We Updated Our Privacy Policy. Here's What Changed and Why.

We recently updated our privacy policy for the first time since 2022. Most of the changes are clarifications, reorganizations, and improvements in transparency, particularly around how third-party tools that run parts of our site operate. But one change is substantive enough that we want to address it directly.

The Change You Should Know About: Opt-In Email Tracking

We want to know how we’re doing with our advocacy: which campaigns get your attention and which do not, which topics you are very interested in, which less so, and which not at all. It helps us to do our work better and to prioritize or rethink our strategies as we push to build support for freedom, justice and innovation around the world.

So, to give us a rough picture of how we’re doing, we are introducing the option for you to provide explicit, opt-in consent for us to see how you interact with the emails we send you. That includes whether you open emails, and whether you click on the links inside them.

We know what you’re thinking: Doesn’t EFF strongly oppose nonconsensual tracking? You bet we do. Sneaky email tracking is ubiquitous on the web and EFF’s opposition to it remains unchanged. We have never used email tracking pixels and we’re not changing that. We’re not building profiles and we’re not sharing the data and we’re definitely not selling it.

But we do want to give you the option of allowing us to learn about how our communications are landing with you. Here’s how consent will work. We will ask, and if you say yes, we’ll be able to see whether you opened an email or not, and whether you clicked on any links. That's it.

If you say no, or ignore the ask entirely, nothing will change and we’ll do no tracking.

If you say yes, you can change your mind and opt out at any time by clicking an opt-out link in any future email or by contacting membership@eff.org.

We have heard many EFF members say that EFF is one of the only organizations that they trust with consent to track their emails. That trust is important, and we do not take it lightly. But it led us to think that if we ask, enough of you would agree that we could have a better picture of how our campaigns and other emails to you are landing and that, in turn, could help us decide what to double down on and what to change.

By giving you a real ability to consent, EFF is taking a very different path than most of the web. Asking isn’t the norm; it’s more or less never an option to say no and dark patterns often make it hard even if it looks like you can. Unfortunately, estimates have shown that 2/3s of emails received by users contain tracking, regardless of whether the senders received explicit consent at the time when a recipient signs up to receive their mailings. Automatic, nonconsensual tracking doesn’t have to be the default, and it shouldn’t be.

We hope our approach works and it inspires others. It shouldn’t be an abnormality that users are not tracked by default, and that only users who feel comfortable doing so choose to consent to tracking. We hope that our example will show mailing platforms, organizations, and users that a privacy-protective approach is better and worth doing and can still give an email sender a solid understanding what campaigns and other messages resonate with recipients. We weighed this decision carefully. We know that email tracking is something we've criticized when used covertly or without meaningful consent and that many people don’t like at all. For EFF, an opt-in requirement isn't a formality. It's the key distinction between a sneaky strategy and an aboveboard relationship with you. And to us, it’s just a common sense approach based on respect.

It’s also consistent with our advocacy and approach to technology. We have said for many years that strong consumer privacy laws must require real opt-in consent before data is collected. And we have walked our talk in other ways as well, including in pushing for Do Not Track policies and in Privacy Badger, which protects you from ads and trackers that violate the principle of user consent.

Again, this behavior has been our suggestion for privacy policies, and privacy laws. In 2022 we released a guide for nonprofits that recommended the following:

Not tracking email open rates can, unfortunately, sometimes cause list “hygiene” problems, because it becomes difficult to know whether email subscribers on your list are still interested. You can send occasional emails to ensure subscribers want to receive emails, either using open or click tracking, and informing people that the purpose of that specific email is to determine active subscribers. The essential point is to let users know when you are using tracking, and to do it in a limited way when possible.... The Internet Archive found that whi