[swedegeek]

Yea, it's hard to not think this is ultimately not a great move. It seems rather shortsighted from a Gmail user's perspective if Google can't address concerns over spammers being able to verify email addresses, or even just analytic trackers. It is also vastly less appealing to hear that Google plans to cache all images, which we know Big Brother is grabbing as well. And in the case where someone may want to actually see images for a marketing email (albeit, extremely rare for me), it actually hamstrings the source of the email from possibly providing customized images/content based on geolocation/browser/etc. that I could be interested in seeing.

So, what's the upside vs. just having the option to display images as desired and NOT have Google cache them?

[maxerickson]

Aren't verified email addresses a relic of the past? Does anybody actually get anything other than nonsense spam anymore?

[swedegeek]

That feels a bit like the "I have nothing to hide argument." Should we just accept that probably spammers no longer send address verifying emails, and tacitly approve this change helping them out if they do? Ultimately, the default should be to let people decide for themselves to opt in to something like this. Forcing this with some pretty big head scratching holes in the benefits seems rather evil.

[maxerickson]

Looking at the preference, it isn't auto loading images in 'suspicious' messages (the help text more or less says this).

So trusted messages are now leaking read receipts.