Exclude visits from email scanning gateways

Support & Bugs
1

Hi guys,

As per subject line, is there any way to exclude visits generated by email scanning programs which go through links in an email?

I often see a real visit from a user from their phone, but at the exact same time also hits from a desktop device (often located in the US).

I have the TrackingSpamPrevention v4.1.3 plugin installed with Block Headless Browsers checked.

Do I need to check Block tracking requests from the cloud and from server-side libraries?

2

Hi @luminsol,
How do you recognize it is email scanning gateway? Is there any specific IP that you could exclude? Or some kind of browser type (that you may also exclude)?

3

It’s because the utm_campaign is set to a value that we have set in our emails and location is in the US (we do not have users from the US).

It seems quite varied. Some examples:

  • IP: 40.94.0.0 from Quincy, Network owner: Microsoft Azure
  • IP: 13.91.0.0 from San Jose, Network owner: Microsoft Azure

Of the two I’ve checked, they are Chrome 103.0, Win 10, Generic Desktop, 1280 x 960

Any idea what’s the best way to approach this?

4

I would exclude the Microsoft IPs.
I think this plugins can help you to achieve that:

Also, as you previously suggested, you may exclude IPs from cloud (via TrackingSpamPrevention plugin).

5

Thanks Philippe, I will try exclude IPs from the cloud first and see how it goes.