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Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

jacquescorbytuech.com

41–50 of 215 posts

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#41

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…

> So, I guess I won't know if 10% open my marketing emails or 50%. You didn't know before either since many mail programs block tracking pixels. This was always garbage data to a large extent.

Gmail doesn’t (kind of), and that’s a big enough slice of email users these days...

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#42

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.

> 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. not true, i mark all those as spam, if there is a "newsletter checkbox" i check it out, but if they have hidden it somewhere i dont care, mark as spam and next.

Yes, I always hope that if enough people do this the company might get blacklisted by gmail and find it hard to get it reverted.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#43
post #37
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what, so do American tax-lawes (targetting Americans) and affect the rest of the world's citizens, FACTA.

I was arguing against two points made above: 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 imple…

I misunderstood the fact that you don't see it a as a problem.

I don't think the GDPR solves much or anything, iff you want to play on the internet, almost [there are good exceptions, where you can just choose to have a 'lesser' experience] all of the time you'll have to click "I agree".

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. not true, i mark all those as spam, if there is a "newsletter checkbox" i check it out, but if they have hidden it somewhere i dont care, mark as spam and next.

Yes, I always hope that if enough people do this the company might get blacklisted by gmail and find it hard to get it reverted.

Same here, for the same reason.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#46
post #22

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.

> 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 Certainly not. If I didn't check a box saying "I want to receive commercial emails related to your products and services" I expect not to receive those. I might unsubscribe from the whole thing if I don't have any other means of avoi…

I generally report such "you bought something and so we signed you up to the mailing list" activity as spam in Gmail, and if the unsubscribe button links me to a third party vendor, list "I never signed up for this list" as the reason.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#47
post #5

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.

This isn't bound to email marketing, unless you put all commercial communication dealt via email as email marketing.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

As an european who rejects ad trackers on every website, I can confirm that a good 95% of them are correctly implemented and will let you keep browsing. Some of them (usually americans with a poor understanding of why they even implemented that) will kick you out or ask you again on every page load until you accept. We need a standard for managing these controls on the browser side, which major browsers can then impl…

i don't think its a problem that people don't let you use the site if you don't opt-in. thats a design choice, not a fault or problem or bad implementation. just a show of that they would really really like to track you. if you don't want to be tracked, then it's a clear indicator to avoid such site in the future.

I wholeheartedly agree on your point though, that if i reject 'A' on one site, it could be assumed by the browser i'd like to reject 'A' on the next site. Perhaps the same kind of block could occur like they do with faulty ssl settings, just stating that you blocked 'A' on some site ,and this site is using the same, with a button to proceed if you accept that fact.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

As an european who rejects ad trackers on every website, I can confirm that a good 95% of them are correctly implemented and will let you keep browsing. Some of them (usually americans with a poor understanding of why they even implemented that) will kick you out or ask you again on every page load until you accept. We need a standard for managing these controls on the browser side, which major browsers can then impl…

I find that some vendors will have a section for "information storage and access" and list both the cookie used to remember your gdpr setting and cookies from doubleclick in there.

Or the opt out page just leads to instructions to disable cookies in your browser.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#50
post #7

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.

Quite. It's like I've wondered into the Large Print section of the library. What's wrong with normal sized fonts, and letting the minority with impaired eyesight or curious hardware resize as desired? Or maybe browsers could expose some standard config info to sites saying "yeah, extra normal for me please"? I could use reader mode for everything, except it breaks some sites.
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