Superhuman is a surveillance tool (Updated: Changes Being Made to Email Client)

[Ink]

Original Blog post: Superhuman is Spying on You » Mike Industries

It is disappointing then that one of the most hyped new email clients, Superhuman, has decided to embed hidden tracking pixels inside of the emails its customers send out. Superhuman calls this feature “Read Receipts” and turns it on by default for its customers, without the consent of its recipients. You’ve heard the term “Read Receipts” before, so you have most likely been conditioned to believe it’s a simple “Read/Unread” status that people can opt out of. With Superhuman, it is not. If I send you an email using Superhuman (no matter what email client you use), and you open it 9 times, this is what I see:

Recommended to Read: Everything you need to know about the invisible e-mail tool that tracks you


UPDATE: Response from CEO over Privacy Controversy: Read Statuses

Over the last few days, we have seen four main criticisms of read statuses in Superhuman:

1. Location data could be used in nefarious ways.
2. Read statuses are on by default.
3. Recipients of emails cannot opt out.
4. Superhuman users cannot disable remote image loading.

On all these, we hear you loud and clear. We are making these changes:

1. We have stopped logging location information for new email, effective immediately.
2. We are releasing new app versions today that no longer show location information.
3. We are deleting all historical location data from our apps.
4. We are keeping the read status feature, but turning it off by default. Users who want it will have to explicitly turn it on.
5. We are prioritizing building an option to disable remote image loading.

Homepage: Superhuman

It makes you question their initial design choices, the logging, sharing with email sender and storing of historical location data. Google might sweep them up.