How are spammers getting images past my no-image default?

Post date: 2023-03-17 14:53:15

I use Thunderbird as my PC mail client. It doesn't allow images to load by default, and I have to allow image loading to let images into my browser. Recently, a lot of spam images have started appearing in my email, with no option to block the remote source. How do I stop this?

I'm partly annoyed because images are getting through, and also because as I understand it, image loading can at the very least ping that the email has been opened (even in preview) and the address is active, leading to even more spam.

I've put the full source of the email here: https://pastebin.com/PcgVffy7

An image of the email is here (now marked as spam, because I did that manually in Thunderbird): https://imgur.com/a/CdZZWEj

Thunderbird doesn't let me view mail as HTML natively, so I can't look at it that way.

How is this happening, and is there something I can do to prevent it?

Please click Here to read the full story.