How do I whitelist external content for e-mails in Thunderbird?

To protect my privacy and prevent tracking pixels, I had blocked external content in Thunderbird. Previously, a bar appeared above the mail in Thunderbird indicating that external media was hidden in these messages - and on the right I could then open a drop-down menu to add domains to the whitelist.
For a few weeks/months now (currently Thunderbird 141.0 x64), however, only ‘To protect your privacy, Thunderbird has blocked remote content in this message.’ appears here, followed by an X to close the notification.

I have added [email protected] and gg.deals to the whitelist - if they are other domains, I can no longer identify them in the new view. ‘Allow remote content in messages’ is activated in the settings.
What can I do to see the external content again? Some messages, especially those from familiar senders, are really unpleasant to process.

#Thunderbird #AskFedi @thunderbird

  • Boris NotTooBadinov@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    From: https://kb.mozillazine.org/Privacy_basics_-_Thunderbird

    To modify your exceptions list:

    This used to add an entry to the address book that had either “Allow remote content” or “Allow remote images in HTML mail” checked for the specific sender. Recent versions store this information in permissions.sqlite and content-prefs.sqlite instead. You can modify that information using Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Mail Content -> Exceptions.<

    If you can not see any remote images check that View -> Message Body As is set to “Original HTML”. “Simple HTML” and “Plain Text” do not show remote images. <

    To allow all content (this is a bad idea, but whatever I’m comment not a cop)

    Its possible to display all images from any sender, though its not recommended since malware can be embedded in images, and spammers will be able to verify your e-mail address. If you want to do this use the Config editor to toggle the preference mailnews.message_display.disable_remote_image to false.<

    A better alternative would be to use the Config editor to create a mail.trusteddomains setting that specifies what e-mail domains it should automatically display remote images for. This is much easier than having to specify each email address, but you’re taking the risk that you won’t get any messages with a spoofed From: header in one of those domains. The setting contains a list of domains separated by commas, with no wild cards, white space or subdomains allowed. This change won’t take effect until you restart Thunderbird. <

    • Boris NotTooBadinov@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      One other thing you can do is verify the sender domain is really what’s listed
      View >> Headers >> All

      You’ll see the entire path the message took to get to you, just back track until you find the sender server, and verify the html links further down of the images linked. Actually, an easier way to verify the linked image(s) domains would be to view the message in plaintext. If you scroll down, you should see the URL of the images

    • oliver@friendica.xyzOP
      2·
      6 months ago

      @Boris_NotTooBadinoff It seems like I found the reason for what’s going on.
      Mailbox 1 is my account at @mailbox_org - they encrypt every message I receive with my public PGP key.
      Mailbox 2 is my ISP’s mailbox, where I usually don’t receive encrypted mails.

      In mailbox 2 I can whitelist domains or e-mail-addresses. In mailbox 1, I just see the notification that external media is hidden for privacy reasons. Even if I enable external media for every mail + mailbox, #Thunderbird doesn’t show anything it in PGP-encrypted mails. I don’t know if that’s intentional by @thunderbird, but it does not seem to work in principle.