Web Bugs the New Norm For Businesses? 108
An anonymous reader writes "What ever happened to the good old days, when underhanded email practices were only used by shady email marketing companies and spammers? Today, it seems, the mainstream corporate world has begun to employ the same tactics as spammers to track their customers' email. Jonathan Zdziarski noted in a blog entry that AT&T is using web bugs to track email sent to customers. Could this be used for nefarious purposes?"
Email client remote image blocking (Score:3, Insightful)
Turn off preview. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How Long? (Score:3, Insightful)
2003 called (Score:5, Insightful)
it wants its story back
this news is very old
i read email text only. i'm not paranoid, i just prefer it. the conversion to text sometimes results in some really fugly emails, and they are always emails from businesses, usually ads. and i'm talking about valid businesses i have some sort of demographic contact with with my lame public email address (as opposed to my personal public email address, that i actually attempt to protect and actually pay attention to): starbucks, cvs, best buy, verizon, etc
i pay attention to 1% of such emails, usually for half a second, when i scan this folder maybe once a month for any valid correspondence. but the image links always stand out since they usually burst the flow of text when converted to text. they are always something like 88daeef445bb23c1.jpg. never banner.jpg or greatoffer.jpg. it's always some unique code
yes, every time you view an html email (with automatic image download), you are spied on. this should be of no surprise to anyone half awake, since this is true for i would say a decade or more as the normal status quo
Don't Load Images (Score:5, Insightful)
Every e-mail client I've used in recent times doesn't load images by default. I generally assume that I am being tracked if I choose to load the images.
Re:"Legit Email Marketer" (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a difference you know. I get promotional email from Amazon, quite often it actually alerts me to deals I'm interested in, so it serves it's purpose. If I change my mind I can switch it off. It's not spam, it is email-based marketing.
Fighting spam is hard enough without confusing what it actually is.
Re:It's Done (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not Public, it's You Get Spied On Every Time You Connect.
There's a big difference between the classical model of Public and today's surveillance-driven Orwellian nightmare. In your front yard, your neighbors can see what you're doing ... if they happen to be looking in your direction while you're doing it.
On the web, everything you do is watched, tracked, and analyzed by a legion of machines bent on calculating ways to extract money from you ... or worse, whether men with guns ought to be sent to arrest or kill you (in the case of suspected terrorists).