What you need to know
- Images in emails allow senders to track whether an email was opened.
- By preventing images from loading, Gmail also prevents the tracking.
- The option wasn't previously available to iPhone and iPad users.
Google has updated its iPhone and iPad Gmail app to allow users to prevent it from automatically loading remote images inside emails. Remote images are often used as a method of tracking whether an email is opened and, in some circumstances, where that action took place.
A long, long time ago people realized that by adding a remote image to an email they could then track whether that image had been accessed. If it had, then they knew the email had been opened. That can be valuable information for marketers but it's a horrible idea in terms of privacy.
Many email apps already provide options to prevent the loading of remote images, but this is the first time that Gmail has done so on iPhone and iPad. The updated app is now available for download from the App Store. A new "Ask before displaying external images" option can be found in your account's settings once the update is installed.
You can now choose to be asked before external images are displayed automatically. To enable this for new incoming messages, go to Settings > specific account > Images and select Ask before displaying external images.
Unfortunately, this only appears to apply to personal accounts and not those attached to GSuite. Whether that's an oversight or something administrators for GSuite setups need to apply isn't yet clear, however.
