[justinmchase]

And they do that exactly. The fix is to disable images by default but every user has to manually do this.

[nerdponx]

Or use an email client that disables images by default.

[dexterdog]

I thought images were off by default

[afiori]

But it does not matter, if google download all the images when for all your emails then showing them to you is just a fetch from their own servers. Similarly to the ad-blocking extension that clicked all ads on the page (in isolation) so that tracking would be useless.

[Moru]

Not in the Web client I'm afraid