How to disable Gmail automatic load of images on your email

It is safe to disable automatic load of images on your gmail account. There are many reasons why we would like to disable autoload of images on our mail box, two reasons are most common; find the most common reasons below.

1. Spammers

2. Hackers

3. Reduced Bandwidth and internet bundle cost

4. Faster and quick way of loading email content

 On your email with images there is a dialogue box saying “Images are not displayed.” and asks you whether you want to “Display images below” and also gives you an option to add the sender to a trusted list (whitelist) after which the sender’s email images will always be displayed without confirmation.

The box is designed to protect you, serving has a layer of safety and also sieves unwanted distractions and calls. Another reason is privacy.

In the case of security and spam here is how this works, Your email app loads the image in your browser > The tracking image has codes embedded in it that records your IP, Browser details, OS details, Location and much much more and then sends it back to the sender of the Email.

With Googles recent feature addition, you email will now automatically download images without the box with the confirmation thing. Not bad uhnn.

Behind the scene of this action by Google.

Google now caches these images you receive in your email, into their own servers and then serves them directly from these caches. Hence preventing any kind of tracking images from collecting your details.

Then why do I need to re-enable the confirmation?

Mainly because nothing can be considered secure, Hackers might find a way around the caching and also because of the privacy factor I talked about above.

How to Disable Automatic Loading of Images in Gmail.

So here is how you can re-enable the confirmation for images in your email. It is simple and takes 5 seconds.

Step 1. Login to your Gmail account.

Step 2. Click on the Gear Icon > Settings.

Open Gmail Settings

Step 3. When you are in the General Settings tab, Scroll down until you see the Images option.

Step 4. Click on the radio button beside “Ask before displaying external images”.

Ask before displaying external images

Step 5. As a safety procedure, check if you have “Always use https” ticked. If not choose it and click on “Save changes”.

Now you just have to reload your Gmail Inbox to see the changes in effect. Just open an email with Images and you will be shown that ugly (yet useful) confirmation box.

Gmail now asks for confirmation before displaying images in your emails

And that is it folks.