On: Why does Gmail hate my domain?

[grkvlt]

You regard finding out whether someone you have sent a marketing email to actually opened that message as 'morally reprehensible' somehow? I know that blanket surveillance and government intrusion is a bad thing, to be minimised, but I'm not sure that also makes recipient tracking for one's own marketing purposes evil. If done right, cookies, email bugs and similar technologies are benign, or even beneficial to the recipient... It's all about finding out what the customer actually wants by observing what they do, since when you ask them, they often don't really know.

[quesera → grkvlt]

Not OP, but -- Yes. Morally reprehensible because it removes choice from the user/customer.

I might tolerate your initiation of contact, but I will not tolerate your observation of my reaction, without consent.

For this reason, I will not click on links with obvious tracking parameters. I strip them out first, or come to get the information some other way.

[mike-cardwell → grkvlt]

Recipients of email containing tracking beacons are generally not aware that such things exist, did not give permission for them to be used, and generally speaking, if they were aware of their existance, would opt out.

So if you use them, you're taking advantage of peoples ignorance. Seems morally reprehensible to me...

[MichaelCrawford → grkvlt]

I'm cool with some discovering that I read their eMail.

I am not cool with them discovering I read their eMail while receiving pleasure in a hoyse of ill repute.