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No to Spy Pixels

notospypixels.com

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Re: No to Spy Pixels

#11

Post by lzooz »

xiaomai wrote: post #7

I get why people do this. I used to use Freshbooks for my billing. They include tracking pixels in their emails, so I could see if a client had opened their invoice or not. If a client was late, I could adjust my behavior based on that tracking pixel (if they hadn't seen it, I would just send the invoice again vs. calling and trying to hound down a payment). That said, I don't like the idea of tracking pixels either.…

You don't like the idea of it but you admit that you used them because they were useful to you.

Re: No to Spy Pixels

#13

Post by tppiotrowski »

My knowledge might be outdated but back in 2014? Gmail decided to download and cache images embedded in an email. This meant that a tracking pixel was only downloaded once (before a user even opened an email) and every subsequent time the email was opened, the cached image was served from Gmail's servers, not the image origin server. This meant that tracking pixels became useless for Gmail (web based) users. I'm still under this impression today but maybe something has changed?

Edit: I said the pixel loads before the email is even opened. This is incorrect. The pixel loads the first time an email is read. Subsequent loads come from Gmail's servers.

Re: No to Spy Pixels

#14

Post by draw_down »

lzooz wrote: post #11
xiaomai wrote: post #7

I get why people do this. I used to use Freshbooks for my billing. They include tracking pixels in their emails, so I could see if a client had opened their invoice or not. If a client was late, I could adjust my behavior based on that tracking pixel (if they hadn't seen it, I would just send the invoice again vs. calling and trying to hound down a payment). That said, I don't like the idea of tracking pixels either.…

You don't like the idea of it but you admit that you used them because they were useful to you.

No post body was provided.

Re: No to Spy Pixels

#16

Post by xiaomai »

lzooz wrote: post #11
xiaomai wrote: post #7

I get why people do this. I used to use Freshbooks for my billing. They include tracking pixels in their emails, so I could see if a client had opened their invoice or not. If a client was late, I could adjust my behavior based on that tracking pixel (if they hadn't seen it, I would just send the invoice again vs. calling and trying to hound down a payment). That said, I don't like the idea of tracking pixels either.…

You don't like the idea of it but you admit that you used them because they were useful to you.

To be clear, I didn't opt-in to using them. They were just there. But yes, the point of my post was that they were indeed useful (and I still don't like them).

Re: No to Spy Pixels

#17

Post by kobalsky »

beebeepka wrote: post #9

I just have images disabled. What good are they in email?

and that doesn't mean you can't have emails with images.

if it matters they can embed the content and the images will display even if you have remote images disabled.

Re: No to Spy Pixels

#18

Post by cdot2 »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #13

My knowledge might be outdated but back in 2014? Gmail decided to download and cache images embedded in an email. This meant that a tracking pixel was only downloaded once (before a user even opened an email) and every subsequent time the email was opened, the cached image was served from Gmail's servers, not the image origin server. This meant that tracking pixels became useless for Gmail (web based) users. I'm stil…

That happens for some emails but I've also seen Gmail emails that activated tracking pixels normally.
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