4 ms·
How does this affect invisible pixels (for analytics)?
by draz 13y ago
How does this affect invisible pixels (for analytics)?
- badbrain 13y agoBadly: http://blog.movableink.com/gmails-recent-image-handling-changes-the-impact-and-resolution http://blog.movableink.com/gmails-recent-image-handling-chan...
- roryhughes 13y agoWould the image not still load only once the receiver opens it?
- Anonymous98236 13y agoTo clarify, it's bad for marketing people, but good for users desiring privacy.
- GrinningFool 13y agoTo an extent - it seems that google indirectly confirms that emails are received (even though additional data is lost).
- Anonymous98236 13y agoI believe they still have an "Ask before displaying external images" setting.
- GrinningFool 13y agoYes, but it is unclear whether their servers will load them regardless of whether or not they're sent to my browser.
- eterm 13y agoBut surely ALL emails to @gmail.com are received.
- valgaze 13y agoA outfit like Yesware provides rough location data w/ their pixels. FWIW, they're partially funded by Google Ventures- perhaps there is some type of technical compromise that doesn't break geographic tracking completely: http://www.yesware.com/blog/2012/07/18/how-does-yesware-tracking-work/ http://www.yesware.com/blog/2012/07/18/how-does-yesware-trac...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- cantfindmypass 13y agoHow can this possibly do anything but enable tracking? They can just embed hmac(secret, your_email).png.
- twoodfin 13y agoTracking is currently only useful insofar as receiving a URL request for the image indicates that someone opened the email, as well as providing whatever metadata is available via the request, through geo-locating the request IP or what-have-you. This change makes all of that impossible: Google will (presumably) always request your image URL, whether the user opens the email or not, and the request will come from Google, with their metadata, not your target.
- mratzloff 13y ago> Google will (presumably) always request your image URL Why presumably?
- twoodfin 13y agoBecause relative to the quantity of email Gmail has to process, the images returned from tracking links are likely a drop in the bucket, and requesting them all provides their users with even better privacy protection than the "Show Images" toggle did. If you want to be cynical, you can note that Google will still know which emails you opened and which you did not. Does the current Gmail TOS restrict them from selling that information to advertisers, or (more likely) using it to target ads? Probably not! I suppose if they're clever, they'll figure out when a sender is serving a million copies of the same image to slightly altered URLs in the same email template, and forgo the requests, but either way, the sender loses the analytics.
- mratzloff 13y agoIf you want to be cynical (or perhaps realist), you will see this as just another effort to push marketers to paying for expanded analytics data from Google. I doubt any of this is done with the privacy of users in mind.
- pbreit 13y agoIt doesn't sound that bad. First, apparently only affecting 2-5% of mail. Secondly, everything works the same except for the absence of useragent and cache control headers (which aren't that helpful anyhow for analytics, especially when you're still getting those on 90%+ of your messages).
- natch 13y agoIt devalues other tracking solutions, and makes Google's own paid analytics services more compelling. So users will still be tracked, but the trackers are more likely to have to share some of the money and data with Google.
- mcintyre1994 13y agoGoogle offer paid email analytics? Out of interest do they have a free version like they do for websites too? All I can find online are things like [0] showing how to use web analytics to track emails etc. [0] https://plus.google.com/+DanielWaisberg/posts/XDrRoh3GoVP https://plus.google.com/+DanielWaisberg/posts/XDrRoh3GoVP