Forum Moderators: DixonJones
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to the end of your <a href's in the mail, then look for them in the logs
welcome to WebmasterWorld!
Thereby possibly violating your stated privacy policy. Even Microsoft warns Outlook users that a read-receipt is about to be sent and asks permission to send it.
It's not a reciept - sending a receipt sends an email and you don't really need those.
If you have a graphical template but the graphics are loaded by the email directly from your server (like most emails) and not embedded in the actual email to reduce size, you can easily count the number of opens by the number of times the graphics are transmitted. If one of the graphics pashaps passes a hash code then you can count unique opens and WHO opened it if you want :)
As long as the information collected is only used for the purposes of the webmaster to manage the list and not distribued it's usually not a privacy violation based on how your terms are written and it's a very common practice in major email marketing campaigns.
DerekH
Bill: we're back to privacy issues. Commonly done or not, tracking whether an individual on your list opened one of your emails, and keeping that information attached to the person's email address in some database, is probably outside of many (not all) privacy policies and is probably offensive to a lot of people whether it's in the privacy policy or not. Commonly done or not ... hasn't anybody noticed a backlash against "common practices" of large commercial emailers? "Managing lists" is a euphemism for some questionable things.
As I said, even Microsoft Outlook knows better than to send, without your knowledge or permission, an individual-identified notification that you've opened their email. Is there a meaningful difference between a receipt email and one of these bugs? It doesn't feel that way to me.
ReUser2000 needs to decide whether this is an okay way to treat newsletter readers without explicitly informing them of the practice (and I don't mean in some privacy policy page).
Let's clarify we aren't talking about SPAM in this case, at least I'm not, it's all OPT-IN and above board. If people don't want to be tracked in a mailing then they shouldn't subscribe, real easy, and they can unsubscribe with one click.
Good, bad or indifferent I know people use HTML email to track their mass mailings whether you approve of it or not. Heck, if they are already tracking you as a registered customer using COOKIES the email will get a hit from the customer's cookie when you open the HTML email assuming they allowed cookies from your web site in the first place.
Someone else mentioned they don't allow loading of graphics from HTML email, that's fine, you probably wouldn't subscribe to catalog updates from major retailers anyway. These days when you subscribe to a mailing list that email might as well be considered a web page extension of that site that just happens to show up in your inbox complete with all the cookies and tracking as that's what most of them are.
One of my customers sends out emails with LIVE PERSON embedded in it so their customers can chat with SALES in real time as they open the email. You can actually see people opening email in REAL-TIME and watch them move from the email to read about the offer on the web site. Nobody has ever complained about this practice and in fact often use the chat feature if they are interested to ask questions.
Clever email marketing if you ask me.
You're confusing the handling of email RETURN RECEIPTS, which BTW has been part of email handling protocol way before that evil virus farm Outlook ever existed
Care to point it out to me? I can't see it...
[faqs.org...]
FYI, I run Mutt so never to worry about such things.
[sendmail.org...]
Our company was also involved in the X.400 discussions in the 90's which addressed formalization of many informal issues such as this.
Nice try.
The point is not the technology used. The point is that the recipient, on opening the email, triggers a message (email or not, I don't care) that tells the sender that that particular individual opened that email.
The point is that Microsoft Outlook asks the recipient, in a little popup window, if it's okay to inform the sender that the recipient (identifiable as an individual) has opened the email. The point is that "list managers" using the "clever" technology described do NOT ask the recipient if it's okay to inform the sender that the recipient, identifiable as an individual, has opened the email.
Some people care about the privacy implications. Others think it's not a big deal. A question of fact would be whether the average opt-in individual knows the extent to which a) their actions are known, or b) how far their email address is spread around, with the related ability to know those actions. I don't know the answer to that but I'm sure there are plenty of opinions about the answer.
At any rate, let's not confuse technical details with the central concepts.
Some people care about the privacy implications. Others think it's not a big deal.
If you're signing up for mailing lists you're accepting whatever privacy policy and practices that list employs and if privacy is really a concern then don't sign up, real simple and then it's a moot point.
If it's spam all bets are off, never open it and it's never a problem.
