April 9, 2012

Gmail's People Widget Shows Recent Photo Attachments

Gmail has never included an option to manage the attachments from the messages you've received. You can't see a list of PDFs received this month or a list of photos sent by one of your friends. Gmail's advanced search features let you find the messages that include PDF files or photos, but you have to open each message to see the files.

The people widget now shows more information about a contact: thumbnails of recent photos your contacts sent you. Clicking on a thumbnail opens the corresponding message.


For now, Gmail only shows the most recent 3 photos from a contact and doesn't let you see all of them. Maybe Gmail will integrate with the upcoming Google Drive and all the Gmail attachments will finally be searchable, easy to organize and share, just like Google Drive (Docs) files.

{ Thanks, Daniel. }

54 comments:

  1. also shows "shared" docs with the person(s) in the email.

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  2. It Just suck i dont want people see what kind of picrures i share with my friends

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    Replies
    1. yes, one just can not remove that. so annoying.

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  3. I am not a GMail user (and this note may illustrate one reason why), but my wife and some of our friends are.

    A few days ago, I e-mailed some personal photos of my wife to one of our friends who uses GMail, and cc'd my wife. This was intended to be a one-time transmission for just their eyes.

    But now, whenever either of them open any e-mail from me, on any subject, those photos appear in the right margin of their GMail screens, under "Recent photos."

    This proved especially embarrassing to my wife when today she opened a business e-mail from me with a professional colleague watching, and the personal photo again popped up in the margin. She asked, how can Google justify doing such a thing? More importantly, how can she prevent it from happening in the future?

    She would like to remove those pictures from Google's memory. She is afraid that Google will use them to illustrate mail to other GMail users who should not see them. I would like to assure her that this will not happen, but I have no factual basis for such assurance.

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    Replies
    1. She tried an experiment: She located the message with the photos attached and invoked "delete this message." Then she found it in her Trash and invoked "delete forever." But still, the pictures show up under "Recent photos" when she reads any message from me. Even worse, if she clicks on any of those photos, the entire text of the message she supposedly just deleted forever shows up again.

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    2. Worrisome! Anonymous just posted a way that seems to work below.

      btw. This also kills Rapportive, right?

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    3. Click the gear icon in the upper right, then select Settings.
      On the General tab in Settings, select the ‘Hide the people widget’ radio button.
      Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

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    4. We're all here for the same reason, however I loved reading your story!

      ‘Hide the people widget’ did the trick, thank you very much, I think you might have saved a lot of jobs LOL

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  4. Click the gear icon in the upper right, then select Settings.
    On the General tab in Settings, select the ‘Hide the people widget’ radio button.
    Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page

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    Replies
    1. Yes, that disables the People Widget entirely. I would prefer to keep it, but disable its taking pictures from unrelated e-mail messages.

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    2. THANK YOU!! I hated that thing posting personal photos in public places!

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    3. Thank you! I'm happy to be rid of that widget.

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    4. To Anonymous April 11, 2012 10:21 PM: Thank you SO MUCH for this tip.

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    5. amazing I had to find this info on the web. couldn't find it in gmail help. THANK YOU!

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    6. blogspot is bought by Google dude. So Google just did help you resolve this issue. Peace........

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    7. It just hide from the photos i just wanna delete it from the gmail memory is there any posibilities???
      i don wanna any other people viewing my personal photos.

      Delete
  5. See https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/LMZIwDXFTo4/discussion

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  6. I occasionally send private documents and diagrams as image files. This "recent photos" option feels arbitrary, feels like a breach of privacy and to a major degree seems useless. +1 for dumb ideas, I vote just to get rid of the thing...

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  7. Loved it, until I had an embarrassing moment at work with personal pics just because a person I shared personal pics was in the thread.

    Seriously, your personal mail account should not be tied nor treated as a social network, for that we have Facebook, far away from my personal sensitive information.

    I'm scared now, and re-raises my concerns about G+

    There is only one reason I don't use G+: I can keep my personal gmail account out of the public Eye, again, that's why I have Facebook, there's where all the stalkers need to look things about me, and EVERYTHING that is there is intended to be seem, at some point, by the public, either I set it public or private, it will be discoverable by stalkers some how, some day.

    But please, not gmail, that's sacred!!!

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  8. This feature is creepy enough that I am re-thinking Gmail. I had people's scanned documents pop up under the widget. I assume they were at one point in emails between us, but do not like the idea of them coming up every time we communicate. This is not Facebook, this is email and the context of email changes from conversation to conversation and having pictures inappropriate to the context of the conversation pop up in unprofessional. Google needs to change this.

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  9. This is a serious concern for me as well. I am not sure when this was implemented, as I just noticed it today. I was relieved to see that these pictures were not published to G+ (to my knowledge), but the very fact that I could worry about such a thing is a huge red flag for me. Email users should never be concerned about their private photos and mail content being extracted and published anywhere (even on a margin). This is a serious transgression in my opinion. Google needs to have defined boundaries across its services for them to work. Email is not a public or social utility, and this fact must be respected. While Google does not appear to be publishing this content in G+ (for the moment), it should know better than to so blatantly reach its fingers into the personal content of email for any purpose. Must we all buy privacy screens to use gmail now?

