Quick note to everyone: I launched Simplify v2.3.3 today, and you may have to accept new permissions to get the update. It’s safe to accept!

There are three new permissions I added to Simplify and they are all for blocking email trackers:

• webRequest & webRequestBlocking

• googleusercontent.com/proxy/

Gmail routes all image loads through googleusercontent.com to provide some privacy protection. But Gmail still loads all images including email trackers.

Simplify uses these permissions to see if any image url matches a known tracker. Developing this list of known trackers was actually the hardest part of blocking email trackers. And I’ve shared it with several other services including Hey.com to try and help everyone do better.