Omit Clicks, Opens, etc. from reporting when performed by a security program

[BarryW49]

Seems that a number of companies have started automatically tracing back all the links in emails. This makes the click reports pretty useless. Results are swamped with this.

[CIFMarketing0296]

The plot thickens. Update on our questionable data resulting from a monthly e-newsletter.

We received a large number of clicks on a Twitter link to our page there and Apple App store link for our company app, both of which normally have almost no clicks. CC said this was likely from security programs checking links - but I think it's strange that it was only for these two.

After some digging, we found that if you have hidden links in your email - end user systems can flag your email and then add greater scrutiny (clicks?) Spammers apparently use these hidden links to do their ill will. 

We had a couple of them in the footer of our message - added to deal with earlier bad data coming in through CC due to robots clicking every link in the email (and messing up our data). Hence, anyone who clicked on a hidden link was not a person but a robot. Those have now been removed and I am hoping we don't have this problem when we send again soon.

Apparently there is a paid service CC offers to dig deeper but the general help via chat was quite broad and did not give any insights into why this is happening. Maybe together as a community we can try to figure this out. Appreciate you all.

[SoundAdvice]

So disheartening to realize nothing has been solved on this issue in the last 4+ years. I'm new to CC, and was blown away to look at the engagement reports and see how every link is clicked in my "opened" emails within one minute of the campaign going out. The only way to really know if an email is opened is if they Unsubscribe 😂 

[CIFMarketing0296]

I am starting to wonder if the Constant Contact staff or key vendors even read these forums. Is there anything new to report, solutions they are working on?

[Passport]

Following this thread. It is really annoying to see that open, click report phenomena. Unfortunately, I think it has more to do with virus software than with Constant Contact. I use another email program for another operation and it experiences the same phenomena. I was told that some virus software "triggers" links to check the domain the link is associated with as part of its security protocol. I don't see how any program is going to be able to differentiate between an automated click and a human click, except perhaps by the timing of the open/click record....