It's even possible to uniquely identify each e-mail, so marketers can tell which e-mail address requested the images-they know that you've read the e-mail. Perhaps more useful than all of those though, you’re giving email marketers and spammers confirmation that their email has been read and that your email address is ‘live’.

You’re also giving them your IP address, which can provide a rough idea of your location, and your user-agent string which is a brief description of the browser and operating system you’re using.Īlso, unless you’re using a browser or a browser add-on that blocks the action, the sender will also get an HTTP referrer: an HTTP header field that shows the URL of the page that you are on. That’s because emailed images, though they might look like they’re part of the email, are normally hosted on a web server controlled by the email sender.Īs far as privacy issues go, when you load the images, you not only get to see whatever pretty picture the sender wishes to bestow upon your eyeballs you’re also sending a message about yourself (an HTTP request) to the email sender.įirst off, by clicking on an image, you’re giving the sender any cookies you might have previously received from their website. Up until now, we’ve had to mull whether or not we want to view images because all sorts of security sliminess and privacy pitfalls can lurk behind them.Ĭlicking on images is like leaving whatever fortress you’re holed up in and venturing out into the wide, open, scary world of somebody else’s HTTP territory. You were relieved of this choice as of Friday, when Google announced that Gmail users will now see images automatically.Īutomatic image viewing for desktops was enabled on Friday, and we’ll see it on Android and iOS apps in early 2014. They should if you’re a Gmail user, since Google just lifted from users what one assumes must have been the heavy burden of having to choose whether to display images in email.

Gmail takes a long time to load