Mwahahaha!
“Spy Pixels in Emails Have Become Endemic“
BBC | 16 February 2021 | Leo KelionThe use of “invisible” tracking tech in emails is now “endemic,”
… and you thought a pandemic was pretty bad.
according to a messaging service that analysed its traffic at the BBC’s request.
Hey‘s review indicated that two-thirds of emails sent to its users’ personal accounts contained a “spy pixel,” even after excluding for spam.
I like the name of the company.
They should take part in a good Abbot-and-Costello routine.
Then they should partner with “Cut It Out!”
Its makers said that many of the largest brands used email pixels, with the exception of the “big tech” firms.
Oh, no; not them. Never them. They’ve got subtler means.
Defenders of the trackers . . .
“Hi, good-looking — what do you do for a living?”
“I defend hidden email trackers. I’m one of their defenders!”
. . . say they are a commonplace marketing tactic.
And several of the companies involved noted their use of such tech was mentioned within their wider privacy policies.
. . . about seventeen furlongs down in their End User Agreements.
Emails pixels can be used to log:
… if and when an email is opened
… how many times it is opened
… what device or devices are involved
… the user’s rough physical location, deduced from their internet protocol (IP) address
Now, how did they know my physical location is rough?
Tracking pixels are typically a .GIF or .PNG file that is as small as 1×1 pixels, which is inserted into the header, footer or body of an email.
Since they often show the colour . . .
“Colour.” Heh-heh-heh.
. . . of the content below, they can be impossible to spot with the naked eye even if you know where to look.
Recipients do not need to click on a link or do anything to activate them beyond open an email they are embedded in.
British Airways, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, HSBC, Marks & Spencer, Asos and Unilever are among UK brands Hey detected to be using them.
Tracking pixels are a standard feature of automated email services used by large and small businesses, and in many cases the facility is difficult to turn off.
(Customers, by contrast, are the opposite.)
Clients can use them to track how many emails in a specific campaign are opened in aggregate, as well as to automatically stop sending messages to customers who ignore them.
Adapt this artificial intelligence to the male of the species, and you will have made a real contribution.
The BBC asked some of the companies identified by Hey for their own response.
British Airways said: “We take customer data extremely seriously, and use a cross-industry standard approach that allows us to understand how effective our customer communications are.”
TalkTalk said: “As is common across our industry and others, we track the performance of different types of communications to understand what our customers prefer. We do not share this data externally.”
IMAO’s response to questions was to release an emu.
Only one Emu? I would have released the whole herd.
(Errr, not that we HAVE a whole herd of Emus just waiting to be released. Honest. You can trust us, we’re from IMAO the Trust leader in trustfulness.)
Smithers, release the Emus!
It is my understanding that one Emu will suffice…
Not for thieves like this. They must hurt, hurt bad.
So, is it an image tag whose URL says to load it from an external server, so the server software can get data from the request?
My comments are much more palatable in the aggregate…