egress1 said

When you have gmail open in a tab, Google can essential track what you are doing in all the other tabs open in that browser, and associate them with your account.

Hmm, I don't think it works that way in Firefox. Google would only be able to associate a page with your account if it had some Google content embedded in it. I guess that can happen a lot with Maps, reCAPTCHA, search boxes...

Does the same apply for Thunderbird? IE if I set up Thunderbird with my gmail account, can Google now associate all activities taken on my computer with that gmail account? Or does Thunderbird exist within a container which prevents that kind of tracking?

When you use IMAP to mirror your email from the server into Thunderbird, the mail service provider gets some information back: for example, when you delete a messages or move it into a folder in Thunderbird, that is mirrored back to the server. However, Thunderbird doesn't report back to the mail service provider for actions such as printing message, copy/pasting from it into another program, etc., and certainly doesn't report any actions related to mail from other accounts or anything outside of Thunderbird.

Of course, if you open an email message sent by Google, when Thunderbird retrieves remote content (mostly images), then that would be recorded by Google's image servers.

Right, and I appreciate your reply. But I'm more thinking.. like if I log into gmail in Chrome or Opera, and I open a new tab and go to Youtube, I'm automatically logged into YouTube because Google tracks every tab in that browser and every page which has any Google code in it, Google interacts with. It knows who I am from my Gmail session so it logs me into YouTube, and in the same method, tracks me through every website that has Google code running on it (which is most websites).

So if I've got my gmail account running in Thunderbird, can Google now interact with every page in every browser that's running any Google code? Maybe not? Hopefully not. But Google won't tell me one way or the other beyond saying "trust us".

I don't use Chrome or Opera anymore, so if Firefox is simply coded differently from the ground up then maybe that answers my question. I've been hesitant to log into my gmail account at all since learning just how much they track you, but I also need to access it for all I've got linked trough it, hence hoping Thunderbird could be a good solution to isolate that exposure. I've found a lot of desktop mail clients are essentially just browser emulators (I'm looking at you Mailbird). Especially the calendar functionality.

egress1 said

Right, and I appreciate your reply. But I'm more thinking.. like if I log into gmail in Chrome or Opera, and I open a new tab and go to Youtube, I'm automatically logged into YouTube because Google tracks every tab in that browser and every page which has any Google code in it, Google interacts with. It knows who I am from my Gmail session so it logs me into YouTube, and in the same method, tracks me through every website that has Google code running on it (which is most websites). So if I've got my gmail account running in Thunderbird, can Google now interact with every page in every browser that's running any Google code? Maybe not? Hopefully not. But Google won't tell me one way or the other beyond saying "trust us".

it logs you in based on cookies in your cache, not through some sort of magic ability to read around corners and into other tabs. You have to remember that most pages on the web server Google adds, so they have Google code. But, the link is the signin cookies, not some ability to access other tabs. If you are worried about privacy, you would be far better advised to ask what is facebook doing with the data the get from the loading of every page with one of their little blue F's on it? Little wonder Mark Zuckerberg got an invitation to Washington to discuss privacy among other things.

Tracking is not limited to Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft LinkedIn and a host of other players large and small make millions and billions off of tracking data. It is noteworthy that Firefox has a blocking add-on for facebook and not from Google. I must assume that is because Facebook is a worse offender than Google.

I don't use Chrome or Opera anymore, so if Firefox is simply coded differently from the ground up then maybe that answers my question.

One of the things that browser makers (that is now limited Mozilla and Google. The "guts" of all the others in the mass market use one or the other browsers rendering engines) have been aiming for is complete isolation of each tab into a encapsulated form. Sure cookies can be shared, but Firefox now has tracking protections built right in. But exception exist for useful things like signing into your account using the cookie already saved on your computer for that site.

I've been hesitant to log into my gmail account at all since learning just how much they track you, but I also need to access it for all I've got linked trough it, hence hoping Thunderbird could be a good solution to isolate that exposure. I've found a lot of desktop mail clients are essentially just browser emulators (I'm looking at you Mailbird). Especially the calendar functionality.

Thunderbird is a full functional mail client. It talks to mail servers in IMAP, POP and SMTP protocols. They are mail protocols, not browser ones. But I really do not understand what you have against mailbird. It is as I understand it written in the .net framework, it has a browser component. But what having such a complement means in reality I don't care. I do not use it. I prefer a dedicated browser for web pages and a dedicated mail client for email. Thunderbird's calendar is connected to gmail via the open source caldav protocol, or you can use a provider that utilizes XML data from Google for the calendar. Or just use a local calendar, in which case it is linked to nothing but the hard disk on your local machine.

Perhaps this will be helpful to you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_email_clients

Thanks very much for your reply. Facebook is terrible about tracking people through their Facebook pixels, I haven't used it in years and I've got lots of plugins blocking that stuff. I'm at the point where I'm cleaning up the other offenders, such as Google. But knowing that Thunderbird doesn't use cookies, and cookies are what Google is using to track my logins, should be the answer that I was looking for. I appreciate your time.

As far as Mailbird, I used to use that for years as well. Mailbird's calendar is basically just a web browser emulator, so I was worried that it simply replicated Google calendar in every respect within a contained session of a browser (possibly even IE!). I emailed Mailbird for clarification and they were not able to assist. I don't think their techs understood the question, they just assured me that they couldn't read my emails themselves, which isn't what I was asking. That's when I started looking for alternatives and Thunderbird is the biggest open source, secure mail client on the market so here I am!

