Gmail: This Message Seems Dangerous

Gmail may sometimes display a red warning banner when you receive an email from suspicious senders. The banner usually reads as follows:

This message seems dangerous. Many people marked similar messages as phishing scams, so this might contain unsafe content. Avoid clicking links, downloading attachments, or replying with personal information.

This warning may also appear when you send emails using genuine apps, services, or domain accounts. For example, this issue is quite common among people who use SaasS services or monitoring apps.

What To Do If Gmail Says This Message Seems Dangerous

⇒ Note: Always take security alerts seriously. If Gmail says an email is dangerous, start from the assumption that’s true. If the alert is a false-positive, nothing happens. But if the alert is real and you ignore it, you risk getting your computer infected with malware and your data stolen by hackers.

Click on Looks Safe

Use this option only if you’re completely sure the sender is a genuine person or service and they’re not trying to spam you, spread malware or steal your data. Don’t click the “Looks Safe” button if the email is coming from an unknown sender. Also, make sure there are no disguised links in the email.

In this manner, Gmail’s bots will gradually learn that those emails are safe and should not be flagged as suspicious. Additionally, you can also add the sender to your Contacts list.

Declutter Your Emails

If the messages you sent are labeled as dangerous, you need to declutter them a bit. Here’s what that means:

Reduce the number of links in the emails.
Reduce the number of images. Or remove all the images.
Make sure there’s an Unsubscribe option in the emails.
Reduce the number of attachments. Maybe you attached too many files and the bots think those files could potentially carry viruses.
Check your grammar. Make sure the email body is not poorly written.
If you have a signature set up, remove all the links it may contain.

Disable Your Antivirus Email Signature

Certain antivirus programs such as Avast automatically add a digital signature to your emails. Basically, the signature confirms your email has been successfully scanned and it’s virus-free.

However, it is this antivirus digital signature that may sometimes cause Gmail to flag your emails as dangerous. Disable your antivirus’ digital signature and check if the issue is gone.

Scan Your Emails

Whenever you get security alerts, make sure to run an in-depth system and email scan. Make sure your email account has not been compromised. Running a complete system scan using your antivirus helps you to detect and remove any malware that might have sneaked into your machine.

If you’re running Windows Security, click on Virus and threat protection, and select Scan options. Then click on Full Scan.

Forward the Email to Yourself

Many users complained they cannot open these emails or download the attachments even if they’re 100 percent sure the respective emails are safe to open.

As a workaround, you can forward the problematic emails to yourself. That should at least allow you to view the email body and download the attachments.

Report as Spam and Undo the Action

There’s another rather strange approach that seemed to work for some users. First, report the email as spam. Then, go to the Spam folder and click on Report not spam.

By doing so, you basically whitelist the sender. But again, this method might work for all users.

Create a Never Send to Spam Filter

Other users managed to work their way around this issue by creating a special filter for those emails.

Open the email and click on More options (the three dots).
Then click on Filter messages like this.
Check the sender’s address. Make sure it’s visible and it’s safe.
Then click on Create Filter.
Select the option that says Never send it to Spam.
Create the filter. Gmail should no longer flag the emails from that sender as suspicious.