What is Pixel Tracking and How is it used in E-Mails? How Can You Protect Yourself?
Tracking Pixel is nothing but, HTML code snippets that are loaded on the website or an email, whenever a user visits or opens it. Tracking Pixels helps in tracking a user’s behavior and conversions on a website.
Advertisers use it to acquire valuable data for web analysis, email, and online marketing. These days, tracking pixels are widely used by most businesses, small or big.
Tracking pixels also helps marketers to measure click rates, track conversions, discover different traffic sources, and also collect user data. Nowadays, email tracking pixels have become advanced, comes with strategic functions, that can deliver personalized ads to the users on the web.
How does Pixel Tracking Work
Even though Pixel Tracking is an effective way for marketers to get valuable insights, it’s a sneaky and hidden way for email trackers. It allows to infiltrate the email server, intercept data and information that is being transmitted.
In Pixel Tracking, a 1 x 1-pixel tag is used that is loaded on a website or an email. The email, within the message, includes a link to download a one-pixel image from the server that sent the email to the user.
When the server receives a request to download the pixel image, the sender can track the email message, know the device’s IP addresses, type of the device, operating system, and even geographical location.
As pixel are tiny, the recipient can hardly see the tracking pixel, also, they’re transparent and gets mixed with the background color in the email message.
Why Tracking Pixel is used
For SEOs, email senders, businesses, and website operators, a tracking pixel is very beneficial because it helps them use the collected information to improve their online offers.
Through tracking pixels, the information of the user can be used to make the online offer friendlier, and which would get adapted to the user browser types and versions. Also, it is more effective than cache.
Along with Pixel Tracking, if JavaScript is used, more information can be collected, that includes plugins used, browser support, screen resolution, and much more. It also helps in differentiating the users from bots and their visits, properties can generate navigation paths.
When it comes to web analytics, tracking pixel forms the basis, as advanced technologies are required along with it. Also, only specialized service providers can implement that. Pixel Trackers sent through email can help in analyzing the newsletters, it would track the open rates of that sent newsletter.
Together with A/B testing, if pixel tracking is used, it helps to effectively determine the campaign’s success rate. Now, that’s the benefit for a marketer or advertiser, but what about the user?
The user or the recipient can expect to receive more personal, relevant, and exciting newsletters in the future.
How Can You Defend Against Pixel Tracking
There are numerous ways you protect yourself from getting tracked by pixels on websites and emails, it would help to prevent the collection of data through tracking techniques. Below are some of the ways you can defend yourself from Pixel Tracking:
- Make sure to set your email and browser settings very restricted. Make sure after your permit, external graphics would be supported and HTML emails shouldn’t be kept.
- Enable and utilize firewall settings on your browser and email.
- To see pixel tracking, you would need to install browser extensions.
- Browser anonymously on the web and prevent tracking pixels from getting download by using proxy servers and TOR browser.
- If you want to prevent user data collection, disable the support for browser scripts. But you must remember that, by disabling scripts in the browser, some of the other configurations may offer limited functions on the web.
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