Google had disabled automatically displaying images inside emails to protect users from phishing and other malicious stuff that could be hidden in photographs. Instead, Gmail used to prompt users whether they wanted to display pictures from a sender and also an option to always show pictures from a particular sender. However, starting today, Gmail will display all photos by default in the desktop version and will bring the feature to its mobile apps in coming months.
The new change in policy does not mean that Google is compromising its users’ security. Instead, it will now serve images from Google’s own secure proxy servers, instead of taking from their original external host servers, which will make the process more secure for users than before. Besides taking care of the security bit, this update will also improve the user-experience by automatically displaying images instead of asking a user for displaying the images in a message.
Google is also giving users the option to authorize image display on a per message basis like earlier, and it can be opted by selecting the “Ask before displaying external images” under the General tab in Settings. The company says that this image proxying will only add to the existing security process which includes default https access, suspicious activity detection, and free two-step verification.
Google will be rolling out this new improvement on desktop starting today, and to mobile apps of Gmail in early 2014.