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  10. You can delete the photos from Picasa. I agree this was a pain and I will likely delete G+.

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    Replies
    1. I downloaded Picas, but I can't find these photos anywhere. How can I delete them?

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    2. I downloaded Picasa, but I don't see these photos anywhere. How do I delete them?

      Delete
  11. Agreed! I will also probably delete G+ because of their lack of sense of privacy policies. I'm sad about this because I LOVE their hangout feature. However, having personal photos pop up in the right margin from past emails is flat out not ok. Seriously goole?!? Did you consider that people would not want whoever is around their computer to be able to see past personal photos??? This seems like a huge mistake by google, one that I hope they realize and take seriously.

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  12. I hate it. You should have the option of turning it off. What is going on with gmail? They are stupidly taking away options

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  13. Thank you for the fix!! i love my photos, I just don't want people who happen to glance at my screen to look at them. They're PRIVATE.

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  14. This whole thing is scary but while it scares us Google must have its reasons for doing this to us; of course, it does what favours its bottomline, not us. Remember Google, we make Google what it is today. Listen up. I have same concerns with photos showing on the screen whenever I open a mail from someone who has sent me photos in the past. Anyway, I deleted the mail from my inbox and followed it up to the Trash bin and deleted it forever. After that, I did not see the photo show up again. Hope it never shows up again ever. If you also saved the file in a Labels folder make sure to get rid of that too because Google is inching closer to Facebook.

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  15. This is really creepy. It is unacceptable that we can't truly delete messages and the last photos we email to people with gmail (even if the email has been deleted) show up on their sidebar widget. If we are unable to find a work around, sadly, we will find an alternative to gmail.

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  16. I as well have had an extremely negative experience with this feature. It's creepy and it invades my and my peers' privacy. Remove it as quickly as possible, please. I'm seriously considering leaving Gmail for this.

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  17. aaaaaaaaah ! >:D

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  18. I am a GMAIL user but I don't think I noticed this. It's good to know.

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  19. Por favor, quitar la opcion de fotos recientes, las imagenes son privadas.

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  20. Every time I have an email conversation with a specific friend, it shows a picture of my ex in the sidebar because we shared that picture in email when he and I were dating.

    Ask me how much I want to see that picture every freaking time she and I email each other. WTF.

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  21. WTF is happening with google. I just opened an email from a contact and in the side widget had photos jumping up at me. This is such an invasion of privacy and i wouldn't have expected that from google. I'm seriously starting to reconsider my email options even though i've been with gmail for over 5years.

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  22. The recent pictures widget could really embarrassed me at work too.

    Not good.

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  23. If you disable the People Widget that only disables it on your side, right? Unless others disable it, they will continue to see you most recent attachment to them regardless of sensitivity. Correct?

    How about opt-in instead of opt-out!

    Quit making decisions for me Microsoft. I mean Facebook. I mean Google.

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  24. ok, so i disabled the people widget in my settings, so I no longer see the pics, but does that mean that other gmail users will still see them? am i only hiding the pics from myself?

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  25. What a poor design decision. People email personal photos because they don't want to go through the very public facebook/g+ (where a slight mishap in privacy settings can expose the photo to the world). The photos popping up without warning are not "profile pictures."

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  26. This is a ridiculously awful design decision. Google get rid of it.

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  27. Google seriously. Most of us are adults here and we use our email accounts for inappropriate things. Please get rid of this feature.

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  28. I agree! This needs to be removed. It is offensive that Google took it upon themselves to add this feature without any regard for the privacy and preferences of the people who use Gmail.

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  29. My issue is that my co-worker (who I email multiple times a day) forwarded an inappropriate email that one of our users received so I could look into it. Now I see porn every time he emails me. WTF?

    So freaking annoying that I have to hide the whole widget because of this. Does google even think about the implications?

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  30. Yes, I agree. I use Gmail for business every day. I have about 10k emails in the past 24 months, and now I have to see some photo of me playing darts in a bar wearing my fire gear every time I email a client for work!! Wildly unprofessional Google, and way over the line!! Did I ask you to smather the online world with my personal photos?....??? NO! I've been a Gmail user for about 3 years now and this is making it awkward for me to do business. I may have to delete my account and go somewhere else. PLEASE FIX THIS NOW!!

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    Replies
    1. halleluiah to anonymous

      been seeing my bf's c**k pictures every time i open any email from him..... which has embarrassed me more than enough times

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  31. Gmail is one giant pain in the fucking ass, I'm done with it. I never wanted my Youtube and Gmail account to be linked, did everything to avoid it and despite my best efforts, I could not prevent it. Next thing I know, my Youtube photo is showing up in all my emails and now, I can't remove it. Crossing the line? It's like having a wart you can't get rid of. Will never use any Google products again, even if that means giving up web surfing.

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  32. this thread is insane. Gmail doesn't post your photos publicly, they only show up in your account. If it bugs you so much, don't open emails with 12 people standing over your shoulder watching. I love the "recent photo" in the people widget.

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