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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'

#191

Post by mcv »

relix wrote: post #181
mcv wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not consider it "best practices" to automatically unsubscribe someone who legitimately subscribed. Have a double opt-in, and then assume they're interested until they explicitly unsubscribe. I'm subscribed to some mailinglist that I don't actually read but would be upset if they auto-unsubscribed me, because if I'm ever interested, I want it to be there.

What I described is literally listed under "best practices for bulk senders" by Gmail. These are hoops I'm not fond of jumping through either, obviously, but if Gmail marks all my email as spam I lose 4000 subscribers overnight so I do what big G asks me to do.

I checked and found this: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126?hl=en

It doesn't mention pixels anywhere, though.

It does contain the line:

> "Consider unsubscribing users who don’t read your messages."

But that's only after lots of mention of opt-in and unsubscribe options. And ultimately, you can't really know whether users read your messages or not.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#192

Post by [deleted] »

grey_earthling wrote: post #149
bennyelv wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but the way the article came about seems to be a bit strange. Apparently the BBC asked Hey to some analysis on their emails, and have written what appears to be a publicity piece for them on the result. Did you know that Hey allows you to block tracking pixels for the low price of $99/year? Now you do! Not the kind of thing I'd expect to see from the publicly funded BBC.

The BBC has form on this. They periodically publish news articles reporting that a person's life was saved by the app What3Words, without mentioning the existence of similar proprietary and open systems. See for example: => https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-55... 2021-02-03 What3words: Stafford women rescued from flooded river after using app => https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49754820 2…

[deleted]

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#193

Post by achairapart »

hamlsandwich wrote: post #179
mcv wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honesty is always the best solution in my opinion. Send a verification email when someone subscribes. In the verification email, put a "yeah, I want this" link, and explicit "unsubscribe" link. If you also want to consider loading remote images to be valid verification, then say so explicitly in the verification email, and explain they may get unsubscribed if they don't either click the link or load the images. Expli…

Part of the problem is that so many of the 'actions' people take with email are invisible to the sender: If the recipient marks you as spam, filters you to junk, blocks you as a sender or their client/provider auto-files you away somewhere, you as the sender get no indication of that. People won't click links in emails they've never opened, let alone read. 'Verification' tends to decay over time - even if I clicked t…

What I do with the email is invisible to the sender and it's ok. It's actually the way it should be.

I clearly expressed interest in your newsletter by confirming the double opt-in.

It's also ok if I open your newsletter only once in a while, I may be busy, or I only want to read your content when its title click something in me.

The most successful newsletters respect this and did so for so many years. They never messed up with my subscription. I will never mark them as spam because I trust them. And there is a clear unsubscribe link in every one of them that I can click if I change my mind.

This is nothing new, Permission Marketing from Seth Godin is what, more than 20 years old now?

Instead, automation looks always fun and clever, until your growth-hack goes wrong.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#194

Post by zaudo »

hamlsandwich wrote: post #179
mcv wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honesty is always the best solution in my opinion. Send a verification email when someone subscribes. In the verification email, put a "yeah, I want this" link, and explicit "unsubscribe" link. If you also want to consider loading remote images to be valid verification, then say so explicitly in the verification email, and explain they may get unsubscribed if they don't either click the link or load the images. Expli…

Part of the problem is that so many of the 'actions' people take with email are invisible to the sender: If the recipient marks you as spam, filters you to junk, blocks you as a sender or their client/provider auto-files you away somewhere, you as the sender get no indication of that. People won't click links in emails they've never opened, let alone read. 'Verification' tends to decay over time - even if I clicked t…

But it's much worse for the operator of the list to take actions which are invisible to the user. That's why I agree with mcv's point here. There is no perfect solution, someone will always be unhappy, but I think it's preferable to send an additional email to your user explaining "if you don't do X, then we will do Y".

They may well consider this email to be an annoyance, but I think that's better than making an assumption, taking an action and leaving users in the dark. Some will prefer that, but some will be confused about why your service isn't working for them.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#195

Post by wruza »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #189
wruza wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do that because they have no guarantee that a site will respect an “unsubscribe” request, and it wouldn’t drag them through a shady multi-step “but why” dialog, and it wouldn’t send them another email with “Dear sucker, we see your request and sadly have to react, but you know how these servers work, right? Wait for a week or twelve before all our systems are aware that you wanted to unsubscribe from one of our…

I think you're missing the point. They opted in to receiving my email. They handed over their email address to me and requested that I send them an email. They then told their email provider that the email they requested was spam. I've considered putting up a page with a list of these peoples email addresses, but I feel like it would end up causing me more problems than it's worth. [edit] There should be a system whe…

They opted in to receiving my email. They handed over their email address to me and requested that I send them an email.

