When you open an email in PrMail, a coloured badge next to the sender's name gives a quick read on how much to trust it. Emails rated Caution or Suspicious also show their badge in your inbox list. This guide explains the badges, what's checked and how to see the details.
The four badges
Each email gets a trust score from 0 to 100. Every email starts at 50, and each check below moves the score up or down.
| Badge | Score | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|
| Trusted (green) | 70 to 100 | Several good signals, for example someone you've emailed regularly, with no trackers or warning signs. |
| Verified (blue) | 40 to 69 | No serious problems found. Most ordinary email lands here. |
| Caution (amber) | 20 to 39 | One or more warning signs, such as trackers, urgent wording or a lookalike domain. Read carefully before clicking anything. |
| Suspicious (red) | 0 to 19 | Several warning signs together. Treat it as likely phishing or spam. |
See why an email got its badge
Open the email and click Trust info under the sender's name. For Caution and Suspicious emails it opens by itself. You'll see the Trust score out of 100 and a list of signals, each marked with a green tick (good), an amber warning triangle (caution), a red cross (bad) or an information icon.
What's checked
- Sender authentication (SPF, DKIM and DMARC): whether the sending server and signature were approved for the sender's domain. If these results aren't available for a message, you'll see No auth headers and they don't affect the score.
- Whether you know the sender: people you've emailed several times score higher, people you've emailed before score a little higher, and a First-time sender gets a warning.
- Trackers: how many tracking pixels were found and removed. No trackers detected is a good sign.
- Disposable email domain: the sender is using a throwaway email service.
- Phishing indicators: the sender's domain contains the name of a well-known brand or bank (such as PayPal, Amazon, Microsoft, HSBC or Barclays). This catches lookalike domains, but it can also flag genuine emails from those companies, so use it as a prompt to check the address carefully.
- Urgency language in subject: words like "urgent", "verify your", "suspended" or "act immediately", which are common in phishing.
- Major email provider: senders on large providers such as Gmail, Outlook, iCloud or PrMail get a small boost. This isn't shown as a separate line.
Things to keep in mind
- Badges are information only. They never block, move or delete an email.
- A Caution badge doesn't mean an email is malicious. Newsletters with trackers, or a first email from someone new, often land there.
- A good badge isn't a guarantee either. If an email asks for passwords, payment or urgent action, check with the sender another way.
- All checks run on our own servers. Nothing about your email is sent to outside reputation services.
Something out of date or unclear? Let us know.