Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook uses bgsound to see if you have opened an email

plus.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 99 posts

Re: Facebook uses bgsound to see if you have opened an email

#41

Post by mike-cardwell »

ricardobeat wrote: post #39
mike-cardwell wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an attack on privacy. The recipients don't expect to be tracked in this way, and you don't ask their permission before doing it (1). You're exploiting a weakness in the system. It doesn't matter how many organisations are doing it, or how long they've been doing it, or how much money they make from it, or how useful the information is, or how good the "services" you provide are. It's still an attack on peoples…

You could say the same for any website. What's different?

I can, yes. And I do...

EDIT: Oh, are you talking about tracking someone on your website, or tracking people across websites?

EDIT2: When people visit a website, they expect that website to be able to see their IP address and track their movements across it. What people don't expect is that websites (without their permission) can track their movements across other websites.

Re: Facebook uses bgsound to see if you have opened an email

#42

Post by tobtoh »

technel wrote: post #37

Given that this is a community of entrepreneurs, I'm surprised how unsympathetic a lot of people here are to this technique. Operating a business online, analytics are a very important part of understanding how your users interact with with your service and improving the quality of your correspondence. Facebook is just trying to identify which emails people respond to (i.e. open) most.

Probably because most entrepreneurs have morals/ethics. Just because you can do something, or just because you want something, doesn't mean you should. And doubly so when you know that the victim would most likely not agree to being tracked.

Re: Facebook uses bgsound to see if you have opened an email

#43

Post by marshray »

technel wrote: post #37

Given that this is a community of entrepreneurs, I'm surprised how unsympathetic a lot of people here are to this technique. Operating a business online, analytics are a very important part of understanding how your users interact with with your service and improving the quality of your correspondence. Facebook is just trying to identify which emails people respond to (i.e. open) most.

How many of their users do you think know they're being tracked like that? I mean actually know and understand, not "were notified in the fine print on page 27".

Tracking users in ways they don't actually know about and understand, well, the usual terms normal people apply to that sort of behavior are "underhanded", "antisocial", "betraying trust", etc.

Re: Facebook uses bgsound to see if you have opened an email

#44

Post by kysol »

nostromo wrote: post #20

I just checked using a proxy -- there are no calls made to Facebook from gmail if you do not display images. (Checked using Chrome on a Mac.)

Also checked using Chrome/Firefox on Ubuntu, with the same result. iOS Mail App didn't grab anything with remote images turned off.

Considering it's an IE specific tag, I tried with IE and gmail, I couldn't get it to download anything, even when allowing remote images. IE was too bugged out trying to render gmail (not hating, stating).

Re: Facebook uses bgsound to see if you have opened an email

#45

Post by tzs »

ktizo wrote: post #38

I have yet to work out why anyone should wish to turn on html in emails ever and I always thought that was the start of email being broken. Protocols existed before machines and should serve us as well as them.

People turn on HTML in email because there is no other widely accepted alternative for rich text email.

As for why plain text only is not good enough, here's a simple thought experiment. Imagine that we did not have any kind of email. We invented computers, and computer networks, but somehow, incredibly, overlooked inventing email.

In this hypothetical world, people still communicate by writing letters, and sending them through the post office. Of course they write the letters on computers in word processors, and then print them, and it is the print outs that they mail.

Now, imagine in this hypothetical world that someone finally comes up with the idea of email, and pitches it as an electronic equivalent of regular mail that is faster and more convenient. Is he going to make it plain text only? Of course not. It will need to be as capable as physical mail, which means it needs to support sending anything that people can print on paper. That means some kind of rich format that can handle different typefaces and fonts, colors, inline images, and attached documents.

Email started off plain text only simply because when it was invented the technology wasn't up to the challenge of handling the presentation features of real mail. The technology has improved, and rich email is the natural, inevitable outcome.

Re: Facebook uses bgsound to see if you have opened an email

#46

Post by gpambrozio »

technel wrote: post #37

Given that this is a community of entrepreneurs, I'm surprised how unsympathetic a lot of people here are to this technique. Operating a business online, analytics are a very important part of understanding how your users interact with with your service and improving the quality of your correspondence. Facebook is just trying to identify which emails people respond to (i.e. open) most.

I agree that analytics is important, but users are still entitled to their privacy, at least until they say otherwise.

I'd say a nice way to go about it would be to use Read Receipts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_tracking#Read-receipts). I know they're kind of annoying, I have not used them in a while and I don't even know if gmail supports it but it would be the correct way to track opened emails.

Re: Facebook uses bgsound to see if you have opened an email

#47

Post by danso »

technel wrote: post #37

Given that this is a community of entrepreneurs, I'm surprised how unsympathetic a lot of people here are to this technique. Operating a business online, analytics are a very important part of understanding how your users interact with with your service and improving the quality of your correspondence. Facebook is just trying to identify which emails people respond to (i.e. open) most.

Wow, I hope that subscribing to this mindset is not the status quo among entrepreneurs. Another "very important" thing for most online businesses is money. Doesn't mean that we should accept it when they get it through underhanded means.

Re: Facebook uses bgsound to see if you have opened an email

#48

Post by marquis »

ElliotH wrote: post #32
mike-cardwell wrote: post #26

I've personally found loads of bugs in most of the major email clients and numerous webmail clients that cause them to make outgoing requests which can be detected (even with remote images disabled). Most of these are closed now. I have an automated tester which sends an HTML email with a bunch of tests like this bgsound one to your address which displays information about any callbacks. You can access it here: https…

Ooh thanks for this :) Got a "DNS Prefetch - Anchor" on Gmail

So did I, it picked up a Google IP address. Anyone know how to close this? I have images turned off.

Re: Facebook uses bgsound to see if you have opened an email

#49

Post by ktizo »

tzs wrote: post #45
ktizo wrote: post #38

I have yet to work out why anyone should wish to turn on html in emails ever and I always thought that was the start of email being broken. Protocols existed before machines and should serve us as well as them.

People turn on HTML in email because there is no other widely accepted alternative for rich text email. As for why plain text only is not good enough, here's a simple thought experiment. Imagine that we did not have any kind of email. We invented computers, and computer networks, but somehow, incredibly, overlooked inventing email. In this hypothetical world, people still communicate by writing letters, and sending t…

So, by the same logic, twitter should allow javascript to execute when I view some post about people microwaving small mammals.

Perhaps I should be more explicit.

My problem is not with the abilities to assign pixels to an output device. Email should not be an interactive proposition and should have no ability whatsoever to run code.

Re: Facebook uses bgsound to see if you have opened an email

#50

Post by RexRollman »

technel wrote: post #37

Given that this is a community of entrepreneurs, I'm surprised how unsympathetic a lot of people here are to this technique. Operating a business online, analytics are a very important part of understanding how your users interact with with your service and improving the quality of your correspondence. Facebook is just trying to identify which emails people respond to (i.e. open) most.

Just because the information is useful, that doesn't mean it is ethical to collect it.
Post reply on HN