How the Australian election has invaded your inbox with email tracking tools

Krusty · May 1, 2019

Politicians want your time and your donations, but they especially want to know if you've opened their emails — and perhaps even when, where and on what device.

That's why there may be something hidden in messages sent from Australia's political parties, candidates and lobby groups: a 1x1 pixel image.

This tiny, invisible picture is an email tracker. When the email is opened, the pixel is downloaded, potentially letting the sender know a range of details about the recipient.

The ABC found various pixels in campaign emails sent by the Australian Greens, the Labor and the Liberal Party, as well as from lobby groups Advance Australia and GetUp.

Open tracking is a standard technique used by marketers, as well as by newsletter services deployed by media organisations, including the ABC, but its use in electioneering has privacy experts concerned.

Email was once a simple, relatively trustworthy messaging system that "wasn't crawling with surveillance and tracking tools", according to Dr David Vaile, data law expert at the University of New South Wales. But no longer.

Surveillance is just one part of the picture: Emails often include links that, if clicked, can connect the recipient with the broader Facebook and Google-owned online ad networks common across the internet.

And while political campaigns are increasingly data-driven, Dr Vaile suggested the online practices of Australia's political parties are largely opaque — thanks, in part, to their exemption from the Privacy Act.

"Not everybody's aware of this, and if they're aware of it, they're not aware of how it's used," said James McDonald, head of digital marketing firm Audience Group.

"It would be concerning to a large chunk of Australians, I think."
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/science...-interest-groups-australian-election/11056186

[...]
"This means that trackers can connect email addresses to browsing histories and profiles, which leads to further privacy breaches such as cross-device tracking and linking of online and offline activities," they wrote.

Australian political parties (but not lobby groups) have access to the electoral roll, which means that combined with data they collect online and offline, they have the potential to create data-rich profiles of Australian voters.

Dr Vaile said we have little visibility of these collections or their security.

"The political parties in Australia have given themselves an absolute free kick, an exemption from virtually any form of a privacy or data protection law or spam regulations.

"In effect, you know, they are data addicts. Big data addicts."
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Circuit · May 1, 2019

Not to you in particular Krusty, getting a little tired of the news to frighten people.
This forum should be talking about solving issues not copy/paste almost, want to say "fake news" and a little to political .
Seems like Wilders is just becoming like a "drudge report".
Anyone that goes on-line will find scary stories everywhere, why does this forum have to become like this.
My wish would be to stay on topic about security products and their advances.

Fun to read like the national enquirer, this forum should be on a higher level then that.
Said my thoughts, now here comes the trolls.

Krusty · May 1, 2019

Circuit said: ↑

My wish would be to stay on topic about security products and their advances.
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With no disrespect Circuit, this board is titled, "Privacy General", so isn't here for security products. There are boards for them too.

Cheers.

mirimir · May 2, 2019

People who care ought to disable image loading in email clients. Just sayin'.

reasonablePrivacy · May 2, 2019

Circuit said: ↑

Not to you in particular Krusty, getting a little tired of the news to frighten people.
This forum should be talking about solving issues not copy/paste almost, want to say "fake news" and a little to political .
Seems like Wilders is just becoming like a "drudge report".
Anyone that goes on-line will find scary stories everywhere, why does this forum have to become like this.
My wish would be to stay on topic about security products and their advances.

Fun to read like the national enquirer, this forum should be on a higher level then that.
Said my thoughts, now here comes the trolls.
Click to expand...

You probably clicked "Privacy" instead of "Security General" at the top of the page.

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