I just released an update to my app DreamFX Photo, and made it free. My problem is that I have an "email me" button for support, and I'm getting around 3 blank emails an hour from different people. Any thoughts if this is spam or some sort of bug?
haha, i have that issue as well.
I believe users are pressing on the support link, and then decide to cancel the email. by mistake they are clicking on the "Send" button, instead of the "Cancel".
either that, or they save the email as draft and then send it later on by mistake.
I support a very popular free app and we get tons of blank emails. We thought that it was a bug or a spam as well but after analyzing them and responding to all of them, we have come to the conclusion that there are 4 primary causes.
People tap the support link and then accidentally hit "send" instead of "cancel".
People are just tapping things randomly trying things out.
"Pocket emails". Similar to pocket dials, the phone becomes unlocked and unintended actions occur.
"Baby emails". We respond to each email, even the blank ones, and have found that often someone let their child play with the device and the child manages to send an email. This might even be our primary driver of blank emails. :)
Related
Many times I receive e-mails that have a Confirm account button inside them, a click-able link. At the end of the e-mail there's also a message that says:
Trouble clicking? Copy this URL in the address bar: http://example.com/confirm-account/xyz
Why is the plain URL added at the end of the e-mail, should I include this in all my e-mails as well? Why would a Confirm account not be clickable?
It's a relic of the past =)
Now we code buttons and it works properly always. But earlier buttons were made by images. And, you guess, sometimes images doesn't appear in emails when they are in inbox (or spam folder).
So don't be worry. Coded button works OK.
This is not exactly a programming related question but it is closely related to developing so I think it is pertinent.
I´ve been charged in my work with developing an app with access to Facebook Messenger. I needed a Facebook Account and I didn´t want to use a personal one (and I don´t use Facebook anyway) so I created a new gmail account to use it to sign up in Facebook, as user and as a developer.
After a couple of days of work, having created the page, my webhook, done some tests, etc., and investing a good deal of work hours, my account appeared as disabled.
I have to admit a didn´t use much of real info on this account (I´m kind of allergic to disclosing personal information unless mandatory), and the account was new so I thought that maybe that was the reason (they don´t give you any).
So I tried again a second time with an account I had been using for years (just for logging in some sites, not much of real information there neither, as I say I don´t really use Facebook), and after a couple of days, same results, locked account.
I can´t stress enough I don´t use the API extensively, I just send some messages to another user I have added as one of the application developers so I can test (that other account is never blocked, by the way). It´s not like I am sending hundreds of messages or anything like it. And by the way, I have never been blocked while I was doing something (so I could indentify my wrongdoing). It just happened that at some point when I was going back to work (first hour in the morning, or after lunch for example) I tried to log in again and then I got the warning.
So I have tried a third time, this time I have given all my real information, reluctantly uploaded a personal picture, given all my data to Facebook (yikes!).
And after a couple of days: damn, same result. Blocked account. Work lost. They prompt you to upload a picture to check your Id, but to no avail (no answer yet, not even a notice of any kind) and they don´t give you absolutely any reason why the have blocked you.
And if I go to https://facebook.com/help/contact/260749603972907 to fill the form where they ask you to upload an ID then it says that the email doesn´t belong to a disabled account!
What is the unusual activity they have detected? What have I done wrong? Has someone experienced the same problem? Has someone got any clue of what it is that I could be doing wrong?
Because I don´t want to go through the whole process once again only to get blocked in a couple of days.
Thanks.
EDIT 1:
Ok, after checking again now it recognizes the account as a disabled one. I have gone to https://facebook.com/help/contact/260749603972907 to fill the form and I have uploaded my ID (even though I completely disagree with disclosing that kind of information).
Honestly, I don´t know what it means by "shortly". It´s been two days now and I have not received any kind of notification yet.
By the way, I haven´t received any kind of notification (mail, sms, anything) during any step of the process EVER. No one. Nothing. Not even an automatic email response. Plain absolute silence.
Honestly, if Facebook uses a security system like this, that lets hackers in while blocks legitimate users, creating false positives and making us lose many hours of work, without any reason or notification or explanation, then Facebook security is plain wrecked.
And I cannot do anything less than to strongly discourage any developer to use it if they can avoid it (what unfortunately I can´t).
EDIT 2:
After some days I regained access to my account again. Without any notification, I just tried again and now it worked (really good communication policy, Facebook, congratulations).
My App had disappeared, so I had to go through the whole process again. And after sending ONE message to the API, this again:
And once again the asked me to upload a picture of myself (I think they already have enough pictures of me to make an album).
This is just plain crazy.
