Sometimes Gmail will show a notice just like the one below warning you that an email message seems dangerous. This happens when similar types of emails have been reported to Google as “phishing”.
What is phishing?
Phishing is an act in which someone pretends to be another person or company in an attempt to gain your trust and obtain personal and/or financial information from you. Sometimes phishers may ask you for personal details such as your username, password, social security number, or credit card information. Other times, they may ask you to click a link, complete a form or download an attachment from an email. Phishers pretend to be companies you know and trust so you’ll be more likely to give them the data they’re looking for.
How do I know these emails are safe?
Please remember: Refersion will never ask you for your personal information such as passwords nor will we ever ask you to provide financial information over email.
If you’re seeing a phishing notice like the one included in this article, here are the steps you can take to confirm the email was sent by Refersion:
1. Review the header information for the email.
You can do this in Gmail by clicking on the down arrow next to your email address when viewing the email.
Here are some things to look for in the email header:
The “from” field:
The email’s “from” field will always be from a refersion.com email address. For report notification emails, we use the following email address [email protected].The “reply-to” field:
The reply-to field will specifically include an official refersion.com email address.The “mailed-by” field:
The domain for the mailed-by field will always include refersion.comThe “signed-by” field:
The signed-by field should say “refersion.com”.
2. Review the email content:
Phishing emails often have language prompting you to take any action that’ll result in you providing your information to an attacker or downloading something dangerous on your computer. The FTC website outlines some clear ways to identify phishing emails which you can read about here.
Refersion’s report notification emails only serve to notify you that a report you requested has been delivered to you. In the email, you’ll find a short summary of the report and a copy of the report you can download as a CSV file.
The best practice when you’re unsure about downloading attachments is to not download them at all. You can always log in to your Refersion account to securely download a copy of your report by visiting the Reporting > Report Status page.
How can I remove the red warning banner?
Once you’ve confirmed the email was sent from Refersion, you can click “Looks safe” in the red warning box so Google knows this email and future report notification emails from Refersion are not dangerous.