Privacy concerns

Ever since version 4.2.41151, it is impossible to block external images from being loaded. This is a major privacy issue as many commercial emails contain tracking images with unique identifiers that only by opening the email will notify them of email being read. The implication is that privacy is severely affected and additionally, more spam is likely to be received.

In newer version of Gmail app, a setting called “Show sender images” was introduced but it absolutely does not avoid to load the images. Google says that the images are loaded from Google servers, not from the third party. I’m sorry but when an image has a unique identifier it doesn’t matter if Google “pre-loads” the image and Google serves the image. The unique identifier for that image will indicate that I loaded the image, and tracking will be performed by the third party.

I request to to have the same feature we have on the web version of Gmail to not load external images. And while we I’m at it, a setting to use Safari as my browser when I click on a link in an email and not the built-in browser which I very much dislike.

Hobss about Gmail - Email by Google, v5.0.180311