a couple of days ago, something alarming came to my attention and realized something very wrong, I was checking my e-mail and I noticed a message from Buzzfeed and it said, we miss you. So, the curiosity made me click on it. It said that, it has been a while since you have opened up any emails from us. We just want to know are you still interested in subscribing to us?
At this moment, I was very alarmed, creeped out and actually violated that some of these people from these social media outlets, news outlets and more who send newsletters and new things know when you open up an e-mail or not. I have also noticed this with other companies that I am subscribed with, that they no longer send things because I do not open an e-mail.
That is pretty creepy that they monitor those things and even more creepier when they e-mail you saying that they haven’t seen you open up the messages. They should not be allowed to do that. I open a message when I want to, not when they ask me to open it and not being monitored to.
I know these days with technology, social media and everything is not private anymore and everything we do is monitored online, but this freaked me out where these people who send newsletters actually know when their e-mails sent are open or not. It just makes you ponder about our e-mails no longer being private for our eyes to see only.
I know the difference of spam and e-mails that contain viruses which I delete right away. I am talking about those ones from Buzzfeed, News Sites, Social Media marketing sites and more.
Have you encountered and received an e-mail saying that we have not seen you or heard from you in a while when you check your e-mails? I am seriously considering on unsubscribing to all those newsletters. I will be contacting Buzzfeed and other sites that have said the same thing to me in the e-mail. I will see what they say.
I am thinking of starting an online petition to boycott the monitoring of opened or unopened e-mail newsletters. Just so unbelievably creepy.
Talin Orfali Ghazarian 
everything you do online on a computer or smartphone is heavily monitored, all Federal Governments in North America, the UK and Europe have agencies dedicated to monitoring all smart phone & computer activities , and they can listen into any phone call they choose, they usually require a legal document to access your call history directly from a phone company, but that is not the same as monitoring or eavesdropping on your call, the US FBI & CIA has demanded and is pressuring Apple to provide them with the backdoor encryption key for their new iPhones….
nothing you say or do online, including emails is private, social media sites monitor what you do and say, they keep track of emails , facebook is the most invasive social media site , facebook, google , yahoo, and most other media platforms including their browsers tailor ads specifically to you based on the social media sites you subscribe to, the newsletters you receive, what you type into the search bars and what you talk about online…. facebook will actually use your images ( photos of you or your children , anyone’s picture you post ) in ads directed at the people in your friends lists ….
all this is perfectly legal .
[ Smiles ] I haven’t had that experience. I don’t know what it is like to receive creepy emails.
That’s not an unusual feature. Outlook has it; it’s not on by default, but you can set it to find out who reads the messages you send out.
Yes, the people sending out things like mass amounts of emailed news letters can see those statistics, it’s like the way we can see how many people view our sites on WordPress, and what country they live in, it’s just so they know how they’re doing though, they cant see anything else you’d be doing online. I’ve done a little bit of work like that for companies.