Fifty US retailers sent nearly 42 billion emails during the Black Friday hype — and they were loaded with sneaky ways to track your habits.
According to Proton’s report into Black Friday and Cyber Monday spam, retailers are becoming increasingly aggressive in their marketing tactics.
It has become a holiday season ritual for retailers to flood inboxes with promotional emails, offering discounts, early access to deals, and free shipping.
These emails may seem harmless, but often contain hidden tracking scripts and analytics codes that collect sensitive information about the user’s browsing behavior, buying habits, and email reading patterns.
While online tracking may not be new, the sheer volume of emails sent during the Black Friday season is unprecedented.
This aggressive email marketing can lead to a slippery slope where users’ online activities are constantly monitored.
The report highlights the following issues related to email tracking:
This list of emails is a mere sample of the tracking scripts that retailers employ to monitor users’ behavior.
These scripts can be linked to personal data, including browsing history, geolocation, and device information.
For instance, the following code snippet can be embedded in an HTML email to track user interactions:
Users often click on these links without realizing the risks involved, which can compromise their personal data.
The report emphasizes that retailers are collecting vast amounts of user data without explicit consent.
This lack of transparency raises serious concerns about the misuse of user data.
Users have the right to control how their data is used and shared.
Here’s what you can do to protect your data:
Limit the information you share online.
TAGS: data privacy, online tracking, email marketing
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SEO_TITLE: The Dark Side of Black Friday Email Marketing: How Retailers Secretly Track Your Habit
SEO_DESC: This article reveals how retailers use black Friday email marketing to secretly track your online habits, highlighting concerns about data privacy.
FOCUS_KW: Black Friday email marketing
