How to Report a Phishing Email in Apple Mail, Gmail, and Microsoft Outlook?

Phishing threats are not localized but a global phenomenon affecting businesses and consumers across the world.

According to the Verizon 2024 DBIR, a whopping 73 percent of cyber crimes, which are largely linked to social engineering, come from phishing and pretexting.

This data shows that no matter where you are, there is a need to be vigilant and aware of phishing threats.

How to Report a Phishing Email Varies Based on Your Company?

It would be beneficial for all individuals to learn how to report a scam email; there are quite a few ways of doing so.

There are now steps you can take to counter pamphlets: internally to the organization’s IT admin, externally to the email service provider, and externally to law enforcement.

Having a proper and formal organizational procedure to report a phishing message is very important.

If your organization doesn’t have these in place, your IT admin should provide concrete measures you, your staff, or other network users should follow upon receiving an unsolicited e-mail (along with the other types of messages).

This structure gives a feeling of safety and security while handling the possible threats. Another very important way to report emails is to report them to your actual email service providers.

Of course, different companies have different possibilities for using such conditions, and they can work on different emailing platforms or even in customized system environments. Therefore, how it’s done may vary depending on the circumstances.

Reporting a phishing email is not that cumbersome a task, especially if your organization uses basic versions of popular email clients.

Here is how you can report a phishing email in the traditional platforms of the top three emailing clients, which should give you the confidence to handle such situations. Remember, you have the power to protect yourself and your organization from these threats.

How to Report a Phishing Email in Microsoft Outlook?

You must hand it to Microsoft when reporting suspicious and malicious emails in Microsoft 365 Outlook. In this respect, they make it easy.

Outlook allows reporting a phishing message quite easily; only a little can go wrong with such action. That allows you to report Junk and Phishing messages separately.

• Users can report a message as junk from the Inbox or any email folder other than Junk Email folder.
• Users can report a message as phishing from any email folder.
• In a supported version of Outlook, select one or more messages, select Report, and then select Report phishing or Report junk in the dropdown list.

• Lastly, to proceed with the report of the phishing message, click the Report button to affirm the action.

This process sends/passes the message as a phishing email to Microsoft and your IT admin via the Microsoft 365 environment. In this way, they can read the message and move to more measures if required.

What If You Don’t See the Report Phishing Option?

If you need help finding the Report Message > Phishing option in your top Outlook Ribbon toolbar, we will help you install it. This can be done by adding a designer and setting your Outlook Ribbon to XML.

• Right-click in an open area on the right side of your Ribbon bar and select Customize the Ribbon in the pop-up menu. This will bring up the Outlook Options window.

• In the right part of the new window, which is called “Customize the Classic Ribbon,” you see the list “Home” – click the “New Group” button at the bottom of the list. This action will result in creating a new group in the list labeled as New Group (Custom).

• If you wish to rename this group, look for the Rename button, which is next to the New Group button. Complete the display text (Report Message) here, and you can pick an icon in the ribbon bar.

• To get back to the overall Outlook Options, press the OK button. Look at the right column, and you should see the new group that you created.

• Beside the column “Choose commands from“, click on the available drop-down list created at Popular Commands and click on All Commands.

• In this long list of options, scroll down to find Phishing [Report phishing message]. Select Add from the buttons listed between the two columns.

NOTE: You can also add other options like Junk and Not Junk to this menu following the same steps.) Now, you should see the Phishing [Report phishing message] tool displayed in the right column under Home (Mail) > Report Message.

• To save the changes, press OK on the keyboard, and then, if you are done, minimize the Outlook Options window to get back to the main Outlook window.

Outlook Webmail

To report a phishing email from your inbox without opening the message:

• Locate the options to report a message and when you find it right-click on it bringing up a context menu.
• On the menu on the right of the page, choose Select Report then click Report Phishing.

• When you’ve done this you’ll possibly note a confirmation request screen. To proceed, select Report.

If you’ve already opened a suspected phishing message and want to report it:

• Look at the options floating above the Esp automatically icons at the very top-right corner of the received email.
• Then locate and click on the drop-down menu which has Select Report on it.
• Press Report Phishing.

How to Report a Phishing Email in Gmail?

Gmail (Browser)

Reporting a phishing email in Gmail using a web browser is a quick and painless process. For this example, we’ll use Google Chrome. Once you’ve opened a suspected phishing message:

• It is located to the right at the top of the message within the box besides the “Reply” arrow, click on the three vertical dots. That is how you can unlock the drop-down list.

• Navigate to the Report Phishing option from the available list of options on the menu bar.
• After that to proceed with the reporting process you have to click on the button Report Phishing Message.

Gmail Mobile App (iOS)

This process is slightly different as there is no option that translates to ‘report this as ‘phishing‘ per se. Ironically, it is within your power to mark the received mail as junk instead. This is different from the in browser email client reporting facility which we just described where users have options to either report spam or report phishing.

To report the email as spam in Gmail’s iOS app:

• It is important to tap the icon located next to the mail symbol in the form of three dots-ellipses. This enables you to select options from the drop-down list.

• Choose Another option which will again drop down its options and choose Report Spam. The action of reporting the message will produce a pop-up window with the relevant message.

• Besides, in the confirmation screen, click yes block to block the sender and have access to your mailbox.

How to Report a Phishing Email in Apple Mail?

Apple Mail

Similar to the Gmail mobile application for smartphones there does not seem to be a ‘Report Phishing’ under the list of options. However, you instead have to mark a message as “Junk” instead.

Once in your Inbox:

• Further, to report an email, place the mouse cursor on the respective e-mail; right-click on it. This will produce a menu.
• Locate the Move to Junk option on the displayed list. This will automatically shuffle the message off to the Junk folder.

However, what is necessary to point out is that when you delete the message, besides it would be served as spam you wouldn’t be able to prevent the sender from sending you more messages.

In order to completely rid oneself from the messages, it is necessary to block the sender as well by hand. You can achieve this by going to the junk folder and then right clicking on the message of the sender and then tapping Block Contact.

Apple Mail iOS App

Similar to the desktop client, the official Mail app on iPhones does not enable users to report “phishing” specifically. It has to be filed as “Junk” again rather than that.

To send an email to your junk folder from your iPhone’s inbox:

• To delete the message, swiping left on the screen, the message to be deleted shall appear.
• Click on the More (…).

• Choose the Move to junk option. This will re-categorize the email to that particular folder on your own.

Conclusion

For choosing a partner to protect your organization’s reputation and improve the security of its e-mail communication, you can contact Certera. Over a vast array of digital certificates such as S/MIME Email Signing Certificates and Verified Mark Certificates, you can trust that your email messages and attachments are genuine and safe.