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Holy crap. If I'm reading this right, this basically destroys all pixel tracking, so no more email open stats, no nothing.

by kevrone 13y ago

mml 13y ago
Yup. I'd really hate to be in the bulk email business today. Perhaps google will sell them back the data they used to create themselves.
- warfangle 13y ago
  The future of marketing is forming cohesive communities with your customers, anyways, not spamming the shit out of them.
  - austinhutch 13y ago
    What does a "cohesive community" look like and is anyone doing this today?
    - warfangle 13y ago
      No idea, and I don't think so. Just spitballing.
    - TillE 13y ago
      Indie/small/medium-sized videogame studios with forums. Alternatively, if you're not the sort of company that naturally engenders an active community, Twitter. It's not perfect, but it's a far better experience for customers who may want to keep up with what you're doing but don't want a new email to delete every week.
sitkack 13y ago
:) !
typpo 13y ago
Not quite. According to testers in the other thread[1], Google pulls images on mail open. This means marketers will get more accurate email open stats because now the default behavior is to load images. However, they don't get cookies, IP, etc so they lose some of that capability. Not all bad for marketers and spammers. I tried to opt-out of external content in Settings > General but unfortunately it's still loading images. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6895606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6895606
- kevrone 13y ago
  Very interesting. And seems like it doesn't affect most mobile users since they use a default client, for the most part.
dangerlibrary 13y ago
unique urls for each image still work. httpurl/image.jpeg?email=your.email@gmail.com
seiji 13y ago
You have no right to know what your users are doing after you send them a message. The privacy invading "tracking pixels" shouldn't exist in the first place.
- petercooper 13y ago
  Why shouldn't content providers be free to monitor usage if it's legal and easy to do? Would you next start to argue SaaS providers shouldn't have any Web server logs at all since it's a way of "tracking" users?
  - seiji 13y ago
    Web server logs are okay. Any javascript-based tracking and cross-site usage aggregation is not.
  - EGreg 13y ago
    If I choose to visit a website hosted by a server operated by someone else, that server is involved and can do whatever it wants. If a piece of content is delivered to me via the mail, I should be able to open a cached version as many times as I want without any request to the remote server. And the cached version can be built for me by my mail system, which by ALWAYS fetching the resources protects me. As a question of what SHOULD happen, I thinkread receipts should be voluntary.
    - petercooper 13y ago
      If a piece of content is delivered to me via the mail, I should be able to open a cached version as many times as I want without any request to the remote server. And the cached version can be built for me by my mail system, which by ALWAYS fetching the resources protects me. Agreed, and not even the server has to do that, any good e-mail client could (as it seems Gmail is now starting to do).
  - sedev 13y ago
    For the same reason that sending me a postcard doesn't entitle you to enter my house and take an inventory of my fridge. To get that information about a user, you should need informed consent, not just a marketer's wistful greed. That same "why not?" attitude is exactly the same bullshit user-contemptuous line of thinking that the NSA and the FBI use with their "intercept it all and let God sort it out" eavesdropping schemes.
JohnTHaller 13y ago
Email open stats have been bogus since most email clients switched to not loading external images by default.
sedev 13y ago
Yes, and as a consumer, I couldn't be happier. All that shit is customer-hostile privacy-invading bullshit and I'm ecstatic that Google is making a move that kills it. I vigorously object to things like tracking bugs that leak information about me without my consent, so I'm in favor of measures like Google's that get us further towards people being unable to go on data fishing expeditions such as were possible with inserting arbitrary tracking bugs in emails. HTML email is a giant attack surface not just for Outlook Express-style remote code execution, but for invasions of privacy. If a marketer can't do their job without invading my privacy, I have no sympathy for them and I hope that this technical change stabs their business model in the belly.

Holy crap. If I'm reading this right, this basically destroys all pixel tracking, so no more email open stats, no nothing.

by kevrone 13y ago

Holy crap. If I'm reading this right, this basically destroys all pixel tracking, so no more email open stats, no nothing.

mml 13y ago

Yup. I'd really hate to be in the bulk email business today. Perhaps google will sell them back the data they used to create themselves.

warfangle 13y ago
The future of marketing is forming cohesive communities with your customers, anyways, not spamming the shit out of them.
- austinhutch 13y ago
  What does a "cohesive community" look like and is anyone doing this today?
  - warfangle 13y ago
    No idea, and I don't think so. Just spitballing.
  - TillE 13y ago
    Indie/small/medium-sized videogame studios with forums. Alternatively, if you're not the sort of company that naturally engenders an active community, Twitter. It's not perfect, but it's a far better experience for customers who may want to keep up with what you're doing but don't want a new email to delete every week.

sitkack 13y ago

:) !

typpo 13y ago

Not quite. According to testers in the other thread[1], Google pulls images on mail open. This means marketers will get more accurate email open stats because now the default behavior is to load images. However, they don't get cookies, IP, etc so they lose some of that capability. Not all bad for marketers and spammers. I tried to opt-out of external content in Settings > General but unfortunately it's still loading images. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6895606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6895606

kevrone 13y ago
Very interesting. And seems like it doesn't affect most mobile users since they use a default client, for the most part.

dangerlibrary 13y ago

unique urls for each image still work. httpurl/image.jpeg?email=your.email@gmail.com

seiji 13y ago

You have no right to know what your users are doing after you send them a message. The privacy invading "tracking pixels" shouldn't exist in the first place.

petercooper 13y ago
Why shouldn't content providers be free to monitor usage if it's legal and easy to do? Would you next start to argue SaaS providers shouldn't have any Web server logs at all since it's a way of "tracking" users?
- seiji 13y ago
  Web server logs are okay. Any javascript-based tracking and cross-site usage aggregation is not.
- EGreg 13y ago
  If I choose to visit a website hosted by a server operated by someone else, that server is involved and can do whatever it wants. If a piece of content is delivered to me via the mail, I should be able to open a cached version as many times as I want without any request to the remote server. And the cached version can be built for me by my mail system, which by ALWAYS fetching the resources protects me. As a question of what SHOULD happen, I thinkread receipts should be voluntary.
  - petercooper 13y ago
    If a piece of content is delivered to me via the mail, I should be able to open a cached version as many times as I want without any request to the remote server. And the cached version can be built for me by my mail system, which by ALWAYS fetching the resources protects me. Agreed, and not even the server has to do that, any good e-mail client could (as it seems Gmail is now starting to do).
- sedev 13y ago
  For the same reason that sending me a postcard doesn't entitle you to enter my house and take an inventory of my fridge. To get that information about a user, you should need informed consent, not just a marketer's wistful greed. That same "why not?" attitude is exactly the same bullshit user-contemptuous line of thinking that the NSA and the FBI use with their "intercept it all and let God sort it out" eavesdropping schemes.

JohnTHaller 13y ago

Email open stats have been bogus since most email clients switched to not loading external images by default.

sedev 13y ago

Yes, and as a consumer, I couldn't be happier. All that shit is customer-hostile privacy-invading bullshit and I'm ecstatic that Google is making a move that kills it. I vigorously object to things like tracking bugs that leak information about me without my consent, so I'm in favor of measures like Google's that get us further towards people being unable to go on data fishing expeditions such as were possible with inserting arbitrary tracking bugs in emails. HTML email is a giant attack surface not just for Outlook Express-style remote code execution, but for invasions of privacy. If a marketer can't do their job without invading my privacy, I have no sympathy for them and I hope that this technical change stabs their business model in the belly.