Images not appearing in Mail

Unless you're using a true VPN tunnel, such as between you and your employer's, school's or bank's servers, they provide false security from a privacy standpoint.  Read these articles: FPubic VPN's are anything but public,, Former Malware Distributor Kape Technologies Now Owns a Number of Public VPNs and a Collection of VPN “Review” Websites and Security Risks: The Dangers of Using Free VPNs (eccu.edu).  

And it just could be involved in the problem you're currently having.

Just some food for thought.

Make sure these checkboxes are not checked in Mail's Privacy settings pane:

Start with the bottom one and then, if necessary, uncheck the top one also.

Thanks for your clear information. I'm running OS Sonoma 14.2 and "Block All Remote Activity" was UNchecked. I unchecked "Protect Mail Activity" and not yet sure it's fully working. The email address was a Gmail so I checked through the Gmail site and a small logo that was not available through my hard drive email did show in the direct Gmail link.

I hope Apple will fix this!

Thanks for that suggestion but it is not working for me. I'm running my iMac on Sonoma 14. I recently added a VPN and am wondering if that is overriding my choices.