Email marketers are tracking your every move, and you might not even know it

Why it matters to you

Think twice before you open your next email — it might contain tracking technologies that let marketers see your location, browsing history, and more.

In this day and age, no one’s a stranger to email. The world’s most popular form of peer-to-peer messaging reached new heights in 2015, when users sent and received a collective 205 billion emails. Its growth isn’t slowing down anytime soon — analysts at the Radicati Group project that email users will exchange as many as 246 billion messages in 2019.

But there’s a downside to email’s ubiquity, and it has to do with privacy. Increasingly, senders use web beacons — tracking objects in a web page or email — to collect information about the people who receive them.

Invasive tracking

One common tactic involves embedding one-by-one pixel images, called “clear GIFs,” in the footer, header, or attachments of a message, which forces web browsers to download the image from a web server. The server collects gobs of information in the process, including the date, the physical location of the device that opened it, the length of time the message was open, the number of times it was subsequently opened, the pages that were opened when the message was displayed, and even the people who’d been forwarded the message beforehand.

Folks who click on the links embedded in a marketer’s email — including (but not limited to) the “Unsubscribe” link in newsletters and mailing lists — are subject to much more invasive forms of tracking. One technique, canvas fingerprinting, uses a web script to instruct the browser to draw a unique, invisible image that can be used to track a person’s web history. Another called cookie syncing lets marketers share information they’ve discovered about people, and link together IDs they’ve created to identify their devices. And a third method — “super cookies” — uses persistent local files to build a picture of a person’s preferences.

As creepily voyeuristic as that sounds, online tracking, and mail tracking in particular, is a well-established practice that’s perfectly legal. Marketers aren’t required to disclose the use of tracking technologies, and email providers like Google even has a support page dedicated to guiding advertisers through the process. Email managers like Constant Contact, HubSpot, Yesware, Bananatag, Streak, and MailChimp compile tracking reports for paying customers. In recent years, employers, sales people, nonprofit organizations, bill collectors, and even publishers like The New York Times have adopted tracking to figure out the efficacy of mailing campaigns.

In a recent study, One More Company, an email technology startup, found that more than 40.6 percent of its client’s emails in 2017 were tracked, and that “conversational” emails — emails that fall outside the category of newsletters, marketing materials, and other ad campaigns — tripled in tracking from 5 percent in 2015 to 16 percent in 2017.

Marketers argue that email trackers actually help recipients because senders use the data to craft more relevant messages, but not everyone feels that way. A 2012 survey by researchers at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology found a majority of Americans — 60 percent — do not want information collected about the websites they visit.

“[Marketers] are very creative,” Florian Seroussi, CEO of One More Company, told Digital Trends. “They fetch the data in a variety of ways. It’s very invasive.”

Protective measures

It’s not all that surprising, then, that the growth in email tracking has corresponded with a proliferation of new services to combat it. Some email providers have built-in settings that disable trackers. Gmail asks permission before displaying images in an email — clicking “no” prevents images, including invisible tracking pixels, from loading. Within the default Mail app on Apple’s iPhone and iPad, users can disable tracking images by toggling the “load remote images” option in the settings menu.

Desktop users have more tools at their disposal. PixelBlock, an extension for Google’s Chrome web browser, shows the number of tracking attempts and the source of the tracking widget for each message. Ugly Email, meanwhile, detects and highlight which messages in Gmail inboxes have tracking software embedded in them.

Others are more holistic. Senders, a service from One More Company, acts as a middleman between mail services and recipients. It intercepts emails as they arrive and uses algorithms to scan them for tracking code. After automatically scrubbing them of embeds, it forwards the “clean” message to the intended recipient’s inbox.

Anti-tracking tools like Senders have proven popular. The early success of Senders (formerly known as Trackbusters), which doesn’t require special software or a browser plugin, surprised even its creators.

“We expected 100 to 200 outside users at first,” Seroussi said. “Instead, we had 10,000 to 12,000. It’s a growing concern — people want minimal tracking. Tracking make them uncomfortable, and they think companies shouldn’t be doing it without a disclaimer.”

There isn’t much appetite at the federal level, unfortunately. A proposed federal “do not track” bill in 2015 failed to gain steam, and earlier this year, Republicans voted to repeal Federal Communications Commission (FCC) protections that prevented Internet providers from collecting, storing, and sharing customers’ behavioral information. For now, built-in settings and third-party tools are email users’ only recourse.

“All those email services aren’t going anywhere,” Seroussi said. “Email, unlike instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, is an open environment — if I send email to anyone in the world, they don’t need specific software to download it or see it. The volume of emails we get is only going to increase.”

