Web beacon/GIF poorly worded, unnecessary

[mdekstrand]

Two issues with the Web Beacon section of the privacy policy:

• Please don't say that web beacons are "also known as gifs"; I don't think that is true in circles that actually know what a GIF is. It sets off my "does the author know what they're talking about?" alarm.
• I question whether web beacons are necessary at all. On the app.net site, can you not just instrument the site request handlers themselves for tracking and analytics? On e-mail I can understand, but most e-mail clients default to not displaying images anyway. Deploying beacons on third-party sites is highly suspect behavior.

[berg]

Would you mind looking at the new privacy policy? It is still a baseline, but is different in this case.

I specifically asked that the "gifs" language be removed (as that was very low hanging fruit, and also set off my warning bells!), and we can look into verifying/reducing the usage of other items.

[mdekstrand]

@berg The new ones definitely clean up the GIF terminology issues. That leaves the existence of web beacons in the first place.

Can you (or someone) provide a use case for a web beacon where an alternate instrumentation technology is either insufficient or impractical?