is there still no way to remove this icon completely
If you don’t want to even see any avatars as @Victor.David advised in his original post at the top, then you can “disable the column from view” as in the below extract paragraph from the eM Support page.
(Quote extract below from the above link).
“Right-click the top of the message list and open Columns configuration. Select the Avatar from the “Show these columns” list on the right and then click the Remove button, which will move it to the list on the left”.
…
Also you can uncheck the other box in Settings / Contacts / General “Show Monograms when no other Avatar is found” as in @Gary screenshot above in his post, so then won’t show any Avatars.