Spy tracking in Martin's Money email

fermi

thelawnet wrote: »

Microsoft Outlook blocks all remote images by default,

As does Thunderbird.

(plus most other email clients I can think of.)

Consumerist

I always open my emails whilst offline (paranoid) so I can't imagine they get any tracking info from me.

Or am I kidding myself ?
.

MSE_Martin

Thanks for the notes, though i think some of the explanation above misunderstands how we need email out to 4m people (though i will check it out with my techies in case im wrong )

The tracking enables us to see who opens the email (or in some cases who opens the email and downloads images).

We know the usual rates for each main ISP address - and if they are disproportionately lower we can investigate whether there has been an issue.

While for sending a normal email spam blockers are the worry - sending an email in the volume we do is a different type of job.

In the past we have been a. blocked entirely by ISPs as they can't cope with the volume - but without any bounce back return. b. had spam filters drop on mass due to use of the word "credit" or "freebies".

Knowing open rates is one of the useful indicators we get of how well the email is getting through - i don't consider it to be particularly devisive or intrusive - certainly not data mining as we don't ever use the info for anything other than ensuring the email (which people have opted in to) is being delivered and of course never send it on to a third party.

Martin

thelawnet

MSE_Martin wrote: »

Thanks for the notes, though i think some of the explanation above misunderstands how we need email out to 4m people (though i will check it out with my techies in case im wrong )

The tracking enables us to see who opens the email (or in some cases who opens the email and downloads images).

We know the usual rates for each main ISP address - and if they are disproportionately lower we can investigate whether there has been an issue.

While for sending a normal email spam blockers are the worry - sending an email in the volume we do is a different type of job.

In the past we have been a. blocked entirely by ISPs as they can't cope with the volume - but without any bounce back return. b. had spam filters drop on mass due to use of the word "credit" or "freebies".

Knowing open rates is one of the useful indicators we get of how well the email is getting through - i don't consider it to be particularly devisive or intrusive - certainly not data mining as we don't ever use the info for anything other than ensuring the email (which people have opted in to) is being delivered and of course never send it on to a third party.

Nonetheless, the fact is you do perform individual tracking, right down to the individual email address (not simply the ISP - e.g., btinernet.com in the email address [EMAIL="joebloggs@btinternet.com"]joebloggs@btinternet.com[/EMAIL]), and you didn't notify people that you are doing this.

Also, the purpose of a privacy policy is to inform users what data is being collected, and what it is being used for. Whether you personally consider it intrusive is not really the point - people are entitled to be informed and make up their own minds, otherwise your privacy policy would just say

'Martin Lewis might collect your personal data, but he won't do anything nasty with it.

End.'

And I haven't seen too many privacy policies that look like that....

MSE_Martin

thelawnet wrote: »

Nonetheless, the fact is you do perform individual tracking, right down to the individual email address (not simply the ISP - e.g., btinernet.com in the email address [EMAIL="joebloggs@btinternet.com"]joebloggs@btinternet.com[/EMAIL]), and you didn't notify people that you are doing this.

Also, the purpose of a privacy policy is to inform users what data is being collected, and what it is being used for. Whether you personally consider it intrusive is not really the point - people are entitled to be informed and make up their own minds, otherwise your privacy policy would just say

'Martin Lewis might collect your personal data, but he won't do anything nasty with it.

End.'

And I haven't seen too many privacy policies that look like that....

As noted earlier, "I will check out how that interacts with the privacy policy and if it does conflict (im not sure it does) then we will have to amend it. We get more compaints about 'non-delivery' of the email than anything else and this is a very important tool to help people ensure they're getting it. "

MSE_Martin

Hi folks,

Been taking a bit more of a look at this today - my team want to keep that link as its useful to them - and I dont believe its ethically impacting privacy at all.

And while I dont think it goes against our privacy policy particularly - I'm really glad it was pointed out - as i think I would prefer to explain to people what and why we're doing something rather than have them think its something nefarious.

