Bart Kuijper

When displaying a post or comment with avatars enabled, WordPress will always check for the existence of a Gravatar. (Note: even the default avatars ‘mystery person’ and ‘blank’ are in fact Gravatars served from gravatar.com.) WordPress does this by sending an MD5 hash of every displayed post or comment author’s email address to gravatar.com. Even with many plugins that introduce locally stored default or user avatars, this check still happens. On top of that, some themes or plugins force (Gr)avatars to load even if the display of avatars is disabled completely in WordPress’ settings. If for whatever reason you do not wish for Gravatar to receive these requests (which some people have voiced GDPR concerns about), this plugin is for you.
The way it works is every time WordPress attempts to display an avatar, this plugin first checks if the image is about to be retrieved from gravatar.com. If it is, the URL is changed to the locally stored ‘mystery person’ image (included with this plugin). If the avatar has any other source, this plugin doesn’t interfere.
Gravatars are also removed from the Discussion page in Settings and replaced with the locally stored ‘mystery person’ image. Again, any non-Gravatar images are left alone.
Upon activation of this plugin, if a Gravatar is selected as the default avatar, that setting is changed to the locally stored ‘mystery person’ image. If any non-Gravatar avatar is selected, that setting isn’t changed.
Upon deactivation of this plugin, if the locally stored ‘mystery person’ image is selected as the default avatar, that setting is changed to the Gravatar logo. If any non-Gravatar avatar is selected, that setting isn’t changed.

Redirect Gravatar requests

All requests to load an avatar from gravatar.com are redirected to a local image, preventing Gravatar from potentially gathering data about your site  …

Marcus (aka @msykes)

Pixelite

Marcus

This is a very simple and lightweight plugin that anonymizes default avatars and prevents the user’s gravatar being automatically obtained from gravatar.com based on their registered email. This would be useful for sites where users require an extra layer of privacy, or if you just want to prevent potentially silly or embarrasing avatar accidents.
If you’re using Identicons or any other generated default avatar, the user should keep a consistent avatar unless they change their registered email.
You can also disable Gravatar completely and choose a default image to display.
This plugin is also compatible with other avatar customization plugins such as <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/avatar-manager/" rel="ugc">Avatar Manager</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress/" rel="ugc">BuddyPress</a> or <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/add-new-default-avatar/" rel="ugc">Add New Default Avatar</a>, since this plugin specifically prevents the gravatar of a specific user email being used and reverts to the default or user-defined avatar.
Important 3.0 Update – BuddyPress users should visit the Settings > Discussion page on your dashboard and choose one of the Disable Gravatar options to restore previous behavior.
If you have any issues or suggestions, please visit our <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/disable-user-gravatar" rel="ugc">support forums</a>.
If you find this plugin useful and would like to say thanks, please leave us a <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/disable-user-gravatar?filter=5" rel="ugc">5 star review</a>!

Disable User Gravatar

The plugin is a must-have for each WordPress installation. One can't process the email of the user (personal information) to create a hash and sent it to a remote server without consent of the user.

Must-have

Stops WordPress from grabbing a user avatar using their registrated email from gravatar.com.

Redirect Gravatar requests vs Disable User Gravatar