Personally speaking, I’ve never been a fan of this method because to the hosting web server it was still fetched. That might confirm that an email address exists or (mistakenly) confirm that the user did in fact follow the link (or load the resource).
I have ad and tracking blocked like crazy (using DNS) so I can’t follow most links in emails anyway. External assets aren’t loaded either, but this method basically circumvents that (which I hate).
Not sure what the original point was but curiously I happened to use
file
on a an Apple.numbers
file recently and found that it was a.zip
file in disguise with zero compression.So maybe the point was that it’s used often as a container format more often than it’s used for compression? Just my (unrelated) general computer work would also suggest this.