To report a spam/phishing email, we need the following information:

  • The sender address of the email
  • The recipient address of the email
  • The timestamp on the email
  • The email headers

Our spam filtering captures >95% of email spam - however, no spam filter is perfect. Approximately 32% of all emails received (daily) on our servers are blocked for matching spam patterns. This percentage can, of course, vary based on a few factors - i.e. whether you have been involved in a data breach of some kind, whether you are a high profile or well known individual etc. Certain clients are more likely to receive spam than others, due to their status. We typically work with these clients to adjust their spam filtering to capture the most spam.

 

To report these messages to us, please follow the process below:

 

1) Export the email - typically in .eml format. In Microsoft Outlook, you can double click on an email, click File, then Save As.

2) Send us the .eml file in a ticket. If you intend to send us the file via email, please first add it to a .zip archive to ensure that it isn't blocked by our spam filter.

 

Alternatively, you can find the message headers and paste them into a support ticket. You can see the instructions for getting headers for the most common email clients below.

 

Thunderbird

In the email -> Go to top-right corner, Click the "more" dropdown -> Select View Source
Apple Mail

Highlight the message -> Go to View at the very top -> Message -> All Headers
Outlook for Windows

Double-click the message so it opens in its own window >> Go to File->Properties >> Headers are displayed in the properties box near the bottom
Gmail

From the message, go to the upper right-hand side >> Click the 3 dots >> Select Show Original
Yahoo! Mail

From email message >> Top center next to "Spam", Click 3 dots >> Click View Raw Message
Outlook.com, Live.com, Hotmail

Click Message >> In message screen go to top right-hand side >> Click the dropdown >> Select View message source
Horde

Highlight email message >> Mid Screen Click + symbol >> View Source
Roundcube

Highlight email message >> Click the 3 dots with "More" underneath>> Click Show Source

 

What we do with your report

Once you send us a report of spam/phishing, we will analyse it. It is best to provide us with both the headers and email body content. This allows us to make an informed decision.

Please note that we may not always be able to block emails - especially if we deem that they have arrived from a legitimate sender with legitimate purposes - you may wish to contact the sender directly to request the removal from a mailing list etc.

If we determine that an email is indeed spam/phishing, we will add the headers into our filtering system - this will then monitor future emails with similar attributes (from similar sending IPs, using similar subject names, similar senders etc.), and will automatically increase their spam score (the higher the score, the higher the chance of being blocked).

If the email contains content that could be deemed illegal, we will automatically report the content to the NCSC (gov.uk) group.

 

Responses

Please note that due to the volume of spam reporting that we receive, we cannot respond to every submission manually. However, you will receive an automated response with the action that we have taken.

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