A better way to handle HTML image downloads in Mail

Apr 07, '09 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: skeeks

I am annoyed with the limitations in the way Mail displays the HTML images in messages: you can either enable or disable the display of HTML images, but that's it. If you enable the display of images, well, you are vulnerable to all the malicious spam out there ... but if you turn them off, you have to always go to the Load Images button for those messages whose images you do want to see. Add in that there's no keyboard shortcut for this button, and this becomes a major annoyance. There's also no way to turn on the display of HTML images only for known email addresses.

If you feel the same way, I have come with a sort of solution using Little Snitch:

  1. Turn on "Display Remote Images in HTML Messages" in Mail.
  2. In Little Snitch, remove the option to access by default port 80 for the Mail application.
Now each time there's a remote image to load in a Mail message, Little Snitch will ask you to confirm the connection. But if the image is coming from a known site, newsletter, etc., you can tell Little Snitch that it's OK to connect forever to that site, and forget about clicking the Load Images button again. Most importantantly, you will be protected from the malicious spam from unknown addresses.

Maybe not the best solution, but it saves me a lot of clicks!

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