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. 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. 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.