Yes. It’s clear that you have no intention to reach them afterwards. But to them it is not so clear, and they mark these innocent letters as spam preventively, out of habit, cause other sites committed abuse in the past and they don’t want to test yet another service’s good nature. Much easier to ban you forever and forget about that, even before you did something unexpected. I know it’s unfair, and I don’t act like that, but they can and some of them do. No time on their hands to differentiate. Modern email culture is rotten to the core and popular email services only cultivate that.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#196

Post by zaudo »

relix wrote: post #178
mcv wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honesty is always the best solution in my opinion. Send a verification email when someone subscribes. In the verification email, put a "yeah, I want this" link, and explicit "unsubscribe" link. If you also want to consider loading remote images to be valid verification, then say so explicitly in the verification email, and explain they may get unsubscribed if they don't either click the link or load the images. Expli…

For subscribing, you just described double opt-in and that already happens. When unsubscribing, users are very sensitive to any subsequent emails (just read the other comments in this thread). Sending an email to confirm their unsubscription might annoy a lot of the users, or will make them doubt that you're above board ("legit" newsletters boast about not sending any emails after unsubscribing, so this is a little r…

There is no perfect solution but I think annoying some users by sending them an additional email to confirm what you are doing is preferable to annoying some other users by taking actions without informing them. Honesty really is the best policy.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#197

Post by [deleted] »

m000 wrote: post #177
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…

> 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. These slackers are the worst. Not only they cause trouble to legit email newsletters, they also affect the subscribers who want to read the email. Every time I check my gmail spam folder, I'll find at least 2-3 legit newsletters classified as spam bec…

[deleted]

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#198

Post by coremoff »

m000 wrote: post #177
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…

> 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. These slackers are the worst. Not only they cause trouble to legit email newsletters, they also affect the subscribers who want to read the email. Every time I check my gmail spam folder, I'll find at least 2-3 legit newsletters classified as spam bec…

you can blame email spam from the past for this; it used to be that clicking "unsubscribe" indicated to the spammer that they had reached a valid email, and that they should sell it on to everyone else to use.

Personally, I end up clicking spam on a lot of stuff - they get one chance at unsubscribe. If I get asked to log in, or it redirects to anything other than a confirmation page, then I mark it as spam and forget about it. I get too many misdirected emails to give it any more time than that (my email address is my name, many other people share that name, and a lot of them seem to think that they have that email address too).

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#199

Post by relix »

zaudo wrote: post #196
relix wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For subscribing, you just described double opt-in and that already happens. When unsubscribing, users are very sensitive to any subsequent emails (just read the other comments in this thread). Sending an email to confirm their unsubscription might annoy a lot of the users, or will make them doubt that you're above board ("legit" newsletters boast about not sending any emails after unsubscribing, so this is a little r…

There is no perfect solution but I think annoying some users by sending them an additional email to confirm what you are doing is preferable to annoying some other users by taking actions without informing them. Honesty really is the best policy.

The problem is that doesn't stay contained for those few users. If a certain number of users mark your confirmation email as spam, your reputation suffers and there's a higher likelihood that suddenly your emails get sent to spam for all other users, because of that reputation hit.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#200

Post by relix »

mcv wrote: post #191
relix wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I described is literally listed under "best practices for bulk senders" by Gmail. These are hoops I'm not fond of jumping through either, obviously, but if Gmail marks all my email as spam I lose 4000 subscribers overnight so I do what big G asks me to do.

I checked and found this: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126?hl=en It doesn't mention pixels anywhere, though. It does contain the line: > "Consider unsubscribing users who don’t read your messages." But that's only after lots of mention of opt-in and unsubscribe options. And ultimately, you can't really know whether users read your messages or not.

I'm glad you agree that it is indeed considered a best practice to automatically unsubscribe someone who legitimately subscribed, when they don't read your emails.
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