Gmail: Be careful with this message
Are you using Gmail from Google to send emails using your company domain name? We find many do as it’s a free alternative to Microsoft’s Outlook 365 service. If so, do you have it set up correctly?
It’s well worth checking everything is in order as Google recently started showing warning messages to recipients stating ‘Be careful with this message. Gmail could not verify that it actually came from [sender]. Avoid clicking links, downloading attachments, or replying with personal information‘. The warning includes buttons to ‘Report spam’ or ‘Report phishing’ which is obviously far from ideal.
If you’re not sure, there’s a relatively simple check that you can do. Send a test email with any subject and message to the following email address ping@tools.mxtoolbox.com, you will receive a reply containing a link to a deliverability report. In this report you will see a ‘reply to’ address, if this shows a gmail.com email address instead of your email address at your domain name then it’s likely your recipients are being shown the warning message.
Is there a fix?
Fortunately yes. Previously when setting up Gmail to send emails from a company domain name, Google defaulted to using their own mail sending SMTP servers, we have found that in the majority of cases this is the cause of the warning. The fix therefore is to set up Gmail to send your emails using your own SMTP server for your domain name. Your domain controller or web host should be able to help you out with the details.
There’s also one further step we would recommend that involves modifying the SPF record at your domain controller to include the following ‘include:_spf.google.com’.
Please note, the warning message is shown to recipients if they are using the Gmail web based email client.
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