What you’re seeing
- Recipients report your messages arriving with a red banner or a warning that the message may be a phishing attempt.
- Clients say your invoices or links went to quarantine and their IT team had to release them.
- Bounce or quarantine notices that mention spoofing, failed DMARC, or a blocked link or attachment.
- Your domain or a sending IP address appears on a public blocklist.
- Sender reputation reports from Microsoft or Google show a sudden drop or high complaint rates.
Common causes
Every environment is different, but these are the causes our engineers find most often:
- SPF, DKIM or DMARC is missing or misaligned, so receiving systems cannot confirm the message really came from your domain.
- A compromised mailbox in your company sent a burst of phishing or spam, damaging the reputation of your domain and mail servers.
- Your messages contain links through a URL shortener, tracking domain or file-sharing service that attackers are also abusing.
- Display names, signatures or wording closely resemble common phishing templates, such as urgent payment requests or 'shared document' notices.
- A third-party sender such as a CRM or e-signature platform sends as your domain without proper authentication.
- Your domain is very new or was recently dormant, so filters treat its mail with extra suspicion.
Why it matters
When customers see a phishing warning on your email, they hesitate to pay invoices, sign contracts or click links, and some will assume your company has been hacked. Messages that land in quarantine may never be seen at all, delaying payments and responses. If the cause is a compromised mailbox, the warnings are a symptom of a live security incident in which your contacts are being targeted under your name. Rebuilding sender reputation takes time, so the longer it goes unaddressed, the longer deliverability suffers.
How AskTechGurus fixes it
Skip the trial and error. A certified engineer works on your actual system, finds the root cause, and fixes it properly.
Tell us what’s happening
Submit a ticket in about two minutes. Paste the error, describe what changed, and pick your tier. No charge to submit.
A certified engineer diagnoses it
A vetted, US-based systems engineer claims your ticket, usually within minutes during business hours, and investigates over a secure remote session you can watch and end at any time.
Fixed and verified with you
The engineer resolves the root cause and confirms with you that it’s working. You don’t just get a workaround, and you get a plain-English summary of what was wrong.
Pay only when it’s resolved
Fixed price from $99, invoiced only after you approve the fix. If it isn’t resolved, you don’t pay.
Frequently asked questions
Does this mean we were hacked?
Not necessarily. Missing authentication records are a frequent cause, but a compromised account sending bad mail produces the same symptom, so we rule that out first.
Why are only some recipients flagging us?
Every mail system uses its own filters and reputation data. Organizations with strict security gateways or aggressive link scanning tend to flag mail that others accept.
Can our sending reputation recover?
Yes. Once the underlying cause is corrected, reputation typically recovers as receiving systems see consistently clean, authenticated mail from your domain.