Why you should disable automatic loading of email images

Many email clients today have an option to disable automatic loading of images in your email. Many even have this feature enabled by default. Why is this a good thing to do?

1. You may want to protect your eyes (or yours kid's eyes) from images you'd prefer not to see. This way you can open an email without also loading its images, and then decide whether you'd like to display the images.

2. In the past, there was some worry that "images" you load might contain viruses. I don't think this really happens, especially as computer software is much more robust now.

3. The main reason images are often blocked by default is to protect your privacy from spammers. Images you see in your email can be one of two kinds - (1) the local kind where the image files are actually attached to your email, or (2) the externally linked kind where your email references files that are stored on an external server. If it is the second kind, your computer will have to contact an outside server to get the pictures to be displayed. When it does this, it may log a message on the server that you have opened the email that was sent. This lets spammers know that your email address indeed is a real address, and they may spam you more!

Here's links about how to enable this feature for your mail:
- In Yahoo! mail or Yahoo! mail classic: I believe Yahoo's default is to initially block all images.
- Gmail doesn't automatically load externally linked images, unless it is received from a someone you have emailed twice. You can customize this setting.