The Beacon is an umbrella for tracking techniques, among them the pixel tracking, which is a controversial mechanism because it attempts to inform about access to a message or other individual form that the person accessed that.
Some consider it an invasion of privacy because there’s no way they know this tracking is taking place and they don’t have much to defend without compromising normal functionality (there are some clients who already have facilities, but almost need to be technical to configure properly). Of course a person with technical knowledge and will has something to do.
It consists of inserting an invisible pixel that has some unique identifier, when the content is accessed it will be loaded indicating on the server that there was access to the content and it is possible to know who it was if the identifier is linked to an identity obtained otherwise.
Do you know that feature of asking for confirmation if the person read the email and that it can be delimited? Some customers do not even respond to it. The pixel tracking always works, unless the image load is disabled. This can be used for various types of content, not just emails.
The exact form of implementation may vary, it may not be invisible, it may not be a pixel, it may not have a unique identifier, it depends on the need and what is available.
One way to see it is to treat it like one cookie.
It is a technical tool basically at the service of marketing, so other details are not important in our context.
This is implemented in the client (an HTML page somewhere), with support on the server if you want to control the identity. Generally, the log to see what was accessed. But you can have a server to handle it in a specific way. The process is simple and similar to what is used in cookie.
<img src="http://tracking.dominio.com/pixel.gif?id=1234"/>
What would that be
guarda-chuva para técnicas
?– MagicHat
There are several ways to track, the pixel tracking is one of them, the Beacon it’s about all of them.
– Maniero
@Magichat saw that I gave an edited? It was good now?
– Maniero