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Since the headline misled me, this is about the email marketing industry and their use of tracking pixels, as opposed to issues with generic emails.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a problem when you are targeting users from Europe, which you are doing almost certainly.
We already have more than enough cookie popups and "heads up" emails whenever a company changes a comma in their ToS. GDPR is a bureaucratic madness and not something to be imitated. Want to educate users about privacy? do it with extensive educational campaigns, not by ruining everyone's experience on the web
And the point of GDPR is to give users the information to let consumers make informed choices and to make companies abide by those choices.
There's no point in 'extensive education' if the consumer is still powerless to exercise that knowledge.
Browsing the web in Europe is like experiencing the rebirth of the pop-up ads era. It has lead to compulsory acceptance. This too shall pass. There is a reasonable expectation that when you submit your email to a company in exchange for their service, they will email you communications relating to their products and services.
Which is not a problem with the regulation in and of itself but instead just highlights how ubiqitous tracking has become.
Browsing the web in Europe is like experiencing the rebirth of the pop-up ads era. It has lead to compulsory acceptance. This too shall pass. There is a reasonable expectation that when you submit your email to a company in exchange for their service, they will email you communications relating to their products and services.
>Browsing the web in Europe is like experiencing the rebirth of the pop-up ads era. Very much so; the pop-ups interrupt and obstruct, breaking immersion. I sincerely hope a browser gets brave enough to start blocking those obstructions by default. It irks me how every "Cookies" banner is an unpaid advertising billboard saying, "Your privacy is valuable to us. Yours faithful, EU". >This too shall pass. For now, uBlock…
Browsing the web in Europe is like experiencing the rebirth of the pop-up ads era. It has lead to compulsory acceptance. This too shall pass. There is a reasonable expectation that when you submit your email to a company in exchange for their service, they will email you communications relating to their products and services.
I've been very satisfied to the extent to which these popups allow you to not opt in to everything and still use the site. I think the previous popups have trained us to assume that the popups are meaningless and we just have to click yes on everything. This is not so!
We need a standard for managing these controls on the browser side, which major browsers can then implement. It wouldn't surprise me if people were already working on something like that. If I reject ads from google doubleclick specifically, they should be pre-rejected for every subsequent website that asks the same question. Likewise for the various cookie purposes.
(I do understand the unfortunate potential for fingerprinting here...)
True that the European user should be able to opt-out just from tracking. Our platform MailUp (ESP) is handling this in the preference center (that can be customized). Here is a sample: https://updates.mailup.com/frontend/preferencecenter/363734/...
No, and if that's how it's implemented by you then you're breaking the rules here. It should be opt-in. And yes, I know that at that point you could probably just delete the tracking. If that breaks your business model, all I have to say to you is bye.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
GDPR is Europe's (attempted) solution to a problem. It affects companies globally [1]. [1] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/international_law/publica...
So what, so do American tax-lawes (targetting Americans) and affect the rest of the world's citizens, FACTA.
1) "GDPR is europe's problem" --> I'm saying it's an attempted solution, not a problem
2) "not of the entire 'email industry'" --> the whole 'email industry' is in fact, affected. Where you operate from isn't a factor. Only if you don't email EU citizens (which is quite unlikely), you don't have to worry about it. If you do (which is very likely), you should know and implement GDPR rules.
I understand your FACTA analogy, but don't see how you disagree with me.
Off-topic: I absolutely love the design choices made by the author of this site. It's the basic browser stylesheet with some nice refinements. A real triumph of minimalism and incredibly readable.
Font is too big.
I think the GDPR is a good opportunity to reflect how much tracking we really need. Tracking has become so ubiquitous, it's become the default to put Google Analytics on a site, to put a tracking pixel into every email, to personalize every link we send out... But so much of that tracking isn't really necessary. I've stopped tracking website visitors and stopped including tracking pixels in emails a few years ago, an…
Analytics provide great insight and enable optimization that companies who are serious need to actively engage in to grow and succeed.
Dismissing analytics is like saying you don’t need a debugger. Just put log statements all over the place... (or, write classic ASP :))
Browsing the web in Europe is like experiencing the rebirth of the pop-up ads era. It has lead to compulsory acceptance. This too shall pass. There is a reasonable expectation that when you submit your email to a company in exchange for their service, they will email you communications relating to their products and services.
"Communications" as in "valuable information", like letting you know somebody logged into your account. That's fine and unaffected by the GDPR.
If by "communication" you mean unsolicited advertisements about the company you are describing illegal behavior that was already illegal before the GDPR. "I agree to be contacted for marketing purposes" checkboxes are ubiquitous precisely because without my opt-in they can't.