iOS 15 privacy hides all photos in emails

[MichaelL11419]

Nowhere am I reading that the result of iOS 15 privacy settings being that ALL photos in a CC email are hidden to the phone user. This is much more serious than not being able to track behavior. I thought there were non-visible pixels doing the tracking that were not in each photo but discretely hidden in the email body. Seems I was wrong.

[Zoe_H]

Hello @MichaelL11419,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community! To protect customer privacy, iOS 15 and Apple Mail will preload images in emails, including tracking pixels, which are commonly used by marketers to track email opens. Because this is also how Constant Contact tracks email opens, this update may affect the accuracy of your email reporting, as we won’t be able to reliably determine which contacts opened which emails when using Apple Mail. This includes anyone who checks their email on the Mail app, no matter which email domain they use (such as Gmail and Yahoo). As a result, it may inflate your email’s open rate and, consequently, lower the click rate shown in your reporting. If the images are hidden in the email, we do recommend Safelisting. Thank you! 

[MichaelL11419]

Are you a bot repeating boilerplate about not getting accurate tracking? The issue I raised it that no images are VISIBLE when viewing the email. I see only blank rectangles, when I view cc emails on iPhone and iPad (and virtually any commercially generated email). I really don’t care about tracking nearly as much as I do about my email images being visible. Does “preload” mean “hide?”

[MichaelL11419]

I have found the issue, on my devices, which is the iOS Privacy Pro app’s vpn interacting in some way with the new iOS 15 email privacy settings that makes tracking photos invisible. With the new iOS settings off, photos are visible with the vpn (which I’ve used for a while without this behavior). Reversed, ie vpn off, email settings on, photos are also visible. I will report this to Privacy Pro.