France's CNIL Seeks Input for Recommendation on Consent for Pixels in Emails
The use of tracking pixels is growing, raising issues about email, French privacy watchdog CNIL said Thursday as it unveiled a consultation on draft recommendations for using pixels. CNIL said it's receiving increasing complaints about pixels and wants to help stakeholders who use such trackers understand their obligations around user-consent collection.
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Pixels are an alternative tracking method to cookies, CNIL noted. They take the form of an image of one pixel by one pixel, integrated into a website or email but invisible to users. Loading the image, whose name contains a user identifier, makes it possible to know that a tracked user has visited a page or read an email.
The technique is used for customizing communications according to users' interests and measuring audience, CNIL said.
The draft recommendation seeks comment from all public and private bodies that deploy pixels in email as well as from the technical service providers they use, the watchdog said. It concerns only the use of pixels in emails, not on the web.
Comments are due July 24.