How to tell Mail never display images in the Junk folder?

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Level 4

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How to tell Mail never display images in the Junk folder?

I thought this would be obvious. Why does Mail sometimes allow messages moved to the Junk folder to continue to display images? Don't Apple's software designers know that every time one of these images loads, a spammer somewhere is getting confirmation of a valid email address? I want to know how to tell Mail to never, under any circumstances, load an image when displaying mail in the Junk folder. Why should I even have to ask this question?

2008 Mac Pro 8 Core 2.8 GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.4), 10 GB RAM

Posted on Jan 26, 2009 1:09 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 26, 2009 4:55 PM in response to Gary P

If a message is marked "Junk", Mail will not download images unless you tell it to. You will still see the image if it is included in the message, rather than having to be downloaded from a server. In that case there is no security issue.

You can also set your preferences to never automatically download images, even if the message is not marked junk. In Preferences > Viewing, deselect the “Display remote images in HTML messages” checkbox.

If you are seeing an image in a flagged Junk message, and you are sure the image is not an attachment, then your Mail configuration is not behaving normally.

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Answer 2

Gary P Author

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1,418 points

Jan 26, 2009 5:49 PM in response to Jeffrey Jones2

The problem is that messages dragged to the Junk folder do not automatically get marked Junk, like messages intercepted by Apple's Junk mail filter. They are in the Junk folder because I dragged them there. But they do not have the Junk Mail icon. And you can't mark a message as Junk without clicking on it. Looks like interface failure to me.

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Answer 3

Jan 27, 2009 8:28 AM in response to Gary P

If you close the preview pane, you can flag Junk without opening it. If you prefer to leave the preview pane open, then unset the "Display remote images" option, as I suggested before. Then you won't accidently download images -- even from a message that is not (yet) identified as junk.

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Answer 4

Gary P Author

Level 4

1,418 points

Jan 29, 2009 6:37 PM in response to Jeffrey Jones2

OK, then I guess my real question is, when I drag a message to the junk folder, why isn't it automatically labeled junk. This would be my preference. Maybe I should put in a feature request in mac OS X Feedback.

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Answer 5

qriman

Level 1

0 points

Mar 10, 2009 12:16 PM in response to Gary P

I would like this feature also.
Thunderbird behavior wouldn't hurt either, having a default of not loading any images and allow them by sender.

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