Gmail to securely show images by default

Google has announced its plans to show images by default from unknown senders. Previously, Gmail automatically blocked images from unknown senders in order to protect users from image-based exploits.

To achieve this, Google is serving all images using its own secure proxy servers instead of showing images using the original host server, which could theoretically lead to malicious sites. Google’s secure servers will scan images for viruses or malware before loading it in your Gmail inbox. This greatly improves the user experience by not forcing users to add safe senders to a whitelist.

Google plans to bring this new feature to the web, Android, and iOS in early 2014. For users who want more control, Google will offer a setting where the old whitelist feature can be enabled. The setting will be located under general settings with a checkbox for “Ask before displaying external images.”

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Source: Official Gmail Blog