Gmail automatically shows images, now safer

[Ink]

Gmail Blog: Images Now Showing

Have you ever wondered why Gmail asks you before showing images in emails? We did this to protect you from unknown senders who might try to use images to compromise the security of your computer or mobile device.

But thanks to new improvements in how Gmail handles images, you’ll soon see all images displayed in your messages automatically across desktop, iOS and Android. Instead of serving images directly from their original external host servers, Gmail will now serve all images through Google’s own secure proxy servers.

From Gmail Help

How Gmail makes images safe
Protect you in the following ways:

• Senders can’t use image loading to get information like your IP address or location.
• Senders can’t set or read cookies in your browser.
• Gmail checks your images for known viruses or malware.

As always, Gmail scans every message for suspicious content and if Gmail considers a sender or message potentially suspicious, images won’t be displayed and you’ll be asked whether you want to see the images.

What you think? Is Google trying to regain users' trust by being truthful?

 

[I'm Me]

I just saw that message a little while ago when I logged into my gmail. When I clicked on the "learn more" next to the external content in the settings menu, I saw this:

In some cases, senders may be able to know whether an individual has opened a message with unique image links. As always, Gmail scans every message for suspicious content and if Gmail considers a sender or message potentially suspicious, images won’t be displayed and you’ll be asked whether you want to see the images.

I rather not trust Google to prevent this from happening. Google says they can prevent cookies from being set and they can prevent your IP address from being obtained. But what about the sender knowing I've opened a message? If it's a marketing email, I may not want the sender to have that information.

I chose to revert back to not displaying images automatically.