Why emails display raw in your inbox

If you've opened a message in inboxy and noticed it looks plain — no fonts, no colours, no embedded images — that's intentional. Here's why.

The short version

We display the raw email message to protect you from tracking pixels and malicious links hidden in email formatting. The moment you open an HTML email and load its images, your email provider, the sender, or an attacker can see exactly when you read it.

Showing you the raw, unstyled message means you're in control of whether and when tracking happens.

How email tracking works

Modern emails aren't plain text. They're HTML documents with embedded images. The sender doesn't include those images in the email itself — instead, they embed a link to a tiny invisible image on their server.

The flow looks like this:

1. You receive an email from a newsletter or shop.
2. You open it in your email client.
3. Your client loads the images from the sender's server.
4. The sender's server now knows: your email address, your IP, your approximate location, when you opened it, what kind of device and email client you use.

This happens invisibly, every time. Retailers use it to track when you read a promo. Spammers use it to confirm your address is live and worth targeting. Malicious actors use it to map which emails you're actually reading.

Links hiding in plain sight

HTML emails also let senders hide the real URL behind friendly text:

Click here to verify your account

But the real link might be:

https://phish-site.ru/steal-password?email=you@domain.com&token=…

The email client shows "Click here to verify your account" — you don't see the malicious URL until you hover over it, and even then, it might be obfuscated.

Displaying the raw email shows you the actual link structure so you can see what you're about to click.

What "raw" means in inboxy

When we display an email, we show:

• The plain-text body, if present.
• The parsed message structure — headers, attachments, etc. — formatted as readable Markdown.
• Links exactly as they appear in the HTML, so you can see the destination before clicking.
• Attachment filenames and sizes, but not the rendered images.

What you don't see:

• Embedded images — they are not loaded.
• HTML styling — fonts, colours, backgrounds, layout tricks.
• Tracking pixels — because we didn't request them from the sender's server.

If an email relies heavily on images or layout (a design newsletter, a visual product offer), you'll miss the visual experience. That's a real downside, and it's deliberate.

Downloading the email

If you want to see the email as the sender intended — images, layout, the whole thing — you can download it:

1. Open the message in inboxy.
2. Click Download (if available on your client) or View raw to get the MIME file.
3. Open the downloaded .eml file in your email client (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.).

Your email client will render it fully, including images and tracking. You're now in control of when that happens — it's not automatic every time you open your inbox.

Why we do this by default

Privacy means you choose when you're tracked. Most email clients load images automatically, turning on tracking by default. inboxy flips that: we show you the safe version, and you opt in to tracking if you want it.

A side effect is that inboxy's inbox view is not a replica of your marketing inbox. It's a privacy-first reading interface. If you want the full visual experience with embedded images and styling, your regular email client does that fine.

For agents and API clients

If you're using an agent or script to read mail via the MCP or REST API:

• mail_get_body returns the parsed plain-text body + headers. No images loaded.
• mail_show returns Markdown with inline images (proxied through inboxy, so we can drop tracking pixels). Safe to render in a chat interface.
• mail_get_attachment downloads attachments separately, on demand.

So if your agent is reading mail on your behalf, it's also reading the privacy-safe version.

Stuck?

If an email's content is unreadable or an important link is hidden, email support@inboxy.net with the message ID. We can help troubleshoot or discuss whether there's a better display option for your use case.