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SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

cappe.github.io

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Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#11

Post by shantara »

petercooper wrote: post #10
crisp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably the only way with SendGrid to strip down all of the trackers. Single Send is simple to use but apparently dude's gotta write his own mailer script to send emails via the API.

I've taken a look and a lot of this single send/marketing stuff seems new (to me – it could well be a few years old!). I don't think it was in place when we started using Sendgrid several years ago. Sendgrid has only been an email "pipe" to us – no campaign or list management, email designing, etc. I think they've added that stuff on top of their traditional offering in recent years.

I suggest checking Tracking settings in your Sendgrid account. I found myself in a similar situation with a tracking pixel being embedded in my personal email notifications. After checking the settings page, turns out Open tracking and Click tracking were enabled, even though I always disable everything spyware-related in every account I create. I can only assume they were silently added and enabled at some point during the last couple of years.

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#12

Post by petercooper »

shantara wrote: post #11
petercooper wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken a look and a lot of this single send/marketing stuff seems new (to me – it could well be a few years old!). I don't think it was in place when we started using Sendgrid several years ago. Sendgrid has only been an email "pipe" to us – no campaign or list management, email designing, etc. I think they've added that stuff on top of their traditional offering in recent years.

I suggest checking Tracking settings in your Sendgrid account. I found myself in a similar situation with a tracking pixel being embedded in my personal email notifications. After checking the settings page, turns out Open tracking and Click tracking were enabled, even though I always disable everything spyware-related in every account I create. I can only assume they were silently added and enabled at some point dur…

Even better, I checked the actual HTML received from a few recent campaigns - no Sendgrid tracking either at link or image level, luckily! :-)

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#13

Post by crisp »

shantara wrote: post #11
petercooper wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken a look and a lot of this single send/marketing stuff seems new (to me – it could well be a few years old!). I don't think it was in place when we started using Sendgrid several years ago. Sendgrid has only been an email "pipe" to us – no campaign or list management, email designing, etc. I think they've added that stuff on top of their traditional offering in recent years.

I suggest checking Tracking settings in your Sendgrid account. I found myself in a similar situation with a tracking pixel being embedded in my personal email notifications. After checking the settings page, turns out Open tracking and Click tracking were enabled, even though I always disable everything spyware-related in every account I create. I can only assume they were silently added and enabled at some point dur…

As you can see from the blog post, those tracking settings are/were disabled. As a developer I know that it's easy to leave wrong default values on checkboxes so I went to first disable them (it was enabled by default) -> enable -> disable.

The tracking pixel was added in test emails as well as in the actual emails nevertheless.

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#14

Post by shantara »

crisp wrote: post #13
shantara wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest checking Tracking settings in your Sendgrid account. I found myself in a similar situation with a tracking pixel being embedded in my personal email notifications. After checking the settings page, turns out Open tracking and Click tracking were enabled, even though I always disable everything spyware-related in every account I create. I can only assume they were silently added and enabled at some point dur…

As you can see from the blog post, those tracking settings are/were disabled. As a developer I know that it's easy to leave wrong default values on checkboxes so I went to first disable them (it was enabled by default) -> enable -> disable. The tracking pixel was added in test emails as well as in the actual emails nevertheless.

I'm not arguing with the premise of the blog post. In my case, the emails were send as "single-send", not a part of a campaign, so disabling the options worked. But the blog post was very helpful nonetheless, as it lead me to discover the mysteriously enabled tracking options, which I would have never got around to checking myself.

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#16

Post by crisp »

adders wrote: post #15

Not an expert at all, but my basic understanding of GDPR is if you outsource a service to a 3rd party and they collect data or do any processing that they shouldn't, you are essentially responsible.

It makes sense. I'm the one selecting the tooling afterall so I should also be responsible for making sure to comply with whatever laws/directives there are.

This being said, it feels unfair when you try to comply but somebody fucks you over.

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#17

Post by jwr »

BTW, don't use SendGrid unless you intend to pay them lots of money for a dedicated IP. I've been using them for a couple of years now and it's extremely frustrating, because they are used by spammers and do not react quickly enough or simply do not care. Some of your E-mails will end up sent from IPs that landed in various anti-spam blackhole systems already and will never reach their destination.

This happens regularly and makes SendGrid totally useless for transactional E-mail (I prefer to send it myself) and problematic for things like product updates.

I complained to them about this problem many times and it is my impression that this is a way to force-upsell customers to higher plans with dedicated IPs.

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#18

Post by crisp »

jwr wrote: post #17

BTW, don't use SendGrid unless you intend to pay them lots of money for a dedicated IP. I've been using them for a couple of years now and it's extremely frustrating, because they are used by spammers and do not react quickly enough or simply do not care. Some of your E-mails will end up sent from IPs that landed in various anti-spam blackhole systems already and will never reach their destination. This happens regul…

Thanks for the insight. It's the only mailer service I've used so far but seems like I gotta do some exploring.

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#19

Post by notreallyserio »

jwr wrote: post #17

BTW, don't use SendGrid unless you intend to pay them lots of money for a dedicated IP. I've been using them for a couple of years now and it's extremely frustrating, because they are used by spammers and do not react quickly enough or simply do not care. Some of your E-mails will end up sent from IPs that landed in various anti-spam blackhole systems already and will never reach their destination. This happens regul…

I'm not sure this is limited to SendGrid. Are there comparable email services that don't use shared IPs or that have done a consistently good job of stopping spammers? I've had moderate-to-poor luck with Mailgun (Yahoo and Microsoft don't really like them much).

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#20

Post by technothrasher »

crisp wrote: post #18
jwr wrote: post #17

BTW, don't use SendGrid unless you intend to pay them lots of money for a dedicated IP. I've been using them for a couple of years now and it's extremely frustrating, because they are used by spammers and do not react quickly enough or simply do not care. Some of your E-mails will end up sent from IPs that landed in various anti-spam blackhole systems already and will never reach their destination. This happens regul…

Thanks for the insight. It's the only mailer service I've used so far but seems like I gotta do some exploring.

I've been exploring lately, and the only two I've actually tried so far are SendGrid and Amazon SES. Both of them have a free tier that lets me play. Both of them have so far had pretty poor deliverability due to being in blacklists, though SendGrid has been better.

I'm just looking for something that doesn't cost an arm and a leg for the minimal email volume I send, and that has better deliverability than sending myself with a VPS, as there's usually at least one bad actor in any /24 your typical VPS will land in and that punishes your deilverability.

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