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What irks me is when email newsletters that I'm willfully subscribed to (the Economist comes to mind) inform me that "since I haven't been interacting" my subsc

What irks me is when email newsletters that I'm willfully subscribed to (the Economist comes to mind) inform me that "since I haven't been interacting" my subscription will be terminated. I have too been "interacting" (or as I call it, "reading") but my email client, very sensibly, doesn't load external resources, like pictures, willy nilly.

btgeekboy 6y ago
It's quite the juxtaposition seeing your post right next to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26163842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26163842
- wastholm 6y ago
  As someone with a daily email "newsletter" of my own [1], I am aware of (many of) the vagaries of spam filters. I use plain text only, though, so I couldn't use tracking pixels even if I wanted to. I do unsubscribe users if messages start bouncing but I have no way of knowing if they get silently dropped or spamfoldered. As someone who subscribes to lots of newsletters, the "interact or we will auto-unsubscribe you" thing still annoys me. [1]: https://www.aphorismsgalore.com/daily https://www.aphorismsgalore.com/daily
  - jedimastert 6y ago
    > I do unsubscribe users if messages start bouncing but I have no way of knowing if they get silently dropped or spamfoldered. IF you get spamfoldered by enough people the provider will just start sending to the spam folder for everyone. Your newsletter is now useless
    - anewone 6y ago
      And on top of that, some mail providers like Gmail won't even tell you this is happening. I understand why they don't but it's really difficult if you're a small time newsletter trying to get off the ground.
encom 6y ago
I think all sane email clients block external resources in emails. And if I ever get a time machine, I'm going back for the first guy to put HTML in emails, and then Hitler second. Additionally, if I'm receiving a message from example.com, and links in the message are not targeted at example.com, but some bullshit like sendgrid with a query string that won't fit across a 4K monitor, I'm deleting it. The other day I received an email from ft.dk, the danish Folketing. Our parliament. I mean legit dot gov stuff. It had email tracking through Sendgrid. I sent them a strongly worded email and asked them to cut American tracking companies out of our democratic process. And then I deleted the email. All this tracking seems to have just become the new normal, and hardly anyone cares about it.
- mcv 6y ago
  Your government should have a place where you can report phishing email. I would definitely report mails with these kind of suspicious links. If they see their legitimate emails getting recognised as phishing, hopefully they'll reconsider their bad practices.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  > I think all sane email clients block external resources in emails. Of the major email clients, I believe Thunderbird is the only one that does so by default.
jsmith99 6y ago
I wish The Economist was so careful when emailing me. I frequently get spam from them about 'exclusive subscriber only events' with no unsubscribe link because 'This service email [sic] contains important information about your subscription.'
- alpaca128 6y ago
  Reminds me of my bank. Whenever they change their terms of service or do anything that could affect my account they send an automated notification email that pretends to have been sent by an actual employee, and always with a subject line like "XYZ sent you an important message regarding your account". As any UI designer knows, if everything is important nothing is important, and so I just treat those as the spam they are. Which lead to a legitimately important mail getting lost, but it only caused problems for them so ironically they shot themselves in the foot with their dark patterns.
dalke 6y ago
The ACS (American Chemical Society) did that to me. Odd thing was, I wasn't on any of their mailing lists. Which would explain why they didn't register a tracking pixel for a long time.
eli 6y ago
Anti-spam technology forces newsletter publishers to do this. For example, gmail punishes senders who send too many messages that recipients don't interact with.
- kijiki 6y ago
  gmail presumably doesn't need to use a tracking pixel to determine if someone opened an email in the gmail interface...
  - abestic9 6y ago
    But if I’m using IMAP I’m downloading all messages and potentially interacting with all, some or none of them.
  - eli 6y ago
    But as a newsletter publisher they don't share that information with me. If I don't track it myself, eventually my engagement metrics will fall below a certain (undisclosed) level and everything goes to the spam folder.
    - cwhiz 6y ago
      That is surprising, and unfortunate. I believe this will ultimately have to change. The percentage of people blocking remote content will only go up. I block ALL remote content in my emails, and there is nothing that will convince me to stop doing that.
      - eli 6y ago
        Can you imagine the comment threads if google was secretly sharing inbox engagement data with marketers? Anyway, it's been like this for years and the overwhelming majority of email clients load images by default so everyone mostly works around it. I don't think it's changing any time soon.
        6y ago

