Ask HN: Open gmail, see image blocked.... hey wait

also, is this common? I haven't seen this until now.

Are they attachments?

Inline if so, I have no option to download or retrieve.

I've seen it before, had the same question.

I guess it's encoded (embedded) in the email body? The src is not pointing to any external resource. I

One of the purpose of blocking images is to prevent tracking by sender. Embedded images won't require a request to sender's server to display so there's no need to block it?

It's using a relative url for the image.

There is no image at https://mail.google.com/?ui=2&ik= …

My guess is that the blue shape and text are in the css somewhere.

Emails attachments can be used as inline images. If an attachment is being used as an image, gmail no longer shows it as an attachment.

In the linked email, there were attachments used as images (as shown) and possibly additional image tags which source remote images.

There's no harm in auto-loading inline images. However, remote images can be used for tracking.