I have a similar message posted in the iPadOS forum because it happens with iOS also. Anytime I receive an email from someone with image links (LinkedIn, X, Twitter, etc.) the attachments icon is displayed. Text links in the signature don't appear to do this... it's only when the link is an image/logo. This makes it very difficult to find emails with actual attachments. Any suggestions on how to fix this?
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Mail app indicates attachments when sender's email signature includes image links
- Thread starter chromosapien65
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Hi. I still haven't been able to find help with this issue. Does everyone have this issue and they've just accepted it? To recap, hyperlinks with images are detected as attachments. These days, everyone seems to have hyperlink with an image in their email signature which makes every email look like it has an attachment (paperclip icon on message). This makes it practically impossible to find emails with actual attachments. I've had this problem for years with the native MacOS mail app. I don't have the issue with other mail apps such as Outlook, but I'd rather not use a third party email app.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I believe that what you are seeing depends on how the email was constructed (i.e. it is a sender issue). I only get a few emails with attachments that are not obviously attachments. In the past 2 weeks, I have one from Microsoft (an alert about my OneDrive), one from Proton (alert about mail delivery), one from a state government agency (the signature is an attachment) and one where the email is constructed from multiple attachments. Otherwise lots with "real" attachments and lots with signatures that are not attachments.
Other apps, e.g. Outlook, may well behave differently and hide the presence of attachments.
For all its troubles, Apple Mail is a fairly pure implementation of SMTP (i.e. what is delivered is what is shown).
hi
this was an issue (for me. a long while back).
but i have almost forgotten about it until your post.
i dont know for sure, but along the time that apple added Mail Privacy Protection to its Mail client/app this problem stopped for me.
again, im not sure if its related to your situation.
there used to be a separate setting, something along the lines of not allowing remote links.
links embedded in images is bad news.
you might want to check your Mac Mail setting to be sure its set as per the screen shot below.
I don't understand how "loading remote content privately in the background" doesn't tell the sender that you've opened the email if the sender has set up specific image links tied to your email address.
if you turn on that security and privacy feature, apple loads that email on one of its servers first, before that email is even seen by you. therefore the sender of that email does not know you ever opened it or not. no location info about you is exchanged when/if you do ever open it. as the info states, it makes it harder for those guys to track you.
pls look on the web for more info about it as i cant help you further.
Maybe you can if you understand what I'm asking.
If I send an email to a specific email address that includes an specific image link that no one else in the world has and I see, from my web analytics, that the image has been downloaded/accessed then I know that someone somewhere has opened that email and therefore I have a pretty good idea that the email address to which I sent it is a valid one. It doesn't matter if it's the recipient or Apple that opens it. This is one way email address harvesting is done.
Sure, they won't know where I am if it's Apple opening it…but you can bet they've upgraded the email address to "active" and the spam will follow.