Missing/blocked images in emails

[jbuchanangb]

Starting my own thread in accordance with Community rules.
Along with @TrevorW1 we are experiencing loss of images in emails. This is affecting my tiscali email and my wife's tiscali email. Although we access using Outlook 365, the images are also blocked when accessing using TalkTalk webmail. The images are also blocked when viewing the emails in a web browser from the Outlook version.
Capturing an image URL such as this one
https://mcusercontent.com/daf32393cc0775ab7c9ffd0f1/images/93a776c0-0194-f4d0-0792-bdbccd4de5da.png
results in the browser returning "ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR"

It is notable that this problem not only affects newly received emails, but also emails which have been received more than a week ago, and in which images were displayed properly when they first arrived. This is a problem between the email client and the server, irrespective of whether the client is the TalkTalk webmail interface or the IMAP interface used by Outlook 365.
Following a suggestion in the thread started by @TrevorW1, I disabled Kidsafe, which made no difference. I have re-enabled it, but have lost my whitelisted websites which is a nuisance.

[Gondola]

That's certainly a strong plan of action of online defence against scammers. Nothing wrong there.

[jbuchanangb]

I will not turn off Scam Protection. SuperSafe is up to date. HomeSafe is on. Kidsafe is on. I will recommend my wife unsubscribes from any MailChimp lists, but if she values any of the senders, then she can send them a report informing them that our ISP is blocking the images in their mail due to MailChimp being a potential source of viruses and malware, and request text only emails.

[Gondola]

mcusercontent is reportedly linked to MailChimp. TalkTalk will block suspicious content particularly if malware downloads are implicated in emails supposedly sent by MailChimp. It's up to MailChimp to prove that their outgoing mail does not carry malware download links. I suggest you report the issue to the email originator as it's not a certainty that MailChimp have notified all of their customers impacted by the recent hacking events.

In the meantime I recommend that everyone not on an eero enabled package, and therefore using HomeSafe, does reinstate the HomeSafe protection they feel is needed to protect themselves from malware. Also to keep anti virus and anti malware software fully up to date to keep devices protected.

[jbuchanangb]

This is sounding exactly like what happened with Wix images back in May. I raised a fault ticket with Wix, due to missing images on my web site, and eventually TalkTalk and Wix worked out how TalkTalk was blocking Wix images as Scam.
I tried mcusercontent.com as a URL straight into the browser and it is immediately blocked by Scam protection. This was the same with Wix, and the workaround was to turn off Scam protection. But that is unsatisfactory for a server which seem to be used by a wide variety of email senders.

I see from  Trevor's thread that this has been traced to MailChimp. So the "mc" in "mcusercontent" means MailChimp. So now TalkTalk has to talk to MailChimp about why their images are being blocked.

[Gondola]

Hi hikernick 

Your findings are very helpful. HomeSafe blocking is what I'd concluded at the outset of helping another customer to identify the root cause. However, I didn't expect to see Scam Protection blocking mailchimp email images unless some nefarious activity has been detected with hidden pixel scam malware being downloaded along with the images from certain mailchimp emails.

I've asked the other customer to double check the image links from an assumed good source with a fully reset Chrome browser and then to check by switching off Scam Protection. The other elements of HomeSafe had already been switched off.

Thanks again for your post.

Further advice here following a bit more in depth look at the reasons for MailChimp image downloads being blocked by TalkTalk.

[hikernick]

I am also experiencing this issue. These are newsletters sent out using Mailchimp. I've had a couple of instances from different senders in the past couple of weeks. This was not happening a month ago for the same newsletter sent by the same method.

Cutting the image link out of the email body and opening it in a browser firstly I get an error saying the connection is not secure, so changing https to http in the image path I then get a TalkTalk error saying the site is blocked for scam protection and I must alter my settings in "My Account". That works (turning off scam protection) but it's not desirable. Why has TT blocked this very common (and considered very safe by websites such as scamadviser.com) website?

Thanks

Nick

[jbuchanangb]

OK. I have conducted some further tests, which might contribute to the solution of this problem. I wanted to eliminate Supersafe as the cause. I proceeded cautiously at first, with three actions, none of which made any difference.
a. Added mcusercontent.com to the "Allowed websites" list.
b. Turned off "web traffic scanning"
c. Turned off "Adblocker"
Reverted all those to normal settings.
I then took the nuclear option and turned off ALL Supersafe protection. No improvement. Turned protection back on pretty sharpish.
Remembering that images are being blocked from old emails, not just recent ones, I pulled up an item received in July. Images blocked. As before I captured the URL and pasted into a new window. Image blocked.
Lightbulb moment. I noticed that the images from this old email are hosted on the same server mcusercontent.com as those on more recent emails.
Earlier in the year I was caught up in a similar problem which was the subject of this thread

Is it conceivable that there is a problem between TalkTalk and mcusercontent.com similar to that which affected images from Wix?

[jbuchanangb]

Aside from the fact that the email access using Outlook 365 is down, I have looked at the Inbox using Webmail, and  email received yesterday still does not display images.

I attempt to paste the URL of broken image here

If I paste it directly into the reply I see a broken image icon:

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Hi jbuchanangb,

How is it this morning, are you still experiencing problems?

Chris