I recently described to someone how to use T-bird to avoid being tracked by spammers who embed things like invisible GIFs in messages to know whether a recipient reads their spam. My description was a good-sized paragraph. To defeat the most common type of vulnerability, there's a Don't Load Remote Images option stashed under Tools -> Options -> Advanced. There's a button under Tools -> Junk Mail Controls for viewing Junk as Sanitized, which sounds potentially applicable but its name leaves one with a certain lack of faith that the problem has been fixed. And there's the enigmatic View Messages as Simple HTML, stashed away under the View menu. My understanding is that these three very differently named options scattered over the UI like acne are all applicable, and that their overlapping circles of influence are best described using a Venn diagram. The rest of my good-sized paragraph described other things to do, since I think it's not clear that one has successfully become invisible after throwing these switches. Holy Goldberg! I think the fresh, streamlined TBird UI is showing signs of UI accumulation. This particular setting is a simple thing in concept. It shouldn't be so fragmented in the UI. And I think it should be described more clearly so people who are aware of the problem will understand what to do without needing to RTFM, and so people who aren't aware will see it and believe this mail client is watching out for them. Maybe a Privacy section like in Firefox, with comforting buttons like these ----- Don't give me up to spammers who are trying to track me ----- [ ] Ignore items in messages that must be loaded from a remote server ( ) In all messages ( ) Only in messages marked as Junk I'm not saying even this is quite right, but I think it's an improvement. I am suggesting a little bit of consolidation, not the addition of a fourth set of switches to throw.

this is addressed by 216133 *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 216133 ***

Kind of. That bug makes blocked images more apparent, with a future wish for other remote elements as well. It doesn't address the Faith or Acne issues.

I also think this bug is distinct from Bug 216133. I tend to agree with Dan that showing the related settings Block loading of remote images in mail messages When displaying HTML messages marked as junk, sanitise the HTML and View -> Message Body As -> Simple HTML in one place (as well as where they are now) would be a good idea. The Privacy section of the Advanced pane in the Preferences dialog is a sensible place IMHO. The last two settings are not really self-explanatory - I don't know exactly what "Simple HTML" and "sanitised HTML" are. A bit of explanation in the dialog(s) wouldn't go astray.