But also, most email platforms don't have the ability to add a pixel on a per-recipient basis. This is a clear failing on the part of these tech companies.
>most email platforms don't have the ability to add a pixel on a per-recipient basis.
right, which is why I assume that they would add the pixel and the company would decide to not track the non-consenting users at the backend. Everyone has the pixel, but only consenting users get tracked by the pixel being requested.
yeah but there is such a thing in computing as legacy decisions and I'm pretty sure the addition of tracking pixels is legacy in that they were added before GDPR back in the dark ages when everyone thought surely we'll be allowed to track every person and sell their data as much as we want forever!
So now you find out you're not allowed to track if someone hasn't opted in.
But because of reasons it is difficult for you to fix the thing that puts in the tracking pixel of pixels. So you leave those in place, and you do a check on the server when that pixel gets requested as to whether or not that user should be tracked, and figure that will be good enough.
yes, but sometimes when one is writing fast one makes slight errors that don't make much difference overall, thus:
If you send out a tracking pixel that is
1. designed to track user reading of emails per user
2. and the user has not opted in to the tracking
3. and the backend implementation is look up tracking pixel id and lookup user assigned to that id and look up if user consented
4. if not consent do not track user read email.
I'm not sure that scenario is against the GDPR either, although it may be that the company is told at some point - do not send out the pixel if the user has not said they agree to be tracked...
so, I don't think that it made much of a difference in my argument.
> do not send out the pixel if the user has said they don't want to be tracked
Per the GDPR, they need to opt in, not opt out.