FYI, just tried to add my calendar using a CALDAV link and it's telling me cookies are required. So at least that functionality (through the Lightning extension) does require cookies, which takes me back to square one. If cookies are being used, then Google can track your logins, through unknown browsers.

egress1 said

If cookies are being used, then Google can track your logins, through unknown browsers.

Why do you think that?

If you are logged into Google in one program, those cookies are stored by that program and used according to the rules of that program. Chrome can't use cookies stored in Thunderbird or vice versa.

Also, bear in mind that cookies saved on your browser are sent to web servers along with the request you are making to that server. There are rules about which cookies are sent with which requests. Sites can't just poke around in your cookie jar and see whatever they want.

That's why I opened this forum thread. To see if such trackers existed in Thunderbird, and if so, if they are contained. I've reached out to Google, but of course Google as big as they are don't actually have a support team who are willing to talk to consumers. The only humans I can speak to are the ones who support the Pixel phones, and all they do is refer me back to their privacy pages, which deal only in how they handle your Google account data, not how Google collects data about you from other activities like this.

I'm by no means an expert. That's why I'm asking questions. It looks like Thunderbird is based on Firefox (it renders the default mail page, addons page etc.. as html and appears to be pulling the addons page directly from the web), so I'm trying to figure out how it works under the hood. Heck, it's an email app that has a default search engine. I went ahead and configured gmail and allowed cookies, and comparing the cookies stored in Thunderbird versus Firefox it does not look like they're shared. So it appears that Thunderbird, or lightning at least, does require cookies for Google Calendar, but at least that those Cookies are stored and used locally.

Matt said

egress1 said

Right, and I appreciate your reply. But I'm more thinking.. like if I log into gmail in Chrome or Opera, and I open a new tab and go to Youtube, I'm automatically logged into YouTube because Google tracks every tab in that browser and every page which has any Google code in it, Google interacts with. It knows who I am from my Gmail session so it logs me into YouTube, and in the same method, tracks me through every website that has Google code running on it (which is most websites). So if I've got my gmail account running in Thunderbird, can Google now interact with every page in every browser that's running any Google code? Maybe not? Hopefully not. But Google won't tell me one way or the other beyond saying "trust us".

it logs you in based on cookies in your cache, not through some sort of magic ability to read around corners and into other tabs. You have to remember that most pages on the web server Google adds, so they have Google code. But, the link is the signin cookies, not some ability to access other tabs. If you are worried about privacy, you would be far better advised to ask what is facebook doing with the data the get from the loading of every page with one of their little blue F's on it? Little wonder Mark Zuckerberg got an invitation to Washington to discuss privacy among other things.

Tracking is not limited to Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft LinkedIn and a host of other players large and small make millions and billions off of tracking data. It is noteworthy that Firefox has a blocking add-on for facebook and not from Google. I must assume that is because Facebook is a worse offender than Google.

I don't use Chrome or Opera anymore, so if Firefox is simply coded differently from the ground up then maybe that answers my question.

One of the things that browser makers (that is now limited Mozilla and Google. The "guts" of all the others in the mass market use one or the other browsers rendering engines) have been aiming for is complete isolation of each tab into a encapsulated form. Sure cookies can be shared, but Firefox now has tracking protections built right in. But exception exist for useful things like signing into your account using the cookie already saved on your computer for that site.

I've been hesitant to log into my gmail account at all since learning just how much they track you, but I also need to access it for all I've got linked trough it, hence hoping Thunderbird could be a good solution to isolate that exposure. I've found a lot of desktop mail clients are essentially just browser emulators (I'm looking at you Mailbird). Especially the calendar functionality.

Thunderbird is a full functional mail client. It talks to mail servers in IMAP, POP and SMTP protocols. They are mail protocols, not browser ones. But I really do not understand what you have against mailbird. It is as I understand it written in the .net framework, it has a browser component. But what having such a complement means in reality I don't care. I do not use it. I prefer a dedicated browser for web pages and a dedicated mail client for email. Thunderbird's calendar is connected to gmail via the open source caldav protocol, or you can use a provider that utilizes XML data from Google for the calendar. Or just use a local calendar, in which case it is linked to nothing but the hard disk on your local machine.

Perhaps this will be helpful to you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_email_clients

egress1 said

Right, and I appreciate your reply. But I'm more thinking.. like if I log into gmail in Chrome or Opera, and I open a new tab and go to Youtube, I'm automatically logged into YouTube because Google tracks every tab in that browser and every page which has any Google code in it, Google interacts with. It knows who I am from my Gmail session so it logs me into YouTube, and in the same method, tracks me through every website that has Google code running on it (which is most websites). So if I've got my gmail account running in Thunderbird, can Google now interact with every page in every browser that's running any Google code? Maybe not? Hopefully not. But Google won't tell me one way or the other beyond saying "trust us". I don't use Chrome or Opera anymore, so if Firefox is simply coded differently from the ground up then maybe that answers my question. I've been hesitant to log into my gmail account at all since learning just how much they track you, but I also need to access it for all I've got linked trough it, hence hoping Thunderbird could be a good solution to isolate that exposure. I've found a lot of desktop mail clients are essentially just browser emulators (I'm looking at you Mailbird). Especially the calendar functionality.

Hallo,

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