Email tracking no longer working

End of email tracking?

[lukasz]

Last month Microsoft retooled its Hotmail service, adding a feature that allows users to block web bugs placed inside email messages. A similar option exists in the most recent version of Microsoft's widely used Outlook Express email program, and the company says the next release of its other email program, Outlook, will block the tracking mechanisms by default... Web bugs, which online marketers refer to as pixel tags, are used by creators of web pages and advertisers to keep track of visits to a page...

full article [smh.com.au]

[edit_g]

Not the end - I think most people have been using other methods to track their emails for a while now. Using unique URL's and images. Pixel tags are the lazy way to do it.

[Mardi_Gras]

(in the next version of Outlook) Content from external websites will be turned off by default

The end of HTML mail?

[edit_g]

Shouldn't think it will be - you can turn off the images in your browser and after a while you'll just get annoyed and turn them on again. They won't actually block the html mails - the images will just be red crosses.

The wast majority of Outlook 2003 users will be using it in the office - and they'll most likely have to turn it on because of their jobs. It will also be quite annoying for users because all the spam merchants will start embedding their images in their emails - this will make them gigantic. There has also been talk of outlook looking at the image url and checking for unique id's - and then blocking it.

Maybe the next step is blocking all html mail - now that would be serious.

[Mardi_Gras]

It just sounds to me like that is the direction MS is headed in, edit_g. All they have to do is just ship Outlook with "View all messages as plain text" enabled by default (a similar setting now exists in OE).

How many "typical" users will even know how to turn on HTML if that happens?

I don't want to say the sky is falling ;), but it seems to me the future does not look bright for HTML mail.