The Best Fluffy Pancakes recipe you will fall in love with. Full of tips and tricks to help you make the best pancakes.
How can you know if the link someone sent you was to track your IP?
If the link is for a common site (eg http://www.google.com/) and there are no extra parameters on it; then it won’t help them link your IP to your email address.
If there are parameters on it(eg ?id=MN0ks93S&trk=98126), or the URL has a value encoded into it (eg http://some.site/interesting-article-name/MN0ks93S); then one of them may be unique to your email, in which case it is possible. But not certain that will use it to track your IP, but definitely technically doable. All websites know the public IP of all requests because that is part of TCP/IP protocol. What they do and don’t do with that is a different matter.
So for instance, a quora link I received by email like: https colon //www.quora.com/qemail/track_click?al_imp=eyJ0eXBlIjogMzMsICJoYXNoIjogIjEzNzQ2MjMxMjgwNjI3Nzg3NTl8N3wxfDY0NTEyMjk3In0%3D&al_pri=ReadMoreLinkClickthrough&aoid=32LaCuX4ZDB&aoty=1&aty=4&click_pos=7&ct=1528011250886612&et=2&id=143cc27f74fc4c2d991fbaee57e76539&request_id=1374623128062778759&source=1&src=1&st=1528011250886612&stories=1_a0lc9rmcvM6%7C1_Fu1zK4MQpxx%7C1_47ChVVBnEcr%7C1_8m0ek8NGqdP%7C1_9WtKF3Clte7%7C1_YQy3Bfy081A%7C1_32LaCuX4ZDB%7C1_3E7ufsDs31H%7C1_oWXgxaOt41S%7C1_aVAg4yhtPVr&ty=1&ty_data=32LaCuX4ZDB&uid=oF3zih4mmnW&v=0
If one of those characteristics is present; it could undoubtedly be used to link my IP address to my email address. [Note – this doesn’t mean quora does this, even though the name “track_click” suggests they do, it just means with so many parameters it could be done]
(Which is why clicking on SPAM email links because you are curious is a BAD idea – doing so confirms the email address is valid and so they send MORE SPAM).
- The same applies to images . A beacon image (1×1 transparent image or similar with a parameter encoded in the url) as part of a html email is a common way of tracking, unless your email reader doesn’t show images by default
- If you received the link by some other means than email, then they would only be able to confirm your IP address matches the method they used to send you the details. For example, if it is a Text message, then they could link your IP to your phone number. If they sent it as a physical card to a postal address, then that would link your IP to that postal address (assuming the link was actually tracking the IP and was unique to you).