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Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

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

#61

Post by tiborsaas »

jakobegger wrote: post #16

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…

> But so much of that tracking isn't really necessary.

I've just launched my e-commerce platform and I see 34 unique visitors and no sales. Analytics is key to figure out if something is wrong and I'm not talking about the code.

> I'd rather focus on making my product better.

How do you make it better? Having numbers without analyzing user engagement is shooting in the dark with a shotgun.

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

#62

Post by hanoz »

pteraspidomorph wrote: post #35
FeepingCreature wrote: post #12

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…

> 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.

Really? Any chance you could share some examples, because my strong impression is that a clear 95% of those I see are not compliant.

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

#63

Post by masklinn »

jmarbach wrote: post #10

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.

No. Most of the services out there require an email to sign up to the service itself. Using that email for anything beyond the core provision of the service I signed up for is a breach. If I bought a fucking pencil sharpener from your website, any communication beyond keeping me abreast of (and optionally checking if I was happy with) my order is abusive.

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

#64

Post by giancarlostoro »

isostatic wrote: post #6

"This stressed out a lot of email marketers, who quite rightly realised that the new regulations would have a significant effect on their ability to acquire and market to customers via their email address" "The overwhelming majority of commercial email sent today contains tracking pixels and tracking links, these are used to uniquely identify individuals so that opens and clicks can be correctly attributed to them" G…

> While spammers may have a problem, people don't.

Marketing spammers maybe, but now scammers and malware spammers have the floor instead. Laws only stop the law abiding citizens from doing their thing, it sure doesn't stop the criminals from.... being criminals.

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

#65

Post by ericb »

aiCeivi9 wrote: post #3

There is the Email Industry - that is the problem.

Just because you associate emails with spam doesn't solve the problem of every charity, business, church, school and group needing to communicate with large numbers of email subscribers. Like anything, bad actors make it worse.

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

#66

Post by giancarlostoro »

microcolonel wrote: post #57
isostatic wrote: post #6

"This stressed out a lot of email marketers, who quite rightly realised that the new regulations would have a significant effect on their ability to acquire and market to customers via their email address" "The overwhelming majority of commercial email sent today contains tracking pixels and tracking links, these are used to uniquely identify individuals so that opens and clicks can be correctly attributed to them" G…

What surprises me more is that tracking pixels even work anymore. What email clients don't bother to filter them out?

Do any email clients block tracking pixels? My understanding is that they block images by default but if you choose to view them you will load all the tracking pixels.

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

#67

Post by wsy »

vectorEQ wrote: post #48
pteraspidomorph wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

That's not how GDPR is designed. In Europe, the business model to 'sell' Web content for the permission to track has now become illegal. Web site owners will need to change their business model, or they will be fined.

Note that you can still 'sell' Web content for forcing your customers to see advertisments. You just aren't allowed anymore to track that on a person-by-person basis.

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

#68

Post by rypskar »

CrLf wrote: post #52
jmarbach wrote: post #10

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. And this by itself says a lot, but not what people usually think it says. In fact, you don't need any kind of cookie popups _unless_ they're tracking cookies. Any reasonable use of cookies for site-specific reasons (authentication, session, csrf, load-balancing, settings) is already allowed with no need to opt-in[1]. The reason why c…

So much this. Every time I see a popup with "We respect your privacy", I think "no you don't" and try to see if it is something I can block in privacy badger to remove the popup.

If the site respect users privacy it will not track the users and don't need the warning

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

#69

Post by satanspastaroll »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #64
isostatic wrote: post #6

"This stressed out a lot of email marketers, who quite rightly realised that the new regulations would have a significant effect on their ability to acquire and market to customers via their email address" "The overwhelming majority of commercial email sent today contains tracking pixels and tracking links, these are used to uniquely identify individuals so that opens and clicks can be correctly attributed to them" G…

> While spammers may have a problem, people don't. Marketing spammers maybe, but now scammers and malware spammers have the floor instead. Laws only stop the law abiding citizens from doing their thing, it sure doesn't stop the criminals from.... being criminals.

Not having marketing spammers is still better than having spammers and scammers

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

#70

Post by maccard »

Angostura wrote: post #26
jmarbach wrote: post #10

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.

> It has lead to compulsory acceptance. No. It leads to non-acceptance by default. If you are seeing forms where you are opted in to data capture by default that isn't a core part of the service, that's a breach.

Great, so how do we fix that and stop them doing it?
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