A better night’s sleep isn’t a far-off dream with this sci-fi wearable

Why it matters to you

A good night’s sleep is essential to our health and well-being, and we should turn to technology if we can’t achieve it naturally.

Because modern life often gets in the way of a relaxed, deep, refreshing sleep, more of us are turning to technology to rectify this problem. This may of course sound ironic since technology is often a cause of disturbed sleep. The latest sleep-promoting product, however, is completely sleep-friendly and doesn’t have a screen. It’s called the Dreem and it’s a sci-fi-esque headband with a built-in EEG system and bone-conducting audio, ready to send you to the land of Nod in just a few moments. We love the look, and the tech is equally as enticing.

The Dreem has been in development by startup Rythm (sic) for three years. It has recently completed its beta test program, and is ready to be put on sale. We spoke to creator Hugo Mercier in March about the technology inside, and what the device is like to use, so it’s great news the device is now almost ready for the public. It’s not a cheap piece of equipment though, and you’re going to have to splash out $500 on it, and then be prepared to wait until the fall for it to ship.

If it delivers on the benefits it promises, though, it may justify the high price. The dry polymer EEG electrodes monitor your brain activity, and the bone-conducting audio pipes specially produced audio directly to your inner ear. There’s no need to wear headphones with the Dreem, and only you can hear the audio, so you won’t disturb anyone sharing the bed. A touch sensitive bar runs along the top, so you don’t have to reach for your phone to control it. In the morning, data on your night’s sleep is presented in the app.

Audio plays a major role in the Dreem’s operation. Various settings play meditative tracks, those which guide you through breathing exercises, and others that help sync breathing and heart rate together. Once you’re asleep, the EEG watches over your brain, and uses sound to increase the quality of your sleep. There are many benefits to this apparently, including waking up properly refreshed in the morning, and promoting better overall health. The headband also has a smart alarm, waking you up gently at the optimal time.

It’s impossible to say how comfortable the headband is to sleep with on without trying it, but Rythm says it soon becomes unnoticeable. The soft fabric reminds us of the Google Daydream VR headset, the bands are lined with foam, and the whole device flexes and bends to conform to your head and movements. In beta tests, the Dreem has helped cut the time it takes to fall asleep by 31 percent.

You can pre-order the Dreem directly from the company, and expect delivery toward the end of the year.

A better night’s sleep isn’t a far-off dream with this sci-fi wearable

Why it matters to you

A good night’s sleep is essential to our health and well-being, and we should turn to technology if we can’t achieve it naturally.

Because modern life often gets in the way of a relaxed, deep, refreshing sleep, more of us are turning to technology to rectify this problem. This may of course sound ironic since technology is often a cause of disturbed sleep. The latest sleep-promoting product, however, is completely sleep-friendly and doesn’t have a screen. It’s called the Dreem and it’s a sci-fi-esque headband with a built-in EEG system and bone-conducting audio, ready to send you to the land of Nod in just a few moments. We love the look, and the tech is equally as enticing.

The Dreem has been in development by startup Rythm (sic) for three years. It has recently completed its beta test program, and is ready to be put on sale. We spoke to creator Hugo Mercier in March about the technology inside, and what the device is like to use, so it’s great news the device is now almost ready for the public. It’s not a cheap piece of equipment though, and you’re going to have to splash out $500 on it, and then be prepared to wait until the fall for it to ship.

If it delivers on the benefits it promises, though, it may justify the high price. The dry polymer EEG electrodes monitor your brain activity, and the bone-conducting audio pipes specially produced audio directly to your inner ear. There’s no need to wear headphones with the Dreem, and only you can hear the audio, so you won’t disturb anyone sharing the bed. A touch sensitive bar runs along the top, so you don’t have to reach for your phone to control it. In the morning, data on your night’s sleep is presented in the app.

Audio plays a major role in the Dreem’s operation. Various settings play meditative tracks, those which guide you through breathing exercises, and others that help sync breathing and heart rate together. Once you’re asleep, the EEG watches over your brain, and uses sound to increase the quality of your sleep. There are many benefits to this apparently, including waking up properly refreshed in the morning, and promoting better overall health. The headband also has a smart alarm, waking you up gently at the optimal time.

It’s impossible to say how comfortable the headband is to sleep with on without trying it, but Rythm says it soon becomes unnoticeable. The soft fabric reminds us of the Google Daydream VR headset, the bands are lined with foam, and the whole device flexes and bends to conform to your head and movements. In beta tests, the Dreem has helped cut the time it takes to fall asleep by 31 percent.

You can pre-order the Dreem directly from the company, and expect delivery toward the end of the year.

