understand a bit about how advertisers track you via email. For the most part, advertisers primarily use remote images that load on opening an email for tracking purposes. But they also use tracking pixels to collect user information. These tiny pixels are usually hidden in white text and are barely visible to the naked eye. When the mail is opened, the code in the pixels collects the required information (such as type of email opened, time the email was checked, how often the email has been viewed, etc.) and sends them to these advertisers. This is how a personalized profile of the user’s online activity on websites is created.
How does Mail Privacy Protection work?
Apple’s new privacy feature ensures that your personal information is not accessed. For this, the Mail Privacy Protection function hides your IP address from these trackers and loads all remote content privately. This way, invisible trackers cannot access any of your information. Another good part is that when this feature is enabled, it loads content in the background even when you haven’t opened the mail. This makes it even harder for trackers to find out about your activity. Apple also uses multiple proxy servers and assigns a random IP address to make things more secure.
Therefore, email senders can only display an IP address that matches the region you are in and the actual data is never collected. Additionally, the data is non-specific and random, making it difficult for advertisers to build your profile online.
Enable Email Privacy Protection on Mac
The Mail Privacy Protection feature is quite simple to enable once you’ve updated your Mac devices to the latest macOS Monterey. Here’s how to go about it:
1. Open Apple Mail app on your Mac, then click the Mail menu in the upper left corner of the screen.
2. Now choose Preferences from the menu.
3. Next, make sure privacy the tab is selected.
4. Finally, check the box right next to Mail Privacy Protection to enable it.
From now on, Mail Privacy Protection will hide your IP address on your Mac and load all remote content privately in the background. Therefore, trackers will not be able to keep track of your email activity.
Disable Mail Privacy Protection on Mac
If you no longer want to use this feature on your Mac,
- Go to Mail preferences via the Mail app.
- Select privacy option.
- Just uncheck the box for mail privacy protection.
Once deactivated, you will have the choice between two new options. These options can help you decide what kind of data you want to hide. Following the above-mentioned steps, you will find “Hide IP address” and “Block all remote content” options. You can also choose or disable both.
Mail privacy protection to protect your information
That was all from us on how you can use the new Mail Privacy Protection feature on your Apple device and prevent data trackers from collecting your information. Since the privacy of our data is of the utmost importance, features like Apple’s can come in very handy. Moreover, you can also use Mail Privacy Protection on iPhone. Moreover, Apple has also introduced features like Hide My Email and App Tracking Transparency on iOS 15. All these features are meant to protect your personal information from being tracked.
What do you think of this new macOS privacy feature? Share your opinions with us in the comments section below.
