Image links not appearing
 

Sometimes I receive email that I know have image links - sometimes that's all they have - but the image links do not appear in the FM web interface.
The email will look totally empty.

However, if I use MS Outlook, the image link will show and Outlook will offer to download the image if I want.

My FM settings are set to "Show remote images from senders in my contacts, otherwise ask"
In this instance the sender is not in my contacts list, so I am not expecting to see the image loaded, but I am expecting to see the option to load the image.
However the body of the email looks totally empty in the FM web UI.
When I open the email in Outlook, the image link is offered to be downloaded by Outlook.

This does not happen to all email that is not in my contact list.
Usually I will see an option to download the image.

I screen all email that is not coming from someone in my contacts list into a folder called "Screen".

Has anyone seen this behaviour where there is no image link observed in the body of an email using the web UI, but when using an email client the image link appears? :confused:

Quick update - I have also looked at the raw message in FM and tried searching for the link address (as seen in Outlook), but there is no evidence of the link address in the raw message.

Don't FM proxy the image-fetch process (so their server fetches them, not you)? If they do then the link will be to an image file on one of their servers not the original location (which is what you'd see in Outlook if they don't proxy image fetches).

So I think I'd expect to see image links, but not the original ones.

The code that FM use to replace the links (if they do do that), plus the code that converts a raw message into html that will look like the original contents of the raw message must be pretty complicated. I'd think that if a raw message genuinely has no content apart from image links such code, which might be written in terms of finding image links enclosed by other things and then replacing the parts between the other things, might not cope with content that doesn't have stuff before and after each link.

In any case I think you'll need to raise a ticket and give FM examples of specific mails that are not being processed properly.

I agree. But in certain cases the body of the email is totally empty.

Raising a ticket as you suggest is probably the way to go.
But the pain...

Had the same problem in the FM web interface and also a problem where the link would show and when I tried to download the image it never worked.
This didn't happen with all senders only particular ones but enough to be annoying.
I raised a ticket and their response was it was the fault of the sender in that their server SSL certificate chain was broken and they suggested I contact the sender directly.
The sender in question was Barclays bank and somehow I don't think they would take notice of me complaining about their broken SSL, so I just gave up.

Or perhaps the sender was claiming to be Barclays bank but the SSL didn't match the claim.

No, it was a genuine email that I receive on a regular basis reminding me that my latest statement is available.
I have since changed my contact email address for Barclays bank and I can see the content of the emails without a problem.

In my case it is also a genuine email from a health insurance company.

Interesting response from FM.
Do you recall if you tried looking at the email using a client (eg Outlook) and whether the link that was not visible in the FM web UI was visible when using the email client?

I raised a ticket.

Yes I used the Apple Mail app (on both Mac and iPhone) and the missing links were visible and also the images that had links but would not load in the FM interface were loading without problems in the app.

FM support response so far....

Maybe something will come of this??

This is a concern. I have written HTML parsers, and Fastmail should have detected an issue like this themselves. Any failure to fully parse the input should be logged, and reviewed by the responsible developer. Just silently ignoring errors that result in content being discarded is not appropriate.