You can now shout Alexa commands at Amazon’s upgraded Dash Wand

Why it matters to you

If you’re searching for an easier way to reorder paper towels from Amazon, look no further than the new Dash Wand.

Amazon’s Dash Wand is sort of like a television remote that queues up deliveries instead of channels. At least, that was the intention — when the Dash Wand launched in early 2014, the bar code-scanning, voice-recognizing dongle was criticized for its many limitations. Starting Thursday, though, Amazon’s releasing a new model that supports Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant.

To the untrained eye, the new Alexa Dash Wand doesn’t look all that different from the previous generation of Dash Wand. It sports a large, circular keychain loop, a strong magnet (meant for affixing the thing to metallic refrigerators), and a circular button that illuminates blue when pushed. But unlike the outgoing Amazon Dash, which only let you add items to a shopping card via limited voice controls, the new model supports Alexa natively. You can buy items directly instead of having to check out manually, like you can with Amazon’s pricier Echo speakers.

That’s not the only thing the new Dash Wand can do. Amazon says the remote-shaped dongle can find recipes, convert cups to ounces, reorder past items, find nearby restaurants, show movie showtimes, save reminders, set timers, and more. And it supports the full range of the more than 12,000 third-party apps — or “skills” — in Alexa’s library, including ride-sharing apps like Lyft and Uber, food-ordering apps like Dominos and Grubhub, and smart home appliance apps like Hue and SmartThings.

One feature it won’t support is Alexa Calling, Amazon’s new messaging platform — the upcoming Echo Show and existing devices can make and receive calls and dictate messages, which the companion Alexa app saves for posterity. And it won’t support Prime Music, Amazon’s internet music service. But given the Dash Wand’s diminutive size, it’s hard to call either omission a dealbreaker.

The new Dash Wand starts at $20, but Amazon’s gifting Prime subscribers who pick one up to $20, making the Dash Wand essentially a free purchase. Customers can sign up for a 90-day trial of Amazon’s AmazonFresh home grocery service.

Amazon’s Alexa-equipped Dash Wand is only the newest frontier for its voice assistant. Last month, the company unveiled the Echo Show, a touchscreen- and camera-equipped Echo that boasts video chat, Amazon’s Prime Music service, visual weather forecasts, and video content from CNN and YouTube. And earlier this year, it launched the first smart TV-equipped with Alexa, Element’s Amazon Fire TV Edition.

That rapid expansion might be seen as an effort to combat evolving voice platforms like Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri. At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June, the company announced the HomePod, an AI-powered smart speaker that works with home appliances and boasts many of the same features as Amazon’s Echo speakers, including reminders and alarms. And in May, Google announced forthcoming features for its Google Home speaker, including proactive notifications, free calling to phones in the United States and Canada, calendar management, new music streaming services, and Chromecast integration.

Amazon, it’s safe to say, has its work cut out for it.

iPhone reigns in U.S. as Samsung S8 and S8 Plus sales disappoint

Why it matters to you

While Samsung had high hopes for its newest flagship phones, initial reports aren’t so promising.

Despite the hype, it doesn’t look as though the Samsung S8 and S8 Plus are doing all that well. The South Korean company had high hopes for its newest flagship handsets, and for a while, pre-order numbers seemed promising. But according to the latest Kantar data, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are still the top dog when it comes to popularity in the United States — at least in the first quarter of 2017. The two iPhones claimed a combined market share of 20.1 percent, according to the research firm’s data, whereas total iPhone share increased 5.8 points to reach 36.5 percent.

Samsung, on the other hand, saw its hyped S8 and S8 Plus reach a lower market share than last year’s S7 and S7 Plus. Whereas the former received just 8.1 percent market share, the older version saw 8.8 percent market share. In fact, Android as a whole didn’t perform all too well in the U.S.

“Android partner brands Samsung, LG, and Moto experienced year-on-year declines in the U.S.,” reported Lauren Guenveur, global consumer insight director for Kantar Worldpanel. “The Samsung Galaxy S8, released in the last two weeks of the April period, did not show a significant impact on Samsung’s sales in the period ending in April, nor did LG’s G6. Neither of those made the list of Top 10 best-selling phones.”

That said, Apple didn’t fare quite so well overseas, especially in burgeoning market China. According to Kantar, iOS share in urban China dropped 16.2 percent year over year. The research company noted that this represented “another period of decline in China that began during the three months ending February 2016.”

Europeans, though, remain Apple loyalists, with the brand posting 1.1 point gains in sales across the five major markets of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. That said, moving forward, India will be a more important market to corner than any of these five nations, so it seems as though both Apple and its competitors have their work cut out for them.

