In the process of reporting, the reported message body and/or any associated headers or metadata may be included in its entirety, partially included, or omitted. The identifying characteristics of the suspicious message described above may be sent to the network device. The network server device may be notified that a message has been reported by one or more individuals as a possible phishing attack by means other than email, including a SMS message, a telephone call, an instant message (IM), etc.
In some embodiments, activating the report functionality causes the entire message to be forwarded from the client computing device to a pre-configured address at the network server or management console as an attachment. In other embodiments, less than all of the message is transmitted for processing, in some cases only header information and/or a subset of the message body or attachments. In some embodiments, the pre-configured address could be a distribution list. After being reported, the system at the client computing device can move the reported message to a “Deleted Items” or “Junk” folder, or apply a corresponding deleted or junk label, or take no action with respect to moving the message. Alternatively, or in addition, the system may be configured to store messages in an electronic data store at the network server device or other location accessible to the management console module without forwarding through a general-purpose email server or using simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP).