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Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem
- JonAtkinson 7y agoOff-topic: I absolutely love the design choices made by the author of this site. It's the basic browser stylesheet with some nice refinements. A real triumph of minimalism and incredibly readable.
- srbby 7y agoFont is too big.
- pteraspidomorph 7y agoIt's very pleasant on QHD. I agree that they probably should have a different sheet for lower resolutions.
- giancarlostoro 7y agoThis is what kills me about web developers of 2017-2019 (maybe farther back to 2015 or 2016?). We had this awesome hype about supporting mobile resolutions with CSS years ago but now it seems like nobody accounts for the various screen form factors available when designing websites. Like those sites with the overly huge logos that look ridiculous and annoying on 1080p but I'm sure on 2k and higher they look fine. I don't want to scroll down an entire page worth of scrolling to read your article, it should be immediately available. Thankfully there's Firefox's Reader Mode.
- cptskippy 7y agoEverything is mobile first these days We had to write a line of business app used by office staff opening mail to feed high speed scanners to support mobile first with a responsive design.
- giancarlostoro 7y agoWhat worries me more is that, it's not always mobile first either. Sometimes it's just 4K first.
- cptskippy 7y agoI don't think I've encountered that yet, though I could see how someone living in a 4k would could overlooked us 1080plebs. It's like when the world switched from 640x480 to 800x600 and then to 1024x768. I'm more curious though if what you're experiencing might also be sites designed for high res phones. Most phones these days are 1080p or better.
- barrkel 7y agoIn principle, using resolution-independent units like points should be fine; it's using px instead of pt that leads to problems. (And the site is using px; it shouldn't.)
- pteraspidomorph 7y agoAs a web developer in the past I found - though maybe that has changed in recent years, let me know if that is the case - there aren't any real resolution-independent units you can use to design an interface that is comfortable on every medium. You can peg your design to things like viewport width or font size, but you always end up having to make an arbitrary decision at some point, because there is no way for the web browser to know the physical dimensions of the screen the webpage is actually being displayed on. You have to make educated guesses based on the relationship between width and height, user agent and other headers, stuff like that, and create different stylesheets for each case. The style for the 1920x1080 screen (rotated horizontally) of the smallest smartphones can't have the same font size as the style of a 1920x1080 30 inch desktop monitor.
- iamacyborg 7y agoHey man, I work in email dev, I'm at least a decade behind current web dev standards.
- chrismorgan 7y agoYou are incorrect. All CSS units are defined in a resolution-dependent way. (I think there has only every been one exception to this, an experimental unit `mozmm`, now discontinued, that attempted to be resolution-independent, representing one physical millimetre.) On screen, the px unit is king, being defined however the device chooses to define it—most commonly one or two device pixels. All other units are defined in terms of it: 1in = 96px = 72pt, &c. On print, the ratios are the same, but physical length units actually have meaning now, corresponding to physical measurements—well, maybe they do; in practice browsers play fast and loose with it all, second-guessing the website’s stylesheets all over the place, which is normally a good thing for users because few websites take care for print stylesheets, but is utterly debilitating if you actually care and want precision. Now the question of what the root font-size is (a unit I like to call “browser em” or “bem”—I’ve never heard anyone else give it a proper name)—that’s a much more interesting question. It’s almost always 16px (I have no stats ready to hand, but I’d suggest >99% of page views), but there are devices out there that have other values, mostly between 13px and 19px, and you can change the value in some browsers also. However, website layouts commonly break if the value is not 16px, if the font sizes are based in bems and media queries in px, or font sizes in px and media queries in bems, and the developers have assumed 16px (which is completely normal). The ideal situation is to use either px everywhere or bem everywhere. In theory, using relative units everywhere is potentially nicer. In practice, you’re fine using pixel units everywhere. But 24px is still way too big.
- iamnotacrook 7y agoQuite. It's like I've wondered into the Large Print section of the library. What's wrong with normal sized fonts, and letting the minority with impaired eyesight or curious hardware resize as desired? Or maybe browsers could expose some standard config info to sites saying "yeah, extra normal for me please"? I could use reader mode for everything, except it breaks some sites.
- username90 7y agoJust make it smaller? Ctrl + mouse wheel down or minus in chrome.
- martin_a 7y agoTotally. Not sure though, why. 1.2em would have just been fine, but instead 24px (which is 1.5em) is too large.
- iamacyborg 7y agoMostly just me being lazy and writing the stylesheet for my 1440p screen at home, I've done very little optimisation for other screens/devices.
- vince14 7y agoI'm also on 1440p and seeing your website with that "huge" font made my instantly happy. My Firefox is scaled up using layout.css.devPixelsPerPx with a value of 1.2 and even then I've to scale up most websites to at least 120% in order to see anything.
- hailk 7y agoTheir normal paragraph is 24px. Which is huge compared to the average content you find on web. The title is 48px. I find it more legible than the average web content, yet it's a little jarring. Some 22px/40px worked very well for me. Still a good example of minimal design.
- iamacyborg 7y agoThanks!
- aiCeivi9 7y agoThere is the Email Industry - that is the problem.
- ericb 7y agoJust because you associate emails with spam doesn't solve the problem of every charity, business, church, school and group needing to communicate with large numbers of email subscribers. Like anything, bad actors make it worse.
- satanspastaroll 7y agoNo "industry" is needed for pub/sub news. The GDPR only affects the companies abusing current system for unsoliticed advertising
- ericb 7y ago> GDPR only affects the companies abusing current system for unsoliticed advertising No. Have you looked at the thing? It affects every organization willing to do business or communicate with the EU.
- satanspastaroll 7y agoThe rules dictated in GDPR have been the best practices this far, now they're simply being enforced by law. The only ones that are (negatively) affected are the companies that are not wanted by the EU in the first place.
- ericb 7y ago> The only ones that are (negatively) affected are ... Not true. GDPR imposes costs on every company. Specifically there are the legal compliance costs, software compliance costs, support costs, and that's if you're a "good guy."
- criddell 7y ago
- buboard 7y agoGDPR is europe's problem, not of the entire "email industry"
- hjanssen 7y agoIt is a problem when you are targeting users from Europe, which you are doing almost certainly.
- buboard 7y agoWe already have more than enough cookie popups and "heads up" emails whenever a company changes a comma in their ToS. GDPR is a bureaucratic madness and not something to be imitated. Want to educate users about privacy? do it with extensive educational campaigns, not by ruining everyone's experience on the web
- degski 7y agoWhat really infuriates me is this: "We respect your privacy, click here".
- hjanssen 7y agoBut the general idea of GDPR is not only to educate. It also aims to give you tools at your disposal to control how and if your data is processed and stored. That is the most remarkable feat of GDPR. To complain that this is "bureaucratic madness" is not a problem with the regulation, it is a problem with your perception of personal data. If you didn't have tools before to enable users to control _their_ personal data, you are the problem and it is definitively good that you now have to invest into making sure you create those tools.
- Angostura 7y ago> do it with extensive educational campaigns And the point of GDPR is to give users the information to let consumers make informed choices and to make companies abide by those choices. There's no point in 'extensive education' if the consumer is still powerless to exercise that knowledge.
- addicted 7y agoSince the headline misled me, this is about the email marketing industry and their use of tracking pixels, as opposed to issues with generic emails.
- yxhuvud 7y agoIt is more than just tracking pixels - there is also things like personalized links that proxy the underlying link that are generated by the email provider to track clicks.
- srbby 7y agoI don't think anybody would call generic emails "the email industry"
- addicted 7y agoIt’s only people who are in the email marketing industry who think that they are the email industry. The email industry would comprise a lot more than just marketing. You have email providers. You have email clients. You have non commercial newsletters. You have evites. You have e-cards. You have emails related to ticketing and reservations. The email industry is far larger than email marketing, despite what the email marketeers would like us to believe.
- iamacyborg 7y agoI don't think email marketers think they encompass the entirety of the email industry, I was writing that article from the perspective of being an email marketer proposing something to my peers, ie others in the industry.
- ti_ranger 7y agoThe article title, "Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem", implies that. Either you do think email marketing comprises the entire industry, or the article title (and HN submission) are (or give the impression of) clickbait. At least it doesn't seem you are doing any direct tracking on the post though ... (I used to work for an ISP with a pretty large email service, so it touches nerves that were exposed when our enemies, those companies who try and find ways to irritate our customers, think they are the only important parts of the actual email industry)
- isostatic 7y ago"This stressed out a lot of email marketers, who quite rightly realised that the new regulations would have a significant effect on their ability to acquire and market to customers via their email address" "The overwhelming majority of commercial email sent today contains tracking pixels and tracking links, these are used to uniquely identify individuals so that opens and clicks can be correctly attributed to them" Good. While spammers may have a problem, people don't. If I want your tracking pixels and emails then I'll opt in.
- Phenix88be 7y agoI agree, this is a good thing, the GDPR was design to stress those people and give the control back to the user.
- microcolonel 7y agoWhat surprises me more is that tracking pixels even work anymore. What email clients don't bother to filter them out?
- giancarlostoro 7y agoDo any email clients block tracking pixels? My understanding is that they block images by default but if you choose to view them you will load all the tracking pixels.
- iamacyborg 7y agoArticle author here - Tracking pixels aren't blocked per se in most email clients but you're correct that they rely on images being loaded.
- giancarlostoro 7y agoThanks for answering, it's curious enough that I'm now looking into Thunderbird plugins to see if there's one to block (or try to) tracking pixels.
- GoodGOYIM 7y agoMost of my clients just blacklist EU countries given that they represent such a negligible percentage of their client base
- jmarbach 7y agoBrowsing the web in Europe is like experiencing the rebirth of the pop-up ads era. It has lead to compulsory acceptance. This too shall pass. There is a reasonable expectation that when you submit your email to a company in exchange for their service, they will email you communications relating to their products and services.
- FeepingCreature 7y agoI've been very satisfied to the extent to which these popups allow you to not opt in to everything and still use the site. I think the previous popups have trained us to assume that the popups are meaningless and we just have to click yes on everything. This is not so!
- pteraspidomorph 7y agoAs an european who rejects ad trackers on every website, I can confirm that a good 95% of them are correctly implemented and will let you keep browsing. Some of them (usually americans with a poor understanding of why they even implemented that) will kick you out or ask you again on every page load until you accept. We need a standard for managing these controls on the browser side, which major browsers can then implement. It wouldn't surprise me if people were already working on something like that. If I reject ads from google doubleclick specifically, they should be pre-rejected for every subsequent website that asks the same question. Likewise for the various cookie purposes. (I do understand the unfortunate potential for fingerprinting here...)
- vectorEQ 7y agoi don't think its a problem that people don't let you use the site if you don't opt-in. thats a design choice, not a fault or problem or bad implementation. just a show of that they would really really like to track you. if you don't want to be tracked, then it's a clear indicator to avoid such site in the future. I wholeheartedly agree on your point though, that if i reject 'A' on one site, it could be assumed by the browser i'd like to reject 'A' on the next site. Perhaps the same kind of block could occur like they do with faulty ssl settings, just stating that you blocked 'A' on some site ,and this site is using the same, with a button to proceed if you accept that fact.
- jakobegger 7y agoI think the GDPR is a good opportunity to reflect how much tracking we really need. Tracking has become so ubiquitous, it's become the default to put Google Analytics on a site, to put a tracking pixel into every email, to personalize every link we send out... But so much of that tracking isn't really necessary. I've stopped tracking website visitors and stopped including tracking pixels in emails a few years ago, and nothing has really changed. So, I guess I won't know if 10% open my marketing emails or 50%. But who cares? I wouldn't even know what to do with the information anyway. I'd rather focus on making my product better.