So we're looking at adding this in the privacy policy


"We do collect your e-mail address when you register to receive Martin’s Money Tips email. When we send you the e-mail, we also get automatic data back which tells us that you’ve received it and have been able to open it, which helps us monitor whether the emails are getting through. We do not share your e-mail address with third parties and your e-mail address will never be sold to a 3rd party. "


The bit in yellow is the new bit.

I'll happily listen to thoughts on this.

robt_2

Martin I understand why it is done, but many people do not want their email address included in the mail itself.

One scenario would be that you forward it to a friend, who then forwards it to another friend etc whilst your email address is in it.

Firstly, this is giving false information back to yourself - if I had a Gmail address for example and forward it to a friend with a Yahoo email address you are going to get "two yes's" for Gmail and none for Yahoo.

Secondly if I forward the email to a friend and they forward it to someone else etc, my email address is being spread around the Internet, not only as 'forwarded from', but in the body of the email too, and this can be a magnet for email address harvesters for future spamming.

Like I said though, it is perfectly understandable as to why it is being done, it would just be better if there was another way. As it was a long time ago that I registered for it, I'm not sure what the 'welcome email' currently contains but maybe it could include a link to a step by step guide for white-listing the address the email is sent from for all the popular webmail and email clients?

MSE_Martin

robt wrote: »

Martin I understand why it is done, but many people do not want their email address included in the mail itself.

One scenario would be that you forward it to a friend, who then forwards it to another friend etc whilst your email address is in it.

Firstly, this is giving false information back to yourself - if I had a Gmail address for example and forward it to a friend with a Yahoo email address you are going to get "two yes's" for Gmail and none for Yahoo.

Secondly if I forward the email to a friend and they forward it to someone else etc, my email address is being spread around the Internet, not only as 'forwarded from', but in the body of the email too, and this can be a magnet for email address harvesters for future spamming.

Like I said though, it is perfectly understandable as to why it is being done, it would just be better if there was another way. As it was a long time ago that I registered for it, I'm not sure what the 'welcome email' currently contains but maybe it could include a link to a step by step guide for white-listing the address the email is sent from for all the popular webmail and email clients?

Hi its an interesting point, but of course forward an email and it includes who it came from (though of course you can delete it - as you can delete this - but i accept few would know to)

Yet white listing doesn't really work for what we're talking about. The normal sending parameters don't apply to an email of our size. We get blocked by ISPs - or certain spam filters. We've spent weeks in the past negotiating with massie US email clients who say "you're sending too many emails" yet all are opt in - the same with some spam handlers.

We do ask people to white list - but that doesn't impact many of the issues faced - we are also senderscore compliant (which is the big system for ensuring you're auto-white listed and it has stringent criteria). However we spend serious man hours each week ensuring the email gets through and without this i'd leave my team in the dark.

Using this system enables us to react quickly - much of what is in the email is time sensitive and without it - it could be days before we learned.

We try very hard on this site not to data mine - while of course the web is full of it. Search on google and so much more is known about you. I believe we're in a different league of cleanness on this issue compared to virtually every other site in our sector - all of whom cookie, track and more to high heaven.

Yet while I appreciate your point and some will not like this - that pales compared to the mass of people who get very annoyed when they don't get their email - and often blame us (when we have little control) so there's a balance to be had.

Sorry

robt_2

Sorry, my last paragraph was a bit ambiguous, it was two separate thoughts.

What I meant was that it is understandable why it is being done (and personally I don't have a problem with it).

The guide to white-listing was just another thought that could help new subscribers as opposed to ensuring mail gets through - but as I said, I don't know what information new subscribers receive about this .

thelawnet

I'm pleased you recognise the need for disclosure.

FWIW, IME companies sending bulk emails to me often stagger the send over several hours, in order to avoid the 'flood block' effect you mention.

If the emails are particularly time-sensitive that might be annoying if you receive yours towards the end of the sending window, but I guess realistically with an email that has as many readers as yours does, it's impossible for everybody to exploit the offer before it gets killed by weight of numbers.