We don't know if you read our posts and why we're totally fine with it

Many companies, and even individuals, send us many emails. Some of them because we are a customer and others because we have subscribed to their newsletter. Either way, most of these companies are trying to contact us with new information, or even exclusive newsletter deals, convert us to buy their products or services time and time again. We might even be genuinely interested in what these companies or individuals have to say. But with that comes unwanted invasion of privacy through tracking their readers.

There aren't many companies out there who don't (ab)use the usage of e-mail tracking. Potentially every e-mail you receive, that's not directly from an individual you know, has a high chance of containing some form of e-mail tracking. The tracking of e-mails can go so far that these companies not only know you have opened an e-mail. But also how long you've had it open, what links you clicked or how you generally interact with their e-mails. Their smart tracking systems can tell them about what smartphone or laptop you have, at what time you read their e-mail and even how often you check back on that e-mail they sent you. Haven't read their latest additions to your inbox? Don't worry, they won't mind reminding you every once in a while that you haven't opened their most recent e-mails if you have decided to take a little break.

Spy Pixels are slowly invading our e-mail box. And with that, these companies are invading our privacy. Most of us don't even realize these spy pixels exist or the amount of information they reveal about you. This has to stop.

Ever since Hey.com has been released in 2020, with blocking e-mail Spy Pixels as one of its main features, more and more companies are deciding to let go of their e-mail tracking. Even Apple has recently announced that they will be blocking e-mail tracking with the default Mail app starting with their next software release in the fall. This is a huge development when it comes to privacy as now Spy Pixels and e-mail tracking will finally have a chance to become obsolete.

At Draftsman.io we are very passionate about doing right by our readers and, in the future, our users. We value transparency in what we do and what we do with your information. From the start one of our drivers was to generate beautiful serverless applications based on your models, where the generated code is readable and fully transparent. You own the code we generated, wether you decide to stay with us or leave us. When we started our blog Papers by Draftsman.io, we wanted to have the same transperancy. And since this e-mail tracking endemic recently surfaced again in a much larger way than ever before, we decided that we would never include any tracking in our e-mails starting from day one.

Obviously we are still looking to grow our audience, and we would love to welcome you onto our newsletter. For us, this means that we use a specific tool to give us anonymous insight into how our blog is doing. Plausible.io gives us insight in the amount of unique visitors we have had and how often certain pages have been looked up. We also see how this visitor found their way to our blog, maybe through our newsletter, a search engine or a direct link. All we see is anonymous information. We don't see any information about our individuals viewers, and we have no idea who you are. The web is entirely free, as it should be. And for us, well we can't think of anything better than letting our readers decide if and when they wanna read. We don't need to be in the loop via tracking.

So, we don't know if you have read our posts. And we're totally fine with it. Of course, we would love to hear from you! If you have any questions or feedback, don't hesitate to shoot us a message at papers@draftsman.io.