Need someone to lead product management at your software company? I create software for people that create software and I'm looking for my next opportunity. Check out my resume and get in touch.

Web bug education

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 21 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

26 Nov 2002

USATODAY.com - Voluntary guidelines drafted to limit Web tracking tool: Microsoft, the US post office, and others have created a set of voluntary guidelines that require companies to reveal their use of Web bugs and the information tracked by them. Web bugs are images, often invisible in your browser, that track Web site viewers.

My first reaction was one of disbelief. Are companies that use hidden tracking tools trustworthy enough to disclose them? Isn’t that like asking a car theif to let you know before he hotwires your Toyota?

After thinking about it, the idea began to make sense. Several of my consulting clients use Web bugs on their Web sites and in their email without a second thought. These aren’t bad companies and they aren’t trying to comprimise the priviacy of their customers. They have no idea that the reports they read showing them how many people opened their latest newsletter requires technology that violates the basic privacy expectations of their customers.

When I explained to one client that most consumers have no idea that each time they open a newsletter, their email program reports their email address and the date and time the message was opened. Once the client understood that consumers had a reasonable expectation of privacy, they took steps to notify their customers of their tracking methods and gave them the option of unsubscribing from the newsletter.

The anti-Web bug initiative will be ignored by unscrupulous marketers, but it will also serve to educate everyone else.

Tommy
December 11, 2002 12:26 PM

The next version of Outlook, due in the middle of 2003, blocks any externally loaded content in HTML email messages by default. You have to choose to enable it in each message where content is blocked, and there is text explaining about Web bugs.

Adam Kalsey
December 12, 2002 9:37 AM

And Outlook XP can be configured to display all HTML email as text, effectively blocking Web bugs. For browsers, I recommend the Proxomitron [http://www.proxomitron.org/ ]. It's a proxy server that will rewrite Web pages before you see it in your browser. One of the built in features defeats most Web bugs.

This discussion has been closed.

Recently Written

The Dark Side of Input Metrics (Nov 27): Using input metrics in the wrong way can cause unexpected behaviors, stifled creativity, and micromanagement.
Reframe How You Think About Users of your Internal Platform (Nov 13): Changing from "Customers" to "Partners" will give you a better perspective on internal product development.
Measuring Feature success (Oct 17): You're building features to solve problems. If you don't know what success looks like, how did you decide on that feature at all?
How I use OKRs (Oct 13): A description of how I use OKRs to guide a team, written so I can send to future teams.
Build the whole product (Oct 6): Your code is only part of the product
Input metrics lead to outcomes (Sep 1): An easy to understand example of using input metrics to track progress toward an outcome.
Lagging Outcomes (Aug 22): Long-term things often end up off a team's goals because they can't see how to define measurable outcomes for them. Here's how to solve that.
Tyranny of Outcomes (Aug 19): An extreme focus on outcomes can have an undesired effect on product teams.