Mail not showing pictures

Christoph Drösser wrote:

Hi, sometime last week my Mail.app stopped showing me the pictures in emails. I was able to get the pictures bad by going to the Privacy tab in the preferences, disable "Protect Mail Acitivity" and uncheck "Hide IP address."

So my question is not how to get the pictures back – but why were they gone in the first place without me changing anything in the settings? Why is hiding my IP address related to showing the pictures? And is my mail traffic less safe now?

images in Mail—

I have never used any of these "new" features introduced, and have never had an issue. Nor have I had any "safe" issues macOS Mail.app for 20 years. So I venture to say you are no less safe.

Open mail app select Mail>Settings>Privacy disable all and compare your results

“Protect Mail Activity”

“Hide IP address”

“Block all remote content”

“Mail Privacy Protection” if no resolve, Mail>Settings>Privacy> uncheck

ref: —Mail Privacy Protection on Mac - Apple Support

Use Mail Privacy Protection on Mac - Apple Support

Mail's Privacy settings prevent loading of remote content (pictures hosted on some rando's website).

With all settings in place, and your network/network security not blocking it, Mail will load the remote content using two anonymous relays so that whoever is hosting the picture on their website cannot determine it was your IP address that requested the image downloaded.

If you had to turn those settings off in order to load the remote content, you have something in your local network preventing that from working. With the settings turned off, you are no worse off than you were before they implemented those privacy features.