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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'

#101

Post by mike-cardwell »

wnevets wrote: post #31
retSava wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the proxy removes metadata such as useragent, but often the pic urls contain uniquely identifiable information, eg a number that is unique to that email that received the email. That way you still leak that it is opened, how often, etc (unless they cache, I don't know).

Isnt the proxy downloading and caching the image before the user opens the email? If so doesnt that prevent tracking if/when the user actually opens the email?

It does not. That's how it should work, but it does not work that way. It downloads them on demand if and when the user views an email. So it protectes the users IP address from the spammer/marketter, but not the fact that the message was viewed nor when it was viewed.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#103

Post by progval »

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 can't tell if it's sarcasm. Just in case it is not: there is already such a standard header, it's List-Unsubscribe and it's a used by all mailing lists and "legit" ads I can think of. (And may of the "high quality" spam too.) https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8058

It is unfortunately not implemented by most email clients.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#105

Post by OJFord »

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…

Yes, I do it then, but also I get stuff where I've never had anything to do with the company at all even, not just ordered something and not agreed to receive marketing emails.

Sometimes the spam/phishing line is hard to draw (especially without clicking a link and seeing what they try to make me do) and the 'unsubscribe' link is clearly just part of it, too.

Does anyone know what 'report phishing' actually does in Fastmail? I've had to use it a lot recently, and could easily create a rule for when I've been doing it, if only 'report phishing' was an available action. That it isn't makes me wonder if there's manual review or something so they don't want so much bulk? (And in that case probably also don't/want need my tens of ~duplicates a day.)

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#106

Post by encom »

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.

I think all sane email clients block external resources in emails. And if I ever get a time machine, I'm going back for the first guy to put HTML in emails, and then Hitler second.

Additionally, if I'm receiving a message from example.com, and links in the message are not targeted at example.com, but some bullshit like sendgrid with a query string that won't fit across a 4K monitor, I'm deleting it.

The other day I received an email from ft.dk, the danish Folketing. Our parliament. I mean legit dot gov stuff. It had email tracking through Sendgrid. I sent them a strongly worded email and asked them to cut American tracking companies out of our democratic process. And then I deleted the email.

All this tracking seems to have just become the new normal, and hardly anyone cares about it.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#109

Post by arkitaip »

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…

Obviously true and it's sad that newsletter spammers would down vote you. Who else would even find your comment controversial.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#110

Post by wodenokoto »

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…

It’s super annoying that other people’s spam habits hit you.

For a while I couldn’t receive email notifications from Facebook because so many other gmail users marked them as spam, so no matter how many I unmarked, I was screaming in the wind.

Fair enough that other people don’t wanna deal with that crap, but it should still be my prerogative to receive them.

I first gave up, and later decided I didn’t care. But for a while I thought it was clever to have an immutable archive of Facebook interactions (those notifications used to include full text of posts you were tagged in or that was written on your wall as well as new messages)

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