Facebook uses bgsound to see if you have opened an email • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by jiggy2011 » Mon, Mar 05, 2012, 10:27 AM UTC

One thing that puzzles me. Pretty much every email client now will not display images in HTML emails by default.

But most email marketing tools provide some metric called "% of emails opened" or something similar.

Now assuming that the marketing emails you send out are mostly text (as they should be), it seems unlikely that many recipients will bother clicking the "Show Images" button since there is no reason for them to do so (not to mention that it often brings up a privacy warning or the function may have been entirely disabled by IT for unknown sources).

So in that case, that metric must be enormously unreliable. So much so as to be basically meaningless?

I have also heard statistics from business types who say things like "Email marketing is useless, only x% of people even open the emails" and I have also seen such things repeated on websites about internet marketing.

Something doesn't seem quite right here.

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

#92

Post by aptwebapps » Mon, Mar 05, 2012, 1:17 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #85

aptwebapps wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is zzz90210's post dead? Everyone knows about tracking via images. I never considered something like bgsound, probably a lot of other people did not as well. And it's the whole point of the article.

His post is dead because this comment he made: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3662065 Took his karma negative, and once that happened his account was killed. As a new member you have to be careful about controversial statements until you build up a karma cushion.

I see, an indirect cause didn't occur to me.

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

#93

Post by hrabago » Mon, Mar 05, 2012, 1:20 PM UTC

qeorge wrote: post #21

redcircle wrote: post #14

Can you read the post without signing into a Google account? I click through via my iPhone, and get prompted for a Google account. Isn't this a post about getting tracked on the web?

I can on my desktop, but I can't on my (Android) tablet. On the tablet Google actually wants me to create a Google Profile before I can read the article. I've never run into this before today. I wonder if its new.

Ahh thanks for this extra bit of info. I use an iPhone browser which lets me select my user agent, so in cases like these, I tell it to pose as Safari on a Mac. With this, I was able to read the post.

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

#94

Post by TheCapn » Mon, Mar 05, 2012, 3:10 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #73

Drbble wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right in principle, but this isn't a tricky detail about email. This is fundamentally how Facebook and Google run their businesses.

Tracking email opens is surely helpful to their businesses, but is it really fundamental?

Depends on how you look at it. To me their business models are about understanding their users and exploiting their behaviors for more revenue. Understanding their behaviors in regards to email usage is one of the ways they work. To me "understanding user behaviors' is definitely fundamental

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

#95

Post by mike-cardwell » Mon, Mar 05, 2012, 4:39 PM UTC

vimalg2 wrote: post #81

mike-cardwell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That one used to trigger on Thunderbird and Apple Mail. It was fixed after I submitted the relevant bug reports.

Could you link to the fix/bug report? My mozilla-ppa(deb) Thunderbird 10.0.2 leaks like the Titanic after the iceberg. Gmail does much much better - a counter-intuitive result.

DNS pre-fetching was disabled in v3.0.2 - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=544745#c21

I am surprised that you're seeing leaks in Thunderbird 10.0.2. That is my own client of choice so I'm always keeping an eye on it after updates and I am not currently seeing any leaks... If you have remote images disabled, are you still seeing leaks? If so, which ones?

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

#96

Post by mike-cardwell » Mon, Mar 05, 2012, 4:42 PM UTC

TheCapn wrote: post #94

eli wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tracking email opens is surely helpful to their businesses, but is it really fundamental?

Depends on how you look at it. To me their business models are about understanding their users and exploiting their behaviors for more revenue. Understanding their behaviors in regards to email usage is one of the ways they work. To me "understanding user behaviors' is definitely fundamental

Even if Google did zero tracking of users, they'd still be able to display adverts relevant to the search term used when displaying search results. Tracking you across sites just increases their profit, it's not necessary for their business to exist and be profitable. And even if you argue that it is necessary for them to remain profitable, then they don't deserve to remain profitable. Not at this expense.

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

#97

Post by btilly » Mon, Mar 05, 2012, 4:50 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #73

Drbble wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right in principle, but this isn't a tricky detail about email. This is fundamentally how Facebook and Google run their businesses.

Tracking email opens is surely helpful to their businesses, but is it really fundamental?

It is one of the classic things to track in A/B tests. And A/B testing is a pretty fundamental part of their business.

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

#98

Post by vimalg2 » Mon, Mar 05, 2012, 5:42 PM UTC

mike-cardwell wrote: post #95

vimalg2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you link to the fix/bug report? My mozilla-ppa(deb) Thunderbird 10.0.2 leaks like the Titanic after the iceberg. Gmail does much much better - a counter-intuitive result.

DNS pre-fetching was disabled in v3.0.2 - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=544745#c21 I am surprised that you're seeing leaks in Thunderbird 10.0.2. That is my own client of choice so I'm always keeping an eye on it after updates and I am not currently seeing any leaks... If you have remote images disabled, are you still seeing leaks? If so, which ones?

It was just a dns pre-fetch. (I never expected Thunderbird to do that.)

I disabled preFetch in the config editor and my ship's running dry again.

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

#99

Post by pork » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 9:13 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #97

eli wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tracking email opens is surely helpful to their businesses, but is it really fundamental?

It is one of the classic things to track in A/B tests. And A/B testing is a pretty fundamental part of their business.

Flawed logic; A/B tests are hypothesis testing, the specific hypotheses can still violate one's privacy. If they could use a bit of retrofitted code to surreptitiously capture your text messages and geolocation, it would certainly help their business, but would it be ethical?