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Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#91

Post by TheNorthman »

Nextgrid wrote: post #82
achairapart wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eve…

I, and I imagine many more people, block all external resources by default, which has gotten me removed from a mailing list I was interested in.

Although I will give you that the vast majority of auto-removals have been beneficial for me.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#92

Post by lloeki »

thepete2 wrote: post #64
phreack wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons I get weary of going through the unsubscribe route is that it's always a gray-on-white link incredibly hidden at the bottom of the email, like every single time. It's a miracle it's there at all. It'd be much simpler to have it at the top and actually visible by eyes instead, if you just want to keep engaged users on your list.

There should be an unsubscribe email header for newsletters. Then it could even be a feature for mail clients.

I’ve seen something like this on Apple Mail.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#93

Post by godmode2019 »

neeleshs wrote: post #17
ralph84 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the three email tracking services I'm familiar with (HubSpot, Yesware, and Outreach) all generate unique URLs per recipient. The only information you don't get for Gmail clients is location, but you get the most valuable info which is if/when/how many times the email is opened.

I remember reading that gmail caches these images, rendering the how-many-times useless.

I have tested this and the cache expires pretty quickly. From memory 10min -30. I thought that was fine because its around about one hit per session.

You get enough good information. The IP address would be even better however.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#94

Post by wastholm »

btgeekboy wrote: post #62
wastholm wrote: post #59

What irks me is when email newsletters that I'm willfully subscribed to (the Economist comes to mind) inform me that "since I haven't been interacting" my subscription will be terminated. I have too been "interacting" (or as I call it, "reading") but my email client, very sensibly, doesn't load external resources, like pictures, willy nilly.

It's quite the juxtaposition seeing your post right next to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26163842

As someone with a daily email "newsletter" of my own [1], I am aware of (many of) the vagaries of spam filters. I use plain text only, though, so I couldn't use tracking pixels even if I wanted to. I do unsubscribe users if messages start bouncing but I have no way of knowing if they get silently dropped or spamfoldered.

As someone who subscribes to lots of newsletters, the "interact or we will auto-unsubscribe you" thing still annoys me.

[1]: https://www.aphorismsgalore.com/daily

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#95

Post by billysielu »

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…

I've unsubscribed before only to find myself subscribed to a bunch of similar things instead. Clicking a link confirms your address reaches a person and is therefore worth spamming. Plus the risk of phishing. Plus the dark patterns in the unsubscribe UI.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#96

Post by mike-cardwell »

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…

I run https://www.emailprivacytester.com - People will visit my site, enter their email address, receive an email from me, click the "confirm" link in that email, then once confirmed that they control the email address, go to another section of the website and send themselves a test email.

Then they will go into their email client and click the spam button on both of the emails that I sent them. The confirmation email, and also the test email.

Even though they requested these emails. Even though both emails have an unsubscribe header and link which takes them to a place where they can opt-out in perpetuity from receiving any further email from me.

I know this, because I get feedback loop emails when people do it.

This happens regularly.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#98

Post by kuschku »

unionpivo wrote: post #83
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

Thunderbird’s "Simple HTML" view is really nice for this. It’s basically Firefox Reader Mode.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#99

Post by [deleted] »

guerrilla wrote: post #85
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?)

[deleted]

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#100

Post by lawl »

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.

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

100% of them for me because i don't want any stupid newsletters. Yes, all of them go into the spam folder.

For some business that I otherwise am a customer off i also forward their shit spam to their support and tell them to unsubscribe me, even if they have a link. For the simple reason that if they feel like they can waste my time with their shit, i'm gonna waste theirs too.

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