After macOS Monterey 12.0.1 update my mail messages do not display any images

VPN's DO NOT protect you from serialized pixel trackers. This is because a separate image URL is made for each recipient. It's not about the IP address at all. It's simply that each image generated (on its own URL) is sent to only a single recipient. If the serialized image URL gets accessed, then they know EXACTLY which email address has viewed their image.

SIMPLE.

One very good way around this which some better privacy-protecting email services use is to access EVERY image in every email and. cache it (create a copy). When they do this, they render the technique effectively useless, since every image gets accessed. Of course, most of the spammers don't care because the cost of sending these emails is practically nil.

An even smarter email service could implement a method even a little better: Set up honeypot accounts and which are widely registered to mailing lists so that they receive a lot of spam. As messages are received, scan and recognize the image URLs, and , and then load images from ONLY those which appear to be pixel trackers. There still are limitations to this method, but yet it's still not all that much trouble for a provider to implement considering all of the good it can do.

Unfortunately, this whole situation is an endless process of rivals making measures and countermeasures.

Turn on firewall (feature works as expected).

Based on what I heard about this feature, the entire purpose of the feature is to load the images while still protecting your privacy, so that you don't have to make a choice between having your email look like garbage or giving up on privacy. Given that it said my network preferences were not allowing the feature to work, I opened System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Firewall (tab) and then clicked button to "Turn On Firewall". Since I don't recall ever changing this setting I was surprised it was off. Anyway, with Firewall turned on I was able to get images in email without turning off Protect Mail Activity. This is clearly what Apple intended. Hope that helps.

Hello, jesseaknee, I'm glad that solved your problem, but it doesn't solve mine. My firewall is on, Protect Mail Privacy is on, and my network preferences are said to prevent loading mail content privately, so I still have to load it directly if I want it.

Umm, yeah - Jesse, that isn't "firewall on". That's firewall _off_ 😳

I mean, you may have the firewall _switched_ on but then the individual configurations are all set to "Naah don't block anything" so you might as well not have it on at all 😬

I can't argue with that. Since turning it "On" seemed to allow the "Protect Email Privacy" feature to work, I assumed Apple was still doing something through Firewall to make it happen. Like I said originally, my Firewall had previously been "Off" entirely so I didn't really care that it was potentially not going to block a lot now that it is "On".

Doing some internet research, I found that generally Macs have 2 firewalls (one that is always one, and this one that you can configure) and that this Firewall is not typically required, which is why it is defaulted off.

Maybe I just encountered an oddity. Perhaps I'll turn it back to being fully off and see if my email privacy feature starts to block images again.

Thanks, jesseaknee, but no luck. I tried blocking all incoming connections, no help. Then I set up exactly the options you show, and that didn't help either. I did restart mail after each change, but I didn't restart the OS.

Then I looked for an update for the OS and something funny happened. First it said Monterey 13.2 was available, but when I clicked to start the update it said something like "sorry, the update options have changed" and told me I have 13.1 and I'm up to date. Is that what you have?

So Jodywoodcock was mostly right, you have to uncheck Protect Mail Activity unchecked, which opens the options of Hide IP address and Block All Remote Content. Both Hide IP address Block All Remote Content needs to be unchecked for all content to be seen.

I agree with you to a point - Apple's implementation in Mail is halfway there.

If you look at how Microsoft (I know - blasphemy) implemented their version of this in Outlook (which has been in Outlook for years BTW), they allow you to create overrides for individual domains.

For example, if I want to automatically load content for two domains:

abc.com

def.com

I can add those and will not be prompted to load external content as the domains have effectively been whitelisted.

That would go a long way to helping reduce the need to use the Load Content option significantly without completely lowering your shields.

...just my $0.02....

-JeffH

I'd like to ask you a follow-up question (I'm not the O.P.) related to your answer here. From Apple's usage notes, Protect Mail Activity should serve to "Hide your IP address from senders and privately download remote content in the background when a message is received (instead of when you view it)." This suggests to me that the mail images are in fact downloaded and stored somewhere, so that when I do get around to clicking on that message, the images would be there. If that were what was actually happening, I think this would be a good feature. But in my experience, no images load when that setting is enabled, and I have to bypass this whole privacy apparatus and click on "Load Content Directly" in order to see the images. Or am I missing something?

I'm posting an retraction to my own question here; something my mother used to always tell me; Patience is a virtue. I had waited for new messages to be received, after enabling "Protect Mail Activity," before posting the above. But I didn't wait long enough. I subsequently went to a late lunch, came back, checked some messages that had been received during the interval, and voilà! The images are there. It does work in the nifty way that was described, and I'm happy to discover that. Thanks.

I have tried every combination of "Mail Preference Privacy" and still I am getting no photos on my emails.

The more privacy the better from junk email senders, but I would like to see the photos and content of the emails I want/need and I'm not getting any of them.

Can anyone help with this????? And why does Apple not have an answer for this???? I have called numerous times!

I have tried every combination of checking and unchecking these boxes and still photos and art work won’t load on emails.

Im so frustrated!!!!! I knew I shouldn’t have uploaded Monterey—every time I put in a new OS something is wrong with it; and it’s not just that I’m not used to the new OS (which is what Apple service rep told me was probably the problem).

so annoying that Apple can’t even help when I call the 800 number for help.

I was as frustrated and nothing worked. Finally, deinstalled a VPN which was on my MacBook and then they displayed. Did not yet dare to reinstall my VPn back as it is working and displaying images in MacMail at the moment. Hope it helps.

Had exactly the same. I was as frustrated and nothing worked. Finally, deinstalled a VPN which was on my MacBook and then they displayed. Did not yet dare to reinstall my VPn back as it is working and displaying images in MacMail at the moment. Hope it helps.

I've clicked, unchecked, rebooted, etc ad infitnum and I still have the problem. I can't uncheck anything in privacy because a)it's already unchecked and b)it's grayed out so I couldn't uncheck if I wanted. And I still can't search my MacMail either. All since upgrading to Monterrey. Five year with nary a problem and now problems left and right.