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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'

#251

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#252

Post by kergonath »

relix wrote: post #124
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…

I believe it's because even though most newsletters are acting 100% legit (it would be pretty hard to keep going if not), there's always a few that would act like jerks and not actually unsubscribe you, or make you jump through extra hoops. Even if that's only 5% of the newsletters, those are the times that you as the reader would remember happening. A smooth unsubscribe experience is not memorable. It's worse becaus…

> the unsubscribe button is a 95%-unsubscribe button.

I wish I had a 95% success rate when trying to unsubscribe...

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#253

Post by anaerobicover »

pc86 wrote: post #223
mariusor wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them The only way that this justification makes sense to me is if you mail people that didn't explicitly subscribe to your newsletter in the first place. If that's the case, I think that the problem lies elsewhere. An email is meant to be read, that's it. Any other interaction a user will have with it that is still under your concern is if…

That may be how you want it to be, but it doesn't reflect reality. If you consistently have extremely low open rates (e.g. you send to a lot of people who aren't opening) your risk of being marked as spam increases. The only way to avoid this is to periodically cull your list of people who haven't opened in some amount of time.

I'm not familiar with this area. Can you explain the mechanism for this? What thing is imposing the "risk of being marked as spam", and how does it make its determination? Specifically, how does it have any idea about whether the end user has "opened" the mail?

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#255

Post by kergonath »

hesk wrote: post #174
mcv wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe email clients should show that unsubscribe button then. And also, when someone reports something as spam that has a legitimate unsubscribe link, offer to unsubscribe instead.

The macOS mail client shows an unsubscribe button.

The iOS default Mail app too.

AFAIK, Gmail does as well.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#256

Post by ratww »

tus89 wrote: post #254

Can someone explain how a tracking pixel works? How is it different to simply a unique image href url for each client? Why does the image itself need to be different?

> How is it different to simply a unique image href url for each client

This is exactly how it works. The image itself doesn't need to be different. Normally it's a 1x1 transparent gif.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#257

Post by Ombudsman »

tus89 wrote: post #254

Can someone explain how a tracking pixel works? How is it different to simply a unique image href url for each client? Why does the image itself need to be different?

If I understand this correctly, the unassuming image/jpeg/png/gif/pixel is embedded in the email, it's the same color as the background so the user wont notice it. The image itself which has a unique link for each recipient, is hosted in the senders servers, so when they receive the request for the image, they read the HTTP headers for information such as IP address for location, depending on how many requests they get they can count the number of times the email is opened etc

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#260

Post by alpaca128 »

karaterobot wrote: post #219
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…

A trivial point, but I don't see that anyone's made it yet: one reason it's easier to report spam than to unsubscribe is that the UX for reporting spam is a lot better in Gmail. If I want to politely unsubscribe from a newsletter I have to: switch from the keyboard to the mouse, hunt for the link in the email and click it, switch contexts to the browser tab it opens, hunt for the primary action on the page, figure ou…

One online service (I think it was Ubisoft) wanted me to login at my unused account to unsubscribe from their newsletter. After a few cases like that you bet I'll take a shortcut if available.
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