When you receive an email in Gmail with a package tracking link, as is often the case when getting a shipment notification for an online order, the tracking number is detected (assuming a well-known service such as UPS or FedEx is used) and displayed in the right sidebar once the email is opened in reading view. Recently, I noticed that Gmail now also displays a button labeled “Track package” that opens the courier’s tracking page directly from the message inbox.
I’m not sure when this was added, but it is certainly a great idea and saves having to click into shipment update emails, as well as making it easier to identify such emails. It’s good to see Google is still updating Gmail, though I wish the design (especially some of the older themes) were updated to be a bit nicer looking.
that’s great that you like it but I don’t really care for the fact that they are monitoring the content of my emails enough to know when a tracking link is there. I’m sure this alerts the #nsa et al to the package metadata now of course too. we used to be able to expect some privacy.
@thinker
“They” aren’t monitoring anything. It’s an algorithm that matches the format of a tracking number and runs some code.
actually the sender of the email has to add a certain code snippet / markup for google to detect it.
https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/reference/go-to-action
Where can I locate past tracking notices?
Is there a means to turn this feature off? We have an issue with messages that don’t include tracking numbers being mis-identified. In an org that utilized both Skype and Google, Skype codes are being picked up as shipping IDs and getting the track a package option in GMail.