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Comment by dgudkov | Hacker News Reader

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dgudkov

>We take your privacy seriously.

I'm sure you do, but please please please -- don't use this cliché. It's superficial and off-putting.

Better explain specifically what you do for it. And then let us decide if you take our privacy seriously or not.

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You are so right! Thank you for your feedback.

Changed it to "Your privacy is important. Darwin will never record, distribute or sell your personal data to any third parties."

Question I have: do you need to actually collect this information at all?

I appreciate the no share, but if a service never collects it to begin with then it’s never an issue including if you get hacked for instance.

I’m curious not a judgement.

The app does need to know what your email address at gmail is in order to work.

Correct!

Other than that there is no need to collect much other information at all.

Google Analytics is currently how I see how users found DarwinMail & where they came from.

Google Analytics also provides info such as users device and browser type.

A list of the data Google Analytics collects can be found here:

https://www.shivarweb.com/2977/what-does-google-analytics-do

Google Analytics is the defacto standard for millions of websites across the web.

Should probably mention that next you your statement about privacy. I would consider an email service that has Google analytics on it not terribly private

It is true that using Google Analytics does sound quite overt.

The question remains, how else can I see where my users are visiting from, what browsers & mobile devices are they using so that I may better tailor DarwinMail?

I would suggest one of the alternatives listed at https://switching.social/ethical-alternatives-to-google-anal... . Fathom in particular is open source and can be self hosted

Wow! Thank you for those suggestions.

I've looked into Fathom before. I quite like what's offered. And the fact that's it's open source is the cherry on top :)

Thank you very much for the suggestion and for giving me a direct link to check out more.

I've dropped Google Analytics in favor of good old fashioned server log parsing with several off the shelf tools.

The load times of my site, the quality of my stats and the privacy of my users have all been improved.

That's quite interesting. I like the sound of that. Thank you for your feedback.

Thank you for your questions :)

What information are you referring to?

I would prefer to understand your question better so I can give you honest and hopefully succinct feedback :)

> Question I have: do you need to actually collect this information at all?

In the very comment you're responding to, he says "never record". In this context, this means the same as "never collect".

Hey there, thank you very much for helping out :)

how can we take your word for it? not sure who you are. there is no about page.

Hello, that's another great suggestion! Thank you.

Will add it soon. Hopefully, it will help :)

Related to this question: Does Darwin block remote images from loading automatically? I find this is increasingly hard to find (Geary Mail comes to mind) and it's surprising to me.

Thank you for your question :)

We block any and all code scripts/styles from executing outside of emails.

We don't block images though - if we did then the emails you could usually receive with images will feel plain.. won't it? If I understand you correctly?

Allowing remote images to load allows for a tracking signal to be sent from the email client. Blocking images allows the user to choose whether that signal is sent.

Ohh I see. Like a Facebook Pixels tracking image. No, I don't think that's blocked. Then again, it's not blocked in most email clients, perhaps it's difficult to accomplish.

Nonetheless, I've added it to the list of upcoming features as I believe it's worth a shot!

Thank you so much for your feedback :)

There is an option to block it in Gmail/Inbox.

That is excellent news.

I will look into that. It does not sound like it will be too tricky to implement so expect a quick turn around time :)

I believe there are a couple of approaches to this with varying amount of data storage, You can download all images immediately as the email is received (thus preventing image tracking as every image would then be clicked immediately) or have the ability to block all images and selectively turn them on when necessary (unless the image is inline etc).

Thank you so much for your suggestion. This is gold.

I really like your approach to solving the problem.

I have taken note of your suggestions and will look into this further asap :)

Cool - not saying you have to do it like them, but the most popular option there is to block all images globally but allow the person to click a button to unblock images for that specific email, which then enables a dialogue to "always unblock images from this sender."

I like that workflow; may be something to consider. I block all images but allow images from known senders, like my parents or co-workers.

Thank you so much for your feedback.

This is a great approach to achieving our goal.

I have taken note of your suggestions and will look into this asap :)

Thunderbird has the feature. I almost never need to look at in image in an email, unless it's a photo from a friend.

Fantastic, I have an example to learn from :D

Thank you for the tip!

I haven’t seen an email with images in years because I always use clients which allow disabling auto-loading.

If I get an email with images it’s usually an email I didn’t want and I block the sender shortly thereafter. Real people don’t tend to send emails with images that are important for understanding the textual content.

I love your breakdown of emails here.

It's truly eye-opening. I hope that others feel the same?

In any case, I have taken note of your points and will look into this asap!

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