
No one is opening those emails about privacy updates - sverige
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/15/gdpr-emails-going-unopened.html
======
stormbrew
> As a result, some email marketers stand to lose 80 percent of their
> marketing lists -- or face huge fines from the EU if they keep trying to
> email these people without permission.

Oh... no...

~~~
_jal
Of course, someone who loses 80% of their list the first time they ask their
audience if they're still interested _might_ consider giving some thought to
what value they were actually providing in the first place.

~~~
whoopdedo
The mantra in sales is that "no" really means "tell me more".

So I don't expect anyone in marketing and sales to consider this as anything
other than a challenge to find new and more effective ways of getting their
mail into people's inboxes.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
And this is why, despite the efforts of my parents to raise a well-behaved
son, I do not answer the phone when I do not recognize the number and directly
add "sales executives" people to the junk list.

I do use commercial products, usually because I actually searched for them. I
then contact the company, which is usually ready to come and give a
presentation.

And then comes the thing which really amazes me. I always tell them very
clearly , several times: I do not want to hear any marketing bs or the fact
that what they are selling is important. I already know this.

I also tell them I will discuss in very, very deep details such and such topic
and I want someone knowledgeable to come or call in.

What amazes me everytime is that they are so surprised when they loose a 5
digit contract because they did everything but what I asked them, and that I
end the meeting after 15 minutes.

I know first hand that selling is though. I also know that for such contracts
I've need to actually listen to simple requests from a prospective customer.

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thangalin
Because it would take ~76 days to read them all...

[http://lorrie.cranor.org/pubs/readingPolicyCost-
authorDraft....](http://lorrie.cranor.org/pubs/readingPolicyCost-
authorDraft.pdf)

My spam account was recently assailed:

[https://i.imgur.com/bFyXgrf.png](https://i.imgur.com/bFyXgrf.png)

Reading them takes time. Deleting them takes time. Dealing with them takes
time. Posting this... ;-)

------
Animats
"and some are using them to unsubscribe."* Even better.

The system is working!

I've said before that "newsletters" are mostly just spam. Now the recipients
have spoken. They don't want to hear from you.

------
DanBC
This article is pretty bad. It gets a bunch of stuff wrong.

> The GDPR requires companies to send emails to people on their mailing list
> who have never bought anything, asking permission to keep emailing them

Emailing those people was already illegal under PECR. GDPR hasn't changed the
legality of sending unsolicited email to people that you don't have a business
relationship with.

> "People are not opting back in," says Michael Horn, the director of data
> science for digital marketing agency Huge. "It's one thing for your
> customers who don't have a relationship with the brand to decline and not
> respond, but you're also losing a sales channel."

GDPR does not force a business to get consent for all processing. This is a
persistant myth. If you have an existing business relationship and you
obtained the email address legally you can rely on legitimate interests.

> "You never read the terms and conditions when you sign up for some website.

GDPR requires companies to make their T&Cs a lot simpler and clearer. This is
a good thing. If you know people aren't reading your T&Cs how can you expect
those people to be bound by them?

> Under these regulations, companies are relatively free to send emails to
> customers who have purchased something from them. But sending email to non-
> customers is common practice in the email marketing world. A lot of
> companies ask for email addresses when you visit their web site, even if you
> don't buy anything. Others buy email lists from third parties.

This is what people are defending. Sending junk email to addresses that you've
bought. Getting someone's email address for one purpose and use it for
another. (And, again, these are already illegal under PECR).

> Although the GDPR rules are only for the EU, European citizens living abroad
> get the same protections.

No. GDPR applies to EU residents.

Someone somewhere is making a lot of money giving people terrible advice about
GDPR.

------
ssivark
And they're updated privacy policy still allows them to track whether people
are opening e-mails or not... I wonder why most people don't seem to buy into
the privacy claims :-)

------
stretchwithme
It seems to me that the whole privacy notice thing is another version of the
"bury them in discovery" tactic that lawyers use. Only a lawyer can read and
understand all of these policies.

What we need are privacy notices that describe in plain language how a
company's policy deviates from some standard privacy policy that we do take
the time to understand.

If I were renting a car, I'd need to know how its operation is different from
other cars. I don't need to read about how to do everything.

~~~
ashildr
> What we need are privacy notices that describe in plain language how a
> company's policy deviates from some standard privacy policy that we do take
> the time to understand.

And that’s exactly one point the GDPR asks for:

(39) ... The principle of transparency requires that any information and
communi­cation relating to the processing of those personal data be easily
accessible and easy to understand, and that clear and plain language be used.
...

So thank you, EU!

------
gcb0
only becuase they offer zero ways to control data sharing and communication.
it is a legal document, and as such as dense, useless, and meaningless for
non-lawyers (even for lawyers not currently involved in litigation with either
parties)

absolutely none of those email help the sender gets any closer to be gdpr
compliant, but we knew that since the cookie fiasco. just more of the same.

where is everyone who were saying they would send the "nightmare gdpr letter
to google" on day 1 of gdpr? claiming that no company in the world could
comply? I guess nobody expected useless emails and popups with no data control
options to be enough for every EU regulator.

~~~
merinowool
I have sent a couple of requests and waiting for a month deadline to escalate.
None of the companies replied.

------
megaman22
Of course not. Nobody wants to read that shit. It's meaningless drivel to 99%
of people. After a couple, you just consign them to hell unread.

------
craftyguy
> Most Americans are not opening those emails

Hmm, the only way they would know this is if they are tracking folks when they
open the email, right?

~~~
stretchwithme
I think it's routine to include a link to an image in every email. When the
URL is loaded, they know you've opened it.

But this isn't reliable. People who block images don't record that they opened
it. It's entirely possible that this accounts for "No one is opening those"
privacy policy emails.

~~~
Leynos
I thought most email clients block third party images by default? Certainly
Outlook, Thunderbird, and K9 do. This must skew those results somewhat.

~~~
klez
I think I saw statistics somewhere that most people read their mail via the
web interface of their email provider, not via a client, and I don't know
whether web clients block remote content loading.

~~~
Leynos
I thought that might be the case.

------
simongr3dal
It would probably not help or change anything for the average person, but I
would love a Creative Commons style initiative for privacy policies. It should
provide a quick overview and indicate what data is collected and how it is
kept. I imagine that there must be some sort of similarities from one policy
to the other to the kinds of data that are being collected and to the ways
it’s being stored. Enough such that you could make a privacy policy out of
those sort of easily indicated modular/progressive parts that Creative Commons
provides for copyright licenses.

------
notadoc
Much like nobody reads a Terms of Service agreement, the fine print, or
anything else that is perceived as an obstacle by the user.

I suspect a large number of them are trashed or marked as spam.

------
bayangan
In other news, water = wet.

