Spy pixel
Networked email was pioneered in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson and has made it much more convenient to send and receive messages as opposed to traditional postal mail.
The "Hey" email service, contacted by BBC News, estimated that it blocked spy pixels in about 600,000 out of 1,000,000 messages per day.
Common software used by a recipient of email may, by default, automatically download remote image files from hyperlinks, without asking the user for confirmation.
[6] The tracking process begins when a sender inserts an image tag, represented as , into an HTML-based email.
The image tag is linked to a tracking object stored on the server of the sender through a reference Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
When the recipient opens the email, the mail client requests the file that is referenced by the image tag.
As a result, the web server where the file is stored logs the request and returns the image to the recipient.
[10] Individuals and business owners may want to use email tracking for a variety of reasons, such as lead generation, event invitations, promotions, newsletters, one-click polls, and teacher-parent communications.
The sender has the option to enable the tracker and see email open rates, clicks, replies, and bounces.
In fact, it is so valuable that there are companies that sell online user data or offer email tracking as a service, such as Bananatag, Mailtrack.io, and Yet Another Mail Merge.
In fact, tracking technologies can be used for good, offering valuable information for the development of websites, portals, and digital libraries.
It can also be used to improve user interfaces, search engines, menu items, navigational features, online help, and intelligent software agents, information architecture, content description, metadata, and more.
These finds can be useful in marketing and e-commerce and may be important to people like library and information professionals, educators, and database designers.
[1] This information provides insights into users' email reading behaviors, office and travel times, as well as details about their environment.
[7] By doing a reverse lookup of an IP address, the log entry can provide information on which organizations a user is affiliated with.
85% of emails in their corpus of 12,618 gathered using a web crawler contained embedded third-party content, with 70% categorized as trackers.
The study also found that tracking protection was helpful: it reduces the number of email addresses leaked by 87%.
[3] Consumers who perceive a lack of business or governmental regulation will try to regain power through a variety of responses, such as fabricating personal information, using privacy-enhancing technologies, and refusing to purchase.
"[3] Cambridge Analytica used a third-party app called “thisisyourdigitallife” to collect information from over 50 million Facebook users.
[21] Overall, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Qualcomm found that many users don't see tracking as black and white.
[23] For example, disabling automatic download of images is easy to implement; however, the trade-off is that it often results in a loss of information, incorrect formatting, a decline in user experience, and incomprehension or confusion.
California's state constitution, however, grants individuals explicit privacy rights from both government and private action.
In conclusion, the authors argue that the EU regulatory framework has been ineffective in enforcing rules and has not done much in helping reduce users’ exposure to tracking technologies.