I've used 'Are You Interested', a Facebook APP and when something on that app happens (such as a user sends me a message in that app) then I will see (to the left under APPS) a numeric value representing the number of new events that have happened on 'Are You Interested' since I last looked.
I want to do the same thing with my App, as it's also a niche dating site. I'd like to notify users when someone sends them a message or views their profile. I was told that I should search for app requests. However the code samples that I see seem to be slightly different than what I want to accomplish.
The information I am finding seems as though it is intended for me to allow my users to request things from their friends. That's completely different than what I want to do. There's no need for them to request anything from friends.
When I tried sending one to my test account, just to see what happens..it incremented the numeric value to the left under APPS by 1, which is a good thing, but the text was so generic, it was something like, "So and so is requesting something in [sitename]", but I don't want it to say that and I didn't see anywhere to change this text....furthermore, it added a 'Notification' to the very top of Facebook with the same generic request message. Again, that's not what I'm looking for. When I receive these APP Alerts for other apps, they don't add a 'Notification' up top of Facebook, and I don't want to either. I do believe that the code snippets I found under 'Requests' is something different than what I'm looking to achieve.
Just to summarize: I have a dating app, and people can send messages to eachother. I want an APP Alert (as I'm referring to it) to be seen to the left under Apps and also to the right in the bookmarks area, but I want the message to not be so generic and I don't want users to be selecting friends to request something. I want this action to come from my server and sent to the user that will be receiving the alert. I also do not want a facebook 'Notification' up top each time they receive a message. I hope I'm being clear in what I'm trying to accomplish. Thanks in advance for any guidance. -Chris
Is it possible to prevent editing when MFMessageComposeViewController shows up?
'Cause I want the body of SMS can't be changed by user and I think it's still legal.
Please help!
No the user has final say when using the MFMessageComposeView.
Your app is also prohibited from changing the content/recipient/body of the email when the
view slides up.
If you could do this it would be easy to paste in a different recipient, sniff the content provided by the user etc. etc. (especially in the Message App, you could swap the phone number and do terrible things.).
I guess this is the logic behind, you get to pre-populate the message, but the user decides from there on and until "Cancel" or "Send".
You should probably build a web service where you have control over the data
when it hits the server and make an interface for that on the phone.
So, 'Litmus', a web app for testing emails and webpages across browsers and email clients, has a proprietary method that they claim is able to track not just opens, clicks, browsers, etc (standard with an embedded image and pass-through link tracking.)
What's unique is they claim that they are able to track what actions the end user took, how long the end user read it for, and if they deleted or forwarded the email. They claim they do this without JavaScript, and purely using embedded images. They claim that the method works across most major email clients.
What could they be doing to track this? Obviously, if they're doing it with third party applications that they don't control, whatever they are doing should be replicable.
I'm thinking that they realized that when an email client forwards or deletes an email, it 'opens' the email in a different way then normal, creating a unique user string on the server log of some kind? I'm grasping at strings, though.
http://litmusapp.com/email-analytics
Details here http://litmusapp.com/help/analytics/how-it-works
EDIT: It also looks like they track Prints. Maybe they do this by tracking calls to the 'print' css?
It's all done with good ol' image bugs. Breaking down how they find out...
Which client was used: Check the user-agent
Whether an email was forwarded: Done by attaching image bugs to divs that are loaded only when the message is forwarded.
Whether an email was printed: bug attached to print stylesheet
How long it takes to read an email: A connection that's kept open, as pointed out by Forrest (this is also how Facebook tracks(ed?) whether or not you are online on chat).
Whether an email was deleted: Check If a message was read for a short period of time or not opened. In fact, they group "glanced" and "deleted" together.
Of course none of this will work if email clients disable images in emails.
EDIT: Here's another question on this:
The OP actually has their tracking code, and this answer here explains how it works.
One way I can think of doing that is having an embedded image that loads from a script on a server. The script would not return anything or maybe send data really slowly to keep the connection open. Once the email is deleted the connection would be closed. This way they could know how long the email was open. Maybe they just assume if it's open for less than 10 seconds it was deleted?
Another way is tracking the referrer - this would give a lot of data on what a webmail client is doing, but I doubt it would be useful with a desktop client.
They know when the email is opened (it's when the image is called from their http server).
They also know what the user do and when since they can easily replace all links with their own tracking URLs redirecting to the original link.
There is nothing exceptional here. They are just a bit more advanced than their compatitors. There is no magic.
I have only one doubt: how they track delete. Technically, there is no way to know what happened to the message after it was read.
I suspect that a "deleted" mail is a mail that is never opened.