Life

Want To Know Who's Reading Your Emails?

by Emma Cueto

In the latest contender for worst idea of all time, Google is now introducing an app that will tell you whether someone has read the email you sent them. Ugh! Why would you do that? Wasn't it bad enough when Facebook messages started doing that? God, who thought this was a good idea?

Somehow, it gets worse, though. The app, called Streak, not only lets you know when someone's read your email, but gives you an idea where that person was when they read it. So this just went from aggravating to creepy real fast.

Don't like the idea of your friends, family, and colleagues knowing where you are when you check your messages? Well, the only way to ensure that they can't is to completely disable images on your messages. Streak works by embedding an invisible image onto every email a Streak user sends, meaning you won't know that it's there, but it will still spy on you.

I'm going to repeat: Who thought this was a good idea???

Because this app definitely could have some useful implications, especially in a company setting, by making business communication more efficient and making it easier to figure out when an important email has been lost in the spam folder or something; but for most things, this is a terrible idea. We might be living in the information age, but there are some pieces of information that people just simply shouldn't have. And detailed accounts of where and when other people read their emails is one of those things.

So don't use this app. Just don't. It will make you crazy. And since it doesn't allow you to selectively decide which emails get tracked and which ones don't, it will have you obsessing over each and every message you send. Don't do that to yourself. It's a bad idea.

Plus, if I find out that any of my contacts are using this app, I fully intend to ignore their emails indefinitely or just delete them without reading. You know, as punishment.