How to block Gmail from displaying images in emails by default

Most email providers and programs nowadays do not display images and other data linked to third party servers by default when you open emails on their websites or in email clients.
If you are using Thunderbird for example, you will receive a "show remote content" notification if an email attempts to load contents from an external server.
The core reason why it is handled this way is privacy, as remote connections, for instance to load an image from a third party server, may reveal information about you.
So called header information are included in each transfer, and each header may reveal information about your operating system or language. In addition, since a connection is made, your IP is usually also logged by the remote server.
That is not a problem if the email was sent by a friend or someone you trust, but spammers use the same method to retrieve information about you.
Block images on Gmail
Gmail up until now displayed an "Images are not displayed" notification for emails that contained images. The system provided you with options to display the images below, and to whitelist the sender of the email so that images would be displayed automatically in future emails.
Google announced a change to the way images are handled on Gmail. Starting with today, images are automatically displayed in emails thanks to a new proxy technology that it has implemented on the site.
Images that are included in emails are transferred through a proxy automatically by Gmail, and virus checked among other things, so that they are not loaded directly from a remote server when you open the email, but from a Google server instead.
This effectively removes the need to connect to a remote server when images are included in emails that you read on Gmail.
While it is certainly improving the privacy, some users may be inclined to turn the new feature off for two main reasons:
- The images run through Google servers before they are displayed to Gmail users in emails. It is not clear if they are cached by the process as well.
- Since images get loaded automatically, it may take longer to display emails on the Gmail website.
Gmail users who did enable the "Ask before displaying external content" option explicitly on Gmail, will have the "ask before displaying external images" option enabled by default.
Everyone else needs to enable it under Settings > General before it becomes the active preference.
Doing so will block images from being displayed inline automatically when you view emails that contain images.
For now, it appears that Google is loading the image when you access the email, which in turn provides the sender with that information. It does however strip the user-agent headers, the user's IP address and cache-control headers from the response.
Closing Words
A proxy is definitely a solution against spammers and marketers that try to collect information about users by loading contents from third party servers. It has the side-effect that many "check if the email was read" services that use images to do so won't work anymore if the recipient is a Gmail user and using the Gmail interface.
It is not clear if the new image proxying technology is also working when Gmail users are using third party clients to retrieve emails, or if those services and clients are exempt from this.
The feature is currently being rolled out for all desktop users of Gmail. Mobile users will receive the update in the beginning of 2014.
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You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!