Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 341 posts

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#81

Post by Nextgrid »

nickff wrote: post #74
Nextgrid wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why people would be wary of clicking the unsubscribe link on something they explicitly subscribed to in the first place. I mean, they trusted you enough to give you their email address to subscribe in the first place, right? The only scenario I can think of is when people didn't intentionally subscribe or were coerced into subscribing and those newsletters can go to hell and fully deserve to be marked as…

People often forget what they signed up for, especially if the newsletter is relatively infrequent. This is to be expected, given the large volume of newsletters and spam.

Is it really a big problem then? People who care about reading the content would counteract the problem even if it does get flagged as spam. Ultimately if your content is of any value then people will find a way to read it and the spam filters will learn from that.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#82

Post by Nextgrid »

achairapart wrote: post #72
relix wrote: post #50

If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam. Since people are already weary of clicking the unsubscribe link and instead casually mark everything as spam, every little bit towards keeping your reputation counts. It's a damned if you do, damned if you do…

And also because of this, if you're blocking tracking pixels in a privacy conscious way you often get removed from the mailing list without any notice, which is very frustrating. Or you get one of those mail saying "We are removing you from the list because you don't read our newsletter", often without offering any other confirmation signal. Basically they says "Let us track you or you are out of this list". And this…

> you often get removed from the mailing list without any notice

Seems like nothing of value would be lost?

> They don't actually care if you read or enjoy their content, you are either one of the users who increase their opening and click rates, or you're a useless burden to them.

Confirms that indeed nothing of value would be lost. It seems like a win-win situation, spam-letters you wouldn't want to read anyway eventually remove you off their spam list because they can't stalk you.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#83

Post by unionpivo »

relix wrote: post #50

If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam. Since people are already weary of clicking the unsubscribe link and instead casually mark everything as spam, every little bit towards keeping your reputation counts. It's a damned if you do, damned if you do…

That explains few thing, but I guess it means no more newsletters for me.

It's not just tracking. I generally feel email is more useful with html on and pictures off. You automatically skip most colorful signatures , headers, legal whatever's ..., while still getting nice formatting

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#84

Post by jjav »

relix wrote: post #65
panic wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this mean I’ll be automatically unsubscribed from a mailing list if my mail client doesn’t load the tracking pixel? How long does this take to happen?

Yes, if that newsletter is using best practices. The recommended period is 90 days I believe, but you can get send an email asking if you're still interested (and in that email, there will be a link you should click if you want to stay subscribed). You may have had this happen before and probably thought that was just a scammy way to get you to click a link, but in fact it's completely legit.

> Yes, if that newsletter is using best practices.

Clearly that would be worst possible practices.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#85

Post by guerrilla »

relix wrote: post #50

If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam. Since people are already weary of clicking the unsubscribe link and instead casually mark everything as spam, every little bit towards keeping your reputation counts. It's a damned if you do, damned if you do…

This wouldn't work at all for me although I'm probably a minority. I never load any images unless I need to see them for some reason, which is extremely rare. I'd get unsubscribed from your digest but bad actors don't do this and would just keep sending me crap.

(Edit: I just read both Thunderbird and Protonmail do this by default, so maybe I'm not too much of a minority?)

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#87

Post by andreareina »

Nextgrid wrote: post #66
relix wrote: post #50

If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam. Since people are already weary of clicking the unsubscribe link and instead casually mark everything as spam, every little bit towards keeping your reputation counts. It's a damned if you do, damned if you do…

I'm not sure why people would be wary of clicking the unsubscribe link on something they explicitly subscribed to in the first place. I mean, they trusted you enough to give you their email address to subscribe in the first place, right? The only scenario I can think of is when people didn't intentionally subscribe or were coerced into subscribing and those newsletters can go to hell and fully deserve to be marked as…

> The only scenario I can think of is when people didn't intentionally subscribe or were coerced into subscribing and those newsletters can go to hell and fully deserve to be marked as spam.

Yeah that's the better part of 95% of them for me.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#88

Post by unionpivo »

wahern wrote: post #9
pfundstein wrote: post #4

I can't think of any email clients that automatically download external images by default. The article seems to be over-blowing the issue a bit.

GMail displays them. It uses a proxy for downloading, but I don't think that matters unless they're preloading all images unconditionally upon server-side receipt of the message. Apple's macOS Mail.app client displays external images by default, as does their iOS app.

You can disable, showing images.

And then you get button to show images if you need it.

I prefer to use gmail this way, since most of the images are usually tacky signatures, or legal disclaimers or something else I don't need.

And if there are pictures you need there is show images button.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#89

Post by [deleted] »

jjav wrote: post #84
relix wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if that newsletter is using best practices. The recommended period is 90 days I believe, but you can get send an email asking if you're still interested (and in that email, there will be a link you should click if you want to stay subscribed). You may have had this happen before and probably thought that was just a scammy way to get you to click a link, but in fact it's completely legit.

> Yes, if that newsletter is using best practices. Clearly that would be worst possible practices.

[deleted]

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#90

Post by Nextgrid »

andreareina wrote: post #87
Nextgrid wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why people would be wary of clicking the unsubscribe link on something they explicitly subscribed to in the first place. I mean, they trusted you enough to give you their email address to subscribe in the first place, right? The only scenario I can think of is when people didn't intentionally subscribe or were coerced into subscribing and those newsletters can go to hell and fully deserve to be marked as…

> The only scenario I can think of is when people didn't intentionally subscribe or were coerced into subscribing and those newsletters can go to hell and fully deserve to be marked as spam. Yeah that's the better part of 95% of them for me.

It seems like a non-problem, ie the system working as designed, and the GP is just misled by "best practices" peddled by email marketing scum?

If you're running a legit newsletter that people want I can't imagine enough people would be marking it as spam for it to actually affect your reputation.

Post reply on HN