beqh34c2r8d4k

Please be aware of emails from Orbitz and Expedia as well, if that is relevant to you, as FT decides to close my other tread.
Hi exwannabe, I am here just to share information, it's totally up to you what you do with that. As far as I know, PixelBlock works in Chrome or similar, and with Gmail only. I would love to know your non-"crappy" email setup for my not-that-tech-savvy parents, that let you know presence of tracking image in an email before you open it and auto-execute.

SuperG1955

The email is at your mail server. It's not on your workstation until you download it to a client or open it in a browser. At that point, if you're accessing it from an EU IP, EU privacy laws apply, the same as if you were travelling in the EU.

If you open it using a webmail client with Chrome does Chrome block the pixel?

You can also access it from a tablet that's off your network if you have a guest network set up on your router. Same if you use any device that's connected only via a public network.

gitismatt

this is probably what you're looking for, just in case you think any of this is an "invasion of privacy" or "above the law"
https://www.delta.com/us/en/legal/privacy-and-security

after GDPR went into effect, nearly every site that does business in the EU implemented the "this site uses cookies" overlay, so you should be marginally aware that something is happening.

you may have received an email from delta that could have been sourced by a partner. AMEX, Hertz, etc. What you might consider to be unsolicited could be something you agreed to, even if inadvertently.

Finally, if you don't want a company to know you opened an email, might I suggest you get a few pigeons or build a large campfire for sending smoke signals.

beqh34c2r8d4k

Just checked. Chrome does not appear to block from EU IP.

Maybe it is the last trip I took, or maybe it's my dog's food I bought - but isn't it all about consent and trust, rather than pages of fine prints? Isn't it opt-out by default, rather than opt-in?
GDPR-CCPA or not, I am not going to Delta site to check my email, so that cookies warning may be totally either invisible or irrelevant to me.

This is how that email (minus six lines at the top, one at the bottom) looks like in my email client, and I would love to know where am I supposed to click to be tracked. It tries to connect to the tracking server as soon as it is opened.

BTW, apart from a few pigeons or a large campfire, there is at least a third way: be informed. Hope you will join too.

Kevin AA

Lord help us.

pauq

That is unfortunately the SOP nowadays, specially when the email is related to marketing. The only option is to disable auto download of external content on your email client. If everybody did that this kind of tracking would become useless and nothing would really be lost from the receiver perspective since images can be embedded in emails anyway.

gooselee

OP, what exactly are you hoping to achieve here? DL nor any of your other service providers are going to stop trying to track their customers/prospects just because of complaints like this. Even GDPR/CCPA have viable paths to do this that have passed legal muster so far.

You are apparently smart enough to be concerned about pixel tracking, cookies, etc. I thus find it difficult to believe you are not also savvy enough to realize that virtually businesses operating on the internet do everything they can to track prospects/customers/users and establish their legal coverage via fine print T&Cs. You can understand that this happens and take reasonable precautions (some are suggested in this thread) to protect your truly sensitive data, or you can be unhappy about it and stomp your feet hoping that The World will listen and suddenly stop doing these things you don't like. One of those actions is bound to be more tangibly meaningful than the other.

As an aside, I know there's the whole Principle Of The Thing, but every time I see someone get so worked up about something like this, I find myself wondering what exactly that person thinks they have to hide? So an automated server at DL knows I opened an email last week and I was using an Android phone while somewhere in metro Atlanta. Wow...super salacious detail about my life, there.

volabam

While I agree that there's not much point for the OP in railing against what has become commonplace with zero likelihood of going back, I find the "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" sentiment unfortunate. Ideally, privacy would be the default and those who wished to share information about their whereabouts and salacious Hotlanta destinations would be able to do so in return for perks from sellers and marketers.

gooselee

I fundamentally agree with you. Privacy should be the default.

Separately, when things don't end up being private for whatever reason, I'm simply curious at what minutiae other people feel so strongly about that they go down these rabbit holes (often, ironically, on social media or some public internet forum).

However, in reference to the part I bolded - I actually feel like I do get perks, targeted promotions, etc. from sellers and marketers that I can tell are specific to them having certain bits of information about me. And, acknowledging and accepting that internet buyer tracking happens, I can often play these to my advantage (i.e., go to a website, add something to a cart, leave website, come back later that day and they're dangling a 15% off coupon if I complete the purchase).

volabam

Agreed - I've played the cart game also, though my results usually aren't quite that good. But I am not blind to the fact that not only merchants but data brokers of all stripes are working hard at profiling all of us--and while sometimes that's to our individual and collective benefit, those data can and have been used against folks. I don't think I can post links yet but there's a story from a few years back about a firefighter named Phillip Scott Lyons that comes to mind: he was fingered for an arson he didn't commit based solely in part on trawling of supermarket rewards records. While this is a low probability event, I can still understand folks' reticence at being ubiquitously tracked and don't think that necessarily implies they have skeletons in their closets (not to kink shame, of course).

gooselee

Again, I fundamentally agree with you. And I don't blame anyone for not wanting to be tracked and opting out whenever possible (even if I personally choose to not do that for my own reasons).

However, I'd say that Lyons case is not the best example to use, and it seems to be one of those where people have crafted their description of the case to fit the argument they want to support.

A quick google pulled up a couple stories about the Lyons case - they all had basically identical information to each other. Here's one: https://www.firehouse.com/home/news/...-his-own-house
The Safeway card was not the sole piece of information used. A police dog tracked a scent from the location of the fire to the front door of the house, they found a fire starter and Safeway wrapper at the scene, and then matched that specific fire starter to the same product in the family Safeway card records. That's a lot of circumstantial evidence all pointed in one direction, albeit incorrectly and unfortunately in this case. Charges were eventually dropped when someone else claimed responsibility (which the police discovered after said person kept talking about it to various people). Given all this, "low probability event" is an understatement, IMO. This guy was unlucky enough to have at least three things line up with each other and against him all at once, on top of being the target of someone else's arson attempt.

steveholt

what if you just deleted the email

dmbolp

then the bogeyman wins!!

NobleHouse

What does OP do with junk mail that gets delivered to a physical mailbox? It's really not that dissimilar to junk emails - Delta likely purchased your email address from a marketing list aggregated from your ISP or financial institution or any other of the plethora of services you take advantage of and with whom share your information - or you gave it to Delta. If you're concerned about tracking pixels (which aren't new by any stretch), other posters have mentioned disabling JS, not auto-loading images, etc. Perhaps Delta's marketing team is getting more savvy - I don't see anything wrong with that.

Clearly the solution here is to not use the internet haha. Or, in addition to not using the internet, talk to your elected officials and provide them with a donation big enough that they listen to you

gitismatt

I work in digital marketing. plenty informed about how all this works