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

This is not working for me. After the last update, I was asked if I want to have privacy settings so I said yes. I've since decided it's a pain and I've unchecked the protect mail privacy box and the block remote content but no success in getting my images back. And yes, I've shut down and restarted to see if this would help my new preferences take effect? Any ideas?

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.

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?

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 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'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.

VLBIV - Totally agree - there should be an option to load images and have whatever security you can (surely if it can load text - a series of bytes, it can load images - maybe through a filter...?). Even if they can't be bothered to do this it should say when it offers to hide your IP for privacy that saying yes will mean you don't ever see images. Which, in 2022, is like saying you don't want to see vowels in handwritten letters.

We have an iMac and a Mini both using Monterey version 12.4 and Mail 156.0. iMac displays email images while Mini displays only images with Blue Dot and ?... Tried privacy settings - this changed iMac to show/not show images but had no effect onMini images.

I have done this -- I have unchecked both the "Protect Mail Activity" and "Block All Remote Content" boxes. But I still get the message at the top of emails and have to select the "Load Content Directly" button. Any other suggestions?

This setting and the message Mail displays still don't make any sense. The message says: "Your network preference prevent content from loading privately."

Key word: privately. That's exactly what I want. I want the content to load privately, which is exactly why I have "Protect Mail Activity" checked under the privacy preferences of Mail. But the answers in reply to your question suggest that setting itself is the reason this message is appearing, which would suggest that checking that box is the "network preferences" that is preventing content from loading privately. And yet that's exactly what it is supposed to be doing, loading the content without revealing my IP.

The unresolved question is: How should Mail and System preferences be configured so the images load but without revealing the IP?