btgeekboy 6y ago

It's quite the juxtaposition seeing your post right next to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26163842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26163842

wastholm 6y ago
As someone with a daily email "newsletter" of my own [1], I am aware of (many of) the vagaries of spam filters. I use plain text only, though, so I couldn't use tracking pixels even if I wanted to. I do unsubscribe users if messages start bouncing but I have no way of knowing if they get silently dropped or spamfoldered. As someone who subscribes to lots of newsletters, the "interact or we will auto-unsubscribe you" thing still annoys me. [1]: https://www.aphorismsgalore.com/daily https://www.aphorismsgalore.com/daily
- jedimastert 6y ago
  > I do unsubscribe users if messages start bouncing but I have no way of knowing if they get silently dropped or spamfoldered. IF you get spamfoldered by enough people the provider will just start sending to the spam folder for everyone. Your newsletter is now useless
  - anewone 6y ago
    And on top of that, some mail providers like Gmail won't even tell you this is happening. I understand why they don't but it's really difficult if you're a small time newsletter trying to get off the ground.

encom 6y ago

I think all sane email clients block external resources in emails. And if I ever get a time machine, I'm going back for the first guy to put HTML in emails, and then Hitler second. Additionally, if I'm receiving a message from example.com, and links in the message are not targeted at example.com, but some bullshit like sendgrid with a query string that won't fit across a 4K monitor, I'm deleting it. The other day I received an email from ft.dk, the danish Folketing. Our parliament. I mean legit dot gov stuff. It had email tracking through Sendgrid. I sent them a strongly worded email and asked them to cut American tracking companies out of our democratic process. And then I deleted the email. All this tracking seems to have just become the new normal, and hardly anyone cares about it.

mcv 6y ago
Your government should have a place where you can report phishing email. I would definitely report mails with these kind of suspicious links. If they see their legitimate emails getting recognised as phishing, hopefully they'll reconsider their bad practices.
jcranmer 6y ago
> I think all sane email clients block external resources in emails. Of the major email clients, I believe Thunderbird is the only one that does so by default.

jsmith99 6y ago

I wish The Economist was so careful when emailing me. I frequently get spam from them about 'exclusive subscriber only events' with no unsubscribe link because 'This service email [sic] contains important information about your subscription.'

alpaca128 6y ago
Reminds me of my bank. Whenever they change their terms of service or do anything that could affect my account they send an automated notification email that pretends to have been sent by an actual employee, and always with a subject line like "XYZ sent you an important message regarding your account". As any UI designer knows, if everything is important nothing is important, and so I just treat those as the spam they are. Which lead to a legitimately important mail getting lost, but it only caused problems for them so ironically they shot themselves in the foot with their dark patterns.

dalke 6y ago

The ACS (American Chemical Society) did that to me. Odd thing was, I wasn't on any of their mailing lists. Which would explain why they didn't register a tracking pixel for a long time.

eli 6y ago

Anti-spam technology forces newsletter publishers to do this. For example, gmail punishes senders who send too many messages that recipients don't interact with.

kijiki 6y ago
gmail presumably doesn't need to use a tracking pixel to determine if someone opened an email in the gmail interface...
- abestic9 6y ago
  But if I’m using IMAP I’m downloading all messages and potentially interacting with all, some or none of them.
- eli 6y ago
  But as a newsletter publisher they don't share that information with me. If I don't track it myself, eventually my engagement metrics will fall below a certain (undisclosed) level and everything goes to the spam folder.
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    That is surprising, and unfortunate. I believe this will ultimately have to change. The percentage of people blocking remote content will only go up. I block ALL remote content in my emails, and there is nothing that will convince me to stop doing that.
    - eli 6y ago
      Can you imagine the comment threads if google was secretly sharing inbox engagement data with marketers? Anyway, it's been like this for years and the overwhelming majority of email clients load images by default so everyone mostly works around it. I don't think it's changing any time soon.
      - 6y ago