[buug] Fwd: Pearson Education User Group Program Newsletters -- January/February/March 2010

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu):

> Well, ... they switched from sending (non-default, specifically set by
> option) plain text to HTML again ... and effectively not including plain
> text.  Sure, they use
> Content-Type: multipart/alternative
> but the body of the
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ascii
> section is blank, and the HTML version they include is designed to track
> individual subscriber/referral clicks, etc. on essentially every URL.

This is a technique that's being sold to businesses by several Internet
marketing firms:  Constant Contact, Inc., VerticalResponse, Inc.,
Relevant Power, Inc.

Some otherwise worthwhile companies have been suckered into it for
sending bugged communications to customers:  Bonny Doon Vineyard,
Kepler's Books, even Kaiser Permanente Medical Group.  See:

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/keplers-2008-10-23