Why genuine emails sometimes land in quarantine or junk, and what you and the sender can do about it.
Your email is checked for spam, phishing and malware before it reaches you. Now and then a genuine email gets caught. Here's why, and what helps.
Common reasons a real email gets held
- The sender's email system isn't set up to prove it's really them (checks called SPF, DKIM and DMARC)
- It contains a link or attachment type that's often used in attacks, such as a zipped file or a link to an unfamiliar file-sharing site
- It came from a new sender, or a bulk mailing service
- It looks a lot like recent phishing emails, even if it's genuine
What you can do
- Check your quarantine and Junk Email folder before asking the sender to resend. Our tip on releasing held email shows how.
- Mark genuine email as Not junk in Outlook so your filter learns.
- Ask regular senders to share files by a link from OneDrive, SharePoint or a service you both use, rather than a zipped attachment.
The same sender keeps getting held? Email support@deepnet.com with the sender's address. We'll check why and, if it's safe, make sure it gets through. We won't allow a sender that fails security checks, because that's exactly what scammers rely on.