- tom_mellior 7y ago> So, I guess I won't know if 10% open my marketing emails or 50%. You didn't know before either since many mail programs block tracking pixels. This was always garbage data to a large extent.
- arielm 7y agoGmail doesn’t (kind of), and that’s a big enough slice of email users these days...
- rypskar 7y agoDoesn't gmail load images when the email get to the server and not when the email is opened? (That is at least what some who know more about email than I do say) So the only thing tracking pixel really have shown is if the user uses gmail or not
- iamacyborg 7y agoNope, the image loads when the email is opened by the unique recipient.
- martin_a 7y agoOnly for the US market, outside of that there are lots of mail providers which are instead used. GMail addresses are a scarcity in Europe.
- mnm1 7y agoIt's been over a year now and so many sites are not in compliance. I'm surprised the EU doesn't start collecting fines from companies like Yahoo and TechCrunch (and all oath sites). Just two that come to mind that are blatantly violating the gdpr with absolutely no way to not consent to their tracking. Mass email spammers are another issue. Why isn't the EU collecting this money from these large orgs that are clearly in violation? It could do a lot to help the people here.
- Nazzareno 7y agoTrue that the European user should be able to opt-out just from tracking. Our platform MailUp (ESP) is handling this in the preference center (that can be customized). Here is a sample: https://updates.mailup.com/frontend/preferencecenter/363734/5533444f-58b9-46f6-9913-9097dbd8b62c/98/13414/ https://updates.mailup.com/frontend/preferencecenter/363734/...
- Angostura 7y agoBy default the European user should be opted out of tracking
- martin_a 7y agoThis and only this is a valid, legal solution according to the GDPR. Especially all the "by continuing to use our site, you'll agree to getting the shit tracked out of you"-messages are highly illegal, because the GDPR requires explicit consent. Sadly there have been no big legal cases up till now. But the time will come.
- iamacyborg 7y agoBingo.
- LaGrange 7y ago> True that the European user should be able to opt-out just from tracking. No, and if that's how it's implemented by you then you're breaking the rules here. It should be opt-in. And yes, I know that at that point you could probably just delete the tracking. If that breaks your business model, all I have to say to you is bye.
- forgottenpass 7y agoThe last thing I need is another godforsaken preferences center inside a product I was forced to become a "user" of just because some asshole bought my email address.
- richardwhiuk 7y agoI thought GDPR required tracking to be opt in? I can't see how tracking pixels on emails comply at all.
- 0xfaded 7y agoGPDR missed a massive opportunity to standardize encrypted email. Instead we're now stuck with crappy 3rd party "secure mail" systems. I have a startup in Denmark, and the incubator we're part of applied for an EU funding scheme. The bureaucracy for these programs is out of control, and there are claims out there that 90% of state innovation funding is blown on administration. Long story short, I had to fill out some timesheets, and because of GDPR print out the sheets filling in everything except the personally identifying information, and then fill the rest of them out with a PEN.
- thiccly 7y agoMy friends in IM told me I was stupid for not "building an email list" for my high traffic website. Still see no good reason to do it.
- really3452 7y agoPersonal opinion: Pictures and HTML have no place in email. Full stop.
- chrismorgan 7y ago> This might be one of the very few instances in which I’d recommend SFMC What is SFMC?
- reilly3000 7y agoWhile conducting a GDPR review I discovered that our email service provider (Campaign Monitor) was logging IP addresses of our list members associated with each email open. My jaw dropped when I noticed that they were doing geo-ip enrichment, so that I could drill into any subscriber, see a history of their opening of our newsletters, and a map of their approximate location. I could see if "Bruce" was in Melborne or Petaluma on April 23rd. That kind of data is straight up dangerous and would be very hard to justify on a Legitimate Interest Assessment. That said, I haven't found a way to disable or purge that data thus far, and have been having a hard time finding an ESP that doesn't log IPs for its open tracking. We legitimately need open tracking, but certainly not with non-hashed IPs exposed. Realistically, just overall open rate reporting would suffice for our use case, not tracking of individual list member's activity.