What causes photos to not show up in an email? Lately when I forward photos to others (primarily my sister in Fla.) they say there was no photos. And in the email I get back from them (as their reply) there is a long string of letters and numbers where the photo should be. This has happened to me also and no one can figure it out. I use Incredimail for email and cox cable for my ISP. Is it likely that either the ISP or a spam software is blocking the photos? If so, why get some part of the time and not others. I'm hoping some of you bright and knowledgeable people will solve this mystery.

I would love to know the answer to this question also Marilyn. I too have this issue with my brother when he sends me photos a lot of times they don't come through to me, but they work fine for other people. It's a mystery I haven't taken time to mess around finding out about either.

I use Wikmail which is similar to Incredimail (which I used for quite a few years myself too). Not sure if it's our email programs that are to blame or what it is.

Many mail servers now do pretty invasive security scanning of email. It could be your email server or your recipients email server or even their desktop security app. To narrow the source of the issue does the image get messed up to certain recipients or to all recipients?

To avoid this situation I always zip my images or files and send them as email attachments, never embedded in the email body.

Occasionally, at very security conscious large corporations their incoming email servers automatically strip out all embedded images and attachments. If this is ever your issue the only alternative is to upload the images to the web either in a folder on your hosting site or to an online service and email a link (make sure you provide instructions on how to cut and paste the link into their browser as these sort of high security servers generally strip the HTML out of the email as well.

Well, we are all more or less retired so we don't mess with large corporations...

This just happens to some recipients, not all. If they were images from my computer I would put them in as attachments. This generally happens with pics in jokes or other qwerky stuff that has been forwarded.

I have a similar problem, except it is with attachments (usually Excel files) that I can't send to one recipient and one recipient only.
No corporations involved and both of us have email accounts with the same ISP, both also have a BlackBerry email account.
Luckily he's within short driving distance.

Weird, I could swear I posted another reply here lol, I must have hit the wrong button again lol.

The issue for me is that I am the end reader of emails sent to me by my brother. He has a lot of images in most of his emails, and it doesn't happen to all the emails, just some of them. No images show up in some of them just placeholders. Sometimes only some images show up and others don't. Most times all the images show up. We've tried to figure out why they don't show up for me for a while now. They don't do this to everyone, just a few of us that can't see them. He sends a lot of mass forwards and said that I'm one of only a few people that has this happen with his emails.

Its that gremlin of yours I sold on Ebay getting his own back !

And in the email I get back from them (as their reply) there is a long string of letters and numbers where the photo should be.

Welcome to the land of MIME, attachment encoding and the ever-changing landscape of email security! Those letters and numbers are an ASCII representation of the photos, as you seem to have surmised.

It's good that you've mentioned the email client (Incredimail) that you're using and your ISP, but that's really not enough to conclusively state what the problem is. Other factors involved are the email client that others are using to send messages to you, your MIME configuration, firewalls and other security measures at both ends. Sadly, ne'er-do-wells who try to play havoc with computer systems have resulted in safety measures being implemented that sometimes make things harder for us than they should be.

I've found that Gmail is a very reliable email system that offers robust spam & malware/virus filtering, as well as the ability to send and display both inline images and image attachments. It also provides a switch that will allow you to turn on or off the ability to automatically display images on per-contact basis.

You probably don't want to change mail clients, but I've been using Gmail almost since the beginning and find it to be excellent. I own several domains and have email accounts on them that are accessed through POP 3 and traditional email clients, but I rarely use them anymore. I like Gmail that much.

Wish I could be more helpful and provide conclusive help for your particular situation, but the answer isn't a simple one without being able to examine all the variables involved.

Yep my main email address is also a gmail account that I have setup as POP3 mail in Wikmail client software. Not sure if it happens if I check it on the webmail, I guess I'll have to test that with my brother at some point and see. I don't see the ascii chars myself though, I just see the red x place holders that I know should be images.

*Sends Viv to the corner for bringing up Gremlins*

A good test might be to have your brother send the same message -- a fresh one, not a forwarded one, just to remove one variable -- to both your Wikmail and Gmail accounts. I'd bet that that the one you read directly via the Gmail web interface will display correctly. Won't hazard a guess about the other one, though...