Does Anyone Understand This???

[Pixelpusher]

Hidden Image
Use the information below to add a hidden image to your site that will subscribe visitors to your lists.
To add a contact to your lists through a hidden image, you place an img tag in your web page, with some information in the src attribute that identifies the person to add, and what list to add them to. You can specify an email address, a list, and any number of custom fields to set for the contact, though they must be custom fields in the system already.
The format of the hidden image url is made up of several pieces:

• http://server1.emailcampaigns.net/autoadd/?c=7075 - Required beginning of every hidden image url
• email=address%40domain.com - URL encoded email address of the person to subscribe
• lid=1 - ID of the list to subscribe the email address above to

Custom field information can also be included in the url in the form "Custom Field Token"=value. (ex. FirstName=Joe)

Custom Field Tokens

Example:

<img src="http://server1.emailcampaigns.net/au...main.com&lid=1" />














Any help would be appreciated!

[jwhitham]

Can't really see how it can work except in conjunction with a serverside script. And if you're using a script then why not obtain the information for yourself?

I also suspect that it might well cause phishing warnings in visitor browsers.

[Pixelpusher]

The client gave me this information (which comes from contactology.com) and it is supposed to add people that sign up to his newsletter to a database at contactology. I have a call in to them to get the scoop, but with the 4th of July Holiday it may be next week. Just wanted to see if anyone has had experience with this.

Thanks

[juergen]

Only reason to use this would be to subscribe people without letting them know they did ...
put these images in html emails, send to them and when they view the email, they are subscribed. I don't even want to start commenting on such a practice.

Juergen

[pauland]

Yes, it's a trick to add an individuals id to an image so that when they view the web page/html email the browser requests that an image is loaded and in doing so the info identifying the user is passed to the server where it can be logged.

You can basically tell that a specific user has been reading the page/email.

It's the reason why my anti-virus/security software doesn't automatically load images from non-trusted sites.

It's unfortunately a somewhat dubious practice because it's tracking the end user without them knowing, though most of us have similar things going on anyway via cookies. There's a reason why it's a "hidden image"

[pauland]

Only reason to use this would be to subscribe people without letting them know they did ...
put these images in html emails, send to them and when they view the email, they are subscribed. I don't even want to start commenting on such a practice.

Juergen

That's not necessarily so, though there's little doubt that dodgy operators might do so.

A more benign use is to know who read your email newsletter (or indeed spam). It could also be used to verify that a given email address exists.

Generally, don't open email sources from unknown sources and don't display images from unkown sources to avoid this "trick" working.

I'm sure Juergen knows that already.

[juergen]

yes, one not so dodgy reason to do that would be to confirm an email address is correct.

The on posted in the first message was:
-------------
......./autoadd/?c=7075 - Required beginning of every hidden image url
email=address%40domain.com - URL encoded email address of the person to subscribe
lid=1 - ID of the list to subscribe the email address above to
-------------

That one does not sound like just a confirmation.

[pauland]

yes, one not so dodgy reason to do that would be to confirm an email address is correct.

The on posted in the first message was:
-------------
......./autoadd/?c=7075 - Required beginning of every hidden image url
email=address%40domain.com - URL encoded email address of the person to subscribe
lid=1 - ID of the list to subscribe the email address above to
-------------

That one does not sound like just a confirmation.

No, you are right. A legitimate subscription option would have a link for the user to click. That link could also pass the users details for subscription, but that would all be visible and at the users discretion. There's no need to use hidden images to subscribe someone.