Sphero made a Spider-Man your kids can talk to like an Amazon Echo

Sphero’s contract with Disney now includes Marvel, which is great for all of us nerds. I guess kids will like it, too.

We’ve seen Sphero bring BB-8 and Lightning McQueen to life over the last year, but now is the time of superheroes. A little Spider-Man can now stand on a pedestal and interact with anyone who taps the logo on his chest, in a way that is not terribly unlike an Amazon Echo speaker without the wake command. What makes this little Spidey worth adding t your house? It’s aimed at being a best friend for your kid.

Spider-Man by Sphero is a Wi-Fi enabled snark machine with eyes that animate with the audio from the speaker and lots of ways to play with kids. He will “guard” a bedroom, tell stores, and with the two hour battery inside can roam around the house with your kids to go on adventures. You know, standard friendly neighborhood hero stuff.

You can grab one of these little heroes starting today for $149. Will you be picking one up?

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How to shop on Amazon with Alexa

As an Amazon product, naturally you can buy things with Alexa. Here’s how.

Everything Amazon ever does has some form of hook into buying things from its retail store. On its tablets, that extends to adverts on your lock screen, but on the Amazon Echo, it’s pretty much the opposite.

You can use it to buy things from Amazon, but only if you want to. There’re no ads, no up-sell. But instead of reaching for your phone or going on the computer, just ask Alexa to order things for you. Here’s how.

How to enable purchase by voice

The first thing you need to do is turn on the feature in the Alexa app on your phone, tablet, or in a web browser.

Open the Amazon Alexa application.
Tap the menu button. It’s the three-line icon in the top left corner.

Select settings from the menu.

Scroll almost to the bottom and select voice purchasing.

Turn the purchase by voice button to on.

Below this, add a four-digit confirmation code to stop unauthorized purchases.

Hit save changes.

That’s all you need to do in the app for now. Before you can buy things from Amazon with your Echo, you need to follow the below criteria with regards your Amazon account. You need to have:

• An annual or 30-day free trial Amazon Prime membership.
• A U.S. shipping address (50 United States and the District of Columbia).
• A payment method issued by a U.S. bank with a U.S. billing address in your 1-Click settings.
• Voice purchasing enabled in the Alexa app.
• A device with access to the Alexa Voice Service (such as Echo).

The same applies outside of the U.S., where you’ll need to have the necessary payment, address and Prime subscription for your location.

To order a product through the Echo simply say:

Alexa, order a [insert product name here]

You then get the option to respond yes or no when Alexa asks you to confirm your order. You can also use a few other voice commands while shopping on the Echo such as re-ordering a previously purchased product.

Alexa, re-order [insert product name here]

In both cases, when ordering a product, you’ll be asked for your four-digit code if you set it up as part of the confirmation process. It’s worth making sure this is on and you keep it secret from anyone you don’t want placing orders on your Amazon account.

You can also use Alexa to put items in your shopping cart for purchasing later online or in the Amazon app on your phone or tablet. To do this simply say:

Alexa, add [item] to my cart.

Your chosen items will then be waiting for you in your cart to checkout at a later date.

But what about cancellations? If you have a sudden change of heart, you can also cancel your order by asking Alexa to do it for you:

Alexa, cancel my order.

Your last order will now be canceled for you. If for any reason it can’t, you’ll have to go into the Amazon app or your account on the Amazon website to try and put the cancellation through.

And that’s all there is to it. If you shop a lot on Amazon, which if you’re an Echo owner is pretty likely, Alexa can help you order things with ease throughout the course of your day.

Download Amazon Alexa from the Google Play Store

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Questions?

Let us know in the comments below.

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Essential Phone coming to Canada as a Telus exclusive

Telus nabs Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone for sole distribution up in Canada.

This was unexpected. Essential Phone, the titanium-and-ceramic wünderhandset from Android creator Andy Rubin’s company of the same name, will debut in Canada later this summer on Telus.

The company said in a press release that the phone will be available for pre-order at the end of July, with availability later this summer. According to Rubin, Telus was chosen as the sole carrier “due to our strong alignment on the importance of continuous innovation and support for consumer choice.”

Essential Phone Specs

Essential announced earlier this month that the Phone would be available for $699 when it goes on sale unlocked in the U.S. Sprint then came out as the sole U.S. carrier offering the phone. With Telus locked in for Canadian distribution, it would seem that Essential’s strategy is in place.

Canadian pricing hasn’t been confirmed just yet, but Telus said it will be available outright — likely for close to $1,000 given today’s exchange rates — or on subsidy with select shared data plans. Telus also plans to sell Essential’s 4K 360-degree camera accessory in its stores.

