Google just added a new feature on Gmail for iOS that lets users block images from being tracked. Now, Gmail can automatically prevent attached images from loading, a setting that until now used to only be available on the web version of Gmail.
Turning on this setting allows Gmail to block incoming images, including invisible email trackers that often come concealed in the body of emails that can tell senders and when the receiver opened the message — and perhaps even where.
Superhuman Controversy
The change appears to be Google's response to the Superhuman issue that happened back in July, when former Twitter executive Mike Davidson published a blog post about a subscription email service that lets users track the location of a recipient and the time of day they opened a particular email.
The post got a lot of traction and promptly went viral, and also shed light on an often-overlooked privacy violation. As a result, Superhuman, the email service in question, turned off its read receipts feature by default and got rid of location tracking from its service.
For its part, Google has created protection against unauthorized tracking into Gmail. For instance, Google disables a sender's capacity to locate a recipient via an IP address. What's more, Google has also for a long time allowed users to disable automatic image loading to prevent any trackers from gathering data about the user unless they actually intend to load images. However, this feature was previously reserved for the web version of Gmail, meaning it might have gone unnoticed by iOS users. Thankfully, that changes now. They can finally access this setting on their iOS device and make the necessary adjustments.
Why It's Good To Disable Image Loading
Disabling automatic image loading isn't just useful for those who want to avoid trackers, though. It will also come in handy for people with slow and unreliable internet connections, as loading images sometimes require large amounts of data. Another bonus is that it'll let emails load faster, use much less data, and perhaps even save battery. Those who want to take advantage of these perks should go ahead and download the latest version of Gmail from the App Store and opt-out of displaying external images.
Thoughts about automatic image loading? Do you have it turned off by default? Why or why not? As always, if you have anything to share, feel free to sound them off in the comments section below!
