Star letter
This topic of email beacons attracted some negative comments from Jon Honeyball in last month’s PC Pro ( see issue 320, p109). The issue is that beacons can be regarded as breaching privacy by silently reporting whether an email has been read.
I would argue that beacons are a useful fix for one of the shortcomings of email. I imagine most of us would be disappointed to hear that some of our carefully crafted emails never reach the intended recipient. It’s valuable to know that an email has been delivered and a beacon can provide that service. Some email client software offers a “read receipt” function, but that requires the recipient to acknowledge receipt. Nobody bothers.
I use MailChimp to send bulk, opt-in newsletters. Anyone familiar with MailChimp knows that it has strict anti-spam policies, double opt-in and unsubscribing that takes immediate effect. Anyone abusing the system to send spam has their account terminated and every email includes an indication that it came via MailChimp. If MailChimp detects that emails aren’t being opened then after a few failures the recipient address is presumed obsolete and is suspended. Surely that’s a good thing.
I use Mailtrack for my business emails. When I send my invoices, Mailtrack adds “Sender notified by Mailtrack” to the footer. If the email isn’t read after a couple of weeks, I send a postal copy, but that’s much more hassle, is slower than email and the cost erodes my profit margin. Mailtrack also advises me when an incoming email is tracked ( see screenshot).
The fundamental problem is that email was never intended to become the global phenomenon it is now. Spam is a massive issue. In 2004, Bill Gates promised to end spam within two years. I’m still waiting. The various technical “solutions” such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) help, but they don’t fix the issue. That means that email providers (especially those, like most ISPs, that offer free email) have a support problem. The only benefit ISPs get from providing “free” email accounts is that it helps lock users into their service. It generates no income but substantial support costs, especially from users complaining to them about spam. They have a simple answer: more aggressive spam filtering. But that’s a flawed solution: “One man’s spam is another man’s delicious pork luncheon meat”.
We’re often advised to “check your Spam folder” when we place an online order. That’s because automatic emails, such as those from ecommerce software, are especially prone to triggering spam filters. But worse, some filters silently trash suspected spam, neither sending it to a spam folder nor returning a “not delivered” notification to the sender. If we’re not careful, the legislators will half understand the issue and create some brain-dead legislation as they did with website cookies. The consequence of that is that seemingly every website pops up a cookie alert notice.
The solution isn’t to ban beacons but for email clients to add a discreet notification – just add “this email includes a tracking beacon” to the footer. And if Mailtrack can detect its own incoming beacons, perhaps there’s scope for email add-ons to do the same for all beacons.