Why is There a Hidden Link in My Welcome Email?

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Overview

Some customers have reported hidden links in their welcome emails. Do not worry. In this article, we discuss how web beacons are used and how they play an important part in automated email infrastructure.

Web Beacons

A very common practice when sending out many emails is to embed a web beacon into an email. BluSKY uses a small 1 x 1 px image combined with a unique number. When you open the email, it wants to download the image. Since we know the unique number associated with the image we can determine if the email was delivered or not. This is a tool we use to monitor our service. If we have an issue with email delivery, the web beacon serves as an alert to correct the issue.

How BluBØX Uses Them

Typically, BluBØX will use a web beacon every time we send an automated email. This can include: Welcome Emails, new Visitor Requests, modified Visitor Requests and notifications(Coming Soon). If you do happen to see the link it should always redirect you to something in the links.blub0x.com domain. If you encounter an image or link that does not go to links.blub0x.com/ please contact support immediately and we will investigate.

Additional Information

Unfortunately, aggressive web marketers often abuse this technology, leading to clients imposing strict rules for processing email. If you ever noticed a download image button in your email, this is typically how they handle it. Other clients, such as Outlook 365^™, isolate the image as a link. This has led to many more people noticing the web beacon in the first place. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but any new embedded icons and links naturally raise questions as we become more conscience of digital security.