“Just by watching you open your email, [a curious person or] spammers can learn your schedule (‘based on the time you check your email’), your itinerary (based on how you check mail at home, on the bus, or so on), and personal preferences (based on where they harvested the email; say, a sports forum, or a music fansite).”
https://www.wired.com/story/how-email-open-tracking-quietly-took-over-the-web/