Windows User Account picture appearing in emails received by Outlook users

M

Morton1815

I was visiting someone and checking an e-mail I'd sent them and noticed to my alarm that my Windows User Account picture was appearing as a small image next to my name / e-mail address. I had assumed this image along with other images on my computer was entirely private which is how I want them to be.


A similar question has been asked in the past but there are some key differences here. I am not an Outlook user - it's not even installed on my computer - so I can't change anything in Outlook to prevent this happening. I use Yahoo Mail and the messages I send and receive have no pictures except for the sender / recipient's initials and this is why I was unaware of the issue, otherwise I would have acted on it straightaway. Apparently systems such as Outlook sometimes use an image from a person's social media profile in their messages but I'm only on Facebook in the most limited way and have prevented links from it to my other accounts. The image in any event is from my Windows User Account, perhaps because it can't access a social media image.


What this means is that potentially for years people I correspond with who use Outlook have been seeing these images which were meant to be private. I'm very unhappy about that but I now want to make sure it is no longer possible. The only way I can think to do it is by changing my Windows Settings for privacy so apps cannot access my Windows account information but I'm not sure that will work. Does anyone have any other ideas (bearing in mind that I don't have Outlook on my computer so cannot change any of its settings)?


As a final point I do not think it is acceptable in any way for images a user assumes are private to be used in their messages as avatars, etc, unless they have given explicit permission. It can't be assumed that a picture a person is happy to use for their private account is one they want others to see. The same is also true for pictures used on social media, e.g. a Facebook image is intended to be seen by Facebook users, not others who are known from e-mail.

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