See at Telus

The case for a Material Dark culture on Android

I love hex black and a dark UI!

You Android-lovers can’t deny,

That when an app installs in an itty-bitty space,

With a dark theme in your face,

You get sprung!

Google and Android are filled with white, white, white UIs. It wasn’t always that way, but it is now. The only real dark system UIs available right now are downloadable TouchWiz themes and third-party apps and Google’s apps are whiter than my jeans-365-days-a-year legs. Night modes have been toyed with in Developer Previews the last two years but have never amounted to much — and it’s been left out of even the Developer Previews on Android O.

Really, even if they had stuck around, it wouldn’t’ve been the dark theme we need — or want — anyway.

A dark theme, a night mode, and a Material Dark app.

Let’s get some terminology straight first because we keep interchanging some similar but very distinct terms. A dark theme is a UI that is primarily a dark color rather than white. Android itself used a dark theme back in the Holo days. There are a lot of apps with dark themes out there, frequently calling them night modes, but they’re wrong. Night mode should be reserved for the blue light filter that’ll keep your screen from keeping you up while you surf YouTube in bed. Some manufacturers have included blue-light filters in the past, and third-party apps have offered it, too.

We shouldn’t be lobbying Google for this. We should be lobbying everyone.

Then we have what I’m affectionately calling Material Dark, a Material Design-compliant UI based on a dark gray or black background with strong pops of accent colors. It’s not enough to ask for an app to have a dark theme; it needs to be a well-designed and tested dark theme that fits current developer guidelines. Material Dark is what we should push for in Google’s apps and in every app that we use and care about.

And we shouldn’t just be lobbying Google for this. We should be lobbying everyone. Lobby Google to give us Material Dark Google Apps — please, please lobby Google for Material Dark Google Apps — but ask the developers of your favorite apps if they could add a dark theme. Samsung has a dark theme for most of its system apps, so ask Motorola and LG why your Moto G5 Plus and your LG G6 can’t have a dark phone app so you won’t burn your retinas answering a call at 5 in the morning to fill in for a sick coworker.

Lobby for Material Dark for individual apps rather than begging for some magical device-wide dark theme because individual apps can easily add a dark theme without a system or device upgrade like any system night mode would’ve required. It can reach more people and improve the experience for more users without having them shell out money for a new phone.

Also, think of this: how often do you open the Settings app on your phone? How often do you open YouTube? On which one would a dark theme matter more to you day-to-day? So why is it we bitch more about Settings not having Material Dark than YouTube? The white, bright Material Design theme on YouTube can take users out of the videos they’re trying to watch and strain their eyes, meaning they watch fewer videos and Google loses views. Why doesn’t YouTube use Material Dark — like YouTube Music already does — when users will get far more use out of it?

It can potentially double the UI work for a developer, but Material Dark is a feature that users actively seek out in their apps, and adding one can help developers make their apps stand out from the pack. But we have to ask developers to take the time and effort for it. Politely, repeatedly, and in numbers. I’ve been asking for a Material Dark Google Play Music app since the day they announced the current white/orange color scheme. I love pumpkin seeds — I will rock the jack-o-lantern music player! What apps do you want to see go Material Dark? Sound off in the comments!

LG’s Second Year Promise gives the G6 an extra year of warranty

LG is making a big move to win customer loyalty.

The LG G6 has consistently been heralded as one of the best smartphones of 2017, all but erasing the negative impression of the G5 before it. Now, LG wants to continue that goodwill with a new program called the Second Year Promise, which extends the G6’s regular warranty from one year to two in the U.S.

While this isn’t quite like HTC’s Uh-Oh Protection, which acts more as a low-deductible insurance policy, the Second Year Promise, according to a report by The Verge, merely extends the G6’s regular manufacturer’s warranty an extra 12 months. This puts the phone’s U.S. warranty on par with its European one, which tends to be two years for electronics goods.

Here’s what you need to know:

• This applies to all LG G6s sold in the U.S., both from carriers and unlocked through online retailers.
• This doesn’t apply to user-caused damage, so if you drop your phone on day one or day 401, it doesn’t matter — this won’t cover you.
• Users need to register their G6 with LG 90 days after the announcement of the program in order to extend the warranty.
  • If you’ve already bought an LG G6, don’t worry, you’re still covered as long as you sign up within 90 days from June 15.
• If a phone is found to be defective, it will be replaced within two business days of shipping it back to LG.

That’s it! Easy peasy. What do you think of the new program? Is it going to entice you to buy a G6 if you haven’t already, or a future LG product in the future?

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