How to submit an Email Guardian evaluation to Avast

Submitting an Email Guardian evaluation to Avast

The paid version of Email Guardian, included in Avast Premium Security, Avast Mobile Security Premium and Avast One, allows you to scan emails in your online email accounts. Email Guardian labels received emails as either , or , for potentially malicious or phishing emails. The labels are added directly to your online email account. Suspicious emails are automatically moved to an folder in your email account.

If you believe an email was incorrectly labeled, you can report the error to Avast. Your reports can help us improve our applications.

To report an incorrectly labeled email in Outlook or Thunderbird, you must first export the email, then submit it to Avast by following the steps below. To report an incorrectly labeled email in Gmail, you can flag the email for review directly in your Gmail account.

When we fix the categorization of an incorrectly labeled email, the email label or email folder will not change. The reports will not retrospectively change emails that were previously miscategorized. Rather, the reports will prevent future miscategorizations.

Export the email

Select your email provider:

Open Gmail.
Open the relevant email which you suspect is incorrectly labeled.
Click ⋮ More (the three dots) ▸ Change labels.
Add the Avast:Review label, and click OK.

When the label is added to the email, we automatically download and run further analysis on it, to determine whether it is correctly classified.

Open Outlook.
Open the relevant email which you suspect is incorrectly labeled.
Click … More actions (the three dots) ▸ Save as.
Select the folder or cloud location where you want to save your message.
Click Save.

Open Thunderbird.
Find the relevant email which you suspect is incorrectly labeled.
Right-click the email and select Save as....
Select the folder or cloud location where you want to save your message.
Click Save.

The email is now saved on your device as an EML file, and you can submit it to Avast for review.

An alternative method to the steps above is to forward the email in EML format to yourself, save the file, then continue with the instructions below to submit the EML file to review. For more details on sending an email in EML format, refer to instructions provided by your email provider.

Submit the EML file to review

Open your preferred browser and go to Avast ▸ Submit a website or a file to Avast for review.
Under False positive or False negative, select Open submit form.
A False positive is an email that was labeled as Avast:Suspicious, but you believe it is safe. A False negative is an email that was labeled as Avast:Safe, but you believe it is suspicious.
In the top panel, select File.
Fill in the following information:
- Type in your email address
- Attach the relevant EML file
- Provide a description of the issue
Tick the reCAPTCHA box and click Submit.

Your report is submitted.

Further recommendations

For more information about Email Guardian, refer to the following articles:

Avast Premium Security
Avast One
Avast Mobile Security Premium

Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS

Updated on: 06/03/2025

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