It should come as no surprise, but APC, the manufacturers of the uninterruptable power supplies that I use, has just confirmed that they track their e-mailed newsletters. The message at the top of the one I got today was:

Hi HEADGEEK, we noticed that you haven’t opened our PowerNews e-mail newsletter in 6 months. PowerNews offers the latest product information and great promotional offers.

In point of fact, I do read the newsletters, or at least skim them, whenever one comes in. But as I use Thunderbird, which blocks remote images by default, they don’t get any confirmation of this. And quite honestly, I prefer that they don’t. I realize that any business is going to want to know how well it’s advertising is working, so they’ll want to track it, but I don’t want them tracking my e-mail reading habits. Companies know too much about me, and people in general, already.